Business as Usual

Interesting things can be done a number of ways or take a multitude of forms. If there were only one type of flower or bird, they would be boring. Useful, even essential, but dreadfully monotonous to only see one shape and color repeated endlessly wherever one looked, like grass. Playing a game that has only one outcome or way to progress is dull; the excitement of playing is in not knowing what will happen. Whether I win or lose, how we get to the end is novel each time — in a good game, anyway.

People talk about business as if it were interesting; there are entire TV channels and reams of magazines devoted to discussing business. The truth is that business is boring. Not in the sense of filling out forms or collecting data about productivity, although that is certainly tedious. People act as if there is some variability in business or there are novel discoveries waiting to be made in conducting business. While advertising and methods of payment have certainly changed over time, the business of selling is unchanged and unchangeable from ancient history into the future. All it consists of is getting more for something that what one paid. Whatever it is, from bikes to jewelry, clothes to food, babysitting to writing, every single action in business is determined by this simple, underlying principle: buy low, sell high. Whether it is goods or services, the only thing that matters is that I get paid more for something than what I paid to get it. There is no mystery, no novelty, nor any innovation here.

You knew this already. Everyone has heard "buy low, sell high" or that business must turn a profit. This is so commonplace that we don't talk about or recognize it; because it is so ubiquitous, it is trivial. The only thing interesting about this is the mystical, reverential attitude people have about "business". It places emphasis on a tool, the simple practice of conducting trade. Concurrently, this attitude extends to those who conduct it. The reason for pointing this out is simply to question the legitimacy of this worship of business and suggest that the attention paid to the subject would be better spent on other pursuits.

Keeping Down the Jonses

In medicine, the term 'anosognosia' means the patient cannot recognize their own condition. A person literally cannot conceive of the issue or connect the cause with the effect of their own suffering. This is similar to — although distinct from — when we cannot examine own situation as objectively or dispassionately as an outsider could. While this is a common and important human flaw to be aware of, it is different than the patient's blindness: the inability to connect varying symptoms with the underlying disease. It is also different than having others mislead or deny information that would allow one to understand the problem; the term gaslighting may come to mind for some. We need to be clear about these different causes and conditions in order to recognize how to fix our situation. The objective here is to expand the conversation and provide better tools for examining our collective problems.

Additionally, individuals and groups attempt to exploit ignorance, confusion, and desperation by offering self-serving explanations. It is the reason we have scammers, fascists, demagogues, and "influencers" explaining away all problems as due to "godless living", "too many immigrants", "raising 'soft' children", "not 'grinding'/'hustling' hard enough", etc. The insistence that these are all personal or individual issues, despite impacting every person in the society. Claiming that mass shootings are just "lone instances" or "disturbed individuals", rather than the result of choices and influences that pervade the culture. Demanding that nobody look at the arrest, sentencing, and incarceration of minority persons — let alone the violence surrounding law enforcement towards same — as a systemic problem. The 'individual responsibility' narrative serves to maintain things as they are, and benefits those who feed off such conditions. If we were to (or were able to) examine our situation with objectivity and allow for systemic or systematic oppression, we could find solutions that we could not otherwise.

However, the suggestion here is that there exists a greater case of anosognosia than even the collective blindness to violence, inequality, or suffering that people live with every day. In fact, I propose that it is the root cause of those symptoms. It may seem odd to refer to conditions as diverse as police shootings, economic inequality, theft, houselessness, addiction, everyday callousness, political apathy, excessive imprisonment, despair, and extractive practices as anything other than causes themselves. This is due to the blindness — often enforced by self-interested parties — which society has about these terrible conditions being outgrowths of a pervasive condition which supports them. Yet, after seeing the connections, one can recognize a great number of issues as symptoms of that underlying, unacknowledged root cause. Whatever name we know it by, the notion that there is some immutable scale of more and less deserving persons dictated by natural principles. The assumption that there are people who should not have power, privilege, or prestige. This is the underlying belief that makes it possible for otherwise caring and compassionate people to blame victims and excuse the mistreatment of others, thus allowing a system of oppression and suffering to continue.

Let us briefly examine one example as practice at seeing the pattern. While houselessness (previously, homelessness) has been around a long time, people in the U.S. are experiencing it in greater numbers over the past few years. There are a number of rationales for ignoring it, many bordering on the absurd. For this example, set aside budget and history, let us set aside the mundane world and imagine instead that all humans, no matter their limitations or choices, deserve food, shelter, health, and autonomy. If every person were thought of and treated as worthy and deserving — and our systems were oriented to actually ensuring the life and liberty of its citizens — then nobody could be unhoused. If the life of any person living "on the streets" was valued just as highly as any celebrity, it would be impossible to allow that person to continue to live in those conditions. Once, and only when, this ridiculous attitude is abolished, will we begin to progress into the future.

