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Lost in Laputa
May I humbly suggest that our financial crisis has a great deal to do with how virtual our lives have become? If you go to the marketplace with coin or something to barter and you exchange it for something to eat, money has tangible value. But if you sit at your computer, dividing up "tranches," you are imagining value where none exists. The numbers on the screen may convince you that what you own has risen in value. But where is the real value? You can't eat the ones and zeroes behind the screen. You can't even imagine them.
Rewarding people for creating things of imaginary value may trick us into believing we are rich, but are we? What lies behind those numbers on the screen? And what do those "tranches" represent? We seem to have created a world where infinite zeroes represent wealth, but if we stop believing in zeroes, we are suddenly impoverished.
Many supposedly successful people spend more time with virtual interaction than flesh and blood people. Our credo becomes: I Blackberry therefore I am. Have we considered how this changes the way we see ourselves and the world?
In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Lemuel Gulliver voyages to a country called Laputa all of whose denizens are lost inside themselves. With one eye turned inward and the head perpetually inclined either to the right or to the left, these curious creatures cannot communicate with each other at all. They utilize instead the services of a "Flapper" to hit them in the face with a bladder full of dried peas when another Laputan wishes to communicate something.
"Their outward Garments were adorned with the Figures of Suns, Moons, and Stars, interwoven with those of Fiddles, Flutes, Harps, Trumpets, Guittars, Harpsichords, and many more Instruments of Musick, unknown to us in Europe. I observed here and there many in the Habit of Servants, with a blown Bladder fastned like a Flail to the End of a short Stick, which they carried in their Hands. In each Bladder was a small Quantity of dried Pease, or little Pebbles, (as I was afterwards informed.) With these Bladders they now and then flapped the Mouths and Ears of those who stood near them, of which Practice I could not then conceive the Meaning. It seems the Minds of these People are so taken up with intense Speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the Discourses of others, without being rouzed by some external Taction upon the Organs of Speech and Hearing; for which Reason those Persons who are able to afford it always keep a Flapper (the Original is Climenole) in their Family, as one of their Domesticks; nor ever walk abroad or make Visits without him. And the Business of this Officer is, when two or more Persons are in Company, gently to strike with his Bladder the Mouth of him who is to speak, and the right Ear of him or them to whom the Speaker addresses himself. This Flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his Master in his Walks, and upon Occasion to give him a soft Flap on his Eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in Cogitation, that he is in manifest Danger of falling down every Precipice, and bouncing his Head against every Post and in the Streets, of jostling others, or being jostled himself into the Kennel."
Have we become like the Laputans, forever attending to our Blackberries, believing them more than the lives around us? Have we refused to see and hear what is happening in the marketplace because we are so intrigued by the screens flashing before our eyes?
I think the answer is clear.
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Abstractions are superfluous now. The U.S. is in the middle of an monetary financial derivative debt based Global collapse. The bailout by digit transfer is not going to work. The economic engine is accelerating the contraction of production which is a threat to the survival of the population. Unless and until the population realizes this fact we will be heading to our doom. The population must organize and call for an immediate stop to the bailouts and reorganize the U.S. government's priorities. The survival of the population is paramount. As per Lyndon LaRouche: put the fed into bankruptcy and create the U.S. National Bank. Credits and currency can be issued into the population's physical economy. Food, water, and energy production and distribution must be maintained at present levels and increased wherever possible. High paying jobs must be introduced into the economy now. Social Security and Medicaid must be expanded. Pass the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act. Stop the foreclosures, no one is thrown out and made homeless. Hospitals and Healthcare facilities need to be fully staffed and supplied.
The ones and zeros we are looking at all the time… they are just representations of an already arbitrary means of exchange. If I have a checking account that says I have $1000, it doesn’t mean anything until I swipe my debit card at Wal-Mart. What if I want a tangible expression of my $1000? I’ll have to get it in cash, which is then just paper. Again, the paper is useless in any practical sense until it is exchanged for something of an equally assigned value. They only way to avoid this system of arbitrary value exchange is through a barter system, which is impossible in the developed world. If any of this is news to anyone, please take Economics 101.
Electronic means make it possible for my $1000 to have a tangible value as ownership of shares of a company. Again if this is confusing, stop reading. This technology has indeed facilitated the rapid trade, which in some ways contributed to the preexisting problems of deregulation, greed/selfishness, and general stupidity. The problem is not the disconnection between individual humans and the decline of personal interaction, although there are issues related. Our economic situation is a result of the misuse of this technology, not the result of its existence.
"Between 40 and 45 percent of the world's wealth has been destroyed in little less than a year and a half," Schwarzman (Stephan Schwarzman of Blackstone Group LP) told an audience (on March 10th).
All those lost zeroes.
You're on the right track -- Hunter @ Daily Kos had it down cold when he wrote about our Lost Decade. We off-shored our ability to produce "things" and replaced it with an economy that dealt with numbers in space. Wall Street had an orgy of unfettered financial chicanery while the rest of the country feasted off extremely low interest rates and free credit... and all of it came to a head in late 2008.
It was an unsustainable system, but it served the Bush Admin well... keep the masses properly opiated and they won't notice our 2 intractable wars and deterioration of civil liberties.
