Koyaanisqatsi

The pumpkin has a dream
Don't tell me what my place must be. I was born in the gutter, but I long to be free. I was born in a furrow, but I long for the sky: How can you know if you never try?

Best signs from the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear:

• Stand United Against Signs
• The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself -- And Zombies
• My Parents told me there would be CANDY here (a reference to Stephen Colbert's previous, rather unique show)
• Sanity Is A Pre-Existing Condition
• Stark Raving Reasonable
• Stop Illegal Migration; Keep Canadian Geese From Entering Our Country
• Make Awkward Sexual Advances, Not War
• Hitler Is Hitler
• I'm Somewhat Irritated About Extreme Outrage
• Most Hyperbolic Sign Ever
• On the t-shirt of a man dressed as a bear, #1 on Colbert's fear list: Free Bear Hugs
• I Disagree With You But I'm Pretty Sure You're Not Hitler
• Hawaii Birthers For Statehood
• I Came Here Illegally. I Went 5 mph Over The Speed Limit On I-95
• Foreign Policy Expert: I Can See Canada From My House In Buffalo
• I Can See America From My Back Yard
• This Sign Probably Won't Change Your Opinion
• I Love America. Even Though We Get It Wrong Sometimes, It's Still A Nice Place To Raise A Family.
• This Is A Good Sign

And one more, from the American expats in Canada:

• Take It Down A Notch America: We're Trying To Sleep Up Here In Canada

Never have I seen so much determined denial of the evidence of our own eyes. It can be as simple a thing as considering it impossible to live on a slightly lower amount of income, never mind that the known average income of the area demonstrates that more than half of all households somehow manage it. It can even be a refusal to accept that all pies are in themselves finite. (If more pieces are to be found, new pies must be baked; and eventually new ingredients must also be found.)

We have become very adept at building customised blinkers for ourselves.

Yet our apparently infinite capacity for denial should come as no surprise. The tragedy of the commons has been known to us as a mathematical concept for decades, but as a practical outcome, for centuries. The theory of peak oil is more recent, but draws on the same basic psychological concepts.

What is a sudden steep growth in broad-based denial and a parallel determination to get every bit of "what is owed us"/"what we merit", if not a broader, society-wide, full resource sector-wide application of the principles of peak oil?

A recent mishap which had caused significant inconvenience to another (but fortunately not anything really serious) had me searching for an apology card. Note, personal in-person apology, action, and even a gift card would be included, but I planned to use the card as the basic framework for the rest.

In every one of the all-purpose stores which also carry greeting cards, the only types of "sorry" cards I could find were cutsey things, the kind of card you send when you miss someone's birthday or forget an engagement -- and there were extremely few even of those. Not one card in any of these all-purpose stores expressed anything like a "sorry" for something which could not be readily brushed off between friends.

If the purpose of greeting cards is indeed to find a way to say the normal societal things that need to be said: what has happened to the genuine apology?

East Europeans and Turks are still the Mexicans of Europe.

German chancellor Angela Merkel has declared multiculturalism dead, an utter failure. Cartoonists who go out of their way to mock other cultures are to be explicitly honoured in the name of free speech. France has followed up law 2004-228 (banning all religious symbols and garb in publicly-funded schools) with a full legal ban on wearing the veil in any public location. (So much for the legal fiction that the previous law was not intended primarily to target Muslim cultural practices.)

The cracks are widening.

If we judge people based on what they do and do not know, we judge only ourselves.

People who are determined not to know: these judge themselves, and assign themselves a harsher sentence than any we could impose.

Hurricane Track has noted repeatedly this year that the United States has dodged a hurricane bullet. The same, fortunately, has been mostly true (thus far) for Haiti, where over a million people left homeless by the earthquake still live in tarp villages and suspected cholera has now broken out. The people of Haiti do not need to add a hurricane to their current suffering.

But it has not been true for other parts of the world.

Super typhoon Megi, the eighth most intense western Pacific typhoon ever recorded, became one of the strongest typhoons ever to make landfall anywhere in the world when it hit the Philippines: with sustained winds of 225 kilometres per hour. It barely lost strength over Isabella, Cagayan, and Luzon, and is already strengthening again prior to a second landfall onto Vietnam and mainland China.

Dozens of people have already been killed and 60,000 people are homeless despite government action to try to minimise injury and damage. If damage estimates to the rice and corn crops are accurate, the Philippines will have to import rice this year. The resulting global rice shortages and higher prices will in turn rebound onto countless other hungry people around the world.

On the other end of the world, most hurricane analyses dismiss Igor, the other record-setting hurricane this year, as a footnote which managed to spill a great deal of heat energy out of the tropics and do little more. Despite its strength and size, Igor managed entirely to avoid landfall until it became an extratropical system and dissipated in Greenland.

