Esteem is a currency older than money. Before the existence of money, esteem was the measure of social standing, and this social standing was the basis of trust. Trust served as the basis of credit, such that one could access economic resources by utilizing one's trustworthiness, relying on one's esteem for one's credit-worthiness with others. In many cases, this esteem was established a priori to the need for credit, by the building of credit in the form of “gifting,” which was wielded as a form of “reciprocal altruism,” or reciprocity with delayed returns. In other cases, it could be maintained by holding to one's word, such as by returning with something of equal or greater value to the one extending credit in gift or mutuum (loan for consumption).
Before money, the only way around the need for reciprocal altruism or mutuum could be had by means of bartering. But bartering is clumsy and rare, or must itself be accompanied by reciprocal altruism or customary mutuum to round the edges where equivalency is hard to get. That is, bartering requires the “double-coincidence of wants,” the condition of two parties each having what the other wants, without needing it for themselves, and in equivalent proportions relative to one another. All too often, one party will instead have something that they themselves need, or that they would rather exchange for something else, rather than make an exchange with someone who has something for exchange that is not currently desirable or found to be of equivalent value. This leaves the exchange unmade, unless relying on some form of credit, such as reciprocal altruism or customary mutuum, either for the entire exchange or to round out the difference in equivalency where bartering does occur.
Esteem has two sides, honor and dignity. Some push back on the idea of honor having any social relevance, suggesting that honor cultures, which resulted at times in feuds, have been displaced by contemporary dignity cultures, and for good reason. While there may have been problems with honor cultures, the truth of the matter is that honor and dignity cannot be happily divorced, and that a society that demands dignity where it has not been earned is prone to cultural degeneration. Instead, they function analogous to supply and demand in the field of economics.
Supply, representing something offered, and demand, representing something wanted, are both best satisifed together, such as by way of a competitive market equilibrium, where the two meet. That is, where the buying power behind that which is wanted corresponds in value to that which is being offered, exchanges occur, but where there is no such correspondence no such exchange may happen. It must be remembered that effective demand represents prior supply, in that in order to establish demand through buying power one must previously have produced something that can be given in exchange. In a market economy, this is money. But where demand has high hopes it does not back with a will to pay, or where supply wishes to sell more at a price found unreasonable to demand, exchange is missed, and, as a result, dearth or glut result.
Similarly, honor represents something offered, whereas dignity represents past honors already-accepted. Where honor and dignity agree on the level of esteem to be exchanged, much as supply and demand agree upon a price level, the optimal satisfaction is attained by each, because equilibrium has been reached. But where dignity makes claims without honor to back it, such as is done under the banner of cultural Marxism, or where honor demands too much from dignity, as under the herald of cultural nationalism, both fail to reach their optimum levels, and dearth or glut of social esteem results.
Social esteem may otherwise be understood as civility, such that a dearth of social esteem results in a lack of civility, or nonsensicalism and crime, and a glut of social esteem results in extracivility, or sensibilism and government. That is, with greater and more complementary levels of both honor and dignity, or where the general level of social esteem is found agreeable, there is a greater level of civility that follows as a result. Where civility is lacking, there is either crime or government, each a form of disequilibrium.
Aristotle, in his perennial wisdom, tells us that a good character is one that is virtuous, the most excellent of all being the magnanimous individual, who has approximated the golden mean, or the place of harmonic balance between the vices, each being a form of deficiency or excess. Both supply-and-demand and honor-and-dignity can be understood in this framework, with their accompanying dearths and gluts being treatable as deficiencies and excesses of character. As a result, it can be reasonably deduced that economic problems result from problems of civility, which themselves result from problems of character.
But what is to be said of the deterministic forces operating on the individual, which serve as constructs and constructions of character? Can it not also be reasonably deduced that the problems of character flow from the problems of incivility and ill economy, as the communists have suggested? Indeed, the character development of individuals can be stunted by dehumanization and paupery. But Nature offers a way out of this determinism.
This has been called free will by some, and is mistakenly understood by many, including its proponents, to be a will freed from the constraints of Necessity, but this is not so. There is no such will that operates free from Necessity. There is, however, a will that operates free of physical constraint, however according to different aspects of Necessity, which have been understood to be teleological or retrocausal. This will has been connected to notions such as the will to believe or the will to be free. Operating on information, rather than on calories, this will, while unable to ignore the constraints and forces of construct, can surpass and transcend the physical constraints that oppress the individual in the present, by recognizing the constructive and constructionistic forces that limit the actualization of greater levels of character, and seeing to it that these are changed for the future. That is, by recognizing the forces that subconsciously constraint and construct one's character, one may begin to conscientiously choose the stimulants that one is surrounded by, increase one's knowledge within the limits possible, and use the change of environment and the knowledge to break free of the limitations that a passive self could not even imagine. This freedom, which results only from a Love of Nature, including one's inner and the outer nature of the world, is a preternatural, and, while mundane and rational, a mystical and magical act of immanent trancendence, or evolution.
The capacity to consciously engage in one's own evolution, and the evolution of one's species, results from the Divine spark found in each and every individual, which the process theologians have attributed to having a sort of participatory role in God's ongoing act of Creation. While God creates, however, humans can only mimic this act of Creation in the modification of that which already exists, and so cannot be understood to be doing the fundamental works, however crucial they are to our scale and perspective as oriented in the Monad. Creation, that is, must be understood to be synonymous with Necessity, and as an illusion of change that occuring from perspectives oriented within, but not coequal to, the Eternal.
In understanding one's relation to God, one comes to a place of psycho-spiritual balance, an equilibrium itself, which allows one to cultivate in themselves a soul, or a Big-Souledness, much as Aristotle's magnanimous individual. This big souledness means that one does not simply drift about in the currents of existence, but learns to ride the waves. As a result, physical limitations of the present become challenges to overcome for the future, such that the constraints faced by the individual can be broken down in acts of conscious rebellion. These acts of conscious rebellion are honorable actions which, especially when recognized as deserving of esteem, can be utilized as dignity and are conducive of civility and economy. Esteem is a currency older than money, backed by the honorable product of good character and dignified accordingly, serving as the foundation for cultural mutualism, which eschews the dignity claims of cultural Marxism and the honor claims of cultural nationalists, as they exist in discordance with one another.