From the Empirical Archives: Creative Disruption by John F. McMullen

Creative Disruption

John F. McMullen

Originally published in the December 2012 issue of Empirical

Whether you spend most of your waking hours on Facebook or try to stay as far away from computers as possible, technology has changed the world around you, often “under your radar,” and will continue to do so at a constantly accelerating pace. The way you do things will be affected; jobs will be lost; companies, even industries, will disappear; and new opportunities will open for people with the proper education and skill sets.

Consider a mall, if there was one near you, ten years ago. There might have been a B. Dalton, a Waldenbooks, or a local bookstore; there were probably a few stores that did film processing; there were probably two music stores that sold cassettes and CDs; a travel agent; and a movie rental store. Somewhere near the mall there might have been a stand-alone Border’s bookstore and/or a Tower Records. As you walked between the stores, if you passed someone alone speaking loudly, you would give her/ him a wide berth, thinking there might be some mental or emotional problem looming.

That was ten years ago–now, there are no more bookstores, travel agents, music stores, film-processing centers, or movie rental stores, and we just assume that the person speaking loudly is on a cellphone with a Bluetooth earpiece. How things changed!

These are the only changes that we see but there is much more going on. Technological advancement can threaten our economy and our way of life; at a minimum, it will disrupt businesses as we know them; shift more responsibilities to us, the consumers; and require much different tools from our workforce. It also will require greater understanding of the long-term impact of these advances that our elected officials have at the present or seemingly want to acquire.

I call this ongoing march of technological innovation creative disruption because it is always based on innovation, imagination, and disrupts the existing ways of doing things. Some prefer the term creative destruction because of the impact it has on some jobs and some companies. I choose disruption because it is a more optimistic term that sees opportunities in these changes.

Innovation has allowed businesses to make us “part of the process,” eliminating many jobs as it provides instant service to us. Every bill that we pay online to our utilities, credit card companies, or mortgages means that we no longer have to address an envelope, stamp it, and mail it. Further, it means that no one at the other end has to open the envelope, check the payment, enter the information into a computer system, and tabulate the checks for a bank deposit.

Every book that we choose to read on a Kindle or a Nook means we can carry it and hundreds of others with it at all times, takes no storage space in our home or office, and usually costs less than a hardcover or paperback version. It also means that the seller requires no inventory, no employees to package and ship to distribution centers or retail bookstores. These stores require fewer retail personnel as they are selling fewer printed books (it also means fewer bookstores).

iTunes is now the largest music store in the world. The downloading of music is the same model as that of books–no inventory and no retail processing. Even if we prefer the physical feel of merchandise, the ordering online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Apple, Dell, etc., once again eliminates the middleman. 

We call this cutting out of the middle man disintermediation.

We see this disintermediation also in the replacement of many travel agents and realty listings with computer services. Firms doing business with government agencies and large companies such as Wal-Mart are required to enter bids, invoices, and statements by electronic data interchange, once again moving the input process away from the large entity. Many supermarkets and box stores now have self-checkout facilities that both speed the shopping process and eliminate retail positions.

We also see more and more replacement of manufacturing jobs through the use of robotics–robots don’t get sick, break for lunch, or make demands and, properly maintained, perform the same task in exactly the same manner all day long. In a New York Times article, “Skilled Work, Without the Worker,” John Markoff wrote, “The use of ‘artificial intelligence’ is not limited to manufacturing but extends also to such areas as automatic security trading (a programming error in such a system recently caused Knight Capital to lose $440 million in a matter of minutes) and analysis of loan applications.”

The impact of technological changes often extends to entire geographical areas. Rochester, New York, for example, is home to Kodak and Xerox, two firms hit hard by changes in technology. It is particularly ironic that Kodak, which invented digital photography, chose to protect its film and chemical processing businesses and did not pursue the digital technology until it was destroyed by it. Similarly, Xerox, which developed many of the important computer technologies (graphic user interface, object-oriented programming, and Ethernet networking), chose to focus on its copier business only to see e-mail and interoffice networking make major dents in that business.

We have just scratched the surface of the technological revolution.

Our amount of available information grows exponentially, causing the disruption to also grow exponentially. (See the “Did You Know” videos, starting with the first–http://vimeo. com/2030361.) It is more than the tremendous explosion of information technology that has brought us to where we are now–it is the confluence of developments in many areas. Some students of the revolution use the acronym “GRAIN,” which I have modified slightly to mean:

G - Genetics

R - Robotics

A - Artificial Intelligence

I - Internet

N - Nanotechnology.

(Note that I inserted “Internet” as the “I”

to replace “Intelligence,” the second half of

“Artificial Intelligence.”)

Each of these areas are now linked together by our understanding of systems and the digital world–and we are attempting to solve problems and/or create “new things” through “programming,” be it the programming of DNA in genetics, atoms and molecules in nanotechnology, microprocessors in robotics and any type of computer system in relation to artificial intelligence and the internet.

It takes only looking at some recent examples to see the disruptive power of such innovation. A recent video (http://www. liveleak.com/view?i=0b5_1310330270) demonstrates the making of a working crescent wrench by “copying” an original wrench in a 3D copier. Imagine, as this process gets cheaper, the impact on manufacturing if we can simply copy existing tools, furniture, clothing, etc. to make new items. Consider “3D Printing A House” and think of the applications of that.

If these examples don’t either excite you or move you to trepidation, even a basic understanding of nanotechnology should. The manipulation of the world at the molecular level is so full of promise that it boggles the imagination. There are already applications in use by Dockers (the making of slacks that resist stains) and by the Defense Department (production of uniforms that seal on a wound to prevent infection; development of a wearable light skeleton that allows a soldier to carry an incredible amount of weight).

Nanotechnology has allowed the creation of carbon nanotubes, the strongest material made to date. This material has allowed the development of both the skeleton structure mentioned above and is the basis for the planned “Space Elevator,” a rope ladder type of device made with carbon nanotubes that will hang from the “Space Station” over the Pacific Ocean for the transport of material up to the Space Station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator). If successful, there will no longer be a need for manned shuttles to deliver material, greatly reducing cost and danger.

If this seems too much like science fiction, it gets even weirder. Medical technologists envision the development of very tiny programmable machines that may be injected into the blood stream to travel through the human body to find infectors, tumors, and malfunctions and correct them.

Finally, there is the concept of the home assembler that may or may not arrive in our lifetime. Presently, Levi Strauss manufactures the majority, if not all, of its jeans offshore. The jeans are then shipped to the US, trucked to regional distribution centers or large stores, and sold through retail channels. Levi Strauss, IBM, and other firms are engaged in research, which has a goal of moving to the following process of jean delivery–the consumer goes online, chooses a style, color, measurements (all possible measurements), provides payment information and, very shortly, the jeans come out of the consumer’s own assembler. The “manufacturer” has collected the order information and developed the proper instructions to send to the consumer’s home assembler–and there are no longer people in Malaysia making the jeans, ships crossing the Pacific to ferry the jeans to the US, truckers delivering the jeans to retail outfits, or retail personnel handling inventory, bagging, and collection! The consumer can now decide to order a toaster or a pillow in the same manner.

