I am typing this while I am yet again on hold and listening to a randomly bad instrumental music. When you speak to a rep. on a telephone in an official “support” capacity you are not actually speaking to a human. You are speaking to an input device that has a voice recognition and the ability to read out-loud text off a screen. When you get to the last screen and inevitably there is no resolution to an issue the only choice is to handshake your packet to another device. You get the worst of all worlds – a human being embarrassingly degraded to an input device and a computer saddled with the most inefficient and deliberately opaque interface. The vast part of the economy is still run this way.
This is a not only the problem of the inefficiency or the bad usability concept. The emotional toll this process takes on the economy is enormous. A human reduced to the helpless keyboard, the frustration of dealing with an impermeable machine. This is far worse than the classic Kafkaesque bureaucracy. The traditional bureaucrat is a glorified sadist, happily beaming with the illusion of power. In other words a fulfilling, honorable job. The classic bureaucrat can be tricked, bribed and occasionally reasoned with. But today’s rep. has literally the dignity and the self-worth of a plastic mouse and there is no way out from the last screen. It’s a lose-lose situation for customers and clients.
The Internet culture is in crisis. Jewish blogs are stuck. A dignified livelihood is a challenge. Why? In one sentence, when a culture becomes derivative, it mines and depletes its own legacy. I started thinking about this topic when I read this paragraph in Jaron Lanier’s new book:
“It is astonishing how much of the chatter online is driven by fan responses to expression that was originally created within the sphere of old media and that is now being destroyed by the net. Comments about TV shows, major movies, commercial music releases, and video games must be responsible for almost as much bit traffic as porn. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but since the web is killing the old media, we face a situation in which culture is effectively eating its own seed stock.”
Marshall McLuhan declared that “medium is the message”. What he meant was that a new form of expression, i.e. alphabet, writing, print, TV, etc., changes our brain wiring, tastes and values so radically that medium itself is the central cultural event. Inevitably at a dawn of every novel form of expression, a new medium is awkwardly used to reprocess the old, the bleak task comparable to translating poetry into a foreign language. This is the DJ stage where the Internet finds itself at the current moment. The old tunes are remixed, republished, relinked to a new beat, literally and figuratively no new music is created. Occasionally a new app is written for the legacy proprietary code instead of a new OS.
On to the Jews cursed with the satirical task of amplifying a culture. Every potential convert to Judaism needs to be aware of these axioms:
- Marshall McLuhan spoke about the “rear view mirror” phenomena or the propensity of any culture to live in a utopia about its past. Jews amplify this tendency in the worst possible way. Most traditional Jewish communities are consumed with intense utopia and the deliberate subterfuge of history.
- A Rabbi is a DJ, never singing in its own voice and forever spinning someone else’s tracks. There is a derivative throwback tendency in every culture but again amplified by the Jews. The tribe castigated to the two thousand years of the survivalist epic. With the rare exceptions (i.e. kabbalah) the innovation is shut down, conformism is bred and encouraged. People who can’t contain or control their creative impulses are eventually expelled from the traditional Jewish communities.
- Every group on the face of the earth is defined by what this group is not. Jaron Lanier calls this the “mob switch”. Once again this is most sensitive component of the traditional Jewish culture. Although the potential converts are not specifically instructed about the importance of the boundary defining hate, eventually to successfully integrate in the communities they would have to internalize the intense feeling of hatred towards other Jewish groups and denominations, towards the declared heretics, goyim, real and imaginary antisemites, etc.
Now let’s compare the three “Jewish problems” to the Internet. The Internet is definitely not a utopian vision of the past. There is strong revolutionary current, especially in the communal rhetoric of the Open Source movement and the Web 2.0 social. Alas, after a decade, a new server side oligarchy emerged to control the scalable bits. Instead of empowering creativity, no longer under a centralized command, there is a deliberate and impoverishing push for the “free”, the collapse of the copyright boundaries, devaluation of the original unpaid authorship under the assault the ad supported aggregators. The DJ culture is absolutely the internet as we know it today. The disastrous anonymous comments culture and the combustible flame wars take the group/mob hate to the unprecedented levels on the Internet.
And what about the Wall St.? The financial services industry dominated by the derivative contracts became the most important part of the American GDP. There is an easy analogy to the Internet (or any derivatives dominated culture). People often complain that the stocks are the trading instruments removed from the real value of a company. An options contract or a credit default swap contract is like a tweet about a comment on a blog post that links to a different newspaper web site. Derivatives are comments removed from a productive culture, they don’t innovate, don’t create value and eventually pop. To slap a Dell label on a product engineered and fabricated in China is like linking to someone else’s content on a popular web site. Our religions, our ability to make a living and our “internet economy”, the trifecta, is overrun by the derivative thinking. We can no longer extract value from comments about the dried up wells and we can no longer destroy the remaining functioning artisan wells. We can no longer condemn people to the indignity of being replaced by the machines or the outsourced slaves. We can’t DJ, quote, link, mashup or re-aggregate our way from this crisis. You can quote me on that.
