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Musings Report 2023-52 12-23-23 In Gratitude for Your Support and a Note on What Lies Ahead
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In Gratitude for Your Support and a Note on What Lies Ahead
Without you, Of Two Minds would cease to exist.
Of Two Minds would cease to exist without readers, correspondents sharing insights and most tellingly, the select few of you who provide financial support for my work with subscriptions or patronage.
Without you, Of Two Minds would cease to exist because you are my only source of compensation, other than modest adverts and book sales revenues which don't even qualify as poverty-level wages.
I know it's not easy to financially support content creators, especially ones like me that are non-ideological and who focus on exploring solutions via systems analysis (a.k.a. macro-history and world systems) and the practicalities of every day life (burnout, self-reliance, etc.).
Knowing the effort you make to support my work sharpens my gratitude to you.
I expect general financial conditions to increase the burdens on those supporting outside-the-mainstream analysts / creators like me. Anticipating this decline in our general fortunes further heightens my gratitude to you.
You are more important than I've been able to communicate, and I thank you.
I can only pledge to continue seeking solutions that make sense based on first principles rather than on conformity to the shifting winds of prevailing opinions.
Since neither Nature nor History are teleological, i.e. heading inexorably toward a specific end-point, solutions will necessarily be partial, and contingent on conditions that are in dynamic flux.
Both Nature and History are self-organizing open systems, and so analogies from the past are not reliable guides to the future; they offer patterns that might apply, but might also lead us to draw comforting conclusions that are themselves illusions. We crave certainty but the cost of false certainty is high. Neither Nature nor History are particularly predictable or forgiving.
As for what lies ahead, it seems to me that a great many of the core systems that the status quo depends on are obsolete. Another way of saying this is that things that have been tailwinds--globalization, financialization and global stability--seem to have shifted into headwinds. What were deemed solutions have become problems.
It's certainly possible that nothing much will change in the next 5 or 10 years, and there will continue to be plenty of fuel, food and fresh water for the 8+ billions of humanity. That's one possibility of many. But if critical systems have become obsolete in some fashion, we have to be prepared for a variety of possibilities.
We are accustomed to technological obsolescence, in which a new technology painlessly replaces previous technologies: DVDs replaced videocassettes/VCRs, for example. This model of obsolescence is consumerist: all we need to do is buy the new technology and toss the old one in the landfill.
Obsolete arrangements and systems are much more difficult to replace, for everyone being enriched by these arrangements will move Heaven and Earth to keep them firmly in place, lest their share of the gravy train diminish.
The maximization of self-interest comes at the cost of system stability. Put another way, the system can either be optimized for self-enrichment or for dynamic stability, but it cannot be optimized for both, as self-enrichment is best served by monopoly--the destruction of the dynamic stability created by competition--or by reducing adaptability as a means of locking in private gains.
And so various policies are put in place to keep all the machinery in its current configuration. These policies may be for show, accomplishing little, or they may reach extremes, as only extremes can keep the machinery duct-taped together as obsolescence decays the system's functionality.
We can anticipate the uneven unraveling of systems which no longer respond to extreme policy "saves." I expect healthcare, higher education, commercial real state and banking, and the financial system based on extremes of debt and speculative leverage to all unravel, despite the hasty passage of ever more extreme policies.
Human nature being what it is (as opposed to idealized versions of what we wish it were), by definition any system which is currently enriching us cannot be obsolete. It merely needs some modest adjustment to restore its vitality. In other words, the status quo is by definition permanent and forever because we wish it to be so.
Obsolescence often manifests in relatively mundane, small-scale ways that are only recognized as "tipping point" signs of decay long after the fact. Small changes cascade faster than anyone anticipates, and suddenly the entire downtown business district is a ghost town, and there's no pathway back to its previous stability.
That which is obsolete cannot be preserved, though much else can be ruined by throwing good money after bad in vain attempts to restore what is beyond restoration without a bottom-up system reset that sends the status quo arrangements into the dustbin of history.
One dynamic that is scale-invariant is we only act decisively after crisis has cracked something we took for granted wide open. We ignore all the hectoring advice to clean up our diet and start exercising until we have a heart attack. If we survive, we find a way to change our diet and fitness because we realize that what we took for granted has been lost and if we want to live, we must reset our way of living.
This holds true for individuals, households, small enterprises, corporations, cities, states, nations and empires alike. Believing that Rome was eternal even as it unraveled was just too comforting to let go of. The same comfort applies today: everything will stay the same, and new consumer marvels will continue to replace existing marvels.
This belief is absolutely teleological: Progress is an unstoppable force of Nature that cannot possibly reverse. History suggests otherwise. Perhaps nothing will change, and prosperity will increase geometrically for centuries to come without us having to do anything other than buy new products and toss the old ones in the landfill.
Alternatively, self-organizing open systems will evolve in unpredictable ways, and life will be more interesting and demanding than we might expect.
It seems to me that we are each on a voyage that is best described as spiritual, for it may well demand we learn and adapt in both the practical world of everyday life and in our inner world of insight and grace.
Thank you for allowing me to share the voyage with you.
Highlights of the Blog
Everyone Loves a Generous Government Until They Have to Pay For It 12/22/23
The Fed's Empire of Speculation and the Echoes of 1929 12/19/23
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Rain is good!
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
Many links are behind paywalls. Most paywalled sites allow a few free articles per month if you register. It's the New Normal.
5 Sharp Quotes From Diogenes, the Funniest Ancient Greek Philosopher
Eva Cassidy - Over The Rainbow (5:30)
Why Doctors and Pharmacists Are in Revolt: Once accustomed to a status outside the usual management-labor hierarchy, many health professionals now feel as put upon as any clock-punching worker. (via Cheryl A.)
Once the mind is transfixed, it is hardened beyond repair (via Jim S.)
The dressing-room encounter that made me get real about aging (Anne Lamott)
Understaffed and neglected: How real estate investors reshaped assisted living
Filipino American nurse wins $41 million retaliation lawsuit against Kaiser: Maria Gatchalian filed a lawsuit against Kaiser, claiming retaliation for raising concerns about patient safety
Giant food companies are quietly ruining your favorite snacks — and hoping you don't notice
The Fed watcher who called the 2007 housing bubble expects interest rates to stay high for ‘much, much, much longer.’ It’s payback for the unsustainable ‘free money era’
Ivy League Presidents and the Collapse of Moral Reasoning
What Will Become of Cities?
A Worrisome Drop In The Number Of Young Nurses (via Tom D.)
"Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions." Marcus Aurelius
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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