The people of Newfoundland are still cleaning up after this "non-event".

When gale winds and heavy rain strike poor, rocky soil, shallow-rooted trees, and steep hills, bridge and road infrastructure is going to be washed out. For the first week after Igor struck, the east half of the island was completely cut off from the west half. (In typical Newfoundland fashion, life went on after the winds died down, by boat.) Communities came together and repairs began immediately, but even with the military's help, the last washed-out road was only re-connected just a few days ago. Other repairs are continuing between bouts of frost, snow, and heavy cold rain which has further weakened dams and more than once destroyed roads which had just been repaired. Winter comes early in Newfoundland.

A month after Igor hit, Newfoundland's musicians came together to raise money for the Canadian Red Cross Newfoundland relief fund. It is a logical extrapolation of the way Newfoundland communities opened their cupboards and made warm, home-cooked meals for the soldiers bringing in needed supplies and helping them to re-build. As Newfoundland's premier Danny Williams said, "Leave it to Newfoundlanders to turn disaster relief into a kitchen party."

Since when has having a new record-setting hurricane or typhoon every other year become the norm?

The distinction between entertainment and politics is not always clear these days. Self-proclaimed satirists and entertainers on both sides of the political spectrum get the kinds of billings most pundits and politicians can only dream of.

With the Restoring Honor Rally and the subsequent Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear), the line has become blurred beyond all recognition.

(Who pays attention to the minor detail that Beck always describes himself, not as an expert or a pundit but as an entertainer: when Fox chooses to set him on a stage among others who do call themselves pundits? Yet at the same time, who can still honestly name Stephen Colbert "only" a comedian when his 2006 White House Press Correspondents Dinner address marked the turning point of the (George W.) Bush administration; or Jon Stewart "only" a comedian when major politicians and international royalty regularly choose to be guests on his show?)

In a climate of what can only be called discontent, the first of these two rallies has drawn more people (somewhere between 65-300 thousand) than any other political event in recent history, excepting only Barack Obama's inauguration (in the neighbourhood of two million). The second is likely to have at least similar numbers, if not higher.

Yet the first, at least, was taken entirely seriously by its attendees. (Not entirely certain just what it is that Glenn Beck takes seriously: although from the intense marketing, I suspect his bank account is not the lowest of his priorities.)

The second rally is more problematic.

Had it drawn only a minimal crowd, all would have seen this as a sign. But would it have been a sign that hardly anyone still supported Obama, a sign that those who did not support the Tea Party movement could not be bothered to come out with a real protest, or a sign that most who might otherwise have participated in such a rally chose not to participate in a pseudo-event led by a pair of comedians?

Yet it seems attendance will not be the problem. Almost certainly the Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear) will draw people, probably dozens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands of people.

But why are they coming?

Is this a protest rally? If so, exactly what is being protested? and to what, exactly, would support ever be given? (Something concrete, please. Ideals don't pay the national bills.)

Is Jon Stewart knowingly building a generation of intelligent, educated, completely disengaged cynics? In a world which is so caught up in procedure it sometimes seems to have neither head nor tail, it may be the cool thing to be the rebel without a cause: yet all the Johnny Deans of the world never changed a single significant thing. Children and adolescents kick and scream and shout "No, no, no!" Adults try to change things for the better.

It can be safely assumed that all who are coming are fans either of Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart: is it a support rally, possibly even for a (wanted or unwanted) political run? It has not escaped notice that Oprah's programming will soon be coming to an end: is she building a new platform for the first overtly bought presidency? (Oprah vs Sarah Palin 2016: just imagine it.)

Or are those who will be attending the rally looking for a bit of laughter and an overall good time with like-minded others?

In short: is this a fun rally or a serious one?

What is the point of a politicised statement which cannot answer the most basic of these questions, other than to divert energy which might otherwise have been used actually to tackle the real problems?

As of mid 2010, FAO is confident that the rinderpest virus has been eliminated from Europe, Asia, Middle East, Arabian Peninsula, and Africa.
- The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation

On October 14, 2010, the FAO announced that rinderpest, an extremely high mortality disease of cattle, had been completely eradicated. The key breakthrough was Walter Plowright's development of an effective vaccine against rinderpest during the 1960s, for which he won the 1999 World Food Prize. This tool, combined with a world will to bring the threat of rinderpest to an end regardless of wars, drought or recession, successfully eradicated the disease less than five decades later.

Together with smallpox, rinderpest is the second disease to be successfully eradicated through human intervention.