It is only because we allow ourselves to believe that there are deserving and undeserving, worthy and unworthy, valuable and disposable people that so many forms of suffering continue. It causes us to fear being put into the "unworthy" group and look down on those who are called "unworthy". It leads to systems which thrive on and contribute to the prejudicial notion of hierarchy.

The First Step in Fixing a Problem is....

Not so much a mystery as it is an assumption. Anyone in a recovery program will recognize, "The first step in fixing your problem is admitting you have a problem." Others might say it is, "...defining the problem", "...understanding the root cause", or "...recognizing there is a problem". These are all very pithy and goal-oriented. You may have surmised, by this point, that I have a suggestion which differs from these. This is correct, and not only that, I believe it is a vital difference. The baked-in assumption is that we can fix the problem, since the sentence begins with, "...first step in fixing...". It is here that we have already lost a large number of people, because they do not believe a fix is possible. It may seem strange or illogical to imagine that anyone could think we are just stuck with problems, that there is no solution for some things. However, this is the issue underlying many conflicts in relationships and life: one side thinks we can fix it and the other side does not.

In a previous post, I made mention of growth and fixed mindsets. These terms refer to the belief that either change for an individual is possible or not, respectively. In terms of nature versus nurture, one with the fixed mindset will hold that nature wins out and cannot be changed. This can be expressed, "Some people are just born bad" or "You can't fix stupid". This may seem to some as an antiquated notion, something that has been superseded by progress and scientific discovery. However, the fact we can hear people continue to use such expressions should be enough to demonstrate the tenacity of this perspective. It is this attitude that poses a barrier in fixing problems, ironically enough. Those with a fixed mindset will work around the difficulties that others present, assuming that there's nothing to be done to change those others' actions. "It's just the way they are," they will shrug to themselves as they assume the other person cannot change. Rather than pointing out this other person's actions as being problematic, looking for ways to fix the situation, or even contemplating how to address the problem, these folks will take it upon themselves. This situation or attitude may begin to seem familiar, as you contemplate times in your life when someone acted this way.

The point here is not that people are incapable of change, and certainly not to berate anyone for thinking such. Having experienced such change in my own life, I hold with the growth mindset and can attest that it can happen. Because of this, I can believe that the same is possible for you, even if you currently hold a fixed mindset. My hope in writing this is to point out how the presuppositions we do not recognize can end up sabotaging our efforts to make things better. Therefore, my suggestion is that the first step in fixing a problem is simply to believe change is possible.

The Trouble with Philosophy

First, because it is too easy to assume that we share an understanding of what is meant by a word, let us agree on a simplistic definition for laypeople. Philosophy means both thinking about general principles and the overarching beliefs about how things work because of those general principles. Throughout history, philosophy has drawn from outside human society and psychology for rules or understanding of the ways in which things work. From prehistoric religions to the Hellenistic Period of idealized forms, the guidance philosophers offered tended to disregard the human in favor of the super- or extra-human. For example, Pythagoras theorized some very real mathematical instruments still in use, but was also responsible for a religion around mathematics. The heart of religion is bending reality to fit belief, rather than forming understanding based on observation of reality. This insistence that the world acceded to numbers, or that certain numbers were 'sacred' and 'powerful' and could influence reality, was important to Pythagoras and his followers. Despite it's popularity, it did not actually describe a truth or become the basis for a science or society. There are diverse more recent examples, more or less connected with academic philosophy. It is also important to note that our typical interaction with philosophy is informal and generally comes from family and community. This is because we can overlook our own philosophy, since we do not immediately think of it as being such. It is simply the underlying set of assumptions that silently guide how we interpret the world around us, our worldview.

Certainly, philosophy as a discipline has given and continues to give us tools to explore reality and question how we examine it. The fields of ethics and logic are contained within the realm of philosophy. This post does not seek to undermine its real work and advancements, but only to interrogate its limitations. Specifically, has this historic tendency to treat philosophy as an outgrowth of mysticism been a hindrance? Has it created a shared fallacy of some "immutable, eternal truth" or constant, unwavering order to existence? Rather than allowing us to accept that we have an incomplete and ever-evolving understanding of reality, or that we understand the universe through our own (limited) lenses, does this pursuit of perfection blind us to our role in that understanding? The point being that the desire for or expectation of an immutable and total answer may stall our advancements. Blindness to steps taken and insistence that an eternal truth is the only acceptable measurement could be a real threat to progress.

