Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. You write:

"Your dive into Weber and Toennies I find most intriguing. 
It sent me bobbing about the web trying to divine the subject
of your perplexities.  Was it about wealth and society? About
family and tribal ties vs. political and social relationships
in larger societies?  I'd love to hear more about it."

For all the reputed humor and non-judgemental character that you
have attributed to me, I must admit that our conversations about
sharing wealth, helping the impoverished, treating people with
some generosity (e.g. your cherished sister's adopted son) leave
me disgusted.  So I plan to drop the subject.  I am in no position
to lecture you anyway, since I'm no paragon of charitable giving
myself.

Clearly making food stamps, heating oil subsidies and an internet
connected computer available to needy families is worthwhile
without delivering the "universal happiness" you speak of.  It's
better than encouraging multi-multi-millionaires to hold onto
every cent. 

As for the electrician, the plumber and the ophthalmologist,
it is preferable that they be more than the means to get a job
done.  Your patients don't treat you that way, nor you them.
I got the impression, in fact, that the multi-faceted relationships
you have had with numerous of your patients has been an important
part of your wellbeing as an adult.

When you write:

my recent laboratory experiment which proved conclusively at least
to my mind, that the crowning achievement of the 18th Century's
belief in reason, the U.S. Constitution's promise of due process of
law, turns out, if scratched only a little bit, also to be a lie,
one of the most majestic and magnificent of them all.  Pretending
to be a lawyer makes me feel like a fish gleefully - and profitably -
swimming in a cesspool of intellectual corruption and falsity.


is this your comment on the poor quality of humanity who inhabit
a theoretically admirable legal system and make it so shabby
in practice by their unethical ways of running it?  Or is there
a different form of dispute resolution that you think is preferable.
 After all, for all its faults and need for review and improvement,
the rule of law (as opposed to unregulated decisions by overseers
or rulers, or decisions arrived at through superstitions) is
a sound idea, difficult to improve on.