During the same period of time, at least thirty new diseases have emerged for humans alone: SARS, nodding disease, Ebola, AIDS. New strains of cholera and influenza have swept the world. Old companions such as tuberculosis and staphylococci have developed strains which respond to no known antibiotic. If the listing of new diseases is to include those which strike domestic animals, the number soars into the hundreds.

It seems we can make a global difference, if we really want to. Yet we had better decide our priorities soon, or they will be decided for us.

All thirty-three Chilean miners have emerged into the daylight again. I am grateful to those who worked night and day to accomplish this. I cannot express the amount of respect I have for Luis Urzúa, the shift supervisor whose actions and leadership did so much to preserve the lives and health of those who worked under him. Good news is rare in the mining industry.

Though I hoped along with the rest of the world, I wrote nothing before this. There are so many things that could have gone wrong in an already unstable mine in an earthquake-prone country.

(At least it seems that decompression sickness was not among them. So high up is most of Chile that even 700 metres down still placed the trapped miners 120 metres above sea level: making even a fast ascent little different than the takeoff and flight of a twin-engine airplane. Yet ten decompression chambers were on hand during the final rescue, just in case.)

How I wish that I could have left this post there.

Yet we live in a world where the Chilean miners had to hire a lawyer even before they escaped the darkness, simply to watch out for their interests above ground. Documentaries, films, even a book is already in the works. It goes without saying that Chilean politicians took every advantage of the photo op. To some extent, they even staged it. (Not that Chilean politicians have any monopoly on this. Far from it.)

The mine in question has a poor safety record. No doubt its history and current conditions will also come to light -- again, for this has happened several times in the past, and always before the need to continue generating a profit has had the final word.

And again, Chile has no monopoly here. Even before the Deepwater Horizon oil well had been capped, long before standard practices in Gulf of Mexico drilling could be properly investigated, the oil companies had taken the United States government to court to overthrow the temporary moratorium on Gulf deep water drilling. Eleven oil workers died in that explosion, countless livelihoods were ruined: yet standard practices and emergency procedures are exactly the same now as they were then.

In Hungary, the initial flood of red mud had scarcely been stabilised before the Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina plant threatened to declare bankruptcy if it could not restart operations by the Monday following the accident. Never mind that nine people had died, drowned in corrosive sludge; and that half a dozen people are still missing. Never mind that the Marcal river is effectively dead, and that the Danube only escaped the worst by the skin of its teeth. Never mind that the same reservoir which had initially released a million cubic metres of red mud was still in imminent danger of complete collapse, and that no plan exists to prevent this or another such thing happening again.

But this time, it was not quite business as usual. On October 12, the Hungarian parliament decided that if the company could not run a safe and profitable operation under its own management, perhaps it was time for the country to take over.

And on October 13, that is exactly what happened.

United States President Barack Obama just cannot catch a break.

Now Cesar Millan, the self-trained, self-named "Dog Whisperer", has announced on a veritable marathon of shows that Obama -- or, more accurately, his dog trainer Dawn Sylvia-Stasiewicz (because presumably we want Obama himself to be occupied with more world-shaking matters than dog training) -- is training the First Dog incorrectly. According to Millan, "if your dog doesn't learn to follow, you'll never have a disciplined pet." A properly obedient dog should always follow its master, never go in front, and definitely never, never pull. Only in this way can its owner establish who is the leader of its pack.

(Never mind that dogs don't actually have pack instincts. Fortunately for Millan, a dog doesn't need pack instincts to react in kind to interactions which consist solely of submission and dominance and leave no room for play or empathy. Every dog definitely understands bullying.)

In the larger scheme of things, such a statement should matter not at all. Opinion is opinion, and publicity is publicity.

Yet a rather curious correlation seems to be cropping up just a bit too often to be coincidental. Everyone -- literally everyone -- who faithfully follows Millan's teachings in my neck of the woods also admires Ayn Rand and espouses the Tea Party "non-party" line. Many of them hold The Fountainhead to be the best book they have ever read.

Out of sheer curiosity, I ran a Google search today using the term "dog whisperer" with "conservative" (37,000) and "liberal" (32,400). But combining it with "tea party" outdid them both (43,800). When I explicitly added quotation marks in the search, "conservative" came in highest (29,400), "liberal" second (24,300), and "tea party" just 9% behind that (22,300). Of course, now that Millan has raised the immigration skeleton within the past week, there might be other reasons for those results.

(My observations only. Your mileage may vary.)

My dog lags occasionally, pulls occasionally: but comes to me immediately whenever I snap my fingers and remains obediently at my side thereafter. I draw him back mostly whenever there are the kinds of distractions that could be harmful to him. He has an intense curiosity about everything. I can't see why I would want to stifle that.

