Y2k year 2002 back to archive
Y2k2 Week 5, Feb 3 2002 technology and society
Doug Carmichael
Topics: Rationality, Human Nature, 4 thoughts, Spengler, Conrad.
Archived at http://www.dougcarmichael.com/y2k_2002_introduction.htm
Reflections on the week.
Since the last issue, January 3rd, was the first issue in the reemergence of the news letter after two years, it stirred a number of extremely thoughtful responses. First, those who did the hard work of getting people to pay attention to potential Y2K failures have been ignored, even mocked, since. There are a number of such people, about a dozen I know personally.
Two in particular: John Koskinen working out of the Whitehouse, in a mode I often criticized, played his role with dignity and intelligence that has gone, so far as I know, ignored. To me it set a standard of public service beyond what I had known before. His strategy within the government and overseas had profound effects. And Ed Yardeni from Deutchebank, who I am sure helped get Y2K concerns into the core of business. He too was quite correct in his assessment, and it may have hurt his reputation (not with many of us who are grateful for his role).
I was a consultant to about a dozen major organizations and the high level teams that met internally with great intensity, such as the Saturday morning meetings at the Pentagon, are forgotten. The good news is that participants, such as internal y2k project leaders in organizations, gained a total systems awareness and their careers, among those I know, have done very well with few casualties. The message, that system wide issues require systems wide managers, is, however, basically lost.
A second line of thinking in responses sent back to me was a question: why were there so few overseas failures? Does this suggest it was all hype? The reality I think is very complex. I got to visit Greece, and watched very closely the Mexican approach. In Greece business and finance people shared stories and approaches in a clubby atmosphere of cooperation utterly unlike what I saw in the US. Mexico, with its department of statistics and demographics (I have forgotten the exact title) created one of the most direct and attractive approaches, producing manuals and shared information beyond anything I saw in the states. We just must get to travel more, and take seriously the achievements of others who, often better rooted in their histories, and with less distractions, actually get more done.
But most profoundly, we live in a time when many people, well educated, have a very hard time thinking of multivariate issues, where complexity makes precision very difficult, and often impossible. Who would have predicted that some corporations, it turned out to be Enron and Global Crossings, would crash into the post September atmosphere with as much impact as the planes had on the towers - some actually came close, by seeing that the bubble was at the top and some corporations had to come apart.
The key stimulant in 1997-98 to my own interest in y2k was the awareness that people had their minds made up, one way or another, without sufficient information, within a very few moments of hearing about the issue. There was a "fundamentalism" in the mental models of both the "big deal" and the "no issue" folks. The degree to which people's attitude was a reflection of the community of which they were a part was - and is - important, as a social regulator, and as social illusion. Social cohesion is a factor to be reckoned with. And, as I have argued for y2k, was the crucial factor. Because responsibility was internalized in the organizations.
Note how Enron is progressing: we will get increased hysteria, much like the McCarthy hearings, while Enron execs were doing what was obviously the next step in the market, not just derivatives on stock, but derivatives on information. Enron, with its "excesses" was bound to happen, and if not Enron, many other companies would have fallen and any one of which could have been the great scape-goat. It could all be seen as a smoke screen to help fog up the public capacity for understanding by replacing comprehension with outrage towards a few scapegoats demanded by the media. The deeper issue of information, computers, finance and markets synergistically interwoven is not dealt with. When in a bad school situation, such as Columbine, some child finally blows, we know the culprit: evil child and sick parents, we expose, and move on.
The result of the issues raised by comments, plus the incredible complexity of the last few weeks (the quality of critical social analysis has taken a big step forward), I have had a hard time absorbing the last few weeks. Enron, security legislation, the avoidance of the war metaphor now so we can treat the prisoners outside the Geneva convention - and he problems of climate, population, drugs (selling drugs near a school violates a different section of the law code and leads to greater incarceration rates. Most dark skinned lived close to schools whereas light skinned live in the suburbs, farther from the statutory definition of close..) …… Lots to try and understand.
Rationality and Human Nature
Science implies, in the popular culture, of which the financial community is a part, that precision and rationality are possible. But the more rationality, the more removed practice becomes from much of the world that has causal consequences: imbalance in justice, wealth and hope. The "rational" center fights against these, mostly by trying to tighten up its model - and exclusion of those people, facts and political geography that don't fit.
