Tribal Theology

If we take theology in its broadest sense of “how does an individual relate to the ineffable mystery of existence,” then all philosophic systems such as those of economics or government are as much “visions” as any religion from Animism to Zen. All rest on unprovable assumptions.

Are people naturally good or bad? Should we treat people in our tribe differently from those in others? Do markets work flawlessly? Is the best government the smallest? What are the limits of a person’s power, and does it depend on their social position? And on and on .

The days of full belief in the 19th century laissez-faire capitalism, or 20th century global corporate trade are rapidly vanishing in our brave new world. As have Marxism, communism, socialism and all the other artificially constructed economic or government theologies .

Nobody knows what will take their place. There’s a lot of noise in the electronic interconnected world, and a lot of chaos in the real climate challenged one. Prophets are many.

But one thing is absolutely clear. Recourse to reactionary theologies will be no more effective or useful than calling on Quetzalcoatl or invoking the Greek gods at Delphi. Those who cling to ancient absolute doctrines are usually the worst fanatics. Probably we can agree that fanatics are the one set of theologians who can kill us all .

Sketches

As an upon a time amateur artist, I enjoyed sketches immensely. Quick and incisive, a vision condensed, less prone to error than a detailed drawing. Sketches are a joy for an artist, and can be for any later connoisseur .

Although not directly related, political vision is usually more like a sketch of a goal than a map to get there. Whether the goal is “build a canal to lake Erie”, “build a railroad across the continent”, “go to the moon”, or “end poverty.” Even business leaders say generalities like ” improve profits” or “grow market share.”

Details, of course, are important. But at first nobody cares if the way to do it is with 8% state bonds or by reducing labor cost. The means of achieving a goal can often and should often be tweaked or abandoned. There is nothing worse than a means that has lost its purpose but meanders on like some expensive zombie ghost .

So those media calls for “specifics” in a political campaign are ridiculous and only applied for partisan reasons. We vote as we live, for a vision. That is not a failing and it is in fact the only reason things like democracy work .

The only realistic demand to make of potential leaders is to narrow the vision significantly. Not “make life better” but focus on the most salient goals, make them clearly defined. Only then can means be developed, results measured, and possible new approaches tried if necessary .

Discontinuity

A discontinuity is an unexpected, dramatic event which “changes everything.” A good example is the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution could have been plotted and future trends established based on all the data available 65 million years ago. Suddenly – no more dinosaurs! We can imagine many others, the most important of course being our own death .

In modern civilizations, plotted trends good and bad are somewhat comforting. Prices go up by 3%. Average life is a few months longer. The summers are hotter. Trends imply a degree of base stability to be modified relatively predictably – either good or bad .

Oh, we realize that trends reach “tipping points.” Global warming can no longer be prevented. A patient getting worse past a certain point will not recover. But the time factor somehow makes tipping points an almost gentle change .

“Existential” threats often imply a tipping point. As seas rise, coastal barrier islands will disappear. Sure, it’s terrible and final – someday .

On the other hand, much of modern disconnect discontent is the realization that true discontinuities – with no trend lines before – are all around us. Nuclear war, authoritarian takeovers, computers amok. Or, for that matter, a large asteroid strike .

Like the dinosaurs would have done, were they capable, about the only thing most of us can reasonably do about such possibilities is to totally ignore them in our daily lives .

Old Grump

Both political parties this year have suddenly become aware of exactly how fast changes can occur as a person goes through their late ’70s. No matter what protestations of ” being as sharp as ever” there are significant mental and physical issues, some minor, some worse, and all only afflicting sporadically .

The two biggest obvious changes from being, say, 60, are 1) the daily energy level fluctuates a lot and 2) the mind works best in unchanging “safe” zones. Old people dislike the way the world has gone “wrong.” It’s happening to me and to everyone I know my own age. Let us alone in our familiar routine at our own pace and we are usually as good as anyone. Hit us with surprises – especially any that require a vigorous response and out of the box thinking – and our natural response is an angry lashing out .

It rarely makes us incompetent. After all (especially by our late ’70s) our lives have usually settled down considerably. We are happy that it is so. Why can’t everyone else understand?

The classic problems are encapsulated in the highly contentious debate about “should we take the car keys away from Grandpa?” Obviously, he and Grandma are fine most of the time driving to the same old store to get bread. Equally obviously they too often get in an accident or near accident. And mostly they don’t even realize .

Well, our politics has arrived at the same dilemma. It’s never easy, especially concerning politicians (or industrial titans) who are used to power and always think only they are right .

1789 Redux

Large organized societies always contain a latent mob of people who feel they are being cheated and who think they are helpless to change things. Usually their ire is directed at “the government” or at least at those who nominally lead that government. But the mob itself rarely revolts on its own. Its leaders usually come from the “upper” classes.

In the French revolution, for example, the mob was initially provoked by aristocrats who wanted more power (less taxes) themselves. They were aided by an intelligentsia who thought people should be treated better. Those dreamers soon lost control and were swept away in a bloodbath, when fanatic monomaniacs such as Robespierre took over.

Eventually, insurrection collapsed into brutal anarchy, the army sorted itself out, seized power and (being fully heirarchic in principle) installed a dictator/emperor. The mob was killed off in the streets or in wars. Life went on .

History is fun and can be misleading as a guide to the future. But it is interesting to draw comparisons between our current politics and those of Ancien Regime France, which was _ in fact _ better run and more “liberal” than the Napoleonic rule that replaced it.

The mob only listens to demagogues, but were I one, I would tell it to be careful what it wishes for .