I never taught him any of that, not as such. He has a very deep desire to please me: and I never taught him that either.

I did teach him about property lines. He is not allowed to go past them without a leash. If I am outside the boundary, he will go up to the edge and lie down there, watching the world, but mostly watching me. He will stay there, no matter what the distraction. More than once, people have asked me if I have a buried electronic fence.

Many days we interact entirely without a spoken word. (No, nor a clicker or similar thing either.) If I am working, he may go elsewhere in the house for food or a nap, or he may watch me intensely, or he may curl up into a ball at my feet (and, too often, nearly under the wheels of the chair). The moment the computer goes off, he comes running from wherever he is. While the computer is on, I am not to be disturbed: but when the computer goes off, that means it can be his time.

There is a difference between obedience and submission. Obedient dogs are happy dogs because they know what you want them to do, and they know it makes you happy when they do it. Are submissive dogs truly happy, or are they just afraid that they might mess up in some unforeseen way, get caught, and get scolded?

I dog-sat for one of those neighbours last winter. Two dogs, one easy-going, the other territorial to the point that I was not going to bring my own dog over a second time (and was relieved that we had made the initial experiment in the presence of both owners). Both dogs acknowledged the wife's presence. When she took them on off-leash walks, she led, while they took comet-orbits around her.

They orbited me too, when I did it initially her way. After all, it was what they were used to. The very next day, however, it snowed and kept on snowing. For the rest of that week, it was all I could do to keep up with the neighbours' driveway and mine. (I was not going to let them come back from their vacation to a metre of snow in their driveway!) Time was tight, so I did it a different way. For possibly the first time in those dogs' lives, their walks with me were entirely on-leash.

At first they pulled. How they pulled! But I ran both leashes around the small of my back and along my arms: and even those strong, muscular dogs could not pull me off my feet after that. Then we started discussing appropriate on-leash behaviour. I did not say much, I never do: but I can make my voice very sharp, when necessary.

But when they did it right, I praised them, and then after the walk I spent time with them. (Brought a reading part of my work with me to be able to do it.) I did not even treat them!

It was over a month after the neighbours came home before they and I found the time to get together again. (There is always much to do. The time flew.) I sat down with a cup of coffee in my hand: and both dogs immediately came over to me. The territorial one pressed as close as he could, nuzzling against my hand.

She blinked. "He never does that with me!"

At one end of the production process are the raw resources. At the other is the consumer and market share. We understand and appreciate (more or less) the need to manage all renewable resources, so that they shall remain renewable for our children and grandchildren.

Yet we have never thought to manage market share itself as a resource which is not infinitely renewable?

Invert the view, and the approach to market share by labour and management alike resembles nothing so much as the scramble for the commons: a pie which can only be divided so far before it starts to become crumbs.

Never is it asked whether the scramble itself, and the means assumed to be dictated by the existence of the scramble, might themselves be reducing the overall size of that pie -- that soufflé, inflated so far by easy credit that we really have no more real idea just how much substance remains in the ingredients?

Children want everything, now. It is the adult's job to tell them "no". It may be a "no" driven by lack of money, or it may even be an arbitrary "no". One hopes it is driven most often by the child's best interest.

Who tells the adult "no"? Society tells us that if we have the money to buy a thing and it is not explicitly illegal: if we want it, we ought to be able to have it. Oh, the fights over whether a specific thing we want ought to be illegal or no! Who dares deny us the right to smoke ourselves into lung cancer, drink ourselves into liver failure, eat ourselves into an early death from heart disease, stroke, or colon cancer?

Whether it is in our best interest to have the thing is completely immaterial.

Perhaps we delude ourselves a little, and assume that those who earn enough to afford the thing have the judgement when/whether to buy it. We may even base our understanding of what the law ought to be on the actions of those we admire.

Alternately, we may choose deliberately to oppose a law we don't obey anyway. Perhaps we assume that the law is clearly meant for others who lack our own clear judgement, not us. Or perhaps, like the many marijuana growers who sell through Venice Beach but oppose the legalisation of marijuana, we might see the legalisation of our activities as being against our financial self-interest. Not only does this approach lead to strange bedfellows in politics, but it reinforces the reduction of the yes/no debate solely to law and money.

Or perhaps we don't care even so far, so long as the law and the money are aligned, more or less. The two motivations need not even be in the same camp. After all, hard-core law-abiding types and illicit growers unite in their opposition to marijuana legalisation, as Baptists and bootleggers once had to Prohibition. Even the devil can quote Scripture: and that Scripture is no less valid if it happens to be the devil quoting it.

