Leeching Bataille: peer-to-peer Potlatch and the Acephalic Response

the states of excitation … the illogical and irresistible impulse to reject material or moral goods that it would have been possible to utilize rationally (in conformity with the balancing of accounts). Connected to the losses that are realized in this way … is the creation of unproductive values; the most absurd of these values, and the one that makes people the most rapacious, is glory. Made complete through degradation, glory, appearing in a sometimes sinister and sometimes brilliant form, has never ceased to dominate social existence; it is impossible to attempt to do anything without it (Bataille 1985: 128-129).