Social Debtors Beware

A lot of people are in debt to me. 

Is it haram to charge interest on social debts? Or is it just money? I tend to “charge interest” on social debt because I'm a vengeful person. I'm a forgiving person too. I don't think forgiveness and vengeance cannot exist simultaneously. I think justice should be served for objectively bad behavior and I'm happy to serve it. The thing is…almost everyone that I know is in social debt to me. 

Miss Iman, what do you mean by social debt? 

Excellent question! To me, one puts themselves in “social debt” by putting another person in a situation where they must rise above your failure, not taking accountability for the failure, not offering a solution, and not changing the behavior. There is a subconscious knowledge that doing this puts oneself on a sort of borrowed tolerance from the victim of the failure. Therefore putting oneself in debt. Like financial debt, this social debt weighs on the soul. 

I think social debt has a sort of class system too. If you're constantly around equally yoked people, you don't end up in debt. Everyone kind of fails each other equally. Not to toot my own horn, but I am like a social billionaire. My social credit score is 840. How do you build social credit? 

•reliability 

•accountability 

•introspection 

•communication 

•thoughtfulness 

•patience 

•worldlyness 

•knowledge 

Things that will immediately tank your social credit include: 

•flakiness 

•tardiness 

•self-centeredness 

•bigotry 

•unaccountability 

•avoidance of responsibility 

I'm not saying that I'm a perfect person, I'm just saying that my social credit is awesome. I buy things on credit. You have to in order to keep your score up! I said something really unkind to Brittyn this week. She texted me and told me it hurt her. I immediately said that I was sorry and that I would stop the behavior. I paid for that interaction on credit and as soon as I was made aware of my debt, I repaid it. Some people would have deflected, made excuses, not apologized, disregarded. That would put them in even deeper debt. Is it making sense? I hope so because I'm moving on. 

Again, a lot of people are in debt to me. The problem is that I know and I'm charge interest. That's actually how I cope with people that I care about failing to improve. If I didn't charge interest, I would be angry all the time. The interest is like justice to me and all things must be justified for them to fly at Iman International Airport. As usual, all roads for my behaviors lead back to my father. Kachow. He trained me to have tolerance for his social failures by buying my forgiveness with materials. My father is so deep in debt with me that I've had to lock him in debtors' prison. I actually said to him “you don't have enough years left in your life to repay me for all my kindness to you”. The price tag on his freedom is quite literally 5 figures. I don't always collect in materials though, sometimes it's favors, or priorities, or being cornered into revealing information. I wonder, though, if this is ethical of me…Is it right for me to charge interest on debts from people who don't have the means to exist in the way that I do? 

Once upon a time, my grandfather died and I tried to go with him. That earned me two years in and out of the loony bin. That and my ex boyfriend that was secretly doping me up (long story). That time gave me two solid years of studying psychology, isolating, spending weeks without access to technology, and introspecting. I did the works; reiki, talk therapy, mood stabilizers, astral projection, deep state meditation, mushrooms, etc. I worked on myself like it was a job. It was a privilege. I was deeply privileged to do that. I was privileged to have access to education for psychology, I was privileged to spend two years of my adult life coasting on my family’s money while I did this, I was privileged to have the status to go into psychiatric care and be taken seriously. Is it privileged of me to hold people who didn't have my privilege to the same standards I have for myself? I don't know. 

For example: I am reliable and I'd like to think that's something easy to do. I'm not sure if it is though. What makes someone behave reliably? Good foresight. What do you need to have good foresight? Pattern recognition, the ability to quell anxious thoughts, and time to sharpen that skill. Can I, a super pattern recognizer something gifted to me by high functioning autism, really hold a normal person  to the standard I hold myself? I suppose not. It's not fair. But what is the solution? How do I protect myself from people who hurt me with their behavior? The answer can't be to allow myself to be hurt in the same ways over and over again. It can't be to just allow it. Do I discard people who fail? I think that's a common response, but one that leads to a lonely existence. Do I join MENSA? No, I'm already paranoid about the government tracking and abusing my mind. I become fearful when I solve the crossword in less than 20 seconds. I think that will be the time they finally catch me and bring me to the RFK Jr. lab for testing on autistic minds. I'm lucky to have gone to my k-12. There, I found friends that will last me a lifetime because we had to be tested in order to gain entry to the school. Do I resign myself to those being my only reciprocal friendships for the rest of my life? 

