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Infrastructure is a Historical Context that Can Span Several Centuries
Having become somewhat mindless and numb over the past few days, when I awoke this morning I had pretty much no significant topics swirling around in my brain. 😐
No worry — mainstream media came to the rescue! But first let me backtrack a little to the foundations … literally.
Infrastructure is a part of our environment. It is a very significant element of our habitat. While I do not want to downplay the significance of developments like climate change, there are undeniably huge advantages we reap from technologies such as roads, buildings and a wide array of institutions that have evolved since not only centuries, but even across many millennia. Yes, we could even add languages to that list, but things such as health, medicine, law and order probably seem far less abstract.
In many long-since civilized parts of the world, the same roads were traversed by traders and travelers back so far in time that for most of those people there is not a single remnant on Earth that brings forth any image of their time spent living upon it than the ancient stones they tread upon that still exist today. Many religions “offer” enormous stuctures which in times of war and turmoil function as safe havens from the cruelty of the outside world.
There was a local radio program on this morning which I had heard ads for during last week, and the topic seemed rather insignificant to me. I was not disappointed: it completely measured up to my expectations of insignificance — it was about how back in the 18th Century there was a program to bring some settlers from central Europe to parts of Andalusia … all presented in a narrative style mildly reminiscent of a detective story. The names of the German-speaking settlers have been by and large lost over the intervening two and a half centuries. Much of the historical context — namely how Spain was awash with gold, and how many Spaniards were probably much busier acquiring that gold than in remaining settled in their own country — was not even mentioned.
And this reminded me how written languages managed by error-prone humans can lead to less-than-perfect interpretations of the past (or even the merely phyically distant present). How much of the reports coming from Ukraine or other war-torn parts of the world which use entirely different languages, leading to so much getting lost in the translation are reliable enough to make any kind of rational decisions from afar?
As we look forward towards a more and more machine-managed future, we need to balance the advantages we can reap from less and less errors against consuming resources which are becoming increasingly scarce and the consumption of which are harming ecosystems we need to live healthy lives in the habitats — both created by “nature” and also constructed by humans — we surround ourselves with. For more about the concept of managing our habitat, please see also “How to Fix a Problem (in 60 Seconds or Less)” [ https://leading.business.blog/2022/03/19/how-to-fix-a-problem-in-60-seconds-or-less ] .
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Foolish Trusting Untrustworthy Sources of Information
Yesterday, I wrote again about the fanatical belief systems of fools who are time and time again duped into investing in information resources which are not worthy as trusted sources (see “How to Fix a Problem (in 60 Seconds or Less)” [ https://leading.business.blog/2022/03/19/how-to-fix-a-problem-in-60-seconds-or-less ] ).
As you may recall, this is also the conclusion of the previous chapter here (“The Social Construction of Publishing“). In particular, charlatan companies manage to work both sides of an uninformed (and to some degree even illiterate) public marketplace for information. The crux of the matter should be blatantly obvious: the theory of how markets work presupposes complete information — so what are we actually talking about here?
We are talking about a religion — a belief system. In the previous chapter, I referred to it as a mythology (which is actually quite similar to the belief in the Oracle at Delphi) … in order to emphasize the storytelling aspect of the public relations efforts which are undertaken.
Let me remind ourselves of the central issue: we can be either free market participants or socially integrated in “social cohesion” networks, yet not both at the same time. The market hypothesis fails due to lacking information. What we are left with is obvious: card carrying members.
The fan boys (and fan girls) of these charlatan companies believe the hocus-pocus magic purely on faith (or — if you prefer: “allegiance”).
Add to that another fact: the switching costs are actually high (note that in Google’s propaganda in previous years, they sometimes proposed that switching costs are low — perhaps in order to mislead?). Consider replacing your smartphone. Consider replacing your email. Are these changes quick and easy, or are these technologies which bind you to the charlatan company? These are the primary data points the charlatan companies use in order to manipulate their suckers into buying the pitches they offer.