Further, if this has been the case, have we shaken off that tendency? Even after the Enlightenment and Humanistic advancements, this could still be a factor. Have we divorced our philosophy and philosophical pursuits from the need for a mystical basis? A belief that our flaws make us incapable of arriving at valid, if incomplete, conclusions could persist. Have we accepted that we will not arrive at an eternal and immutable truth via our philosophizing? That we are not seeking to understand a rational 'actor', but rather that we are examining an imperfect species' view of a neutral universe? If we do not accept and embrace these tendencies, and factor into our philosophy that central tenet, we may still be sabotaging ourselves.

I suggest that answering these questions could only benefit the field and humanity.

Proposal for a True Universal Currency

How we currently calculate the value of an item is purely economical, in the pedestrian sense. Some version of: “I’ll pay a little more than the total price of components, production, transportation, and sale of the item”. Let us look at a small example to understand the process better. In creating clothing, the demand for various other components was also born; in order to make one thing, we need various tools, ingredients, or processes. The basis for clothes is thread, which can come from sources like cotton, wool, or newer artificial fibers. Any of these require land, water, and effort in order to cultivate, harvest, and produce. While animal or artificial fibers require somewhat different ingredients, they are similar enough for our discussion. Land must be cleared for farming and/or factories, requiring energy for labor and machinery to make a plot usable. The crop must be cultivated, and most often water is involved, requiring further energy output for reservoirs and distribution networks. Finally, once ready for harvest, energy must be used to gather it for processing: reaping crops, shearing sheep, or manufacturing plastics. Additionally, fibers can be stored for the future as well as transported to where the fibers will be transformed into usable thread and then clothing. If we are to create enough thread to clothe a population, there is tremendous infrastructure and construction necessitated. While shoppers see the price of a shirt, the production of that one article is repeated tens of thousands of times requiring a tremendous apparatus that extends beyond just the shirt company. To arrive at a final price, many contemporary examples would also include government subsidies, tax breaks, undercutting competitors, advertising, and on ad nauseam. Additionally, we are not accounting for the loss of habitable land given over to industry, the toll on workers (physical or otherwise), or the environmental impacts of various practices. There are many costs which only get calculated later if enough people raise enough of a fuss. Once established, technologies become more political and decisions have more to do with what industry will allow to be considered than the actual components. In short, what gets considered a “cost” is subjective and often poorly understood. This illustrates some of the underlying problems with the current system. It would be better to have a simpler, universally applicable, and objective way to arrive at the value or cost of any item. As you might expect, there may be such a thing, but we must first explore some basic science in order to make the connection.

First, notice that the word “energy” appears a number of times in our example above; whether electrical, physical, mechanical, or chemical, the work done can be expressed as units of energy. While we may be accustomed to using this term in various ways, for our discussion here we need to think of it as it is used in physics. This means two things: energy exists along an electromagnetic spectrum and only some of it is useful. Energy exists on a scale from radiation at the high end to heat at the low end. It moves "down" easily, i.e. standing in the sunshine warms you up. However, to convert heat back into electricity it takes more energy than we get from that change to heat. We can generate electricity using the falling water at a dam to turn an electromagnet, converting potential mechanical energy into electrical energy, but we would not be able to draw the same amount of water back up into the reservoir using the electricity we gained. This is because there is always some amount of loss in converting any form of energy into another. Once energy translates from light into heat, it is no longer available to perform tasks; once the water is boiled, that heat cannot be used as electricity again. Next, everyone recognizes that it is easier to destroy than create; it takes time and effort to make the sand castle, but it will quickly fall apart on its own. That is entropy: the tendency towards loss of order and need for energy to maintain order. Further, entropy is a universal process. While the news mentions "peak oil", "post-oil economics", etc., which are different ways of expressing our limited supply of petroleum, the same is true of all energy sources. You may remember learning in school that our Sun has a lifespan, and will burn up at some point in the future. More broadly still, there is a finite amount of usable energy in the entire universe and when that is expended further change will be impossible, expressed as the "heat death of the universe". Recognizing this might encourage some to “conserve energy”, but the purpose of this post is just to point out the limitations of our current financial reckoning and suggest improvements.

With this understanding, of both the limitations of current economic accounting and entropy as a basis for the true representation of costs, we can construct a system which would express all activities as consumption of our total energy “budget”. Thus entropy would become a basic unit of currency and evaluation at once. For true cost-benefit analysis, we could do no better.