Yet imagine, just for a moment, how things might be different if all our decisions were to be based primarily on what is in our best interest, for us as individuals and for our long-term survival as a society. On the surface of it, it might even sound idealistic ... right up until it costs you your job.

Tobacco adds hundreds of billions of dollars of employment, investment, and let's not forget tax income. From grower to end-of-life doctor, tobacco feeds on the individual right of individual misery to make us all monetarily richer.

Our addiction to cheap, convenient transportation drives subsidised airlines and bailed-out automobile manufacturers alike: which in turn drive city structures which can no longer be easily navigated without a dependency on fossil fuels and distractions with which to pass the commute time. We demand the right to urban sprawl, longer commute times, high accident death rates, road rage, increased urban heat, loss of tree cover, economically segregated inner cities, faster spread of disease, and being jammed into airline cabins like sardines. Suburbs are subdivided into increasingly small plots which are no longer large enough to support spreading shade trees: and the urban lawn business, ecological clean-up industry, and carbon credit market joins the oil, car, and entertainment industries as essential engines of the economy.

(Plant a tree and offset the carbon cost of your trip: in about fifty years, after the tree has had a chance to grow and breathe out oxygen for at least that long. Are you willing to wait those fifty years to take your next trip?)

Even a broad embrace of the locovore movement, where all consumed food is to come from within 100 miles, would destroy most of the jobs in the food industry and many in the transportation industry. Those jobs simply would no longer be necessary. On the other hand, farmers might finally make enough from their produce that we might even escape the vicious cycle of farm subsidies.

Through the cold eye of rational objectivity: how many jobs in this world are truly necessary? Is yours? Could the unemployment rate fluctuate as much as it does, were not the vast majority of jobs little more than an oil slick on the sea?

Yet without a job, what becomes of our monetary ability to meet our needs, let alone our wants?

Our current societal structure absolutely depends on our making choices based on desire, not our own best interest. If meaningful change is sought and not simply a panacaea, ask first what price you are willing to pay for that change.

In response to a clergyman who hoped "the Lord was on our side,"

I am not at all concerned about that, for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side.

- Abraham Lincoln (1864), as remembered by F. B. Carpenter, the artist who painted his portrait that year


Ironically, it seems that this quote of Lincoln's has now gradually been seeping into the woodwork in a different way: to justify an existing course of action. It seems that the simple action of citing this quote, even with the intent to use it to justify a course of action, is considered a sign of humility.

The sentiment comes with a curious amount of hairsplitting for such a straightforward idea: this was said but not that ... or at least, not in the same sentence -- and what is not said in the same breath cannot possibly be connected.

Certainly, one of the things said was a paraphrase of Lincoln's sentiments:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right, also for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God.

Sarah Palin goes on to specify

I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words, but what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was, let us not pray that God is on our side, in a war, or any other time. But let us pray that we are on God's side. That's what that comment was all about, Charlie.

Yet Palin also goes on to say

I believe that there is a plan for this world, and that plan, for this world, is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country, to be able to live and be protected within inalienable rights, that I believe are God-given, Charlie. And I believe those are the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That in my worldview is the grand plan.

So we find three points, said in separate breaths:

• Pray that we are on the right side.
• Pray that the military leaders [ultimately Obama] are sending them on a task from God.
• [I believe that] God's grand plan involves the same three "inalienable rights" that feature in the United States constitution.

Is it really so unwarranted a stretch to see these three ideas as linked?

While we are at it, let's add a fourth idea, unvoiced, yet utterly implicit within the first three statements:

• God takes sides. (And since they don't believe in the inalienable rights of God's grand plan ...)

In every conflict between human beings both sides claim God is on their side. One side must be [wrong], and both sides may be wrong. I only pray we are on his side.
- Abraham Lincoln

(Although, if someone out there has figured out a way to conduct a war without killing people on the other side, whether or not one dances carefully around the word "infidel" [someone not faithful (fidel) to God's grand plan]: please, let me and the world know. There are many who will be grateful.)

... and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.
- Alfred Nobel's will


In some parts of the world, democracy and free speech are knee-jerk articles of faith. Awarding the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is certainly a strong statement supporting both.

It is sometimes worth recalling that not all of the world -- not even most of the world -- agrees. Not by total population. Not by number of nations.

(And if we are to honestly examine the deepest will in ourselves: how many of us, even among those living in the democratic west, could truly pass that test? How many of us honestly believe that every person's voice is of value, and every person's vote truly informed and equal?)

Fraternity between nations can mean a building of bridges and respect for how each sovereign nation chooses to conduct its own internal affairs.