But that is not even the entire story. Oh, no: it’s just the beginning. As we have seen over the past decade or so, the charlatan companies have invested large amounts towards addicting the users to their technologies. Countless studies now unanimously come to the conclusion that the technology these charlatan companies offer (for “free“) cause serious issues comparable to severe drug addiction.
The way I see it, we ought to not pledge allegiance to these charlatan companies (or irrational brands or brand names). In contrast, I think rational people ought to pledge allegiance to rational concepts (concepts of their own choosing and thereby exercising their own free will) using socially agreed upon expressions (concepts that are meaningful in their own community’s language, again thereby expressing their own free will by choosing the language or languages they wish to use).
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The Social Construction of Publishing
In my opinion there is not actually just one construct of publishing, I discern at least two such social constructs — perhaps there are even more, but let’s start with the one most people are already somewhat familiar with.
Authors. Blank pages. Pens, ink blots and such. Today, maybe desktop PCs — or sitting in a cafe with a laptop. The more wild sort live in the woods, cut off, locked in log cabins, dropping out of the mainstream grid. All of this is not exactly complete BS, but misses most of the true story.
The reality of publishing involves lengthy contracts with more fine print than most people can stomach in one sitting … but that is not all. Let me unpack this with a little chat I had a couple years ago with one of my friends, who is a “real life” published author. I think he doesn’t like this story very much, because he aspires to be one of those folklore romantic authors described above.
In contrast, I asked him how such a story gets published. He said the author submits it to the publisher. I asked more about the submission process, and he began to feel a little uncomfortable. I asked whether some publishers denied submissions, or asked for rewrites — he confessed. Let me cut to the chase: this process involves a lot of haggling, and the end result is not actually the product of one single author dreaming happily alone in the woods or on some balcony enjoying a starlit evening sky in the glow of a warm computer screen, maybe smoking a pipe or sipping wine, … no. The end result is created by an institution, of which the author is but one small cog in a vast machinery which churns out crap for mass consumption — that is the entire business model. The end result tastes more like a fast-food hamburger than a well-rounded gourmet meal.
The publishing industry is only interested in stories insofar as they can sell them to someone — for a profit. Note that here I am talking about what many people refer to as “traditional” publishing, but which I have for quite a while referred to otherwise (see “Hope & Change: Flipping the F-word & Removing the Old-Fashioned R-word” [ http://remediary.com/2020/11/06/hope-change-flipping-the-f-word-removing-the-old-fashioned-r-word ]).
A few decades ago, some researchers came up with some ideas that would introduce a new kind of publishing — more or less. The seeds were actually planted by the defense industry in the United States of America, and they didn’t actually sprout until some other ideas (and significant advances in semiconductor technology) came along. If you want to travel back to the first days — or even the premonitions — of the Internet, go read Vannevar Bush’s “As We My Think” (which quite ironically was published by the “traditional publishing” industry this new technology is now destroying).
To cut to the chase yet again (remember, I want to deliver condensed morsels of information): this new publishing technology does require a certain level of literacy, but essentially replaces the entire institutional overhead in so-called “traditional publishing” with the click of a button [1].
Welcome to the Machine Now here is the cherry on top — if you’re on a diet, just listen to this one small itty-bitty tidbit: I think there are actually (at least) two parallel societies out there. They never meet. They don’t interact. Both walk around with ten-foot poles to keep each other at a distance. The traditional society wants nothing to do with the clicking society. Traditional society views clicking society as raw and unpolished, unrefined to finer expressions and nuances. Clicking society — in case they are even aware of their own biases — views traditional society as backwards old farts, who are simply unable to use Google. Ah, Google! What a neato machine! Much of clicking society doesn’t even realize that this machine puts so-called “stars” [2] from traditional society (who actually pay real money for this so-called “service”) onto the SERPs of clicking suckers to believe in. Every fraction of a millisecond Google finds yet another sucker willing to believe in the Google mythology — KACHING!