"Rational," for the Greeks, who invented the idea, was mind in the service of life. Since the enlightenment "rational" can mean a logical sequence of cause and consequence, that can create things that are not in the service of life and are actually 'irrational". )
We have a struggle between democratic and managed solutions, and managed solutions are totally dominating the political landscape. The idea that there are market forces acting independently is dependent on not paying attention to the use of government by winners to amplify the tendency to concentrations. The current tendency of the market (all markets throughout history seem to do this, strongest when markets and power are aligned) to lead to concentrated wealth will use events like both Sept 11 and Enron to justify security and regulation, and regulation is managed by large corporations. My local carpenter can't install beautiful hand made windows - double paned and thick wood stock, because he can't afford to get the lab tests to show he meets the local building code. So we are forced to buy from a large manufacturer. So the regulatory system, supposedly protecting me, continues towards centralization. It feels like the last minutes in a monopoly game when money tries to - monopolize, and large amounts of cash change hands fast because the payoff is so high. So flows adrenalin, and objectivity is obscured by the heat of the game.
I look forward to seeing physics and economics come together to break the hold that mathematics has, replacing complex calculations with field theory intuitions so that the obvious: making people poorer to make people richer, can be seen for the field disturbance it is.
So, several strong thoughts.
First, the West has been successful because, unlike most of the history of the world, money-power and political-power were not in the same hands. The result was always a struggle, which meant balance, rather than a collapse into a single managed - and owned - solution. In Asia, for the most part, property was always controlled by the state bureaucracy and was not an independent force (or put another way, big owners and big managers were the same people). Almost everyone today wants to get away from tensions in the current situation, because of its connection to violence. Big organizations want to regulate the tension out of their markets, and control their markets. Small players want freedom from crushing forces, ordinary people want their job and the avoidance of war. We will accept regulated centralized management to avoid chaos and illegality.
How much human society with freedoms and equity are possible without violence? "Rational" implies a single machine of regulatory centrality and agreement. But if human well-being depends on a balance of forces rather than managing them out of existence, what are the implications for how we need to learn to live? A violentless future is probably a highly administered future. Not a culture of non-violence but a police state.
Second, I have been thinking about the psychology of markets. Here is a conclusion. Consumerism is a ritualized life affirming religion. In the West Calvinistic negativism, and other beliefs about hell and sin, the valuelessness of earthly existence, paint a tragic, depressing and morbid picture of the world. People sense that these beliefs are related to social control. The joy of the market, being a consumer, are then possibly vital life-loving responses to a very depressing underlying sense of the universe and its rewards. If this is true, criticism of consumerism or the market will backfire, because people feel, more or less consciously, that it is a threat to the major path of vitality open in this society. People would rather that family or leisure were the outlets, but these in turn are dominated by large organizations and media, and people feel powerless in these realms.
The result is that the mainstream of the population senses that the only path for it is increased security and regulation, and reliance on consumer/market relationships. If this is the way it is, then those who are interested in thoughtful change towards a better quality of life, and not to lose what we have had, need a more penetrating analysis.
Third is that science, originally an exploration of the cosmos and everything in it, became an instrument of power and excluded human nature. The very word "truth" is the same root as troth, as in "I pledge thee my troth" - a word describing the relationship of people with each other in a condition of faithfulness. "Truth" then got turned to describe the relation between people and things, and then to things in their relationship with each other, especially the scientific experiment. What was left out then were the humans that arrange the scientific experiment as a reduced set of circumstances. A scientific attitude that does not include human nature is going to be led by that small part of human nature that controls the scientific community: careers and power, finance and the military industrial complex. (beware that this picture is a caricature of very complex thoughtful developments over three millennia)
A crucial question, understood by the Greeks, was that the cosmos and the body and the psyche were all inter-governed. Thus "ethos", the environment, included the moral climate, and the function of law was to create the ethos. Balance and harmony were the same principle, in the cosmos, in the action of justice and in the individual psyche.
In modern times Piaget made the same connection in his studies of children, showing that the ability of the child to rotate a table in front of him in his imagination let him see the world as others saw it, and that this operation, tied to symbols and a feeling of compassion, gave rise to ethics. Ethics is not a sand alone system rooted in socialization, but a natural system brought to the forefront by good symbols. The symbolical manipulation of the operations that moved the body in space were the same operations that equated to ethical judgments.
Very few in psychology understood this, because of the need to understand concepts of groups of transformations and reversibility. (The idea originated with Helmhotz). It was not a metaphorical way of speaking: there was a deeper logic to the argument.
If science were interested in the other half of its self - the human nature that creates it - the fruits of science would then be more a response to the whole of human nature, rather than to that part of human nature that is hierarchical and aggressive.