Yet there is also another approach to peace: evangelising an unrelenting pressure upon other, non-agreeing nations until they fold to our way of thinking. This second kind of peace will accept nothing less than total conversion to one's own political and economic value hierarchy ... whatever it takes.

Thus peace can be achieved either by bridging differences, or by imposing similarities.

It is curious that most nations of the world realise where that second approach must inevitably take us and take a cautious step back from that type of brinksmanship; yet at the same time, the merchants of peace and fraternity among nations hesitate not at all in taking that step.

Jeremy Rifkin notwithstanding, connectivity is neither the same thing as empathy nor naturally facilitates empathy. A dictionary connects us to its maker: yet when we look up the definition of the word 'dictionary', we do not expect to find the words, "Very funny". Rather, connectivity which also increases convenience takes away from the awkward need for working without an off button. It does not matter whether the connectivity is that of dictionary-fact or social media. We may be followed by thousands of friends on Twitter or Facebook: but how many of them would take us into their homes if our own burned down? The greater the casualness and the convenience, the less the empathy required.

Social media easily adapt to the constant desire for greater convenience. E-mails take too long now, blogs are passé: replaced by the brief Twitterfeed and the even briefer text message. Why would tone, context, more words possibly be needed? (Which may also explain the increasing inability of most readers to read between the lines, to see what is not explicitly spelled out; and, more terrifyingly, the increasing inability of many writers to write in any other way.)

The only exception -- for now -- remains the parents. Even teens prefer to actually talk with their parents rather than text. The only time teens text their parents rather than call is when background noise would reveal unwanted information.

At the same time, our increasing dependence on online popularity measuring sticks cuts into our ability and even our time spent making face-to-face connections, and consequently our ability even to make those connections. Who has not seen a social gathering where at least some of its members were more busy talking on cellphones than talking to their immediate neighbours? For every Olympic athlete who is happy to share their moment in the opening ceremonies with a loved one, there are a thousand people who willingly sacrifice time with their own family and friends in favour of the on-line world.

Success is rarely measured in empathy: in today's world, perhaps less than ever. Studies show continually that workplaces with self-motivated workers who have reasons to enjoy working have the highest productivity: yet other studies confirm again and again that those in positions of power over others tend more often than not to use that power to gain and retain at the expense of others, whether by seizing credit and belaying blame, micromanagement, or outright bullying. Histrionic personality disorder (superficial charm, insincerity, egocentricity, manipulation) and narcissistic personality disorder (grandiosity, self-focused lack of empathy for others, exploitativeness) are actually more common among high-level executives than they are among the criminally insane.

Whichever the approach, at the core of it is fear: and so control must be exerted continually lest it be lost -- which, in the end, converts the workplace into just another perceived zero-sum game which continually erodes resources. Refusal -- or, perhaps, inability -- to listen is just another form of control.

(Never mind that, at the least, lost productivity directly due to this particular zero-sum game can be measured in as much as 25% higher employee absence due to illness. In the absence of any need to care and any real employee incentive to improve company productivity, the individual drive to succeed and/or retain control at all costs will continue to be far stronger.)

Autism is not new to the Internet world. Isolated cases of autistic symptoms have been identified as far back as the Renaissance: but they were just that, isolated. In those times, true two-way bridging communication toward a common interest was essential to survival: short-term survival at first, which gradually became longer-term survival as civilisation took stronger hold -- and eventually, such long-term survival, not solely of self but also of family and even of society itself, that we may have forgotten this point altogether. Today, true two-way communication is the road of just another also-ran or didn't-run-at-all. To control dissemination of information without having to worry about little things such as empathy is the ultimate modern path to individual, blinkered power. The true success stories are those who partake of Laurence J. Peter's philosophy of "When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you."

Evolution readily adapts us to those niches we ourselves have defined as preferable. In a world where empathy is increasingly unnecessary and communication is a lesser job specialisation, people trained and hired to manipulate communicative media in order to communicate only what others tell them to: should it surprise anyone that it has become almost chic to be labelled with the genius-linked Asperger's syndrome (thought by some to have been experienced by none less than Newton)? Should it be surprising in the least that an increasing number of autistic persons and their parents no longer see autism as something undesirable to be cured? or even (in its high-functioning forms) as something which may be desirable? From there: is it such a large step to guess that at least some parents, high-functioning autistic and otherwise, might find it preferable to have autistic children? and maybe even engage in behaviours which make high-functioning autism more likely? After all, Deaf parents have already done it.

(Even the instinct toward acutely repetitive behaviours may prove evolutionarily desirable across a broad societal stratum: for of what else consists assembly-line training? Empathy, social imagination, and actual socialising may even get in the way, here. Even the simple physical clumsiness associated with many forms of autism -- which may be a side-effect of reduced socialisation and thus socialised physical play, and which may possibly be remedial through focused tasks which develop the same physical skills and coordination -- plays little role in highly internalised repetitive tasks, only in the otherwise continual adaptation to new circumstances.)