[1] caveat emptor (I don’t really know much latin, but this way I can at least seem a little more learned): please consider the parallels I made in the previous chapter to the new institutional characters on the socially constructed chessboard in real life (see Chapter 8: “Flat vs Deep — Frames & Hierarchies“)
[2] fore more details about this, see Dr. Seuss’s “Sneetches” (image above via https://dobraemerytura.org/and-book/827-the-sneetches-and-other-stories-full-book-541-659.php )
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Flat vs Deep — Frames & Hierarchies
This post may be a little bit unpolished and raw. I have been mulling it over in my mind for a few days, or rather the “it” (the post’s title) just became clear to me now at this moment … but I have been mulling something over for several days already without any clear unifying idea. My mulling over started off by reflecting on some loose ends from Chapter 7 (“First Essay on the Impact of Phenomena such as Presence, Awareness and Focus on Social Cohesion“), and I knew I needed to go into a “deep dive” on (at least) one particular aspect: the interplay between language and cognition.
While I do not doubt that our thinking on a very basic level probably happens without the codified language (and writing) systems we have developed over many thousands of years, the moment we want to share our ideas with others (at the very latest), we need to formulate them. My hunch is that adults also often formulate ideas in this manner to themselves, and that this process is probably closely linked to what many refer to as “rationalization” (and here I intend to also explicitly state that the associated revisionary nature of the rationalizing process is also at play, and that the languages we are “trained” in also in this sense frame the borders of our thinking [1]).
I mentioned “Frame” theory in Chapter 7 … but frames are not the only relevent concept. Similar theories also focus on “scripts”, and there are also doubtless innumerable theories concerning narration and narratives in general — at least that is my hunch, just going by the plethora of storytelling that goes on in the world. The landscape must be quite vast.
And here is the link to my present focus: the Internet is also usually interpreted as a vast space, especially in the mythology of companies like Google, which promise to deliver answers from the far reaches of cyberspace in a split second. All over the world, illiterate noobs believe that such companies have arrived at golden rules and formulas to figure out the truth behind any question whatsoever. These novices are so gullible that it does not occur to them in the slightest that these companies do not care even just one iota about satisfying the users’ quests, but that the companies are (and must be) primarily concerned with the maximization of profits — and according to the business model, that translates into delivering answers the companies are able to make a pretty penny on.
Oops — got a little “carried away” there … that is the risk of writing “on the fly”, I guess.
Back to the “vast” idea. Both the Internet and language are vast technologies… but it is unclear whether / to what extent they are flat or deep. Let me unpack this a little more.
A long time ago, I maintained that the Internet is “PHLAT” (“pretty hyperlinked local and topical”) — and I still fully uderstand my own thinking from what has in the meantime become “decades ago”. Any page on any website can link to any page on any website… well, with some caveats. First, consider the historical evidence: the Wikileaks “hero” Julian Assange to this day remains at risk of becoming punished by the federal government of a country called The United States of America. Likewise, Putin just this week declared it a crime to say particular things in particular contexts (at least that’s what I heard on the “news”). And yet, in general, when I make an observation about something written somewhere on the Internet, my observation of this writing is normally unproblematical for me … much in the same way that there are generally no significant repercussions to me when I go outside and say “it’s a beautiful day” (whether the sun is shining or a storm is wrecking havoc is not something I can be held personally responsible for; and either way, these observations of occurrences are simply my own subjective opinions).
Oops — yet another tangent. Sorry about that.
Let’s get to the “deep” aspect. Way back in time (decades ago), I also maintained that shopping.com is one of the most valuable sites on the Internet — and I also still understand what I meant and also still continue to feel this way. Yet back then it was not as clear to me as it is clear to me today that .com is a directory of brand names. I did in fact say it at the time — and upset quite a few domain investors in the process — but my theories about the significance (or insignificance) of brands had not yet crystalized to the extent that they have in the meantime (cf. the “irrational media” concept described in “Hope & Change: Flipping the F-word & Removing the Old-Fashioned R-word” [ http://remediary.com/2020/11/06/hope-change-flipping-the-f-word-removing-the-old-fashioned-r-word ] ).
