I guess it is a very ordinary ritual. We celebrate past mutuality and cajole further supportiveness. I ask: Is this the extent of the virtue we wish to invoke? I ask: Is the simple mutualism which makes civilization possible for everyone a virtue for anyone?
Your neighbor has use for your cast-off couch. Your neighbor has need for your cast-off time. How much virtue is there in turning over your excess to your neighbor? Oh, glorious neighborhood! We reassort collective assets and remark together how each one has gained back as much as we have given away.
Why celebrate mutual benefit? Why cajole participation which asks no sacrifice? Are we really so vile that without this begging and thin public honor we would refuse to exchange the superfluous?
We step on the surface as if by magic without breaking into the substance. Like a water strider on the surface of the stream we jump ahead so as to stay in our place at the head of the rapids where honey makers and dung eaters both are likely to be trapped by the spatter of the flowing water and so be devoured by us.
In actual reality is this the hagiography of the vapid?