Consequently, should it come as any surprise at all that autism -- now known positively to have not one genetic link but several (for evolution has ever tested as many paths as possible to ruthlessly test which ones are the best means to an end) -- has sprung seemingly full-fledged into an Internet world? and leans most heavily toward males, still the dominant breadwinners on whose economic success the entire family depends?

The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.
- Alfred Nobel's will


Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been awarded to honour innovation and discovery in the five disciplines specified in Alfred Nobel's will: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and fraternity between nations (peace). These were the disciplines whose practitioners, Nobel felt, had the potential to confer "the greatest benefit on mankind", and to which he donated 94% of his fortune. Respecting his wishes, that was how the distribution of Nobel's endowment remained for decades -- until a donation by Sveriges Riksbank changed all that.

Sveriges Riksbank is the central bank of Sweden, Nobel's native country. On the occasion of its 300th anniversary in 1968, the bank donated enough money to the Nobel Foundation to establish a parallel award in economics, which would bear Alfred Nobel's name. The Nobel Foundation accepted the donation and created the award.

As of 1969, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has been awarded every year to honour outstanding contributions in economic "sciences". Although it is not technically a Nobel Prize, it has been given Nobel's name, it is administered by the Nobel Foundation, and it is awarded in the same October block of time as the original five Nobel Prizes. Most people don't even realise that the prize in economics is not actually a Nobel Prize.

According to the official Nobel Prize website:

The Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences according to the same principles as for the Nobel Prizes that have been awarded since 1901. (Emphasis mine - T)

Let's just take a closer look at that claim.

Historical, world-shaking changes were occurring in economic theory during Nobel's life. Certainly he would have been aware of their significance. During his lifetime, innovations in economic thought were revolutionising commerce, industry, and trade. The new-fangled assembly line was giving birth to mass production, driving down prices to make low-cost products affordable to people who could never afford them before. Nobel owed much of his own fortune to the increasing mass production of dynamite. Yet the "merchant of death" deliberately chose not to include economics among the five cited in his will.

Certainly innovations in economic theory during Nobel's lifetime also became a tool of current and soon-to-come political and societal revolutions, but the same was true for virtually every current discovery in physics and chemistry (and indeed for Nobel's own invention). From the American Revolution, through the American War Between the States and Charles Dickens' social concerns, to the bolsheviks of Nobel's day, literature had already proven to be a revolutionary force in its own right.

Dynamite, which made working with nitroglycerine stable and predictable, was a vast human improvement over liquid nitroglycerine. It can be a useful, efficient, life-saving tool for miners and builders, exponentially reducing labour manhours and personal risk. Yet dynamite can also make warfare unspeakably more devastating. What can be used for humanity's benefit can also be used for destruction. Nobel, of all people, would have known that there are two sides to every coin.

Knowing all this, Nobel deliberately omitted economics from the five disciplines to be honoured with prizes in his name.

The five disciplines Nobel did choose all had almost immediate practical application during Nobel's lifetime. Scientific theory was finding applications almost as quickly it was evolving: and on these foundations, new experimenters were able to build new theories. The results were tangible, testable, and repeatable: which is essential to the scientific method.

(Even a body of literature is a tangible thing: but since the economics award is given for innovation in the economic sciences, I examine this award from the perspective of science.)

Yet economic theory is not testable. In an interconnected world such as was already known to Nobel, no economic theory can possibly be shown to have a clear, independent effect. Attempts to apply economic theory cannot show clear results. Consequently, those results cannot be reliably replicated -- and without such reliable replication, it is impossible to demonstrate that a particular economic action will reliably have a particular, predictable effect.

Nor does economic theory agree upon its measures: the very bedrock of all science. What, absolutely and objectively, constitutes wealth? It has become economic convention to use currency or a precious metal or some similar unit as a measure, but none of these has any reliable translation even to that part of human well-being which can be purchased. A rural farmer who sustains only his family may have all he needs without ever going hungry, but he will contribute not a single dollar to his country's GDP. A starving garbage-heap dweller who somehow scrapes together almost enough money to pay others for food to feed himself will increase his country's GDP.

At best, a particular application of economic theory can demonstrate short-term, largely anecdotal evidence that, in a few isolated cases, the application is making a difference. Microloans are such a case. We know that a very high percentage of the microloan has been reliably paid off in full, and that they can improve an individual's earnings and consequently their short-term standard of living. We measure their success in terms of their ability to earn money and pay it in turn to others.

