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January 31, 2009
When a system malfunctions, or becomes dysfunctional under new evolutionary circumstances and environments, it goes bump in the night and makes a lot of noise. The accumulation of noise helps to draw the system from one basin of attraction to another. We are now in this period of shift. An “out of the blue” attractor is emerging and drawing the noise of the old system toward a new basin—sort of like a black hole beginning to form a new galaxy. This will take time, so continue to breathe.
Our national crisis is all about the cultural evolution of Money. Barter was a symbolic system in which one concrete object stood for another concrete object. Coinage was a symbolic system in which metal stood for all concrete objects. Paper was a symbolic system that stood for metal; and now we are evolving a new system in which X stands for money. X may be an unknown, but we do know it is not the old industrial nation-state. Hitherto, the Chinese et alia bought nation-state futures in the form of U.S. Treasury bills; now fear is making them lose their confidence, so rich folks everywhere are looking for other currencies in which to park their fortunes, but are finding all monies in crisis: Euros, Pounds, Yen, Yuan, even Swiss Francs.
So liquidity is turning into a volatile gas and not back to a solid. As a gas, or atmosphere, it is both local and global, so some larger emergence is probably invisibly in front of us as well as the return of local currencies. Great Barrington, Mass.–where the Schumacher Society is located–already has a local currency to protect local businesses from the threat of Wal-Mart. Interestingly, Big Box stores are closing in this crisis.
In the evolution of the cell, when poisonous oxygen began to accumulate, mitochondria were incorporated as endosymbiotic organelles because they could consume the poison and generate ATP as the new energy that made larger cells with nuclei possible. By packing our genes into a nucleus and dividing genomes through meiosis, generations became different from one another in diploid reproduction, and so sex served to accelerate the rate of evolutionary change and the emergence of even greater complexity and diversity. So the little made the large possible, and mitochondria with their ancient DNA remain in charge of the health of multicellular organisms through their role in cell death (apoptosis).
So the question for our new “out of the blue” attractor of this Gaia Politique is how do we turn the poisons of all that bad debt into energy for evolutionary transformation? (Republicans, close your ears now!) Yes, government needs to get larger. But society will also get smaller at the same time in micro economies and local currencies. We shouldn’t give money to banks hoping that they will extend loans to businesses in the hope that they will hire rather than fire workers. We need to integrate the toxic banks in the new cell by taking them over with a Federal Board of Governors, while letting solvent banks continue as free agents, much in the same way that UPS and Fed EX compete with the U.S. Postal Service. And instead of just giving money to the executives of GM and Chrysler, the government should buy their stock, vote on their board of directors, compel them to make greener vehicles, and place its stock in a U.S. Citizens Mutual Fund in which all taxpayers have a share. This mutual fund would exist alongside other private funds, and would be an asset for citizens along with their Social Security.
Now just as the cell is a messy conglomeration of molecules, amino acids, and cytoplasmic organelles, and not an empire run from the capital of the nucleus, so would this Gaian cell not be a linear socialist system run exclusively by the government. The large and the little would be in a mutually energizing complex dynamical system, for local currencies would be springing up in “dependent co-origination” with the national currency.
Just as eukaryotic cells did not outgrow their need for mitochondria, with their ancient DNA and conservative ways, so we never outgrow our need for Republicans. Without Republicans, governments would become bureaucratic and Kafkaesque. Without liberals, business would be what it became under Bush and the neocons: a Wild West of tax cut libertarians, deregulating outlaws, opportunists like Thain, and sociopaths like Madoff.
The old attractor was the heat of greed and the Brownian motion of random agents called individuals. The new attractor would appear to be community and self-organizing, autopoietic cells: subscription farming, local farmers’ markets, the greening of towns and small cities, and local noetic institutions energizing new community enterprises of bakeries, restaurants, micro-breweries, and artisanal productions—communities like Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Ithaca, New York, or Burlington, Vermont.
Thinking of retiring? Forget about Republican condos with golf courses in Fort Lauderdale or Scottsdale; think college town.
Cultural Historian William Irwin Thompson writes regularly for Wild River Review
January 29, 2009
Thinking Otherwise
By William Irwin Thompson
“We Irish think otherwise.” Bishop Berkeley
On Economics, January 29, 2009
Economics is not a set of algorithms for describing the workings of the market. It is a way of thought. It is not a science–dismal or jolly–but a cultural way of thought that itself develops through a process of cultural evolution in which humans try to make sense of the world.