So, between now and sometime in the future, we will have eliminated millions of jobs–from the unskilled person opening the payment envelopes at a utility to the very highly skilled Space Shuttle pilot–jobs at every level. Both political parties tell us “When the economy comes back, employment will return to high levels.” This is nonsense and they either lie or just don’t understand. Jobs that have been replaced by technology aren’t coming back. Unfortunately, the people replaced through the elimination of these jobs are often too old, too uneducated, or too unintelligent to be retrained for the higher skilled jobs required in the new workplaces. Even if they are not, we will require massive retraining projects to keep these people gainfully employed.

It should further be understood that as businesses thrive in a resurgent economy, they no longer will seek to add personnel to meet new demand as they did it the past. They will, rather, seek to automate further to reduce personnel. To compete in the worldwide global economy, it is necessary to reduce personnel costs. The US can only compete with foreign worker wages by eliminating workers.

The biggest problem facing us is that there is no long-range planning for these possible eventualities. Consultant William Hugh Murray, a long-time observer of the impact of technology on employment, suggested the following to this writer: “Computers and robots will produce everything but jobs. In the twentieth century, we dealt with the tractor by shortening the workweek from 72 to 42 hours. How about a 25-hour work week?”

Bill’s idea is not new. John Maynard Keynes, in a 1930 paper, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” laid out a case that increases in productivity would result in a work week of 15 hours a week in 2030 to maintain the standard of living that in 1930 required 40-50 hours a week–he estimated that the average workweek in 2010 would be 20 hours a week (In their recent book, How Much Is Enough?, Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky use Keynes’s prediction as a jumping off point in their analysis of “economics as a moral science.”)

It seems to me that we are a long way from shorter workweeks because of abundance. Competing in a global economy in which other players either have employees working 50-60 hours per week at low wages or have totally automated workplaces tends to weigh against greater leisure time in the US. What then do we do as individuals and as a society to deal wit these rapid disruptive changes? While there is no single silver bullet, there are some obvious first steps:

• We must recognize that there is a long-term trend to deal with–no such public recognition is in evidence.
• Political leaders of both parties must focus on long-range solutions rather than the short-term sound byte pap, which we are fed now. A “space race” type of national mentality is needed and that requires political leadership. We must demand this leadership.
• Education must be strengthened with a focus not only on technical competence but on the realization that constant change is inevitable and, to meet this challenge, lifetime reeducation and constant adaptability is necessary.
• We must also recognize that we will have a constant, if not growing, legion of unemployables and we must find a way to not only support them but to insure that they continue as productive members of society (perhaps through paid volunteerism, mentoring programs, etc.).

One of the great technology visionaries of the last 50 years, Alan Kay, is oft quoted as saying, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” If we do not take heed of Kay’s dictum and continue to reinvent all around us, what I call creative disruption will truly turn out to be creative destruction.

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From the Empirical Archives: Within the Going by Peggy Alysworth

Within the Going

Peggy Alysworth

Originally published in the December 2012 issue of Empirical

I am where your life isn’t

and yet is,

driving across the world,

eternity at the wheel.

Long, long sky,

raw land,

someone always looking

for the Father

and the Son

of antique earth.

Children are crying

in the land. The baby

coming into his soul through tears

but not of sadness.

Adam was suckled and taught to know.

I wake from the fire into radiance.

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From the Empirical Archives: Exploring the Rich World of Flexidox Judaism by Emanuel Stoakes

Exploring the Rich World of Flexidox Judaism

Emanuel Stoakes

Originally published in the December 2012 issue of Empirical

December is the month in which two of the major American holidays, Christmas and Hanukkah, are celebrated–though Hanukkah sometimes begins in late November. While the former celebration is familiar to most, with its family gatherings, present-sharing, spirit of goodwill and an attendant crush of gaudy commercial mayhem, Hanukkah is a more understated and often more misunderstood–as well as misspelled midwinter festival.

It is apt to include a conversation with Rabbi Gershon in the December issue of Empirical, given the beautiful symbolism of Hanukkah, the festival that to many Jews concludes the High Holy Day season which begins with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Holy Day, also known as the “festival of lights,” celebrates a miracle that occurred in Solomon’s Temple during the second century BCE, after the Maccabees had regained Jerusalem from the Seleucid tyrant Antiochus. According to the Talmud, after the Holy Temple was rededicated, oil lamps were lit in celebration and burned for eight days despite there being only enough sacred oil for one day’s use.

This was a reminder of the love of God for the Jewish people, having once again overcome great adversity and oppression. Since that time, in the heart of winter around much of the world, Jews have lit menorah candles in solemn remembrance of this redemptive moment.

It is thus apposite to mention the story of Hanukkah in relation to Flexidox Judaism, a radically universalist school of thought within the great Jewish tradition. The Flexidox movement celebrates all that Judaism encompasses from the time of the Patriarchs through the era of the Nivi’im (prophets) and great thinkers like Hillel to more contemporary voices such as the Lubevitcher Rebbe. In that mix, Rabbi Gershon also includes Jesus, of whom he says: “He was an early rabbi, a Tanna. He was of Davidic ancestry, possibly the legitimate heir of his generation.”

Drawn from the incomparable history of the Jewish people and religion, Flexidoxy collects the varied lights of Jewish faith in celebration of all it has to offer. The Hanukkah menorah, the nine-branched candelabra lit in gratitude to God, puts one in mind of the Flexidox spirit: a tribute to memory and triumph. I began by asking Rabbi Gershon to describe his understanding of the significance of Hanukkah.

Rabbi Gershon: Hanukkah began as a celebration of a revolution to oppose oppression and forced foreign worship [by the Seleucid empire]. Instead of fulfilling the mandate of the Revolution, to restore the Davidic throne and the Zadokite High Priest, the Maccabees made claim on both traditional, lineage-related offices (the royalty and the priesthood), and then went about seeking to eradicate those with a legitimate claim to either.

Emanuel: How would you define the message of Flexidox Judaism?

Rabbi Gershon: The message of Flexidox Judaism is that every branch of Judaism is legitimately Jewish, equally. It posits that interfaith marriage and families is traditional and to be respected. That proselytizing is always in error.

Emanuel: What is your understanding of the creation narrative in Genesis–do you believe in evolution?

Rabbi Gershon: Yes, I believe in scientific knowledge as telling me how God did it.

Emanuel: What do you understand the soul to be? 

Rabbi Gershon: The Hebrew word for soul is neshamah (breath). When one dies the breath returns to the One Who Breathed it and the body returns to the elements.

Emanuel: What is your position on heaven and hell?

Rabbi Gershon: Both heaven and hell are here on earth, in a person’s lifetime. They are but two sides of the same coin (Isaiah 45: 7).