That is where our knowledge stops. We don't know how these individual success stories truly impact on their communities as a whole. We don't know whether the same model will -- can -- still continue to be successful when applied on a large scale. We don't know if the global market will abandon local efforts if prices should get too high relative to others who are more destitute and more desperate. We don't know if inflation is lurking in the wings, waiting to erode the value of the money which is being earned. We don't even know if there is a hidden human cost to each person's success.

Science accepts that there are things we do not know, yet. Science does not accept that isolated data and anecdote tell the full story. Science cannot even begin to investigate and analyse a story at all until there is a standard, fixed unit which accurately measures economic well-being.

These basic lacks make all attempts to apply economic theory into a global experiment with no controls. Without controls, anything that results can only be interpreted through anecdote and faith.

(Nobel also chose not to include any explicit religious insight, however humanitarian, among his five disciplines.)

There is some wiggle room in science for theory without application: for insights and new ways of seeing the world. Yet when placed into Nobel's context of "benefit to mankind", new insights honoured with the Nobel Prize should at least have the medium-term potential to give rise to applications which will provide a net benefit to humankind. Something about the discovery must have the potential to make a human difference.

This in turn implies that, to be true to Nobel's vision, discoveries honoured with an award in his name must have the potential to attain human benefit as the result of actual human action. A discovery which demonstrates only that the optimum human action in a given situation is inertial -- for us to keep doing as we have always done -- is useless in improving the well-being of humankind.

Yet a fair bit of economics research is dedicated to demonstrating exactly that.

It is only to be expected. In our world, economics and politics are inextricably intertwined. It is obviously to a governing politician's benefit to demonstrate as strongly as possible how existing policies and practices must be responsible for all things good, and not at all responsible for all things bad. If it is generally accepted that a large part of the success of a country should be measured in economic terms, then a similarly large percentage of governing policies must needs be based on the most politically beneficial economic theory. Similarly, a significant percentage of the criticism of existing policies must needs be based on alternate economic assumptions.

And there always will be alternative economic assumptions: because there can be no objective verification or rebuttal of any given economic premise. Why blame the subprime mortgage investment bundlers, when their actions are only an extrapolation of private enterprise, leverage-capital ratio, and standard risk hedging (around the entire world)? More taxes, less taxes, nationalise, privatise, pay as you go, use credit wherever possible, more money in circulation, less money in circulation (so long as "I" get "my" share of it): all of which in one form or another we have done before, all of which we will do again, because

• We don't know what we are doing.
• We don't want to know what we are doing, not in any rigorous sense.
• We don't even know what we want.
• And at least some of us expect to be rewarded for our speculations.

Perhaps it is to the benefit of all parties involved that economic theory can have no objective verification or rebuttal. Maybe that way we will all look a lot less like chickens running around with their heads cut off.

Thus, until and unless the study of economic "sciences" can find a common, objective measure -- or our world finds a different basis upon which to assign value and human benefit -- to select a winner of an economics prize cannot but be political.

It gets even more political when an institution creates a prize in economics on virtually a par with other, pre-existing prizes, but refuses to grant any other discipline the same level of honour. In effect, such a decision pre-decides that all other disciplines in all other fields of humanity's study have less claim to benefit humanity than economics.

Yet the Nobel Foundation has stated categorically that the Memorial Prize in Economics will be the first and last addition to the institution that Nobel brought into being.

So strong is the Nobel Foundation's opinion on this matter that when a great grand nephew of Alfred Nobel attempted to start the "Michael Nobel Energy Award" for innovations in sustainable energy research, the Nobel Foundation threatened legal action for "clear misuse of the reputation and goodwill of the Nobel Prize and the associations of integrity and eminence that has been created over time and through the efforts of the Nobel Committees." The "Michael Nobel Energy Award" no longer exists. It has been replaced by the Nobel Sustainability Scholarship.

In isolation, each of these actions seems innocuous. Taken together, these decisions by the Nobel Foundation assign economics a unique status as an imperial discipline. This in itself is a political claim.

In 1968, the Riksbank, whose motto is "Hinc robur et securitas" (herefore strength and safety), endowed the Memorial Award in Economic Sciences. Since that time, the fixed exchange rate regime of the Swedish krona collapsed (1992), a floating exchange rate was adopted (1993), and Sweden has experienced two separate "worst recessions since the 1930s" within two decades (1991-3, 2008-?). As of July 2009, the Riksbank actually has a negative interest rate of -0.25%.

Alfred Nobel's will stipulated that the Nobel Prizes should go to those who "have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." Is it still appropriate for the Memorial Prize in Economics to be linked with Nobel's name?