Scenery

Your care budget is finite. Every unit spent on a stranger you have no causal connection to is a unit unavailable for the people who depend on you. The real stranger on the news is, operationally, Harry Potter — the ontological difference is real, the operational difference is zero. The essay traces how common nouns become proper nouns (“soldiers” becomes “The Troops”) and install permanent, non-dischargeable claims on your resources. The Second Commandment is a budgetary policy. The cone is bounded. Twenty-five humans and three birds are inside it. Everything else is scenery.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​