Emanuel: Do you believe that Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God?

Rabbi Gershon: Short answer, yes! And the Buddhist and Hindu as well. Longer answer, the kabbalist Moses Cordovero, writing in the 16th century, put it this way: The essence of Divinity is found in every single thing–nothing but it exists. Since it causes everything to be, no thing can live by anything else. IT enlivens them. Ein Sof [the infinite] exists in each existent. Do not say, ‘This is a stone and not God.’ God forbid! Rather, ALL existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity. But also do not say, ‘This stone alone is God.’ Again, God forbid! For God is not confined in a stone. The Hebrew concept of God is more as the Force(s) of Creation than as a Man in the Sky. Daniel C. Matt writes in his book God and The Big Bang, GOD is a name we give to the oneness of it all. God is the oneness of the Cosmos. But the name ‘GOD’ is a label we attach to this oneness–the ultimate, all inclusive name. In fact, this is exactly how traditional Jews refer to God: HaShem, The Name. . . .God is the oneness of matter and energy, the process through which one is transformed into the other, the nothingness that embraces both. It is when you confine God to place and space, to image, that you are worshiping an idol. That said, everyone who sees that there is some force in the Universe greater than the human force, is worshiping God.

Emanuel: Does reading Genesis with an understanding of Hebrew alter its meaning?

Rabbi Gershon: I do not know the answer to that. I read it in Hebrew most often. Genesis 1:1 does not say “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Bareyshit, the first word, is continuous. The bareyshit is still happening, not “once upon a time.” A better translation would be “When it began to be created.”

Emanuel: So, creation is still unfolding. That makes sense in relationship to evolution.

Rabbi Gershon: Take the second word in Genesis: bara. It actually conveys the idea of a something coming out of nothing.

Emanuel: That is beautiful.

Rabbi Gershon: Your name [Emanuel, a Hebrew name] reminds me of Star Wars’ “the Force is with us.”

Emanuel: So El does not refer to God?

Rabbi Gershon: El does not mean God but a force, a force of nature. Rabbi Gershon Winkler states: Elo’heem sometimes means God, sometimes means angels, sometimes means mortal judges. Hebrew is not a stiff language, but as with most aboriginal languages it is elastic, lending each word to numerous meanings. Elo’heem, the Zohar says, is “Ey’ma D’ila’a,” literally Great Mother, yet it is written in what seems masculine but that is because, again, it is not a word exclusivelyconnoting the divine mother creator but mortal judges, too, as well as angels. El is divine power, Eloh is feminine attribute of divine power, elo’heem incorporates both, because a mother is capable of conceiving and containing both, male and female within her. Females give birth to boys, too.

Emanuel: So El an expression of God’s power?

Rabbi Gershon: It does not mean God to the ancient Jews. It always is an expression of power.

Emanuel: Isn’t it true that the Tetragammaton is the holy name for God?

Rabbi Gershon: Yes, but what does that name mean? Names in Hebrew define what is being named. It means continual existence! Heh, vav, hen means to be–to exist.

Emanuel: Like the I am in the scriptures?

Rabbi Gershon: Yes, the ehyeh asher ehyeh (the I will be what I will be)–always in becoming. 

Emanuel: What is your understanding of the Moschiach or Messiah–would you understand the Messiah as being a person, or a coming age of spiritual enlightenment as some have posited–or something else?

Rabbi Gershon: The Messiah (Moschiach) is an age–not a person. At one time it was a king of the lineage of King David. But, the concept evolved to refer more to the time of world disarmament and equality of sharing the resources so that no one is hungry or homeless.

Emanuel: Is it permitted for Jews to build a third temple on Moriah, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, as some groups are calling for, absent the appearance of the Moschiach?

Rabbi Gershon: Yes, and one day it will happen. But it can only happen when Islam and Judaism resolve their difference with each other and then bring Esau (Christianity) back into the picture. A Third Temple will incorporate the Holy Places of all Three Abrahamic Faiths plus create worship centers for those of non Abrahamic religious traditions.

Emanuel: Interesting. I take it you are saying this will happen by God’s will–so it cannot be planned for?

Rabbi Gershon: Insh’allah!

Emanuel: Do you think that increased understanding between the Abrahamic faiths could solve some of the internecine rancor on display in places like the Holy Land?

Rabbi Gershon: Yes. Jews and Muslims lived in the Holy Land in abject poverty for multiple centuries until Western powers saw a benefit in [taking advantage of ] Arab and Jewish nationalism. It has only been since the rise of nationalism that the two ways of viewing God (Allah), both correct, have been used for political purposes.

Emanuel: What is your position on homosexuality? Do you consider it a “sin” as such?

Rabbi Gershon: Sexuality is of no concern of mine except where force or violence is involved. A homosexual is as God made them, just as any other sexuality is as God made that person. Homosexuality is as much a sin as is heterosexuality. It is a sin only when the sex is substitutional or abusive.

Emanuel: What do you say to people who bring up Leviticus 18:22?

Rabbi Gershon: It is good to bring it up as then we can go over it. We read those verses in synagogue today. There is no prohibition of homosexuality in Leviticus. It is a prohibition of substitutional sex.

Emanuel: I may be mistaken, I ask your forgiveness–but does it not say “thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman”?

Rabbi Gershon: Exactly, and a homosexual does not lay with a man as he would with a woman. The wording tells you that the perpetrator is heterosexual, not homosexual. He is simply a-sexual. The sex of his partner is not as important as is sex itself. Thus he is substituting a man for a woman.

Emanuel: Thank you. Rabbi Gershon, what inspires you?

Rabbi Gershon: I am inspired by the degree of progress towards equality and Universalism that has happened in my short 70 years on the planet. I believe in the future.

Emanuel: Thank you so much, Rabbi Gershon. Rav Todot.

Rabbi Gershon: B’vakashah!

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From the Empirical Archives: Capsized by Shannon Rooney

Capsized

Shannon Rooney

Originally published in the December 2012 issue of Empirical

Buzzing with river energy–

that’s what happens

when you tip your canoe.

River otters swim into your mind,

and you can’t sleep.

The bald eagle

swoops down into your heart

and pulls forth

a silver fish.

Smells of willow and river moss

haunt me,

and I see again

that huge blue heron

as he rises into flight,

his broad wings shimmering

as I float past him.

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From the Empirical Archives: Globster by Laura Elizabeth Woollett

Globster

Laura Elizabeth Woollett

Originally published in the December 2012 issue of Empirical

It is a pebble-grey day. We step out of the inn and onto the greypebbled beach. The air is cold brine, gusting our hair. We grimace against it. Our arms are linked, our feet heavily shod. There is no one else on the beach, save the silhouette of a fisherman and someone’s Newfoundland dog.