Also, in the meantime the landscape of the Internet has become orders of magnitude more vast — or rather: the number of fiefdoms has expanded at a very significant rate. Most of the people on Earth are completely unaware of this, and only a very few people worldwide can even grasp the notion of “proprietary top-level domains” at all (see “Auctions + Markets for Domains, Domain Names + TLDs” [ http://remediary.com/2016/07/26/auctions-markets-for-domains-domain-names-tlds ] ). At this moment in time, I consider the vast majority of top-level domains approved by ICANN to be quite similar to what were once known as “publishers” in the paper era. This exponentially expanding array of registries will include both steadfast (and thereby reputable) registries such as .com and comparatively clandestine operations such as .sucks (which at the moment seems so lacking in reputation, that I don’t even know whether it still exists at all).
Now note that the depth of these registries is not merely a thought exercise. Wikileaks.org was quite actually shut down, in a very “real world” manner. What is more, domains in top-level domain registries can only be registered once per registry, and increasingly proprietary top-level domain registry proprietors will become more and more concerned with the “going concern” of certain high-profile strings. Even if each top-level registry can register up to about 1 googol domains, the very few domains of significance will matter a lot more than the very vast empty spaces that will probably remain available forever.
[1] Note here also a point of overlap between Wittgenstein’s notion of language and Freud’s notion of self, and also how both of these influencers were themselves quasi “culturally contextualized” (Vienna / Viennese culture in the early 20th Century)
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Natural Languages & Linguistic Empathy — a First Essay on the Impact of Phenomena such as Presence, Awareness and Focus on Social Cohesion
To begin, I wish to contextualize my writing of this chapter within so-called “real world” history. I normally try to remain aloof from engaging with ephemeral inkstains on cheesecloth, but since this very chapter is actually sort of antithetical to the so-called “real world” views of most propaganda industries, I think it is perhaps useful to entertain ourselves with the so-called “real world” thesis first.
To do so, I will start off by quoting from something posted just yesterday (by Josepha) at Josepha.blog — I encourage you to read the entire piece (which is just a few paragraphs long and will hardly cost any significant amount of time). To wit, I wish to jump to the conclusion right away:
[…] as you do all of these things to support your community, however you’re defining it, remember that you do not personally hold all the responsibility for “making things work” today.
https://josepha.blog/2022/02/25/to-my-global-community-start-smallOne thing I particularly enjoy about Josepha’s communications, is that every word counts. She does not use “fillers”. So “however you’re defining it” is not an empty concept — it is very significant. Since everything in the universe sort of “hangs together”, when we make the subjective choice to include some things into our own interpretation of community (and at the same time exclude other things), that decision is indeed odd (and somewhat reminiscent of the “ignorance” issue I addressed in the previous chapter [ https://socio.business.blog/social-business/things-you-dont-know-that-you-dont-know ] ). To imagine that some events on the other side of the world (more or less “real”, depending on how you’re defining your concept of “reality”) have absolutely nothing to do with the here-and-now notion of the price of bread is at the very least naive. How far an enlightened person is willing to overcome their own ignorance of “other” things is, however, something each subjective person must come to terms with according to their own subjective preferences.
For Josepha, this thought exercise began with “My first thought was, of course, whether anyone in the WordPress community lived in any affected areas.” I hope I have already pointed out how this statement is a very “real world” statement — and I find Josepha to be very aware of the “real world” in many ways, and I feel her interpretations of “real world” situations to be outstandingly clear, useful and in total they have a generally “positive” impact on the “real world”.
Now I will turn to the other side of the coin — and I also wish to simply note here, in passing, that the whole “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” argument is acually no longer practical at all, because of the vast increase in the degree of literacy worldwide (and therefore, it seems more realistic to speak of billions of concurrent viewpoints — i.e. however large the global literate / enlightened population is). I expect that many will read into the following a rather fantastical point of view, attributing it with such characteristics as “seclusive” or “ivory tower” arguments.