In the words of my colleague in the Lindisfarne Fellowship, the economist Brian Arthur of the Santa Fe Institute, economics itself is “path dependent,” in that how it develops—which chreod it selects in the temporal process of evolution—creates a whole tree of branches that affects how it will shape culture in the process of trying to make sense of the world. Western Civilization started behaving capitalistically even before the Medicis and the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance in Florence. The foundational thinker that Republicans now canonize in their hagiographies of the sanctity of private greed for the common good, Adam Smith, published his major text in 1776, almost three centuries after capitalism had emerged.
Because economics itself is “path-dependent”–just in the same way an industry is path-dependent in its choice of Sony Blu-ray over Toshiba HDTV, or VHS over Betamax–economics cannot easily change its mind. Nor, for that matter, can physics easily change its mind. Max Planck said of his colleagues in physics, when he created quantum mechanics, that scientists never change their minds; they simply die out and are replaced by younger scientists for whom the new paradigm is neither frightening nor threatening. Even a genius like Einstein could not change his mind about quantum mechanics and its vision of a universe in which chance created freedom from rigid lawful systems and thus allowed for the emergence of novelty and complexity. Einstein remained a devoutly religious thinker for whom God was another serious if greater cosmic thinker who did not shoot craps with the universe.
So it is not surprising that the Republicans voted en masse against legislation that had more spending than tax cuts, because how could they change their minds concerning their deeply held beliefs about the values of the free market? This is the only way they know how to think, speak, and make sense of the world. Economics is their religion and it supports their suburban vision of community as well as their personal assets and investments in life. Small wonder when John Boehner calls for tax cuts and less government control–even in the face of a cascade of business closures and employee layoffs. The world could collapse before Republicans would change their minds because such a change itself would be the collapse of the world, as they know it. And so they dream on, praying with Rush Limbaugh that Obama will fail, that Americans will come to their senses and return to them.
Obama is a centrist and not a radical, so he will try to find a piecemeal form of tinkering with the system to re-establish prosperity. But based upon my way of making sense of the world as a cultural historian, I am willing to bet that the process of cultural evolution will become so vast in the dimensions of the cascade we are in, that he will have to change his world view, probably sometime after the first year or two of his presidency. At that time, Obama’s intelligence should allow him to see that we cannot fix capitalism with either socialism or communism, because these are both linear systems of the command and control of a complex dynamical system. His “Aha!” moment should allow him to see that like the time of the Italian Renaissance, we are in the middle of a shift–in our case, a shift from a capitalist to a noetic economy. Such shifts are often characterized by catastrophe bifurcations.
Giving money to the executives whose behavior and thinking created our crisis, or cutting taxes to stimulate investment in the hope of lowering unemployment, or trusting in the good sense of businessmen to lead us again into bull markets, will only exacerbate the catastrophe we are in through a system of positive feedback.
A noetic economy is an ecosystem and not a market, and it calls for ecological and not economic thinking. Investment in solar collectors will do no good if you don’t have sunshine. Government is the sunshine of a noetic ecosystem; it is not a command and control socialist system in which the state owns or directs everything in a monocrop mentality. It is, however, the overlighting agency that energizes and inspires the re-allocation of resources through new programs in re-educating the unemployed working class through community colleges, transferring the emphasis from freeways to trains, suburbs to small cities, and dividends to wealthy stockholders to dividends to government-monitored citizen mutual funds. The profits should not go to the Thains or Madoffs of the world but to the citizens whose taxes are being used for the investments in education, infrastructure, and public health.
Such a polycentric system of government, corporations, NGOs, not-for-profits, and individuals is not the monocentric system of government and apparatchiks that we know from Russia or Romania. It is not post-war England or contemporary Canada. It is the United States now, or, perhaps, in one to two years, depending on how smart or stupid we are.
Cultural Historian William Irwin Thompson writes regularly for Wild River Review.
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January 26, 2009
The Inauguration: An Unticketed View (part 2 of 2)
By Chris Connell
Madison, WI couple — Catherine Haberland and Roger M. Ervin (Wi Secretary of Revenue)
I’ve read that the new president’s term begins at the dot of noon, regardless. It was 12:06 p.m. when Barack Obama raised his right hand and put the other on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible, held by Michelle Obama (Princeton ’85). Now, I’m not saying I could recite the 35-word oath of office from memory, but it is in the Constitution, and most of us know the sounds and cadence of those words. All around me, everyone, like Barack Obama, realized that Chief Justice Roberts was taking liberties with the word order.
In Roberts’ defense, I’m sure it was cold up there. He may lead the third branch of government, but he had never been under a spotlight like this. The chief justice needed someone to come up, give him a hug and guide him through the words, the way that Mo Cheeks helped that girl with the National Anthem at an NBA game a few years back. Or he could just carry a copy of the Constitution.
