“I thus come to the cheerful conclusion that life, including economic life, is still worth living because it is sufficiently unpredictable to be interesting. Neither the economist nor the statistician will get it “taped”. Within the limits of the laws of nature, we are still masters of our individual and collective destiny, for good or ill.
But the know-how of the economist, the statistician, the natural scientist and engineer and even of the genuine philosopher can help to clarify the limits within which our destiny is confined. The future cannot be forecast, but it can be explored.”
That quote deserves its own blogspace… but it leads into what I’ve had half written for too long:
Within The Monologues, I got stuck trying to find solvers of first and third-world problems and ended butting my head on the level of thinking our society is at. Now I keep returning to thoughts developed by two books I highly recommend (neither are easy-reads). Surprisingly they were published in 1974 and 1973.
“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”: An Inquiry into Values addresses (among other things) the “splits” people sense between values and actions, having black or white decisions and lifestyles imposed on them that don’t reflect personal wishes, eg art OR science, technology OR bust. This leads to common dissatisfactions: the difference between what people say is most important and what they spend the most time and effort doing; the feeling that more wealth should lead to a more relaxed life, while the opposite seems to be the case; how few people feel what they do is truly important or can make a difference. The author (Robert Pirsig) went on his journey through the history of philosophy, concluding that quality is what we seek, modern culture has lost touch with what this means, but people still recognise it.
“Small is Beautiful”: Economics as if People Mattered was written by an economist whose journey concluded that economics is too important in modern culture and the results are ultimately dissatisfying and destructive. He predicts social, environmental and equity problems as a direct result. The most obvious link between the books is the title of E.F. Schumacher’s well renowned chapter: “Buddhist Economics”. (When I later got to the quote above, I wondered if he’d read Pirsig.)
The combined message of the two books cries out for a world where economic and technological goals and achievements are elements of the quality we desire, not ends in themselves. Unfortunately we’re further from this kind of world now, than when these books were written. Many of the failures of our times were logically predicted, but we accelerate in the same direction, led to believe, the only way forward is faster.
I’m not a social scientist, economist or politician, I’m an engineer. Work for me in the past has been about designing and developing technology. The problem I had finding an engineering ‘employer’, was the lack of QUALITY social, economic and environmental systems to ‘develop’ in. The ideas in these two books can be extrapolated to explain the ineffectiveness of solutions I found, but also a blueprint to a better way.
Old-fashioned thought experiments show how we now design the evolution of our world and the direction its heading. Society’s aims (messages) are not the highest-quality: “compete with everybody”, “maximise profit growth”, “minimise labour”… all of these would have been disputed by thinkers at any time until the 20th century. Now people defend them and their results: “that’s the way things are”.
These messages need to be tempered by humanity. Technology and economics to be returned to means rather than ends. Individuals still recognise quality. Individual decisions still master our collective destiny. New messages, goals, frameworks will produce higher quality than current practices; they can be communicated and spread quickly and cheaply, replacing current systems non-violently. That’s a design problem. And a philosophy problem. And an evolution problem. And an economics problem.
Philosophers, Economists and Engineers, unite.
Useful info and recipes for making green cleaning products and avoiding toxic ones: The Nature Challenge Newsletter: Summer Cleaning
Anizers know this… but its worth reading: ‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says
My folks have been married 35 years today. Trying to blog a coherent thought about that and I just baulk at it. Friends of mine married in their early 20s, have two kids by 30 and compare with my folk’s story. But I’m trying to comprehend 35 years of marriage and the stories they’d gone through by my current age and the reality is I don’t relate. The gap would be even bigger to my grandparents.
I wonder if any kids I have will relate to what I did in my 20s as they approach the end of theirs? Perhaps more importantly will I be able to relate to what they’re doing?