Yuri
Tarnopolsky ESSAYS
4. On new overcoats
inflation. competition with things.Use Firefox browser or see essays-complete.pdf |
Essay 4. On
new overcoats
Today
the masses turn for their well-being not to the face of
a god, king, dictator, or national savior but to the
faceless substance of economy acting like climate,
weather, and the roar of the earth. It is a new
ecumenical paganism. The words interest rate,
inflation, stock market, and unemployment carry even
more weight than hurricane, storm, drought, earthquake,
and epidemics. Like the old readers of The Old
Farmer's Almanac we search
our financial skies for signs of changing weather
because we are all farmers in the third millennium: we
grow money. Economy
is now part of global human ecology. As we all know
something about stormy weather not just from textbooks,
we are all entitled to a personal opinion on economy. The
primordial chaos of economy, the tohu vebohu
, "without form and void" of the second verse of
Genesis, calls for somebody to say "Let there be light."
The function of Federal Reserve is to keep inflation in
check. This is done by slowing the economy,
increasing unemployment, and strangling the stock market
where the soil for farming money is the most fertile. To
some people it seems natural. To others, including
myself, it is irrational. How can we slow down the
economy if our entire survival depends on it? We will
have to resurrect tomorrow what we have killed today.
Why not to slow it down forever, or open way to the
natural course of Things and the invisible hand?
I
am not interested in economics per se. I am no
expert. By no means do I want to criticize anybody's
policy. I have no recipe. I am just a metaphor hunter.
In search for metaphors I look for the secret
meadows where they grow. Irrational
does not mean wrong. It is something neither true nor
false, or both. According to Niels Bohr, one of the
greatest experts on the laws of nature, "If you have a correct statement, then the opposite of a correct statement is of course an incorrect statement, a wrong statement. But when you have a deep truth, then the opposite of a deep truth may again be a deep truth." (see Essay 8)
Niels Bohr was one of the
creators of the quantum physics, a science that has always
looked rather irrational not only to laymen but even to
Albert Einstein but still holds as a deep truth. Industrial
Revolution started about 200 years ago. A sharp
increase of inflation was recorded somewhere around
1960-1965. We can see it growing since the end of
WW2. Something happened at that time. This
needs an explanation. If the productivity grows,
everything should be less and less expensive. This may
be true only until the resources of matter and energy
are not close to exhaustion. Even today, however, the
resources seem plentiful. If we pay more and more for
our own existence, what are we paying for? We
have to look at our society and economy from afar to
search for a major difference between the current
historically short period and the preceding long one.
And sure enough, the difference is there. My
explanation (irrational, rather than rational) is that
inflation is what we pay for the existence of man-made
Things that begin to live a life of their own. The
price of bread could be stable or fluctuate around an
average if all the grain was grown, ground, and baked by
humans and horses. Their output of physical energy was
determined by biology. Using selection, we can
significantly, but not endlessly, increase grain yields,
production of milk by cows and eggs by hens, but
unless we have a radically new breed of humans, we
cannot expect more work from them. Physical evolution of
species seems to be almost as slow as the evolution of
climate or continental drift. Not
so with Things. The Industrial Revolution was only the
beginning of their evolutionary explosion. It opened new
non-biological and non-renewable sources of energy—coal,
oil, and gas. That energy was spent by industrial
societies on making consumer products, means of their
manufacturing and transportation, and means of their
military protection and promotion. The
seeds of Things are their ideas. WW2
for the first time shifted the social function of
science from the quest for truth to the quest for
production. Before that science was something like art
and scientific ideas were valued for their uniqueness,
beauty, depth, and potency to conceive other ideas .
Science became an industry of knowledge, part of
economy, branch of business, and an incubator of Things
and ideas for sale. If Things fathered by science
multiplied, the profits percolated back to science.
Scientists multiplied. Sciences multiplied. Not only
that, but with each new decade, the scientific landscape
could change beyond recognition. It seemed like a
new breed of scientists, their instruments, and theories
is being created on daily basis. While
ideas of Aristotle, Darwin, and Einstein had no owner,
ideas today are products for sale and they better be
kneaded and baked quick. A private or public company for
developing scientific ideas in information processing,
biology, chemistry, and even mathematics is common
today. The
intellectual capacity of human brain changes as slowly
as human physical capacity. The intellectual production
was increased by the Things in the form of scientific
equipment and computers. Another large cycle of
socio-economic metabolism closed: the gears of business
engaged with the gears of science. That was the essence
of the big evolutionary event of the 60's, the phase 2
of the Scientific Revolution, catalyzed by the cold WW3
more than by anything else. As
result of the Scientific Revolution, enormous amount of
Things was created—not only individual Things, but also
their species, genera, families, orders, etc., up to new
kingdoms, like TV, computers, and satellites. All
this techno-life (Technos, as I would call it) had
to be fed with energy, installed, inspected, repaired,
disposed of, and exchanged for new and improved species,
genera, families, etc., as well as advertised, promoted,
sold, insured, and defended from the competing species,
genera, families, etc., and provided with well paid,
qualified, educated, healthy humans to run all that.