I talked to my mother about this, this morning. She told me to remember The Serenity Prayer. She also told me the same thing she tells me all the time. “God has blessed you with more capability than others and that is a great responsibility.” My least favorite reminder these days. I explained to her that my issue with social debt is less the debt and more the behavior that it inspires. Much like people in dire financial debt, a lot of people in dire social debt, choose to take a position of entitlement. They feel that the debt is too far gone to be repaid, so rather than going socially bankrupt by admitting to everything and starting from scratch, they become entitled. They don't ask for permission, they don't apologize ever, they stand ten toes down on every poor decision, and they act as though you're crazy for not liking their behavior. This has been very difficult for me to navigate. When do I send people to collections? I think about my uncle who taught me about “debt leveraging” when I started “Shark Week Survival Kit” in 2016. I had asked him about how to grow the business without outright taking a loan and he told me to get a business credit card. At that point in my life, my fear of paying interest was at an all time high, so I looked at him as though he'd lost his mind. 

“I'd have to pay the credit card off every month. How will that help me?” I exasperated. 

He shook his head. “You need to pay more than the minimum to not get in trouble…you're in good standing with your credit. Take out a card with zero interest for a year to start. They're everywhere, you can get one. Then, make a plan to pay it back before the end of the zero interest period. That will grow you enough within the year to take bigger risks with debt.” 

That changed my life. It is the tactic I have used to become a successful entrepreneur and a successful overall human. I only take on major debt if I believe that I will yield a higher return than the cost of the debt. I only ask a favor if it will allow me to show up better in the future. Everything else, I pay off immediately. 

Manipulatively, I see accepting small debts as a route to getting what I want. Specifically with my romantic partners. I like a busy man. A busy man will almost always leave his relationship in a state of debt. He will cancel on you, he will reschedule, he will have periods of emotional incompetence and unavailability, and he will disappoint you. As I said earlier, this is my comfort zone. I operate best with a man that is in debt to me because I love talent, good looks, and ambition. A man with all that has to be humbled by something or he becomes crazy with power. If he also showed up as a perfect partner that does everything right (the way I do), we could be at an impasse when it comes to me getting what I want. Their debt allows me my little delights. I'm counting every reschedule, every cancellation, and every episode of emotional incompetence with intention to collect with interest. It's my little spank bank. I collect on AMEX and Sapphire Reserve. My favorite place to collect is SoHo. How can you say “no” to a Prada bag when I was so patient about the busy season at work? You know? You know? Is it unethical of me to use their debt as a bargaining tool for our overall happiness?

I'm full of questions and there's a shortage of answers. 

 “Is it unethical of me to use their debt as a bargaining tool for our overall happiness?”

I don't think it's unethical to use my romantic partner's debt as a bargaining tool for our overall happiness because society raises men to disregard women's emotions and decide for us. So, I think it's an objectively ethical thing to respond to that by having them show repentance for failure with money instead of having an exhausting conversation that they lack the base emotional intelligence for and will lead to very little change. I think that slow change will come with time, but the person owed a debt needs more immediate compensation in some way. Boom. One answer. 

When do I send people to collections? I don't think that there is a numerical way to estimate the right amount of tolerance before sending a social debtor to collections. I think the right time is when their behavior starts to make you resent them. Not sending them to collections once you start feeling resentful could lead to you yourself becoming bitter and hateful because there is not even enough minimum repayment to make things feel alright. Collections is not relationship ending, it's like a final opportunity to rehabilitate the connection. Their score has been hit and this is the last straw. I think bankruptcy; lack of repayment, but admittance of failure and accountability for it is acceptable here. If they choose to dodge collections, it's done. Wages garnished and straight to jail.

Do I resign myself to those being my only reciprocal friendships for the rest of my life? 

This was a cynical question. Obviously the answer is “no”, but I think it's important that I set my expectations accordingly. I cannot reasonably expect 9.7 out of 10 people to have the capability I do to be an awesome person. I just need to be grateful for the .3% of  people that can show up for me in the way that I do them. 

:) 

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