Yeoman Artisans

Jefferson expected a country of “yeoman farmers” who would have self-sufficiency by day and discuss politics by night. Never happened. He certainly was not much interested for himself, at least if slaves were not available to do the work .

For a while we did have artisan farmers, who would grow some of their own food and sell specialized items for the rest. Soon enough, artisans stopped growing stuff altogether. Then the idea was suburban nuclear families, working for a large company to gain currency. Fuzzy effect of the ongoing industrial revolution on society, as workers were turned into machines. No politics by night, just entertainment .

Now I wonder. Is AI and automation the end of that paradigm as well? More and more we seem to become a nation of “yeoman artisans” bartering our own specialties for livelihood. Not quite worked out yet, but I wonder what work and life may become in the next decade .

Not Jeffersonian. And probably far from Utopian. But the real point is – nobody knows. And hardly anyone is even sure what they would like .

I enjoyed being an artisan computer professional. Artisan pride fit me well. But the other thing I wonder is if there will remain varied niches for varied folks to fit into .

Beauty

Like ” wrong”, beauty is one of those concepts that can never be simply defined. It depends not only on environmental and cultural factors but also on the mood of the observer. We can often agree, but almost as often argue with others and even with ourselves .

It’s fairly safe to say that even considering beauty requires a sense of security within the observer _ you can hardly appreciate the loveliness of a forest while being chased by a bear. . Whether something is beautiful or not occurs way down on the scale of evolutionary fight or flight. A great deal of the time, most of us hardly notice it at all .

We assume that – like other odd traits – there must be SOME biological reason we can respond to beauty. Perhaps it helps social solidarity. Perhaps it is a shortcut to relaxation. Certainly nothing obvious .

I have noticed that in my own life the idea of beautiful has evolved as I age. When young, it was primarily biological. When older, mostly cultural. And now, in an elder, much more simply appreciation of all that is and how it fits together. A miraculous and – yes – extremely beautiful universe .

At least when I am happy, secure, and not doing too much .

Light Lessons

My wife usually gets her hair “done” in a salon,. When she gets home, there are inevitable complaints that it “looks different”. Of course – the lighting is changed .

There have always been different light effects – sunset, noon, overcast. And artificial from candles, gas jet, incandescent. In the era of LED, any “temperature” of red or blue or green or yellow mixture can be served up, bright or dim .

We deal with all this amazingly well. Red usually looks red. A landscape picture resembles itself in almost all conditions. But that should indicate to us just how amazing our vision is – both raw data gathering and interpretation .

Painters always knew this. Patrons who bought things done under “Northern light exposure” in studios rarely hung their purchases under similar conditions. Poor artists’ dimly lit barns had different lighting then when the work is hung in a brightly illuminated museum. And forget trying to recreate the conditions of “plein aire” .

My lesson is that much of our life is like this. We may think things are exactly the same, but only because our brains automatically adjust to what are objectively quite different events. It’s part of our amazing ability to compose and generalize, the core of our knowledge. 

Not quite obvious, and easy to ignore. Until the hair looks entirely different … 

Taxing Machines

Any society seems to require government, complex societies more so than simple ones. Except under true communism (where the government/people own everything) taxes must be raised to pay for it .

Taxes over the last tens of thousands of years have taken many forms, and involved almost anything imaginable. Fees, income, wealth, property, sales, ethnicity and on and on. But as the industrial revolution morphs into the AI/automation revolution, perhaps machines and processes should themselves provide revenue .

This is heresy to classic economists. More production always enriches society, they say, and should be encouraged. Lately, that may not be true. A marginal gain in output of widgets entirely done by machine instead of traditional labor may actually harm the society more than it helps .

How to directly tax machines? probably with heavy fees and taxes on the input resources they use – electricity, air, water. Large land taxes on the property they occupy. Major levies on associated nuisances like noise pollution or environmental degradation. And, of course, the equivalent of tariffs to equalize all this between nations and regions .

Simple? No. But presumably an AI in charge of government could make it all work .

(As long as that AI was not self-aware !)

No Team in I

One current cultural complex alternates between the values of being on a team, or just following a leader. Usually one expects that moderation works best, but in this case a genius or gifted leader can be the right choice, though having a strong team is important as well. It’s illustrated well in the fortunes of sports franchises.

No question a perfect ruler is a wonderful thing – in politics, business, or sports. Almost superhuman, always making the right decisions. Lifting all those around with a series of almost miraculous performances and decisions.

On the other hand, single rule has issues too, well beyond whether the leader is always right. Illness, corruption, burn out and a general malaise on the part of anyone not in the charmed circle. A wonderful leader is often a short-term solution, and one which simply leaves a bigger mess to clean up when it ends .

There is also the unfortunate tendency of such strong personalities to assume they are gods, placed well above all mortals, and deserving of worship. Like the ancient Greek pantheon, they may become irrationally bitter or destructive over the smallest perceived slight .

Unlike those gods, they do usually require some kind of team to accomplish their whims. Alas, poor Zeus.

Alas, the rest of us.

Next Time

We are conditioned by evolution and experience to expect there to be a “next time” for most events. Next time the sun comes up, the next time it rains, an endless procession of recurrences .

We use that knowledge to plan and learn. “Next time will be different” we may say. We hope to do better in things at which we have failed, repeat exactly things we have enjoyed. And for most of our lives, for much of our daily existence, that belief works very well indeed .

Oh, we know there are unusual one-offs. Never again a fifth birthday party. Hopefully not another car accident. We stash those away and hope or fear as “once in a lifetime” .

As I grow older, “next time” becomes more problematic. Almost all the things I used to know have changed. Places are no longer as they were. Some people have vanished. Institutions I took for granted have mutated as in horror films. Some of it is good, I acknowledge, but even that means there is no true next time for a lot of my memories .

And it begins to get a little frightening. Any given day, for any given event, any given encounter, there may never be a next time. Such absences cascade until I feel trapped in a few quotidian routines that I can (for the moment) count on .

And yet – I DO still expect a next time most of the time.