From Latin reputātiō a reckoning, from reputāre to calculate, meditate;
| “I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.” - by Jules Renard - |
What is reputation?
Some say it is the summation of a person’s worth. Can it be measured? Can it be equated to quality? To influence? To credibility? Status? Is it something empirical? Does it exist at all? - Of course it’s a concept and thus not real. - However, reputation carries associations, judgments, assessments, projections, ideas and values. It is connected to survival, money, wealth, property, social prestige, to a woman’s good reputation - virginity, to high ethical standards, laudable efforts, something tediously earned – to be built, to be worked on, able to be ‘besmirched’, to be lost, it is to be carefully monitored; something that is fought for, one wants to protect at any cost; it refers to the position one occupies or the standing that one has in the opinion of others, in respect to attainments, integrity, and the like.
Ideas in connection to reputation
· … of having ‘secret’ knowledge about how best to use one’s resources to create wealth – a reputation that allows a person to borrow against future expected income
· … of possessing superior management skills – a reputation that allows one to finance wealth-increasing investment projects – ‘reputational’ capital – as proving beneficial for the investment in capital
· … of one member getting a bad reputation and then ‘besmirching’ the whole group just by being a member - prisoner's dilemma
· … one must ‘pay for a poor reputation’ whether or not one has earned one, then one must repair reputation or fix it.
· … a bad reputation can damage your legal records
· … is connected to the number of times opinions have been cited, discussed, reprinted.
· … based on comparisons which provide ‘evidence’ that is used in trade-related phenomena – ‘reputation’ mechanisms
· … based on past actions – opinion created on it (opinion that proliferates opinion)
· … someone's ‘reputation’ can be damaged due to false accusations ‘smears’
Political science knows ‘reputation’:
· ‘Reputational’ concerns can make one compliant to rules, demands, law etc.
· ‘reputation’ is something that is put to work in favor of something (a means toward a goal) it helps predict a future behavior because it provides with information
· ‘reputation’ as a ‘good global citizen’
· ‘reputational’ costs and benefits
· ‘reputational’ analysis
· ‘reputation’ can be controlled through actions which are determined within ‘reputational’ calculations
· ‘reputation’ can be cabined to certain issue areas
· ‘reputational’ sanctions to enforce public goods agreements can be enforced (like those addressing climate change or nuclear non-proliferation)
· corporate ‘reputations’
Reputation and Honor is coupled in Early Modern England
· acceptability of violence as a means of defending or challenging honor and reputation
· a pious ‘reputation’ as key means of establishing one's honor, with the notion of ‘honesty’, following one’s conscience and thus also the ‘importance’ of ‘godliness’ generally
Reputation as intangible collateral
Mexico’s early industrialization (1878-1913) was based on firms that were grouped or linked through close affiliations with a common bank. Due to the absence of secure property rights tangible collateral could not credibly be offered to creditors; but there remained the possibility of using ‘reputation’ as a form of intangible collateral, thus firms had incentives to group together for purposes of mutual monitoring and insurance.
William Shakespeare: “Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.”
In the 16th century Shakespeare lets ‘reputation’ play a big role in his famous work Othello:
Lago uses his reputation as an honest man to deceive Othello and everyone else. He takes this cover to make Othello believe that Desdemona would cheat on him. If not for his reputation, he would have been killed for this suggestion. So he is able to plot against Othello, Cassio and Desdemonia.
Is cooperation likely with one of bad reputation? Benjamin Franklin, once said “Glass, china and reputation are easily cracked, but never well mended.” – Shattered illusions. Ideas about a person cannot be mended, they can only be replaced by other ideas. But it’s never the real thing.
“A good reputation is more valuable that money” – Publius Syrus (42 B.C.)
Will ‘reputation’ still be such an aspect with Equal Money? Will one still strive to manipulate one’s own and others’ ‘reputation’? The current system is based on manipulating reputation. Also individually: We fear what people will think. Fear that our reputation might be compromised. Fear that people see through the reputation that we have set up for ourselves to cover up our own underlying self-judgments and inferiority. So we manipulate ourselves and others.
We need to be ‘credible’ to ourselves again. To ‘believe’ what we are saying. Not ‘re’ ‘putting’ everything as ourselves ‘out there’ for others to believe, so that we will get something, to manipulate the system to our advantage, to color ourselves beautiful – ‘rep-u-tiful’ – reputed beauty – a ‘reaping beauty vacation’ = reputation; repeatedly creating / putting ourselves ‘out there’ as a projection of how we want to seen, to be ‘held in honor’, based on what we have done, so we can build on those achievements and don’t have to earn our trustworthiness and credibility anew moment for moment in what we say and do. So we build a reputation by repeatedly cre(h)ating ourselves in and as an ‘idea of credibility’, holding the idea of us intact to manipulate others.
Benjamin Haydon (1786-1846): “The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.”
A ‘danger’ within and as the idea of ‘reputation’ is that we create illusionary ‘self-worth’ from it, we believe we can take credit for it and have earned something in return, thus relying on a trade-off of energy, within which we in-debt ourselves and others. So here one can see the relation towards money very clearly.
The approach to and within this world is earning the respect to be taken seriously, to be worthy, to be seen and sometimes even followed, like a ‘specialist’ that has a good reputation and has credentials and degrees. Reputation is a game of power and a game of / for money. Reputation and survival go hand in hand.
All in separation of ourselves. – Let’s stand equal to this system of ‘reputation’ and transcend it as ourselves in seeing where we ‘reap’ ‘u’ - even ‘rape’ ‘u’ as ourselves in making u/you (ourselves) believe we are ‘beautiful’/wonderful/credible/honorable, oh so respectable – but ‘shun’ the ‘day’ to ‘pay’ because it is obvious that we are working with and on credit.
.Margaret Mitchell:
“Until you have lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.
| ‘Reputation’ is a system word that tells us to shun the pay for raping yourself / to shun the day of raping yourself / to shun what you say because it’s raping yourself / to “keep an i/eye on rape – u - (h) ate” Alexander Pope: “At ev'ry word a reputation dies.” Living your words as the living word in self-application does not allow for ‘rep/rape’ nor ‘hate’. REPUTATION = Put your eye on the hate (of self) wherein you have 'raped' yourself of Life |
