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Musings Report #53 12-31-16 Fragmentation, Nostalgia and the Enigma of Change
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Welcome to December's MUS (Margins of the Unfiltered Swamp)
The last Musings of the month is a free-form exploration of the reaches of the fecund swamp that is the source of the blog, Musings and my books.
Fragmentation, Nostalgia and the Enigma of Change
In this last Musings Report of 2016, I'd like to sketch out my research program for the first half of 2017 -- the Big Topics I find particularly fascinating and worthy of development.
As you know from reading the Musings and blog, I think we're in the midst of a technological/ social / political transformation that will be as disruptive as the 1st Industrial Revolution.
The current 4th Industrial Revolution may even be more disruptive, as it is compressing changes that once took decades into years.
(Just to review: 1st Industrial Revolution: steam power from coal, rail, first factory machinery, mass urbanization; 2nd Industrial Revolution: oil, electrification, integrated manufacturing, assembly lines, telephony, radio, mass transit (subway systems), autos/trucks; 3rd Industrial Revolution: first waves of automation, digital processing/computers, TV, nuclear power, air travel and transport; 4th Industrial Revolution: personal computing, A.I., advanced robotics, the Internet, mobile telephony, software is "eating the world."
(The lines between these are of course blurred / arbitary, but still useful.)
I have started using Marx's term The Mode of Production, as this concept best captures the way financial/technological change doesn't just transform the economy--it transforms everything, from family life to cities/ communities to politics to the way we view and use Nature.
The 1st Industrial Revolution introduced a new Mode of Production that largely replaced the rural, localized, agricultural based Mode of Production that had been "everyday life" for the vast majority of the populace.
The transformation we are living through has a number of featurs, some shared with previous mass transformations, some unique.
Fragmentation and the de-Optimization of Centralization
Many observers decry the loss of national coherence and purpose, and the increasing fragmentation of the populace into "tribes" with their own loyalties, value systems and priorities.
These observers look back on the national unity of World War II as the ideal social standard: everyone pitching in, with shared purpose and sacrifice. (Never mind the war killed tens of millions of people, including over 400,000 Americans.)
But few (if any) of theese nostalgic observers note that history has no rewind button or reverse gear. It is impossible to recreate the national unity of World War II, as modern war is either specialized or nuclear. Neither enable mass mobilization.
Few (if any) observers note that World War II set the template for the next 60 years: the solution is always to centralize power, control and money to serve the goals set by centralized authority.
The wartime economies of every combatant were optimized not just for production of war goods but for centralized command and control of that production.
We are now so habituated centralized decision-making, control and power that we don't even question the notion that a diverse nation of 320 million people cannot possibly be well-served by a single healthcare system that requires thousands of pages of regulations to function in a centrally managed fashion.
It seems blindingly obvious to me that we need 10,000 different solutions to healthcare, not one insanely complex centralized system.
Those who are nostalgic for a centralized command and control economy and society are like those who decried the breakdown of the "one faith" Catholicism in the emergence of Protestant churches.
The Protestant Reformation occurred because the centralized authority of Rome no longer worked for many of the faithful. The proliferation of Protestant churches was the solution.
Simply put, the 4th Industrial Revolution has de-optimized centralization. Centralized control, power and money are now the problem, not the solution.
This reality has pitted the changes in the economy and technology against the political command and control system that is virtually unchanged since 1945. New layers of bureaucracy are added, but none are ever dissolved.
Those decrying the loss of centralized control and purpose are in essence decrying solutions to the new problems we face. Just as the Catholic Church could not turn back the clock to 500 A.D., so the central states and banks cannot turn back the clock to 1945.
The Enigma of Change
One of my favorite books is "the Enigma of Arrival" by V.S. Naipaul, the British author who grew up in the Carribean and came to England for university.
The Enigma of Change is my term for the impossibility of those of us living in the present to completely understand the transformation we are experiencing in real time.
Paradoxically, we can only grasp the processes and the dynamics fully by looking back in time. In the present, the best we can do is identify the dynamics at work and make educated guesses about where they will lead us.
Immanual Wallerstein (another favorite author of mine) is recognized for advancing the concept of world-system, his term for a global Mode of Production. He recently observed that "countries (have lost the ability) to control what happens to them in the ongoing life of the modern world-system."
Centralized command and control clings to the illusion that it can control the nation's destiny and place in the world-system. But the forces transforming the economy and society are beyond the control of centralized governments and banks, just as the 1st Industrial Revolution steamrolled the established order whether it approved of the revolution or not.
From Left Field
Mega-Regions: What If We Redrew State Boundaries Today? -- are existing boundaries accidents of history?
Whistleblower John Kiriakou Critiques the CIA’s Behavior Following the 2016 Election (via U. Doran)
Neoliberalism turned our world into a business. And there are two big winners
The Nordic Way to Be Good at Winter
A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy -- for those interested in how cryptocurrencies work...
‘Duck Dynasty’ vs. ‘Modern Family’: 50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural Divide -- interesting but predictable... I've only seen a handful of these series, so I'm not an informed observer...
Lessons From A Trading Great: Paul Tudor Jones (via Maoxian)
One man has spent years befriending KKK members and persuaded 200 of them to leave the hate group - fascinating story--some big lessons here...
Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time: The disposable academic -- when everybody else is getting a PhD or J.D., the market can't absorb that many new graduates; truth is the economy doesn't need that many specialists or attorneys...
Russia Hysteria Infects WashPost Again: False Story About Hacking U.S. Electric Grid -- when will WaPo lose all credibility?
Study Reveals It Costs Less to Give the Homeless Housing Than to Leave Them on the Street -- problem for cities is where to get the big sums needed to build new housing in places with very little available land...
The Lucidity of the Defeated: Enzo Traverso on left melancholy
"...history seen from the margins, bearing the conviction that the "defeated" have a particular lucidity, whereas the "victors" constantly seek and find reassurance for their own choices."
"A room without books is like a body without a soul." Cicero
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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