We came in the middle of down season, and have since lost track of time. Claude’s watch stopped on the first day of vacation. Neither of us would be able to say whether it is morning now or afternoon. We wake every day in a brown-shadowed void. The bed linen is heavy, and has a stale smell that is neither his nor mine. Every day, awakening in that void, my throat is rimmed with despair. I want nothing more than to sleep it away, to lose the whole day in sleep.

Then there is the sickness. It rises in me like a cold sea wave.

Claude has murmured hotly into my ear. He has told me that we are in this together. My conch has been filled with the condensation of his words. Never, ever, did I imagine I’d love a man called Claude.

The Newfoundland is sniffing at something up ahead. Its tail beats the air, a coal-blackened duster. “Perhaps we could get a dog,” says Claude.

We approach the dog. It remains intent on the thing that it is sniffing. The thing is pale, water-bleached. It spreads across the pebbles like a pile of vomit, something choked up by the sea. The smell of it is dull, putrid: a smell of living flesh, reduced to its most shameful elements.

I am still thin, beyond suspicion. I look young and thin in my big coat, almost young enough to be Claude’s daughter. The thing inside me, surely, amounts to much less than the mouthfuls of pale vomit that I have issued into the toilet bowl, morning after morning.

“Barkly! Barkly!” a woman calls the dog from the cliffs above the beach. It continues to nose the glob, the carcass. Claude squeezes my hand and tells me not to worry, that it is probably only the remains of a squid or whale, washed in from the sea.

I do the only thing that I can do; I vomit. It forms a foamy layer, like frogspawn, on the surface of the water. I think that the sea must be full of such waste.

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From the Empirical Archives: Maman, Maman by Jaime O'Neill

Maman, Maman

Jaime O'Neill

Originally published in the December 2012 issue of Empirical

It is bitter cold on Omaha Beach two weekends before Christmas, and so my daughter, Sionann, sits in her car, watching her Paris friends survey this site she knows so well, having brought a succession of visitors from her Normandy house here to this old killing ground to share in the homage she pays to all the young men who died on this stretch of sand so long before she was born.

Her friends sprint near water’s edge, running against the cold wind that cuts across the channel and through their winter coats. Even in the car, she can feel that wind. She turns up the heater, and she turns up the music, too–Joan Baez singing “Ave Maria” in German. It is music my daughter has known since she was an infant, a Christmas album we bought when she was three months old and have listened to every Christmas since then, more than forty years. She is, at first, swept up by nostalgia and it takes a few moments before she even realizes the language Joan Baez is singing in, and how that particular song sung in German must resonate with the ghosts who inhabit this gray seaside terrain, all those young German men who died here more than half a century ago, calling out for their mothers with their dying breaths.

Then her friends–the four of them part of a choral group Sionann has invited here to sing carols in her village–run back up the beach to where she sits in the car. Their cheeks are red with the cold, and they bring that salty Atlantic cold into the car, a gust of it on their coats and the surface of their exposed skin, but they are all aglow with laughter and vitality as

Sionann starts the engine and they turn away from the beach to drive inland where they are expected, where they will sing carols at the retirement home in my daughter’s village, just a block from her house in a town called Cerisy Le Foret–Cherry of the Forest–a place liberated by some of the men who survived the landing on this beach weeks after their comrades fell here, turning the water crimson and staining the sand where they bled their young lives away.

The place my daughter drives to is on a street renamed, in fact, for the infantry division that pushed the Germans out in that summer of 1944–Avenue 2 “e” Division Indian Head, an unwieldy name, but an honor no post-war Norman would speak against.

At the retirement home, the old people are assembled in the large common room, in wheelchairs and on sofas, awaiting the arrival of this odd American girl and her friends–British and American ex-pats, and a Parisian, plus a couple of people from the village who spent the evening before rehearsing the songs in my daughter’s living room, singing around the fire in her hearth, all those old songs of hope offered up for so long in the dead of winter, songs sung against the cold and the dark–“O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” “Away in a Manger,” “Petit Papa Noel,” “Stille Nacht.” And they sing more recent holiday songs, too–“Blue Christmas,” for example, with my daughter vamping an Elvis impersonation that makes the old people clap their hands together and exclaim in French.

And, when they pause in their singing–this unexpected invasion of young people come to sing them the season–one of the old women begins to sing a song in French that translates to “We’ll Never Be Twenty Again,” and when her singing is met with delight, she sings the song again, all the way through, with the visitors joining in, the sentiment as true for them as it is for the octogenarians who live in this place.

There is a tree in the corner, sparsely decorated, but the lights blink on and off–red, blue, golden–and the pine smell does battle with the odor of urine and antiseptics that hangs wherever the elderly are warehoused, in France just as everywhere else.

Then there is an interlude for punch and petit-fours and my daughter, who is–you’ll forgive a father his pride perhaps the sweetest human being in either France or the country of her birth, notices a stricken old woman, well over 90, slumped in a wheelchair, her face an utter ruin, tears spilling down the slack flesh of her wrinkled cheeks.

Many would ignore those tears, of course, and many would turn away from the obvious pain in this woman’s face. Many would join the conviviality of the nurses and the attendants around the punch bowl, would pretend not to have seen those tears, would avoid the uncomfortable proximity to a stranger’s sorrows, especially the sorrows of an elderly woman who may be addled, and who is, in all likelihood, beyond solace. But Sionann, bless her heart, is not such a person. She goes and sits next to the woman, hears her muttered calls for her mother–“Maman, Maman”–and takes the woman’s bony old hand in her own while she tries to think of what to say, of what there is to say.

Finally, she says something, words in French meant to be soothing. They are universal, the sentiments my daughter expresses in that moment, words meant to bring comfort, though they feel dry and hollow in her mouth.

“But,” the old woman replies, her voice hoarse and hushed, “I am so very sick.”

Sick enough to call out for her mother, long, long dead. Sick enough to grip the hand of this stranger who, though not her mother, has come to her in answer to entreaties that echo those she made when she was a little girl with a scraped knee, calling for her mother to come and take away the pain and make the fear go away, back when her mother was alive and young, long before German soldiers came to this place, or American soldiers either, and clashed in places near here where she had played as a child.

“It’s all right,” my daughter says, “you’re going to feel better soon.”

And then, in the way such words get spoken, she says it again, and still again, stroking the limp and mottled hand with each repetition, herself now become, in this moment of grace, the mother to this now motherless old woman.

The choir re-gathers at the front of the room, beckons my daughter to join them, and she bends to kiss the old woman’s cheek before taking her place with her friends who sing Schubert’s “Ave Maria” in Latin, though none of them knows exactly what the words mean.

The young people who came to sing in this place raise their voices again for those who draw near death, for those who live less than a stone’s throw from an abbey dating back a millennium, where people of this region have gathered in the dead of a thousand winters to raise voices in song and supplication, singing praises to a child, and to that child’s mother.

