Today, my friend mentioned the phrase “Knife Logic” to me, and when I asked her what she meant, she had this to say:
The logic that there’s always a knife at your back, that there’s always a scarcity you’re outrunning, and always someone who can replace you if you falter, and so if you choose to help another, you’re slowing yourself down by carrying them. That’s not to say that you should never help anyone, but it always has costs, about which one must be clear-minded. The brutal logic of scarcity and survival is always the deepest underpinning. Similarly, because everyone else is operating under those constraints, you should never expect others to slow their own flight from scarcity by helping you or extending you grace.
That’s…pretty harsh, but it also pretty much encapsulates my own attitude towards other people. I do help people, but I’m always very limited in how I do it, because I have a scarcity mindset about resources — probably due to my grandmother’s influence in my upbringing. She moved to America in 1930, and lived through the Great Depression. My grandfather literally starved as a teenager before cheating his way into the CCC’s (by bloating to make weight, per family lore). Scarcity is one of the Gods of the Copybook Headings that I don’t think I will ever be able to ignore.
Would I like to live in a post-scarcity society? Yes, I would. But technologically, we are not there yet. And until we are, this fact of scarcity will always be the fundamental underpinning of anything we do.
Emilybook 