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There is this peculiar impression that till the enraged voters in Massachusetts sent a Republican to the Senate, no one, except the unemployed, remembered about the devastating structural changes in the economy. I am not talking about the Jews here specifically; perhaps this is a metaphor for any group. But I always wondered how the Holocaust or the Gulag happened in plain view of humanity but more importantly in plain view of the indifferent world Jewry.
First the layoffs, the crushing cleansing, when many firms cut people they would never dare to, if not for the fact that “everyone was doing it”. This is the middle class depression, more than a half of all jobs lost disappeared permanently. Jews are predominantly middles class and it’s natural that the community is hit particularly hard. Add to this the reality that many of the “working orthodox” feed off the economic margins that are now cut to the bone. For many families this is an unimaginable disaster and speaking of Holocaust, virtually no one is talking about this with the required urgency.
My friend tells me that perhaps the economic realm is not longer within the expertise of the communal organizations. But if this true than what is the rationale for a community that doesn’t have a charter for the mutual support? The communal institutions in service of the oligarchy unelected and permanently detached from the rank and file, accountable only to super rich. Occasionally easing their conscience by fundraising drives for the faraway lands from Haiti to Haifa, the further from home, the better.
Anecdotally many of my friends, who find themselves in the financial distress, tell me that if they try to share their misfortune with others there is a quick comeback and cutoff: “everyone is unemployed, everyone is losing a home, etc.” To be sure, not “everyone”, but there is callousness to this response as if no compassion, never mind a real help, is required, as if you are supposed to die in a plague.
Most people I know are traumatized more by the apathy than by the actual economic downfall. We expect and accept the financial risks and stumbles but the complete indifference by the people who claim a kinship is a life long trauma. And just like with the Great Depression there will be a new generation that doesn’t care and doesn’t remember. The life goes on but our connections to the fellow human beings will never be the same.
The chart shows different categories amongst currently unemployed. The light blue on the bottom represents the lost jobs that are lost permanently die to an economic structural change. You can see that it grew from about 25% in the 60s and suddenly jumped during this recession to 55% of lost jobs (Jan. 2009 data, must be much higher now). NYT – The Growing Underclass: Jobs Gone Forever.
Propublica – Unemployment Insurance Tracker:
“The unemployment insurance system is in crisis due to a combination skyrocketing unemployment and – in some cases – poor planning. A record 20 million Americans collected unemployment benefits last year, and twenty-six states have run out of funds and been forced to borrow from the federal government, raise taxes, or cut benefits. In many other states the situation is deteriorating fast.”
Speaking of bankers. The “international superstar” Erin Burnett does a segment for the MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ about the Citigroup’s earnings, the $1.5 billlion loss last year, plus (or is it minus) 100K layoffs globally. The usual “executive bonuses” jive follows. The metrosexual moron Donny Deutsch starts yapping about the bankers showing some good PR by sending cash to Haiti. Without disputing the gesture Erin Burnett politely asks what would they do with all the money in Haiti? But no one asks the obvious question. Didn’t you just report on the loss of the hundred thousands jobs!? At some point you will need the jobs to send money anywhere, even, gasp, your next door neighbor.
Russ Roberts’ regular podcast is divided into six minutes increments this week. In the first segment Mike Munger speaks about the scarcity of drinking water, hence the title of the post. Mike’s counter-intuitive conclusion is that to solve the problem there needs to be a change in the treatment of waste and the problem is in the pollution and misuse of the drinking water not the scarcity itself. Econtalk.
Barbara Ehrenreich is out with her book: “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.” You can gleam some of her thinking on her blog. How Positive Thinking Wrecked the Economy:
“Positive thinking is endemic to American culture – from weight loss programs to cancer support groups – and in the last two decades it put down deep roots in the corporate world as well. Everyone knows that you won’t get a job paying more than $15 an hour unless you’re a “positive person” — doubt-free, uncritical, and smiling—and no one becomes a CEO by issuing warnings of possible disaster. According to a rare skeptic, a Washington-based crisis management consultant I interviewed on the eve of the credit meltdown in 2007, even the magical idea that you can have whatever you truly want has been “viral” in the business culture. All the tomes in airport bookstores’ business sections scream out against “negativity” and advise the reader to be at all times upbeat, optimistic and brimming with confidence—a message companies relentlessly reinforced by treating their white collar employees to manic motivational speakers and revival-like motivational events. The top guys, meanwhile, would go off to get pumped up in exotic locales with the likes of success guru Tony Robbins. Those who still failed to get with the program could be subjected to personal “coaching” or of course, shown to the door.”
The Reason review – It Takes a Village Atheist:
“What is disturbing about the culture she describes is its uniformity, the sense that there is no space for those who might react to trauma with something other than plush toys and perkiness. As Ehrenreich confronts her diagnosis, she tends toward a hard-edged realism, and she feels increasingly isolated from the group. She resents—rightly, I think—the attempts to coach her into infantile gratitude for a disease that threatens to kill her. (As she points out in a fascinating summary of the literature, the supposed link between optimism and cancer survival rates is mostly myth.) Here, as in nowhere else in the book, one senses the group bearing down on the individual, pushing each new patient toward the desired emotional response.”