In Greek meter, in Russian mate, in German mutter, in Sanskrit matri, in Irish mathair, in Spanish madre, in Mandarin ma, in Swedish mor, in Arabic umm. Across the sorrowing globe we call out for our mothers in prayers secular, or prayers religious, offered to our mothers, or our idea of mothers, or to the mother of us all.

Then it is time for the residents of the home for old people in the cherry of this forest to go to their separate rooms and their beds, and then it is time for the younger ones who came to sing for them to leave, to return to the world where the young will gather for a late dinner around my daughter’s table before they, too, take themselves to bed and offer their whispered or unspoken prayers in the darkness, just before sleep, seeking comfort, seeking peace, seeking to push back the bad and troubling things for yet another night, yet another day. The hopes and fears of all the years. The prayers of untold billions of hearts on thousands of unrecorded winter nights like this one my daughter knows on that cold Norman coast so far from her own mother, so very far from home.

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From the Empirical Archives: The Threat and Promise of Rural Development in China by F. Thomas Trotter and Zhihe Wang

The Threat and Promise of Rural Development in China

F. Thomas Trotter and Zhihe Wang

Originally published in the December 2012 issue of Empirical

China’s stunning economic and industrial growth is breathtaking in its scope. This was confirmed by the extensive coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games. The world saw the dramatic changes in the urban face of the nation. But behind the glittering landscapes lies an urgent challenge that is still to be faced. How will China feed its people?

The concentration of industrial enterprises in the eastern part of the nation has profoundly shaped the landscape. Ten cities have populations of about 10 million and urban growth continues. Yet the amazingly rapid modernization of China thus far has barely scratched the surface of the nation’s rural life. President Hu Jintao has asked the nation to work together on a project called “Building New Countryside” under the slogan “putting people first.” He has said, “the only way to ensure sustainable development of the national economy and continuous expansion of domestic demand is to develop the rural economy and help farmers become more affluent.”

But what will Hu’s “sustainable development” mean for rural China? China’s leadership faces a daunting problem. Acceptance of Western industrial models has proven extraordinarily successful in manufacturing. So the probability is that Western industrial models will offer agricultural planners an immediate solution. If so, there will be predictable catastrophic consequences. The most dramatic consequence will be a vast dislocation of population. If peasant farming is replaced by corporate farming, productivity of labor would be increased. Indeed fully ‘modern’ agriculture in China would only require about 13 million farmers, or only 1% of China’s population. Then China would have to absorb the hundreds of millions of people who will become surplus labor in the countryside. It is estimated that nearly 800 million people would leave rural areas and move to cities. Or, to use a more dramatic illustration, an additional 80 cities, each with a population of 10 million, would be required.

Another consequence flows from the fact that modern industrial farming is driven by petroleum. Adding commitment to petroleum to drive agriculture is problematic given the present reality of scarcity of oil and the prospect of exhaustion of oil reserves in the foreseeable future. We now know that CO2 released from burning fossil fuels is negatively affecting the biosphere upon which all life depends.

Agricultural modernization means increased irrigation, and petroleum-based farming results in more pollution of water. Water is already scarce in northern China and much of what remains is polluted. The melting of the Tibetan glaciers due to global warming threatens water shortages in central China as well. A further by product of modern agriculture is soil degradation. With all our scientific ingenuity, the challenge of producing food without erosion and salinization remains. Pre-modern and modern agriculture present a history of environmental devastation.This on-going devastation is due to the 10,000 year old practice of cultivation. Plow any land long enough and it will turn into a desert of sand or a field of rock.

Is there an alternative to the dangers of industrial agriculture in China? Modernization of agriculture follows quite naturally from what some intellectuals are calling the “First Enlightenment.” This was based on following the European Enlightenment in adopting the mechanistic world view as the basis for development. Mao and other 20th-century political figures correctly discerned that China needed to commit itself to Western methods of industrialization to become a modern nation. In that commitment, however, there was a tragic rejection of a culture that involved a way of life and an ethical consensus that had sustained the Chinese people for millennia. The most egregious evidence of the rejection of China’s cultural achievements was the excesses of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

Partly in reaction to the Cultural Revolution, many Chinese began to re-appraise Chinese cultural values. These include respect for family and community, respect for the earth and other forms of life, respect for tradition and the rituals that hold people together, a sense of the spirituality found in harmony between people and nature, and a way of living (Shangquing) that provides peace in human affairs.

Contemporary industrialized society in China appears to have rejected these classical values and any form of Western ethic other than the private freedom in the market place. Many Chinese are now concerned about the future of a society that lacks any cohesive moral teaching.

The main reason for breaking with the Chinese tradition was that it had not encouraged the development of advanced science and technology. Recently many Chinese are re-thinking the possibility of linking traditional values with science and technology. Some have called this the “Second Enlightenment.” They have been encouraged to believe this is possible by their encounter with the Western philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Although Whitehead has been largely ignored in the West, eighteen Chinese universities have established centers to promote study of his thought.

Whitehead’s philosophy suggests that traditional Chinese thought can connect with contemporary science. Whitehead built a non-mechanistic conceptuality for science based on relativity theory and quantum theory. His “process philosophy” (as it has come to be known), or “philosophy of organism” (as Whitehead himself referred to it), is closer to the basic way of thinking of traditional China than to the mechanistic and reductionistic philosophy to which the First Enlightenment wedded progressive movements in China. Some Chinese intellectuals are now calling for a Second Enlightenment that unites much of their Chinese heritage with the cutting edge of contemporary science.

The Second Enlightenment has implications for many fields.

Thus far its most extensive application has been in education. But today rural development and agriculture are top priorities. Rather than simply supposing that agricultural development requires the acceptance of Western industrial models, the Second Enlightenment calls for a second look at earlier cultural values and the wisdom of traditional Chinese farmers.

Traditional models of agriculture include the use of organic fertilizers. In the Tang Dynasty (618 AD to 907 AD), emperors encouraged “circular” agriculture. Pigs produced organic fertilizer which produced food which made possible the acquisition of more pigs. Although China’s population has grown dramatically in the last two millennia, its traditional agriculture has so far met basic food needs. Even today the Chinese feed one-fourth of the world’s population on only seven percent of the world’s land surface. Instead of displacing the wisdom of traditional agriculture, the Second Enlightenment calls for working with farmers to overcome problems of production they identify.

Reflecting on Chinese cultural tradition and stimulated by the constructive postmodernism of Whitehead, there are some general principles rising into agricultural planning: (1) The fertility of the eco-system must be recognized and respected. (2) Bare soil must be recognized as a crime against the earth. (3) Biological and solar-intensive farming systems should prevail. (4) Agriculture is more than food and fiber production.

Traditionally, plowing has been used to control weeds by maintaining bare soil. Herbicides are a remarkable invention, but weak resistance to these widely used chemicals is prevalent after just 30 years of use. The modern ‘Green Revolution’ can now feed 6.5 billion people, but not sustainably. Ultimately the soil itself will be exhausted by current practice. Today’s modern farming practices and technologies cannot continue for the next 100 years.