Moreover, science and industry could now manufacture and
package human health in quantity and quality unheard of
before. That was a product of unlimited demand, so that
more qualified, educated, etc., etc., ..... to oversee
species, genera... etc., etc. While
Things raised productivity—which has been a major
justification for their invasion—they acquired a
remarkable property of brevity of life. Each new
invention and improvement made them obsolete within time
essentially shorter than human life. Old Things had to
be dumped because old age became a liability for both
humans and new Things. The Things lost their traditional
resale value. Some very old Things went up in price, but
only if they had been practically extinct. As
result, we have some curves that follow. Whether people
in America are healthier, more satisfied with life, have
more comfort, security, and luxury, I cannot tell
because I have no such data, but I suspect, that the
answer is positive. I do not think there is a decline in
general degree of happiness over hundred years. Still,
it would be interesting to find out. It is much easier
to find some economic data over surprisingly long
periods of time. One
can find on the Web a calculator to compare prices for
years from 1940 to present. A computer for $1000 could
be bought for $100 in 1940. It could be bought in 1913
for $60. It was a fabulous life, a Golden Age! Can we
revert the time?
The picture looks even more dramatic if we take a larger
period. The commodity prices, available for UK since 1600
(source: John J. McCusk, How Much Is
That in Real Money?
The jump of inflation coincided with another jump: in
gross domestic product, GDP
So, what was
that "something" that had happened around 1965? I believe it
was the evolutionary explosion of the life of Things who
(of course, who)
invented a radical improvement in their mechanism of
self-reproduction: industrialization and
commercialization of science. They started to distance
themselves from humans and use them as their own
reproductive apparatus. This brings us back to Samuel
Butler (see Essay 6) who predicted all that as
soon as he had learned about Darwin's theory. Humans, with
their chaotic nature, were an excellent source of
mutations for the blueprints. After the
Industrial Revolution, and especially after the 1965,
economy and society found a new environment, free of
restrictions of human biology. Humans believe that
Things serve people. In fact, the opposite conclusion is
equally true: humans serve Things. As I believe, we have
here a typical Niels Bohr situation. NOTE: What
else happened after 1965, see Robert B.Reich, The
Future of Success. The idea about
humans serving Things as their reproductive apparatus is
almost 150 years old and is a topic
of Essay 6. As I see it,
the modern inflation is part of our wealth dissipated by
Things we make. It is our work, resources of
mineral energy, personal time, and savings that we spend
on the life of Things and not on our own biological
needs, i.e., what we need today to be alive and well
tomorrow. There is a small problem: the Things do not
ask us for an invitation. The entire system of
government, law, and business, at least in USA, is
based on a monumentally strong pro-life (for Things)
paradigm. If the
Industrial Revolution brought to life the Things making
Things, the Revolution of 1965 brought to life the
industrial production of the ideas preceding Things, the
Things making ideas, and the ideas behaving as
Things. Ideas became commodity and became engaged in the
socio-economic metabolism similar to any business. But don't
ask me whether I think the Federal Reserve is good or
bad. I am even ready to admit that the visible hand
is always better than an invisible one because you can
at least slap on it. Our own
actions of our free will can be good or bad, judging by
the comparison of goals and results. They could be good
or bad from the point of view of an ideological canon,
such as religion or Marxism. Curiously, for the results
of our dedication to either one we would need to wait
until we were dead. But in the twenty-first century, we
do not have any free will anymore. The measure of our
free will is a number between zero and one, with zero
being the degree of free will of the enzymes that
assemble our own proteins and nucleic acids. Slaves had
somewhat more free will than enzymes. We are all just
enzymes in the global metabolism of Things, like
our own enzymes that are busy with our personal
biochemistry. We assemble and disassemble Things, ideas
for the blueprints of Things, and ideas for their own
sake because they sell, too. Now, where
is the metaphor? In 1842,
Nicolay Gogol, a great writer of the nineteenth century,
one of a few true immortals of Russian literature,
published a short story The Overcoat. A
lonely timid poor clerk, living on a meager
salary, had an overcoat so old and dilapidated that it
could not be mended anymore and its owner was a constant
subject of jokes and teasing at the office. Finally,
with a couple months of fasting and a lucky increase in
salary he was able to order a new overcoat for the cold
Russian winter. The
downtrodden clerk seemed to have gained a new dignity
and respect from colleagues. Same day, however, he was
robbed of his new pride on a dimly lit street of Saint
Petersburg—the tragedy he could not survive. “He
saw some mustached men in front of him. “Hey, it looks
like my overcoat,” said one with a thunderous voice.
Akakiy Akakiyevich was about to cry help when another
man showed him his fist, the size of a
clerk’s head, saying “Don’t even think about it.” Akakiy
Akakiyevich felt the overcoat pulled from his shoulders.
Hit with a log, he fell face down into the snow and did
not feel anything after that.” The literary power of The Overcoat is all in
fine details, not in its plot. As a metaphor, this
story looks to me like a parable of our new economy—by
contrast, rather than by similarity. Unlike the Gogol's
character, we are not clerks but farmers, some more lucky
and gifted than others. The soil of economy brings forth
its edible fruit together with its inedible companions
because we share the land with Things and they plant their
seeds between our feet. Whether we want it or not, we have
to till the soil for them. In exchange, the Things
and not food, nor ideas, nor valor are our pride. It is
the overcoat that wears us. Let us celebrate and enjoy our new—only
50 years old—overcoat of many colors and beware of dimly
lit streets.
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Revised: 2016 Website: spirospero.net To contents email Essays 1 to 56 : http://spirospero.net/essays-complete.pdf Essays 57 to 60: http://spirospero.net/LAST_ESSAYS.pdf Essay 60: http://spirospero.net/artandnexistence.pdf |