90 Days

When the United States was founded 250 years ago, it took three or four days for the fastest message to travel from Boston to Philadelphia. Current print and cable journalists seem to believe the same rules are in effect now. Or so I gather from the consensus that “90 days” is a “frantic whirlwind” for a political campaign .

The saying used to be that “a lie can travel around the world before truth can get its boots on.” Now a meme can “go viral” almost before it is created. A gigantic news sheet in 1795 had maybe a hundred local readers. An internet post instantly informs millions or even billions. A day is an eternity.

In those olden days, the world had very little, very delayed, effects. Crossing the Atlantic could take a month or so, most remote happenings were of no relevance whatsoever. New markets crash now at bank news from Japan, and the entire planet can be incinerated in an hour or so, at the whim of any angry old fart who feels particularly cranky .

In that context 90 days is far longer than most news cycles ever were. People “meet” candidates in minutes on media. A true whirlwind might be 9 days. But then what would all the writers and talking heads have to talk about ?

I’m afraid that this is symptomatic of the endless cynicism I’ve developed about just about every political discussion lately. What “they” say doesn’t quite match my own reality, in distance, speed, or effect

Safety Margin

A race car driver going it over 100 mph can safely navigate within inches of another car. Not so an older impaired driver on an expressway. Safety margin varies with conditions and expertise .

It is natural to “dumb down” safety margin to the lowest (legal) common denominator. In theory, road speed limits are set for normal people and normal cars. Unfortunately, theory is usually easily abused, especially when “experts” are not quite sure themselves. Even more so when jobs or legal issues are on the line .

We have reached an era when “safety margin” has metastasized into insanity. “Just to be safe” applied recursively to more and more of life, leads to ridiculous recommendations and either paralysis of attempting anything or simply ignoring advice totally .

Such seems to be the case with, for example, ultra processed foods, alcohol consumption, or exercise. It’s very hard to get a “ straight” medical answer to anything. A lot of experts “explain” things in such a way that they almost expect to be wrong and want their counsel in such a case to appear blameless.

Intertwined with all this is an astounding ignorance of a sense of proportion. Doubling a chance of being hit by lightning (even if the infinitesimal risk is not exaggerated) is of no use to anyone at all unless they are already working as a steeplejack .

Glad You’re You?

The ” future should look like the past” crowd would try to have everyone live as as they imagine people lived in the 1950s. Presumably all songs written after 1955 would be banned. They should listen to a few of those cheerful tunes written during depression, dust bowl, and war. One that I like is “aren’t you glad you’re you?” Which neatly expresses my own take on a good life .

Reactionaries are always Cassandras. Their future is always bleak, and more horrible the more distantly they imagine. They are infected with lollipop nostalgia of a past that never was, and they are too dumb or too ignorant or too lazy to investigate actual history .

These days we are sandwiched between dour polarized fanatics. On one hand the future is evil because of climate change, computers, population growth, anthropocene extinction, and so forth. On the other side we are doomed by government, laws, social breakdown, and flagrant selfish individualism .

Are they right? Maybe. The one true axiom in all of economics is Keyne’s observation that “in the long run we are all dead.” Looking too far ahead, planning beyond yourself, worried about uncontrollable possibilities, have always been bad bets for living honestly, well, productively and – yes – socially .

So – “every time you’re near a rose, aren’t you glad you got a nose?” Spend each moment as joyfully and consciously as possible. Maybe we all die tomorrow. True history and our own common sense say “probably not.” And memory of the perfume of that flower will last as long as anything else in this unknowable universe .

Diocletian

Most Roman emperors did not die out of office. An exception was Diocletian, who retired after 30 years because of ill health, turning affairs over to a carefully selected, managed, and trained group of successors who promptly failed miserably. Diocletian himself spent his last 10 years or so on a villa happily raising vegetables. His other claim to fame is an attempt to restore the old virtues of the empire, primarily by bringing back wholesome old time-tested religion and getting rid of nasty upstart Christianity. That bloody, reactionary but well intentioned effort gained his evaluation infamy in the centuries to come .

The question, of course, is would the empire have been better served had he remained in office and left vegetables to the peasants. I would answer no. Lots of other problems were combining against the Romans by that time, even though the many reforms of Diocletian did stave off the inevitable for almost two centuries. Another 10 years in office, even if effective, would hardly have changed the course of history dramatically .

The reason this is relevant is that modern aging leaders in business truly believe that the world would fall apart without them and that their imagined godlike power will continue after they are gone. Stocks have a saying: “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” Which should be applied to ancient politicians and business magnates. Perhaps we’d all be happier and better off if they retired and had fun growing cabbages .

Ultra Hyped

A current bugaboo is worry about “ultra processed” foods. On examination, this label turns out to mean to have about as much meaning as anything with “turbo” in the description. “Ultra” used to be defined pretty synonymously with “extreme” or even a little more extreme than regular old extreme. But this connotation has apparently eroded just as much as the other older term, simply slapped on headlines and attention seeking studies to grab interest by shouting about new worries .

” Ultra processed food” is a perfect case in point. On a normal dial indicating, for example, speed, the indicator would range from stop through slow, moderate, fast, to insanely fast or ultra. But the equivalent food dial would label everything under 10 or 15 mph as okay and anything above as “horribly fast.” A fairly useless guide .

So now “ultra” is being slapped on everything bad in the same way “new, improved” used to be attached to anything good. I’m aware that word meanings and especially connotations mutate frequently, so there is little to really get annoyed at. It’s the ridiculously set binary division that is truly crazy .

I will continue to use my own food dial which runs approximately from raw, prepared, lightly processed, heavily processed and – yes – ultra processed. And not to be too worried about occasionally enjoying the “worst” which are – after all _ sometimes very delicious and many of which whole populations have been eating for decades .