Natural Languages & Linguistic Empathy
Empathy seems to be most often viewed as a matter of interpersonal communication. Yet my own views of (“natural”) languages as (evolutionary) technologies — evolving over many generations much like the way many kinds of physical and chemical phenomena have evolved to be involved in various biological functions — seem to take on a less distinctly personal character, and from a more extreme perspective come across as impersonal natural phenomena.
To focus our attention, let’s take the example of human spoken languages. Without a doubt these require not only a large degree and perhaps also a particular kind of brain development. Likewise, they would also be impossible without the physical characteristics we might refer to as vocal apparatus technologies (not only vocal chords, but also tongue, lips, teeth and other “instruments” originally developed for entirely other purposes (mainly food intake).
Yet to make several quantum leaps forwards in time, in my humble opinion we present day humans, as linguistic beings, can also empathise with not only other persons but also with concepts circumscribed by the languages we use. We can smile or frown, we can express “happy” or “angry” as strings … and with such strings we can transmit such ideas to each other — to other members of our linguistic communities, who we feel speak the same (or at least sufficiently similar) languages.
We can exercise and practice (practise?) our language use. We can pay attention, we can attend to, become aware of others’ ideas, our own interpretations may mirror the expressions others use, our own expressions may intentionally influence others’ interpretations of our own ideas, opinions, thoughts, feelings and such things.
We can be present not only during interpersonal communication, but also in the presence of concepts, such as “global warming”, “love”, “hate”, and “kitchen cabinets” (and obviously many things more — indeed, a nearly infinite number; see also Chapter 5, “Infinity vs URL” [ https://socio.business.blog/social-business/infinity-vs-url ] ). All of these linguistic concepts are related with each other (as Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out many decades ago), and also with the so-called “real” world. For example, when we talk about “global warming” we are talking about a very real kind of hot air (and also other things becoming hotter) … and such discussions will also involve other concepts such as “energy”, “fossil fuels” and “economic development” (the theory this is based on also goes back several decades and is generally referred to as “Frame Theory”).
The technology of language (and in particular “machine readable” language, roughly equivalent to “written” language) continues to grow at exponential rates, and some (e.g. Elon Musk) are even calling into question whether humans will be able to continue managing the technology. My own gut feeling is that evolution will continue to take care of humans, not the other way around.
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Things you don’t know that you don’t know
I had an interesting chat with one of my German friends (who also happens to belong to the group I mentioned in Chapter 3: “What is the Primary Goal of Social Business?“). I was telling him about a story I was working on at the moment (“The lowdown on the current state in the Amanda Knox story” [ https://fuckwith.news.blog/2022/02/18/the-lowdown-on-the-current-state-in-the-amanda-knox-story ]), and he asked me “Do you know about Daniele Ganser?” I replied no, I don’t. He explained a little bit, so I decided to check out the dude.
Well, well, well: Even though this guy is apparently a noob (and a “YouTuber” … and also doesn’t know very much about media, in my humble opinion), he does have some somewhat interesting points and seems to be willing to go out on a limb and state them directly. So I am willing to give him a tip of the hat (see “Was mich dann sehr irritiert hat, ist dass über den Einsturz von diesem Gebäude gesprochen wurde auf BBC in den 5 Uhr Nachrichten, aber es ist erst um 20 nach 5 eingestürzt” [ https://branding.photo.blog/2022/02/19/was-mich-dann-sehr-irritiert-hat-ist-dass-uber-den-einsturz-von-diesem-gebaude-gesprochen-wurde-auf-bbc-in-den-5-uhr-nachrichten-aber-es-ist-erst-um-20-nach-5-eingesturzt ]). Mind you, when Mr. Ganser says stuff like “already Goebbels explained that” (note: the German “schon” cannot be easily translated into English), I was thinking along the lines of “dude, why don’t you say ‘already Gustav Lebon wrote (and published) about that’ — already … like, in 1895?” Likewise, he apparently isn’t exactly up-to-date with stuff Esther Dyson wrote decades ago — like how the cost of copying media is nil … and what the implications of that reality are for the world we live in today. He also seems to have missed much of Susan Sontag’s work (e.g. “Regarding the Pain of Others”).