The wealthy will become exponentially wealthier while everyone else struggles. The cyberspace references are superfluous... technology will advance and our lives will become more complicated, but it shouldn't distract us from our National Economic Agenda -- which should value manufacturing and industry -- providing workers with a decent wage and health care... and finally -- capitalism cannot be allowed to run amok because it is too brutal a system and will end up enriching the very few and drowning the rest of the masses.
Are we all so teched out? Not me. I don't use a cell phone, except to carry along when I'm on my motorcycle. I have no Blackberry, and I don't care to Twitter. I have real friends... not faces on the screen who I imagine are "friends". Where is the value added by personal tech devices? Pointless phone calls, lonely people texting like they are fishing for friends, people who can't be alone with their own thoughts, people who need the constant validation of others. People sit in a bar, supposedly there to meet others like themselves... well they do, .. but they all sit there on their bar stools staring down at the cool bright light emitted by their device of choice, their thumbs busily tapping out a tiny detached message..... our modern day Morse Code.
OK, and you don't see the irony of complaining about technology leading to isolation but doing so using the Internet and directing your commentary to a community that exists only in cyberspace? Economics has been fictitious for as long as there has been an economy -- gold is no more "intrinsically" valuable than the ones and zeroes you deride. Sure, the convention is better established, but that's it.
I'm going with the original responder: This crisis is a product of greed, fraud, and deregulation, not some bizarre metaphysical karma that says "I compute therefore the economy tanks".
The question is: What is "rich"? Who knows? -- it's relative. But what's poor is running around like a speed demon or sitting stock still in front of a screen. THAT is DEFINITELY a life of poverty. But we don't know that. We've got gadgets and stuff to do and see. We think diversion is wealth. It seems to satisfy far better than even possessions do. We got the memo on material objects. Diversions, not yet.
Poor us.
Good blog. Thanks.
I dunno but we could start at the top. No one one Earth gets to possess move that $100 million total or $10 million. Period. No loopholes. The penalty is seize of all assets and Big Brother's Eye watching every penny you get, save or spend the rest of your life.
Then each year, that is reduce by million on the total or $100,000 per year until the bottom raises.
That might be a Good Start.
i know, never happen. But why, oh, why, in the name of the sweet Goddess Herself does anyone need more than a $100 million? I can live a Good Life without that custom luxury submarine and those three mansions around the world.
Interesting the way a writer's mind would make the connection to Gulliver's Travels. Thank you, Erica. Another interesting take on this is some recent work by Katherine Hayles that suggests we are now "post-human." The boundaries that determine where we end and our machines begin are becoming more and more blurred, not physically--in most cases, but cognitively.
Naw, it was easy credit and the American myth of the frontier, of endless opportunity, of unending more.
In 1970 the average house was 1,200 square feet for a family with three kids. A mortgage was a necessary but slightly ominous evil, and some folks even had mortgage-burning parties when they made their last payment. People paid with cash, and the closest many families came to credit was lay away.
Then it became 2,400 square feet with granite counters and one kid. Mortgage freedom became endless refinancing for more granite counters, and banks pushed credit cards on undergraduates in as they ate pizza in the student union.
Americans having a problem being "wrapped up in cogitation"? Good one!
Nah. I'm going with deregulation and careless, pornographic, greed from the masters of the universe.
But if it makes you feel better to blame average jane and joe and their ipods...sure, okay. Whatever.
People believe what they see on TV and it is only a single dot flying across the screen. That problem has been around since the 1950s and is only getting worse. Now we have "Reality TV".
You're point is well taken. But it's too facile to simply say "we". Who are you speaking of?
The self-involved class? Those wealthy enough to afford to be that idle? Or in a position to leverage their ability to manipulate information to meet all their physical needs? Or...?
Surely those operating jack hammers, playing music, teaching in a classroom, cannot afford to always dwell in that realm.
I do agree that the impersonal nature of electronic communication places us in a vacuum in which we become overly obsessed on down stock market days and not really feeling as great as we would have hoped for on up days.
For me, I work mostly in my home office, manage my stock portfolio, conduct business, check on Abebooks to see how much my signed first edition of "Fear of Flying" might be worth (it was a better investment than the stocks I bought), and for entertainment, post on HP.
There is no real person at the water cooler to say, don't be glum, Ironquill, the market is a dimension of life, it isn't life, try straightening out your desk, and remember that it's your day to titivate the break room.
Today I imagined that mys posts could even mean something in the real world and I blah, blahed about Buffet being given the nod to add more zero's in his column (that means his real value is increasing) by receiving my taxpayer dollars(my real value is decreasing) to buy toxic assets at pennies (little pixels) on the dollar (larger pixels) while I am forced to gamble my stash of red numbers on bank stocks (very small pixels) to make up my paper losses--which are only imagined, since I can't touch or feel them.
Its time to clean the bathroom or catalogue some books--now those are tangible effects.
Things recorded on paper, (money, contracts, parking tickets), are just as obscure as bits on the computer screen. Civilization needed abstract concepts to grow beyond the caveman stage. The computer screen is just the highest form of paper. If you flush it, you are back to the barter state on your way to a mad max world.
I don't think the concern is with digital bits replacing ink-on-paper bits, but rather with the focus on that little screen to the point of excluding other things.
I have earned my living at a computer screen of some sort for nearly 30 years. I love the screen. But when I'm out on the street, there are beautiful people and buildings to look at. Look up, look around! Hey, you might even see Erica Jong walking by.
love your perception, it's so true
there is a phone or ipod in every ear
and few are present in this moment
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