Only in the past 20 or so years has dry-land agriculture begun to demonstrate how to grow crops without cultivation. ‘No-tillage’ (no plow) farming systems keep the soil covered by green or dry vegetation. This system has been widely adopted in some parts of Australia and the USA. No-tillage farming systems have been shown to greatly reduce soil erosion, particularly wind erosion. But these systems are entirely dependent on petro-chemicals, particularly herbicides to control weeds. Dependence on petro-chemicals carries with it more environmental degradation.

Another major problem in China is that as rural population becomes denser, farms have become smaller. Farming methods that produced a decent living a century ago on larger plots of land cannot support families today. Either there must be some migration to the cities or even more intensive agricultural practices. Furthermore, the question of who owns the land remains a severe problem for rural populations in China as in many other places.

Modern agricultural economy is not resilient. It is fragile and is easily broken. It cannot withstand climatic and social shocks. Modern agriculture feeds billions of people in thousands of cities by shipping food great distances in fossil fueled ships, trains, and trucks. Take for example greater New York City of 15 million people. 3,000 train cars a year transport food from all over the world to feed this megalopolis. Each year 100 million bananas are imported from plantations in Central and South America. Other fruits and vegetables (1.4 billion kg/yr) are imported from over 25 other countries in the northern and southern hemispheres. 100 million kg of fish from 300 different species are transported from around the globe in constantly refrigerated containers.

New York would begin to starve in less than one week if the global or local transportation and refrigeration systems failed. This vast food distribution system is totally dependent on fossil fuels, well-maintained rails and roads, airports, and good governance (lack of war and free trade). Remember the consequences of a twelve-hour storm (Katrina) and subsequent flooding on the population of the small city of New Orleans? Social order collapsed, people became thirsty in twelve hours and hungry in twenty-four hours. Any city in China is similarly dependent on fragile food supply networks that could be disrupted in seconds as occurred after the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province.

It is possible that concern about these vast problems will overwhelm thoughtful planning and lead to despair. Should this happen and no significant change take place, rural China might be left to stagnate. The social dislocation of this failure would have enormous consequences, not just for China, but for the entire world. Remarkably, China’s leadership is more open than that of most nations to recognizing problems of this sort. They are not content with slogans but are taking action in positive directions. In 2005, the central government launched an experimental project to establish a “Green GDP.” Cities and provinces, including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, Zhejiang, Anhui, Guangdong, Hainan, Chongqing, and Sichuan have all joined the project. Now concluded, the project’s findings are being studied and evaluated by the government and by concerned NGOs. There has been a remarkable development of eco-villages, eco-counties, even eco provinces to contribute to the growing concern for environmental planning.

Can the Second Enlightenment find a practical program for the development of agriculture in China? If so, does it have a chance of getting a hearing from decision makers in the West? Perhaps. The daily headlines about peak oil, global food shortages, social unrest in countries where agriculture is being modernized, and the obviously unsustainable nature of modern industrial agriculture may combine to cause Chinese leaders to seek an alternative.

By the year 2030, China’s population is predicted to increase by another five hundred million people, and most of these people will have to be accommodated in cities. If China takes the agricultural modernization route, the grim scenario of vast population shifts to urban centers may well continue. But we are saying that it may avoid that by careful planning. Nevertheless its cities will certainly have to absorb most of the population increase. China loses about 1 percent of its agricultural lands to urbanization and industrial sprawl annually. 

So how will China feed its people? 

China’s problem is the world’s problem. Lester Brown, the leading environmentalist in the world and founder of Worldwatch and the Earth Policy Institute, forecasts “when China turns to world markets on an ongoing basis, its food scarcity will become the world’s scarcity; its shortages of cropland and water will become the world’s shortages.” The economic and political consequences are unimaginable.

We Americans are only beginning to awake to the reality of world food crisis and the political and social consequences of such a disaster. Now is the time for thoughtful reflection and action to support research in agricultural sustainability and survival of the world’s fragile agricultural resources. In a tentative but definite way China’s leadership is moving in the right direction. We ignore China’s initiatives in reshaping agriculture at our peril.

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From the Empirical Archives: A Rich Country by Hugh Mercer Curtler

A Rich Country

Hugh Mercer Curtler

Originally published in the December 2012 issue of Empirical

In one of his travel notes written in 1788, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “What a cruel reflection, that a rich country cannot long be a free one.” He was even then concerned about America’s preoccupation with the accumulation of wealth as an end in itself. As Jefferson saw it, the reason wealth interferes with freedom is to be found in the captive nature of avarice.

As it happens, Aristotle had the same thought more than two thousand years before Jefferson when he attributed the breakdown of aristocracies to the unnecessary accumulation of wealth; the aristocracy degenerated into an oligarchy, rule by the rich. The problem as Aristotle saw it was that the rulers lose sight of the common good out of a growing concern with their own self-interest.

Jefferson, along with other eighteenth-century American thinkers, came to call concern with the common good “public virtue.” It was supposed to be a republican virtue and should keep men away from the lure of self-interest and the accumulation of unnecessary wealth and luxuries. But both of these thinkers were putting their fingers on a central problem that worried the founders of this nation: what are the effects of unnecessary wealth on a republic?

In The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, Gordon Wood, quoting from a sermon delivered in 1778 by the Rev. Payson, has this interesting paragraph for us to ponder: Because it was commonly understood that “the exorbitant wealth of individuals” had a “most baneful influence” on the maintenance of republican governments and “therefore should be carefully guarded against,” some Whigs were even willing to go so far as to advocate agrarian legislation limiting the amount of property an individual could hold and “sumptuary laws against luxury, plays, etc. and extravagant expenses in dress, diet, and the like.”

Though a number of the framers of our Constitution were themselves deists, we must recall the prevailing influence of both the Puritans and the Quakers on the minds of those who prepared the nation to revolt against England. This is especially so in an age in which the conservative element among us tends to emphasize the influence of the Christian religion on the founders of this nation while at the same time they promote the conflicting myth of free enterprise capitalism–which was never regarded as an ideal in the minds of the colonists. In fact the early colonists insisted that “commerce. . . had destroyed England’s soul”; it was beneath the true calling of human beings who are at their best when they remain close to the earth and control their appetites and desires.

Much of this thinking stemmed from their reading of the New Testament, of course. But many of them were avid readers of history and were convinced that excessive wealth and luxuries were among the major causes of the downfall of the Roman republic, which they greatly admired. They advocated “enterprise,” to be sure, but there were both legal and moral restraints in many of the colonies against the unlimited gathering of wealth and luxuries–laws against entail, primogeniture, and even monopolies. Indeed, as Wood tells us, “A preliminary draft of Pennsylvania’s Declaration of Rights even contained an article stating ‘that an enormous Proportion of Property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the Rights and destructive of the Common Happiness of Mankind,’ and therefore should be discouraged by the laws of the state.”

