Volume 4 · The Ledger and the Loom · Essay 9

Action Tendency

You may not know the name Action Tendency, but you know the thing. This page only introduces the two of you formally.

Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.

Ask the LIC agent at your door and the trader at his terminal — both will tell you the same thing in different clothes: money listens to discipline and laughs at moods.

Money is a good clerk and a terrible master; the arrangement is entirely up to us. The name is new; the wisdom stood at bus stops long before either of us.