I was getting a lot of shots of the backs of people’s heads at the World War II Memorial. I needed some faces. As President Obama spoke, I worked my way around to 17th Street and turned back to see all those faces intently watching him speak on the Jumbotron. From 40 yards away, I took the frame that shows a dozen or more young people perched atop the World War II Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial at their backs. Closer to 17th Street, three young woman from Orlando, Florida, attracted a horde of photographers by holding up a large sign saying, You May Say I’m A Dreamer … I’m Not The Only One.
I moved on, trying to reach the Washington Monument, with its commanding view of the Capitol and the crowds in between. There was room enough for three guys to kick a soccer ball, but the crowd packed in again in front of a Jumbotron near 15th Street and Constitution. I took a picture of the White House sitting serenely above the Ellipse. Only later, when I put the pictures on my computer did I realize there were two big, white moving vans in the driveway outside the South Portico. It was 12:25 p.m. and the new President was winding down.
I’d heard phrases that, had I been standing up there against the wall of the Capitol’s West Front with my legal pad, I would have been furiously scribbling down:
“Know this, America: (These challenges) will be met”
“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”
“What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them.”
“To all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born, know that America is a friend of each nation, and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity.”
“The world had changed, and we must change with it.”
“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility.”
“This is…why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take the most sacred oath.”
There was eloquence, but it was an eat-your-vegetables inaugural address. His message to the faithful on the Mall was: Yes, we pulled this off. Now the real work begins.
Heaven knows how long some of the people around me had been standing there, but most were happy to break camp. = Elizabeth Alexander’s poem did not register; I was on the move again. The Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowry, 87, a warhorse of the civil rights movement, gave the final prayer, at first sounding as if the cold had frozen his vocal cords. But quickly his voice gained power. “Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance,” he prayed.
Lowery’s closing made everyone laugh and cheer.
“Lord … we ask You to help us work for that day when Black will not be asked to get back; when Brown can stick around, when Yellow will be mellow; when the Red Man can get ahead, man; and when White will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy, say Amen.”
“Amen,” voices responded.
“SAY AMEN,” the preacher said.
“AMEN,” we called back.
“And Amen!”
“AMEN!”
I stayed atop the Washington Monument’s mound long enough to see George Bush’s helicopter fly high overhead shortly before 1 p.m. en route to Andrews AFB and the flight home to Texas. I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow account of the difficulties of moving off the Mall. I could head back out the way I’d come – that was the path of least resistance – but I wanted to try the escape route that my wife and I had followed after Sunday’s concert, heading down Independence and over to L’Enfant Plaza, where I knew a side entrance to Metro that wasn’t visible from the streets.
It was for naught. My side entrance, including a long wheelchair ramp, was mobbed, and the doors to the transit station were locked. For the first time since crossing the bridge this morning, I could feel the cold. By now, it was 2:15 p.m.
Then three things happened that restored the spring to my step.
As the crowd waited for Metro to open, a baritone voice near the door boomed a familiar chant, with a twist:
“OOOO-Bama, OOOO-Bama, Hey, Hey, Nah, Nah!”
Soon everyone picked up the chant.
“OOOO-Bama, OOOO-Bama, Hey, Hey, Nah, Nah!
“OOOO-Bama, OOOO-Bama, Hey, Hey – We Got Him Now!”
I never saw the singer, but he gave us all a lift.
I headed down to the waterfront to try to work my way back to the Memorial Bridge. Under a railroad overpass near the Tidal Basin, I passed several neatly made beds that homeless people call home. I headed counter-clockwise down the path that tourists take to see the Cherry Blossoms in springtime when a group of school children in yellow knit caps started skipping my way. I asked a teacher where they were going. “The 14th Street Bridge to Virginia,” they said.
“But it’s closed to pedestrians.”
“The police told us we could cross.”
And indeed they did. The powers that be had just opened the HOV lanes – a separate bridge – to foot traffic. The police stopped traffic on the other bridge so the 5th graders from Concord Elementary School in Anderson, South Carolina, and other refugees could scamper over a Jersey barrier and hoof it over the empty bridge to Crystal City and the Pentagon City Mall. They posed in front of the Jefferson Memorial for a class photo.
I hadn’t taken many pictures in the preceding hour, but now I had the monopod extended again and was firing away. Back on land, Virginia State Police directed us across a field and on the final leg of the journey. I fell in step with Sandra Brandt of Virginia Beach, hustling to catch a flight at Reagan National Airport. She had had VIP seats for the ceremony. Sandra Brandt was an Elector, one of the 365 people who actually elected Barack Obama president of the United states (the other 173 Electors cast their votes for John McCain).
Like me and the kids from Anderson, Brandt had endured a modicum of hardship on this hegira out of Washington. But with the winter sun now shining brightly on the Potomac and on Crystal City, the landscape already had taken on a warmer patina, and we were left with the abiding satisfaction of knowing that when Barack Obama became President of the United States, we were there.