He probably doesn’t know that he doesn’t know stuff like this — although, to his credit: in the talk I reference above, he clearly states that neither he nor anyone else can know everything. One of my favorite Jimi Hendrix lines is “I want to hear and see everything” (note that this also doesn’t state that Jimi Hendrix actually sees and hears everything, but rather that he wants to)… and I would add that we probably all innately want to, simply because that seems (to me) to be due to the way human brains have evolved over time.
That famous quote about the “things we don’t know that we don’t know” — does it matter who said it first? Does it matter whether it is attributed to Donald Rumsfeld or to Socrates? Would it be any more or less valid if it were attributed to one or the other? Or can we just try to understand the words? (by the way: ardent Sting fans might now think: “why didn’t he mention ‘Nothing about me’?”)
Yes: By and large, most people will know very little about me. The vast majority of the global population are probably not even aware whether I even exist at all. And I also quite often feel that I don’t matter at all — at times, I have joked to my kids that I sometimes feel as though I am made out of dinosaur remains. What will I be next? Who knows?
Yet (to get back to “Social Business”) to ignore each other’s existence seems to be a recipe for failure. Ignorance of other things hardly makes those other things irrelevant. On the contrary: the act of ignoring will probably make the ignorant whatever irrelevant.
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Infinity vs URL
How many specks of dust are there in the universe? Very very many.
Is each speck of dust unique? Perhaps, maybe, I don’t know.
Vast is a quite short word, yet it spans such breadth, so many cases, across the universe. This little four-letter word almost extends beyond the outer reaches of human intellect itself. Let’s not forget, though, that it’s just another word devised by mere humans.
A little less than a century ago, a hardly known dude in the USA named Zipf developed a very interesting analysis of written language. Today it might seem quite simple, but we should also remember that many of the most insightful scientific breakthroughs could be sketched out on the back of an envelope — envelopes, remember those things?
Back to Zipf’s bright idea. It goes like this: People use short words a lot, and people rarely use long words — isn’t that amazing?
Well, it isn’t — but then again it also is.
Let’s imagine two people who both think the other one is their everything, their reason to exist, their quintessential meaning in life. They might refer to each other as “the only one” — in other words: unique. What kinds of names would they tend to use for each other? Would they choose equally unique terms? Would their choices always be the same, or would they vary?
If you want to single out one single speck of dust from each other single speck of dust in the rest of the universe, you have a very big problem to solve. Luckily, our horizons are not quite that vast.
Quite the opposite rings much more true (or valid or whatever): our languages (and also other, related technologies, such as logic, philosophy, mathematics, data science, etc.) are very limited, localized in both space and time. Sometimes they are so limited that even people from neighboring villages find each other’s “foreign” language (or rather: different dialects of the same language) as incomprehensible.
We ought to not expect too much from information and communications technology — we are a far cry from any universal or even merely global solutions. I do not even believe that a global solution might even be preferable to networks of larger numbers of localized solutions (David Weinberger, for example, sometimes refers to “small pieces, loosely joined” [ https://www.smallpieces.com ] — see also my own “Everywhere Plans for Everybody” [ https://wants.blog/2022/01/07/everywhere-plans-for-everybody ] ). Indeed: Perhaps E.F. Schumacher was right all along, and perhaps the majority were wrong to discredit his “Small is Beautiful”.
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Writing (by Machines for Humans)
At the conclusion of Chapter 2 (“Relationships and Things“), we considered the question of whether languages might be interpreted across species. Now I want to consider whether a particular kind of language can be used for communication between humans and machines.
Let me give you the answer right at the outset: such languages are already being used for such communications … and they already have been used for such communications for decades. Yet the degree of mutual understanding is quite low — mainly due to insufficient literacy skills among humans.
