stapled

It is quite strange to look at a signed contract, or a will and testament, or a lump of gold, or a live stock certificate, and think what it - the object - is doing to be of value.  Or being.  But the strangeness itself is stranger.  For what these objects are doing - holding value to terms - stapling - is comprehensible only in society.  Our society.  And it is as our social selves that we are least strangers to ourselves: best seen to ourselves. 

We will pay to hear a tune, but know nothing of the chords or technology of transmission.  We only want the tune, and others, who want the value at our disposal, bend to provide it.  Everything has something of money in it, at least potentially.  That, of itself, is not sad.  Realizing the money inherent in many things is deeply sad, of course.  To sell one's own or another's intimate body or soul is sad.  Living a money-driven life is sad.  To sell one's dexterity or voice is potentially sad, but in our culture, not immediately so, and more often a happy, daily transaction.

So what are these objects - gold, contracts, negotiable instruments - doing?  These things that can make us sing?  The modern legal category-name for stock certificates - negotiable instruments - and the beautifully suggestive term ancient term will give the decisive clue.  They are being the thing that takes two steps, and are doing the step. 

The first step is to be present for what we - not just those directly involved, but the society in general - say the thing will be.  The second step is to make it harder for us to change what we said at the time the next human action.  The object abides between the two steps and in abiding connects them by limiting the second step to the first.  That is why these objects bear marks of validation - seals, signatures, hallmarks, legal opinions. 

They are staples.  They restrict the subsequent step to the prior, they persevere against change over time, but only relative to the affixed parts: that is, only so long as the broader society holds to the two steps.  Gold is not valuable if the society that makes it so altered - it simply feels that way because there is a kind of social sameness that connects us and ancient Babylon, and that aspect of society is persistent about the fact of precious metal value.  But how we think of that fact changes greatly, and so gold is far more malleable in its conception, as well as its substance, than a worded contract.  The Magna Carta, or the charter of the Hudson Bay Company are, in that sense, far more persistent.