The very problems the colonists were most concerned about have come to pass largely as a result of the combination of the role of very wealthy individuals–like the Koch brothers–and multi-nationals, who have bottomless pockets when it comes to playing poker at the political table. The rest of us hope to get by by bluffing. Let me expand. According to the American Association for Justice, the Koch brothers fund the political group called “American Legislative Exchange Council” that involves thousands of legislators around the country who push bills through that favor the corporations at the cost of the health and well-being of the majority of the population.

Judged from the perspective of Jefferson’s America, such people and such groups are a big part of what is wrong with this country today. As of this writing, the Koch brothers allegedly plan to spend $400 million of their hard-earned money to get Obama out of the White House and keep control of the Congress. They might succeed, of course, because money talks; and after the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, the amount of money spent by the wealthy on the November elections could buy a small country–or a large one that’s deep in debt. After all, the family oil business the Koch brothers own rakes in an estimated $100 billion a year. The sky’s the limit!

But note the irony in the fact that people like this will spend millions of dollars to buy politicians who will guarantee that they get to keep most if not all of their wealth in the future. I dare say they see it as an investment. Some of the wealthy 1%, I understand, even buy politicians on both sides of the political aisle. 

That way they can’t lose.

The interesting question is what on earth the founders would say about this turn of events. They were suspicious of capitalism in its raw forms. As mentioned, a number of the colonies had restrictions on the unfettered growth of capitalism. They saw that as a sure way to aristocracy which they distrusted almost as much as they did royalty. Many were still wedded to the comfortable notion of mercantilism, which was what they were used to as British citizens; it favored the involvement of the government in the financial affairs of its citizens. These were men who, for the most part, knew that humans left to their own wiles would get into a dog-eat-dog fight over wealth and they didn’t want to see that either.

People like Jefferson saw the future of this country in terms of a paradigm in which people would remain close to the earth or own small businesses and earn enough money to be content and have whatever they required to live a good life, but no more. “More” was not necessary and it could lead to moral blindness. Initially the founders, especially the Southerners, didn’t even want a federal bank, though Alexander Hamilton finally persuaded them to go in that direction–as a matter of necessity. And many of the wealthy citizens helped support the young nation (and the revolution) with money out of their own pockets. This was the way to practice “public virtue.”

The attitude toward money in this country in the eighteenth century was quite different from ours now. For the most part money was seen as a means to an end, simply. There were remnants of a deep-seated medieval distrust of money and what it did to people–ultimately stemming from Christ’s admonitions regarding the rich in the New Testament. Just read Dante’s Inferno and try to figure out how many of those in Hell are there because of their relentless greed! That attitude took centuries to die out, but it is now pretty much a thing of the past as, thanks to people like John Calvin, we think that wealth is a sign of talent, ability, and even, perhaps, God’s favor. You cannot have too much. If you do, you can always go out and buy yourself a government–like the Koch brothers.

There are lessons here for us to learn. We like to think we live in a Democracy even though the founders saw it as a republic governed by representatives, not the people themselves. The people were not thought to be wise enough to govern themselves, though through education they would learn to practice public virtue and at least come to recognize those around them who were worthy of elected office. And some would become well enough educated to lead the others. This is why Jefferson established the University of Virginia: he saw education as essential, especially in a republic. Those who remained in school long enough would be recognized as especially able and elected to public office. The cream would rise to the top. 

Jefferson envisioned a “natural aristocracy” governed by the brightest and best minds the country could produce. James Madison tended to agree with him–as he did on so many other issues. The idea goes back at least as far as Plato’s Republic. But it is clear that, as Aristotle foresaw, our “natural aristocracy” has degenerated into an oligarchy–given the fact that those with great wealth are the ones who choose those who govern and later tell them how to govern. And the wealthy are clearly preoccupied with their own self interest in the form of maximum profits. So Aristotle was correct in his notion of what factors lead to the degeneration of an aristocracy, even though he saw an aristocracy in a different light than Jefferson did. And Jefferson, echoing the Rev. Payson, was also correct in saying that a rich nation could not long remain a free one. 

Let me explain.

By world standards ours is a very rich country, though it is the top 1% who have the bulk of the wealth. But our conviction that we are one of the freest nations on earth is based on the misperception of what freedom is: that it is a function of the number of choices we have rather than our ability to decide for ourselves what is worth choosing. We do have a great many choices, heaven knows. But this is what Isaiah Berlin called “negative liberty” and it is clearly a part of what freedom is all about–we must be free from restraint in order to act at all. And we must have a variety of things to choose from. But Berlin also focused attention on “positive liberty,” or the freedom to choose intelligently, which comes from knowledge and awareness of implications. To the extent that we are unaware of what is going on about us, we as a nation fail to achieve positive freedom. As long as the wealthy continue to control the governing body, not to mention the media, whereby they are able to divert attention with entertainment and games, we will continue to maintain the illusion that we are free because we have negative liberty. We can choose the channels we want to watch: more is better. But until or unless we also have positive liberty, unless we come to know which channels are worth watching, we are not truly free–not fully free in human terms. Free citizens know which candidates are worthy of public office and will elect them accordingly. 

That was Jefferson’s dream.

It is not likely that the wealthy will give up their wealth. And as long as they can buy politicians who will pass the laws that give them tax breaks and subsidies, they will simply continue to amass photo : Charlie Nguyen wealth–while insisting all the while, incorrectly, that they are realizing the ideals of the founders of this nation. Thus, if the citizens of this nation are to regain any semblance of their full human freedom, the only hope is education whereby we come to know what freedom is and realize that it does not come down to the number of loaves of bread on the shelves at the local box store, or the number of cars at the dealership. As suggested above, freedom is a function of knowing which bread is healthy and which cars are the lemons: it is a function of knowledge and the capacity to think about what we know. Job training certainly won’t get us there, though it is what the wealthy want us to embrace and what the schools are currently focused upon. It is only through education properly conceived that we can realize this capacity to make informed choices. That is why a liberal education is vital to our political system as originally conceived: it sets us free and keeps us free. 

Let us be clear about this.

Liberal education properly pursued leads to the ability to use one’s mind. One would hope, therefore, that everyone in this country, if not the world, would want as much as possible. But we confuse schooling with education, despite the fact that there are a great many people who are well-schooled but who are badly mis educated. They may be well-trained to do a particular thing, but they cannot use their minds and are captives of every intellectual fad that passes their way. This is the result of job training, and while corporate CEOs will complain from time to time that their employees can’t use their minds properly–they can’t speak coherently, write a clear memo, or organize their thoughts–they would really prefer that these people simply do what they are asked to do. Otherwise, why aren’t the corporations taking the lead to make this nation first in the developed world in education instead of being, as it is, among the last? It is not America that leads the developed world in education; it is tiny Finland.