Humans generally do not understand that the existence of the machines is pretty much completely oriented towards the benefit of the companies (and other organizations) which employ these machines. Perhaps the most obvious example of this are television sets. Most humans think that these machines will somehow make their lives better (more on this further below), when in fact television sets are used exclusively for propaganda purposes. In this manner, organizations will spread messages to influence television users (the recipients of such propaganda messages) towards believing something they might not otherwise believe. These altered beliefs are supposed to trick the gullible users into taking some action through which the organizations spreading propaganda will be able to increase their profits. The basic building blocks for these propaganda systems are nonsense-strings which are granted to organizations as exclusive rights by governments or similar governing bodies. In general, all of this business is known as “trademark law“. Thus, trademarks are government-sanctioned monopolies … and these nonsense-strings are generally used liberally in the context of propaganda machines in order to psychologically manipulate the users of such technology into associating such trademarks and brands with some expected outcome, much like Pavlov’s dogs would — once sufficiently conditioned — begin salivating at the mere ring of a bell.
Such manipulation of users’ beliefs systems must not only be appropriately contextualized but also continually maintained … if these beliefs are indeed “fake news” … as the ring of a bell is not actually a stimulus which would actually warrant a dog’s salivation response (and we ought to expect that such false beliefs would normally cease to remain conditioned, if they were repeatedly proven as false). Therefore, the maintenance of such conditioned responses is a continually costly affair.
Finally, let me point out that the appropriate contextualization of the employment of these machines is absolutely crucial. If, for example, users ever consider the machines to be absurd, laughable, ridiculous or in any way at all to be suspicious or untrustworthy (or even, as I like to say: “distrustworthy“), then all bets are off regarding the efficacy of any such propaganda measures.
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What is the Primary Goal of Social Business?
I want to pick up where we left the discussion at the conclusion of the last chapter … in the next chapter.
Here and now I would like to attempt a first approximation of the primary goal of “social business”. Let me point out that I do not “own” this phrase — except and insofar as this phrase is the (working) title of the current book project (see also “Introduction to Rational Media: Content vs. Container“).
The precipitous moment that led to my decision to start this book project was an “AHA!” moment I had about a week ago and some discussions I had thereupon with some of my friends and colleagues here in Germany. The people I am thinking of were all “German” (whatever that means), except, perhaps, for me — I’ll get to why that’s significant in a moment.
The basic idea is actually quite simple and straightforward. It goes like this: One can have either a free market economy or social integration — but not both. Any social integration policy introduced into a community comes at the cost of infringing upon the freedom of market participants. Perhaps it is best to conceptualize markets as located at one end of a scale, and social integration (or “cohesion”) located at the other end of the scale — ranging from completely free to completely socially constrained.
Now my German friends and colleagues were in general quite quick to point out how awesome Germany is, because it has what Germans like to refer to as a “Soziale Marktwirtschaft” (i.e. a “social market economy”). Now in my humble opinion a big part of the reason why many Germans seem to think this way is because such ideas (as the existence of a “Soziale Marktwirtschaft”) get pounded into their brains over and over at a very early age, leading them to salivate over such ideas much like a Pavlovian dog would respond under sufficient conditioning to generate the conditioned response.
The problem with their response is that it is completely absurd. It is, essentially, the equivalent of speaking about a “white blackboard” — it simply doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. This is the issue: the whole notion of a “market” economy is that market participants are (to quote Milton Friedman’s famous phrase) “free to choose”. If market participants were not free, then it would not be a marketplace at all. There are certain constraints on what qualifies a “place” as a “marketplace”, and ironically rules and regulations a marketplace doth not make (the irony here is that the constraints themselves can be seen as rules, regulations and such).
People are born free, yet everywhere they are in chains — Roussaeu said something like that … and this is the puzzle this project is all about: How do we (best) reconcile this contradiction? We cannot have complete freedom, we cannot have complete regulation. The fanatical fantasies of dictatorial power ought not to cloud our judgement that we must reject such ambitions vehemently whenever and wherever they may occur. One of the most eloquent warnings about such risks to civilization came in the late President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (see “A Better Way to Leave Office“).