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January 22, 2009
The Inauguration: An Unticketed View (part 1 of 2)
by Chris Connell
Come along with me on a journey to the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama.
It was an epic day, not just for him and for the country, but for nearly 2 million of us who made it to the Mall to stand witness with the 44th President at his swearing-in.
Many faced hardships getting home that could have – but apparently did not – invited tragedy. There were hundreds of elders in wheel chairs, and thousands more of all ages ill-dressed to withstand hours outdoors with the temperature frozen in the 20s. Government buildings that might have provided warmth and respite were locked down, and Metro shut its gates and ran at least some half-empty trains from downtown. As soon as the ceremony on the West Front of the Capitol ended, the festive Jumbotrons flashed blue with a foreboding message: Persons exiting the Mall should expect heavy pedestrian congestion … ALL EXITS NORTH ARE CLOSED. In keeping with the sober theme of the new President’s address, perhaps this was all a plan to steel us for challenges ahead. Still, as Virgil said, perhaps one day it will bring us joy to remember even these things.
But I’m jumping ahead.
My journey began improbably late – 10 a.m. — at the King Street Metro State in Alexandria, Virginia, where trains had been running since 4 a.m. On television it looked like vast stretches of the Mall had been full since dawn, despite the sub-freezing temperatures. But I wasn’t trying to get anywhere near the U.S. Capitol. I’d view the ceremony from the other, unscreened end of the Mall.
Two decades earlier, as a pool reporter, I stood on the West Front balcony 75 feet from George H.W. Bush as he took the oath of office. In a photo that sits above my desk, I can see myself scribbling notes on a legal pad in the back behind all the members of Congress. It was incredible to look out over that sea of people, but today, with neither ticket nor credential, I was gladly trading proximity for freedom, and looking forward to the view from ground level.
With two hours left in the Bush administration, only a few dozen stragglers were queued up at the fare machines. I waltzed through with Metro’s equivalent of an EZPass and rode the Yellow Line to the Arlington Cemetery stop, where pedestrians and bicyclists were streaming down the Esplanade and across the Memorial Bridge, the only Potomac River span open into the city. I was dressed for the cold – two pairs of socks, down vest and coat, knit cap and sleek new thermals to replace the 30-year-old woolies in my dresser — but I felt the bite of the wind as I crossed the bridge. Ice floes had formed on the Potomac during the cold snap of the past week. Midway I met a couple wheeling a crying toddler back home. Seventy years from now, when she tells her grandchildren she attended Barack Obama’s inauguration that will be a white lie.
On the other side, I encountered Lori Price and Abbers, a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog who was probably the only living thing in Washington wishing it were colder. They had walked up from Georgetown, with Abbers sporting an Obama pin on his black-and-red saddle bags (for rescues). Everybody wanted pictures taken with Abbers especially the emergency response teams, and Abbers patiently obliged them all. It was 11 a.m.
Scaffolding from Sunday’s Inaugural Concert was still up, but the view from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial was unobstructed. The Jumbotrons had been spirited away from the Reflecting Pool to the other end of the Mall, so the hundreds seated on the Lincoln Memorial’s steps – including a spirited group from Eagle Valley Hill School in Gypsum, Colorado, holding up ”Colorado ♥‘s OBAMA” SIGNS – had contented themselves with listening to the ceremony. The loudspeakers carried the sound to the farthest reaches. I moved on, determined to get within eyeshot of a Jumbotron. Most of the thousands alongside the Reflecting Pool were moving the same way.
For all the extra layers of security laid on for this day – we’d seen Humvees at every intersection before Sunday’s
concert – it seemed the police and Park Rangers had disappeared from this end of the Mall. A handful of officers stood toward the back of the crowd that filled the National World War II Memorial, but made no move to evict the young people who had clambered atop walls and columns to view the Jumbotrons. They gave a new, young face to the granite memorial.
It was 11:40 a.m. when I got close enough to espy a Jumbotron. I squeezed into a corner, raised my monopod and captured the unfolding scene, as Pastor Rick Warren delivered his invocation, Aretha Franklin sang a great My Country, ‘Tis of Thee, and Joe Biden swore his oath. The composition that John Williams composed for Yo-Yo Ma and others to play heavily sampled two stand-bys, Appalachian Spring and the American Shaker Hymn, ‘Tis a Gift to Be Simple.
Students
from Eagle Valley High School
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Eighth in a Series Covering the Inauguration:
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January 20, 2009
Seventh in a series covering the Inauguration:
A few of these photos capture the carnival air in the streets and walkways around the Capitol Monday evening.
All Photos by Chris Connell
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