The Infinite Debt of Society

Historically, kingdoms and empires have rarely been the ost important reference points in people's lives. If we are born with an infinite debt to all those people who made our existence possible, but there is no natural unit called society, then who or what exactly do we really owe it to? Every one everything. And how do we pay a debt to something so diffuse? Or perhaps more to the point, who exactly can claim the authority to tell us how we can repay it, and on what grounds? The authors of the brahminas were offering a quite sophisticated reflection on a moral question that no one has really ever been able to answer any better, before or since.