In a republic like ours, it is essential that all citizens acquire the capacity to use their minds, to know whether or not they are being led astray–to keep an open mind, stay on top of what is going on around them, and think their way through all the nonsense to see if there is a kernel of substance at the center. Liberal education properly pursued will assuredly lead to this end. But even if schools do their job and lead us down the path to an education, it does not stop there. Education properly conceived, lasts a lifetime. In the end, it would appear that Jefferson was right. Corporate wealth which controls the political machinery in this country is at loggerheads with both the ideals of this republic, and in so far as it fosters job training in the place of education, it also limits the possibilities that the citizens of this republic can remain free.

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From the Empirical Archives: Renewable Ignorance by Herman Daly

Renewable Ignorance

Herman Daly

Originally published in the December 2012 issue of Empirical

We are all born pig-ignorant. Upon having accumulated a lifetime of knowledge, we all promptly die. Ignorant babies replace learned elders. Knowledge is a depleting resource; ignorance is renewable. Yes, libraries and data banks grow, but knowledge finally has to exist in the minds of living people to be effective and evolve; unread books, unseen videos, and un-accessed hard drives are inert. They are also subject to destruction by teeth of time: fire, flood, mildew, and moth, as well as that modern bookworm, the computer virus.

Like Sisyphus we push the rock up the hill only to have it roll back down again. Progress is not completely illusory. However, it is three steps up followed by two and a half steps backward. Successive generations repeat earlier mistakes. They also invent new ones. Any solution to a given mistake is usually forgotten within two or three generations and we have to learn it again. But it is not all bad—after all, babies are delightful and happy while old people are grumpy—ignorance is bliss.

Life consists of more than knowledge. Life expectancy has increased, so the old know more when they die, leaving the babies with still more to learn. A massive transfer of knowledge each generation is an unavoidable necessity. This transfer is not automatic. It requires two decisions. The old must decide what knowledge is worth their effort to teach, and the young must decide what is worth their effort to learn. Some knowledge passes both filters and becomes the basis for guiding the future and for discovering new knowledge.

Other knowledge fails to pass one or both filters and is lost. Just as the world is always only one failed harvest away from mass hunger, so it is always only one failed generational transfer away from mass ignorance. What do we know about these two generational knowledge filters? What do they let pass and what do they filter out? I really don’t know the answer, but I have one speculation, taken from E. F. Schumacher’s reflections on Thomas Aquinas and Rene Descartes.

Aquinas said that even uncertain knowledge of the highest things is worth more than certain knowledge of the lowest things. Descartes believed otherwise, that only knowledge that had the certainty of geometry was worth retaining, and uncertain knowledge should be abandoned even if it pertained to higher things. These two filters have very different selection biases. In their extreme forms they represent opposite errors of judgment about what knowledge to keep and what to jettison.

Which error are we most likely to commit today?

I believe we overemphasize Descartes and pay too little attention to Aquinas. I take Aquinas’ “higher things” to mean purposes, knowledge about right purposes. Lower things I take to refer to techniques–how to efficiently do something, assuming it should be done in the first place. We have overdeveloped our relatively certain knowledge of technique, and left underdeveloped our less certain but more important knowledge of right purpose. The old seem more interested in teaching technique than purpose, and the young obligingly seem more interested in learning technique than purpose. So we develop more and more power, subject to less and less purpose. As physicist S. Weinberg says, the more science makes the universe comprehensible and subject to our control, the more it also seems to render it pointless, and the less our control is guided by purpose.

These thoughts remind me of a public debate I participated in at LSU in the 1970s regarding the construction of the River Bend Nuclear Power Plant near Baton Rouge. I presented economic and safety reasons for believing that the plant should not be built, that there were cheaper and safer alternative sources of electricity, etc. After my presentation, a nuclear engineering consultant from MIT made his rebuttal on behalf of Gulf States Utilities. 

It consisted entirely of presenting a scale model of the reactor core and explaining how it worked. He never replied to any of my arguments or said a word about why the reactor should be built. But his exposition of technique easily won the public debate. Afterwards everyone crowded around his model pointing to this and that, asking how it worked. “How to” questions of technique totally displaced “what for” questions of purpose. Maybe I needed a scale model meltdown of a reactor core!

Maybe I needed a course in public relations.

I might as well have been whistling Dixie.

Also I am reminded of a conversation with a friend who was the film curator for the Library of Congress. He told me that digital recording techniques were now so advanced and cheap that the Library would soon be recording and preserving everything that appeared on TV, or YouTube, or the radio, or Twitter, etc.  Historians and scholars could then decide what was important and valuable. Librarians would avoid this difficult qualitative decision, and at the same time feel good about themselves for not imposing their value judgments on future historians. While I understand this point of view, I cannot share it because it seems to me yet another example of “how to” questions displacing “what for” questions–a displacement likely to be continued by the “value-free” future scholars for whose benefit this almost infinite attic of junk is to be saved.

Knowledge is offered as a panacea these days. Young people are urged to go deeply into debt to “get a degree,” and are assured that the growth economy will allow them to pay it back with interest and still come out ahead. Many have been disappointed, and more will be. As one who has spent over forty years in universities, I am doubtful about this exaltation of knowledge; even though in arguing for a steady-state economy I have appealed to physical limits, not knowledge limits, leaving open the question of how much qualitative development could be supported within a biophysical steady state without quantitative growth. Also the “knowledge limits” I have appealed to are themselves knowledge–knowledge of physical limits, mainly the laws of thermodynamics, rather than any inherent limits to knowledge itself. 

Although I am eager for knowledge to substitute physical growth to the extent it’s possible, the basic renewability of ignorance makes me doubt that knowledge can save the growth economy. Furthermore, knowledge, even when it increases, does not grow exponentially like money in the bank. Some old knowledge is disproved or cancelled out by new knowledge, and some new knowledge is discovery of new biophysical or social limits to growth. New knowledge must always be something of a surprise–if we could predict its content, then we would have to know it already and it would not really be new. Contrary to common expectation, new knowledge is not always a pleasant surprise for the growth economy–frequently it is bad news.

For example, climate change from greenhouse gasses was recently new knowledge, as was discovery of the ozone hole. One thing I have learned about universities is that much of what is taught in them today is based on the labor theory of value–“it was hard for me to learn this, so it must be worth teaching it to you.” This is a poor generational filter, and is even found in economics, which of all disciplines should know better! Also, much abandoned knowledge should have made the cut but did not. Indeed the whole field of history of economic thought has been cut from the curriculum to make room for more econometrics–the art of pretending to measure ephemeral and tenuous correlations among ill-defined variables in a world where the relationships to be measured change faster than the data for estimating them accumulates.

The classical economists’ concept of the stationary state economy did not totally disappear, but almost.

Is just trying to save everything a solution?

No. Do I have a solution? No. So I will stop here and simply ask that we all, young and old, pause, and calmly consider the proper balance between the “what for” and the “how to” questions as filters for the generational transfer of knowledge. Let’s help the babies deal better with the perennial problem of renewable ignorance.

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