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Relationships and Things
A very long time ago, someone came up with names for things. It was so long ago, that we can no longer really tell how it happened. In the beginning, it was said. That’s pretty much all we know – no, it’s actually what we believe. How’s that for facts?
OK, so as my father was once reported to have actually said: your guess is as good as mine.
As a result, we have names for things – particular things. Anything you see or hear or whatever: it has a name, or someone is allowed to give it a name because the rules say so. Let’s leave the rules out of it for the time being – we’ll get back to them soon enough.
So all of the particular things have names. The Government Pillar and the Business Pillar are made up almost entirely of such particular things with particular names. Therefore, we can single out these particular things with particular names. That is all good and fine, but we need a third pillar: Relationships. All of the particular things with particular names are in some kinds of relationships with one another… and these relationships are also constantly changing. Everything is in flux. We keep trying to figure it out, and as we try to explain it, it becomes something it wasn’t before. It becomes something else, and so our explanations have to be adapted. This is a never-ending process – we generally refer to it as evolution (at least at this present moment in time).
These continuously evolving relationships are the main ingredient – or even “part and parcel” of the Relationships Pillar.
Now please note that each of these tree pillars – Government, Business and Relationships – are in flux, and more precisely: they are in symbiotic flux. They influence each other, and they are thereby involved in each others’ development (and / or evolution). Yet whereas Government and Business are traditionally seen as being intricately entwined with humans and / or humanity, relationships are generally seen as a matter of science, of scientific development and / or natural evolution.
Personally, I view the Relationships Pillar as virtually synonymous with “language”… but as but one tiny particle, as a mere atom or perhaps even just as one sub-atomic particle, I do not feel confident enough to simply declare such complex phenomena as completely equivalent in every respect. Names are almost certainly governmentally sanctioned phenomena, but the exact point at which names end and words begin is not completely clear. What is nonetheless clear (to me, at least) is that while language evolves certainly in symbiosis with human evolution, it is nonetheless a distinct phenomenon which cannot be controlled by any one human (or even any group of humans). When people are startled, for example, their expressions and behaviors are involuntary – there is some natural force, some instinctive behavior, some pre-programmed automatism involved… and such automatism happens often (and not just in “startling” situations).
Traditionally, human languages have been viewed as specifically human. They have also been viewed as innate, rather than as a devised technology. If humans did devise human languages, then what role do the shape and characteristics of the human vocal tract play? Likewise, what role is played by the human brain – which is itself undoubtedly the result of many thousands of years of evolution? Are human languages dependent on humans, or could the evolution of languages transcend the evolution of humans?
Just yesterday I listened to an interview of Isabella Rossellini with Alan Alda (see Clear + Vivid with Alan Alda “Isabella Rossellini on Communicating the Wonder of Nature” 2018-09-18 , via a variety of sources – see https://www.alanalda.com ), in which Ms. Rossellini remarked about the messages her chickens – she mentioned she owns about 100 chickens – send each other regarding threats from above (like a hawk) or below (like a snake) … that the expressions they use for different threats differ from one another. At that moment, I realized something I have wondered about for a very long time: it is (apparently) indeed possible for one species (in this case humans) to understand the language of another species (in this case chickens). Here I feel I need to point out that this case is different than the case of a pet owner understanding their own pet when the message is directed at the pet owner (or vice versa). In the case of the chickens, it is the expressions chickens use with each other (among the chicken species) that is apparently being understood by Ms. Rossellini (across species).
I feel I have stated clearly enough that the Relationships Pillar is both very abstract and also very complex, … and I could beyond the shadow of a doubt mention a long list of additional nuances. We have barely discovered even just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to language. Yet it would be an unpardonable mistake to ignore languages and / or such relationships when considering how social order happens, how social disorder happens, the kinds of things that lead to growth, the kinds of things that lead to extinction, and so on.
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