Genetic knowledge is used to target diseases that can be products, not health which can be practiced. We deal with part systems because we can sell them, whereas whole systems require more humility and the co-participation of the client in a potentially non-market relationship.
Good moves
http://www.ananova.com/yournews/story/sm_484943.html
"An international contingent of clowns is planning a trip
to Afghanistan to
teach the country's people how to laugh again. Australian clown Jean-Paul Bell,
co-founder of the Humour Foundation, says they will visit hospitals, orphanages
and refugee camps.
And
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-03-02.html
WASHINGTON, DC, January 3, 2002 (ENS) - Thanks to a tremendous
effort by
international donors, non-governmental organizations and Afghan volunteers,
Afghanistan has "averted widespread famine," said Andrew Natsios,
administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Natsios and
Alan Kreczko, acting assistant secretary of state, Bureau of Population,
Refugees, and Migration, spoke today at a special press briefing at the
State Department.
Symptoms
"The year 2001 was a typical year based on historical seismic activity,
producing 65 significant earthquakes worldwide and causing 21,436
fatalities according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Significant earthquakes are those of magnitude 6.5 or greater
or those that
cause fatalities, injuries or substantial damage. During a typical year,
18 major temblors (magnitude 7.0 to 7.9) and one great earthquake (8.0 or
higher) occur worldwide.
"Dense urban populations coupled with weak building structures
near the
epicenters are responsible for most of the fatalities, in any year," said
Waverly Person, Director of the USGS National Earthquake Information Center
in Golden, Colo."
Comment: The next unspoken thought (someone else's responsibility) increased population and urbanization will mean an increase in the fatality rate and the appearance of a worsening level of seismic activity. I remember once in the 60's talking to a weather scientist who was involved with seeding hurricane's in the Caribbean with ice crystals. "What is the impact on the farmers in the Yucatan?" "That is someone else's' responsibility."
Classics
Two readings. We have a possibility of seeing ourselves in the flow of history. The best historians and writers of fiction can take us there.
The first long quote is from Oswald Spengler's book, in as much ill-repute as Machiavelli's book on the education of the Prince. It Is the Decline of the West which, so far as I can say has stimulated all serious modern historians, just as H. G. Wells said, from Toynbee, Sorokin, and Mcneill (by the very title, his The Rise of the West, of his magnificent world history, shows the indebtedness) till today. It is hard reading, almost too stimulating, and full of thoughts that are awkward for us.
The second is from Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and I'll say a bit when we get to it.
From Spengler..
"By the term "Caesarism" I mean that that kind of government
which, irrespective of any constitutional formulation that it may have, is in
its inward self a return to thorough formlessness. It does not matter that Augustus
in Rome, and Huang Ti in China, Amasis in Egypt, and Alp Arslan M Baghdad disguised
their position under antique forms. The spirit of these forms was dead, and
so all institutions, however carefully maintained, were thenceforth destitute
of all meaning and weight. Real importance centered in the wholly personal power
exercised by the Caesar, or by anybody else capable of exercising it in his
place. It is the recidivism of a form-fulfiled world into primitivism , into
the cosmic-historyless . Biological stretches of time once more take the place
vacated by historical periods .
At the beginning, where the civilization is developing to full bloom ( today ) , there stands the miracle of the Cosmopolis, the great petrifact, a symbol of the formless-vast, splendid, spreading in insolence. It draws within itself the being-streams of the now impotent countryside, human masses that are wafted as dunes from one to another or flowlike loose sand into the chinks of the stone. Here money and intellect celebrate their greatest and their last triumphs. It is the most artificial, the cleverest phenomenon manifested in the light-world of human eyes -uncanny, 'too good to be true ," standing already almost beyond the possibilities of cosmic formation.
Presently, however, the idea-less facts come forward again, naked and gigantic. The eternal-cosmic pulse has finally overcome the intellectual tensions of a few centuries. In the form of democracy, money has won. There has been a period in which politics were almost its preserve. But as soon as it has destroyed the old orders of the Culture, the chaos gives forth a new and overpowering factor that penetrates to the very elementals of Becoming-the Caesar-men. Before them the omnipotence of money collapses. The Imperial Age, in every Culture alike, signifies the end of the politics of mind and money. The powers of the program bodily forces , resume their ancient lordship. 'Race" springs forth, pure and irresistible-the strongest win and the residue is their spoil. They seize the management of the realm of books and problems petrify or vanish from memory. There is no inward difference more. The lives of Septimius Severus and Gallienus and those of alrric and Odoacer. Rameses, Trajan, Wu Ti, belong together in a uniform up-and-down of historyless time-stretches.
Once the Imperial Age has arrived, there are no more political problems. People manage with the situation as it is and the powers that be. In the period of the Contending States, torrents of blood had reddened the pavements of all world-cities, so that the great truths of Democracy might be turned into actualities, and for the winning of rights without which life seemed not worth the living. Now these rights are won, but the grandchildren cannot be moved, even by punishment, to make use of them. A hundred years more, and even the historians will no longer under- stand the old controversies. Already by Caesar's time reputable people had almost ceased to take part in the elections. It embittered the life of the great Tiberius that the most capable men of his time held aloof from politics, and Nero could not even by taunts compel the Equites to come to Rome in order to exercise their rights. This is the end of the great politics.
With the world peace -- the peace of high politics-the "sword side" of being retreats and the "spindle side" rules again; henceforth there are only private histories, private destinies, private ambitions, from top to bottom, from the miserable troubles of fellaheen to the dreary feuds of Caesars for the private possession of the world, The wars of the age of world-peace are private wars, more fearful than any State wars because they are formless. For world peace - which often has existed in the -act-involves the private renunciation of war on the part of the immense majority, but along with this it involves an unavowed readiness to o being the booty of others who do not renounce it. It begins with the State-destroying wish for universal reconciliation , and it ends in nobody's moving a finger so longer as misfortune only touches his neighbor. Already under Marcus Aurelius each city and each land-patch was thinking of itself, and the activities of the ruler were his private affair as other men's were theirs.
With the formed state having finished its course, high history
also lays itself down weary to sleep. Man becomes a pawn, adhering to the soil,
dumb and enduring. The timeless village ant reappear, begetting children and
burying seed in Mother Earth-a busy, easily contented swarm, over which the
tempest of soldier-emperors passingly blows .
Page 378-380
Comment: can we read here something about the passage from Clinton, who played the first part of this to Bush who tightens the game? Is the line - Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon. Taking us where Spengler suggests?
And from Conrad, The Heart Of Darkness.
Conrad's writing deals with the penetration of the western psyche into the remoter parts of the world. He makes clear that those who operate on our behalf at the margin of society are themselves marginal people who are organized by strong men and thugs to make the world yield our coffee, our bananas, our rubies and sapphires and diamonds (and now oil and rare meals for computers) - the things we are surrounded by (don't forget wedding rings) and cannot penetrate with our imagination into the causal chain of their coming into our possession. The heart of darkness begins with an amazing act of imagination, a reversal, as the ship sits in London waiting for the tide to come up the Thames that will let it go to another remote part of the world - an old sailor talks about those who came from Rome to these primitive parts of the world.
"And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men. Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of the day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost end of the earth. I've looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs forever, but in the August light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "followed the sea" with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, `has been one of the dark places on the earth." His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow-
"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago - -the other day. . . . Light came out of this river since-you say Knights. Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in flicker - may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine-what d'ye call 'em? -triremes in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries - a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too -used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here -- very end of the world, a sea - the color of lead, a sky the color of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina-and going up this river with stores, or orders for watever you like. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages,-precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falerian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay - cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death, death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh, yes-he did very well here, too no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga-perhaps too much dice, you know -coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, utter savagery, had closed round him,-all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination-you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."
I read this book, like many of us, in high school, and have not the faintest idea of this kind of passage having been there, yet there was lingering sense, a deeper "education" about the problems of empire. But I was not prepared for such magnificent writing and - well, you just should read it to understand ourselves, the world's view of us, and - well, look at how the two passages go together.
"He paused.
"Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm out the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower-` Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is the efficiency-the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force-nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at its blind-as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, it is not a pretty famed when vou look when into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental presence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea-something you can set up, and about down before, and offer a sacrifice to. . "
Books referenced. To order from Amazon use the link, which makes a small contribution
to the newsletter.
Spengler Decline of the West
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195066340/dougcarmichae-20
McNeil The Rise of the west
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226561410/dougcarmichae-20
Piaget The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence
: An Essay on the Construction of Formal Operational Structures
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465027725/dougcarmichae-20
Piaget Play dreams and imitation in Childhood. (my favorite
Piaget book)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393001717/dougcarmichae-20
Piaget Moral Judgment of the Child
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684833301/dougcarmichae-20
Conrad The Heart of Darkness
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0192833731/dougcarmichae-20
On the Greeks: Werner Jaeger Paidea, vol 1
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195004256/dougcarmichae-20
To email me directly doug@bigmindmedia.com Comments always appreciated.