But Jen fights on:
“To be optimistic is not to deny the shadow side of life, but to carry on in belief toward something meaningful when non-meaning and nothingness seems to bear down upon you. You don’t get out of bed because you feel all cheery about it–you get out of bed because you don’t feel like it but you know there is triumph–and gold and bread–in doing it. And you illume the world with the strength of will it took to do it.
You think I exaggerate about getting out of bed–but it’s not pessimistic to say, yes, it sometimes feels exactly like that. The heroism of the ordinary and the every day is nothing to sneer at–it is the very stuff that life is made up. The slightest pause between breaths can be filled with all the courage of a lady knight facing the beast. That is what life is like. That is what it feels like to me. It doesn’t feel like looking at the beast and saying, “la la la, I can’t see you.” It’s looking at the beast and knowing, like you know the sun, that you are stronger than it. Because of what dwells within you.”
MSNBC lists only the losses for the three quarters of 2009 (the available data). For the total year loss, add approximately a quarter to all numbers. The aggregate for the recession is not available (some of my notes included).
- Architects – 17.8% decline, 189K jobs lost (in 3 quarters of 2009 all figures) (as with all construction related professions the downturn started in 2008, the housing crash preceded the financial crisis and the general recession. So the aggregate number for all construction related losses is actually much higher, perhaps double).
- Carpenters – 17% decline, 1.3m jobs lost.
- Production supervisors and assembly workers – 16% decline, 754K supervisors jobs lost and 876K assembly workers jobs lost (the continuing decline of the American manufacturing, plus the collapse of the automobile industry).
- Pilots – 30.5% decline, 96K jobs lost (didn’t know there were that many pilots. The drastic decline of business travel, plus the industry still reeling from the hikes in gas prices).
- Computer software engineers – 10% decline, 970K jobs lost (despite the demand for the “high end geeks”, the rank and file (pun intended) of the programmers jobs continue to be downloaded overseas, the programming is a harbinger of outsourcing yet awaiting other professions).
- Mechanical engineers – 18% decline, 247K jobs lost.
- Construction workers – 14% decline, 1.56m jobs lost (in addition to 1.8m lost in 2008)
- Tellers – 12% decline, 407K josb lost (the first to go during a banking crisis).
- Bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks – 13% decline, 1.25m jobs lost.
Flood victims lined up to get food & clothing fr. Red Cross relief station in front of a billboard. February 1937, Louisville, KY . Photo by Margaret Bourke-White
The fist years of a recession aren’t that bad for people who have jobs and means. The taxes haven’t risen yet and the city services are sill intact. The products become actually cheaper and the bubble generates enough optimism for the stock marker to pretend that nothing changed. And then the city services catch up and everyone starts to notice. LA Times – City retirements threaten a deep and lasting legacy:
“Some policymakers have only begun grasping the magnitude of the exodus of librarians, building inspectors, traffic officers, city planners and other workers, many of them the city’s most experienced employees.”
Rarefied Reflection No. 1
by Ben Atlas on 12.28.2009.8:35am · 0 comments
I am starting the readers mail format. Issac from NY emails about The Case for the Negative Freedom in Isaiah Berlin v. the Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre:
Issac, you know several people emailed me about The Trap and The Century of Self that they watched the entire 3-4 hour series in one sitting. Naturally this is because Adam Curtis lifts the veil on many new and pivotal ideas that we not only take for granted but believe to be eternal. Indeed there is a huge flaw in oversimplification of the complex concepts. But you can imagine that delving into the complexity will turn the documentary in an unwatchable page of Talmud. Instead this documentary is the best conversation starter. It’s like Bible that despite being cryptic addresses the visceral dilemmas of our existence. I don’t know much about Hayek, but Nash reappears at the end on the 3rd film, cured from his schizophrenia, to imply that there is more complexity to the game. And this brings me to the second point you make, are people expecting the worse from their fellow citizens, even to larger degree than ever in history?
Indeed, paradoxically the frum culture is the most selfish and unfriendly society, but specifically about the anonymous comments. A religious person is always wearing a mask in public. The true feeling, thoughts, the rebellious and transgressive urges are separated from the public persona. But the internet medium compels transparency and honesty, it induces the real-time expression of the real. For a religious person to speak honestly without a mask is like going naked through a public square, an unnatural act.
So comments on frum blogs are graffiti walls in a school bathroom. Scribbled opinions with no expectation of conversation (the frum blogs are actually worse than a public toilet. In a toilet you can occasionally encounter a draiwing or an original poem but people who leave graffiti on the frum blogs have been indoctrinated into a system that values quotations, someone’s opinion above even the anonymous personal expression). One step up is when people create a name and a character. You can have a dialogue with a character but this is also problematic. As we discussed everything we do, including the conversation is a game . And you have to put some chips on the table to play a game properly. Speaking as some character means that you are playing the game with no chips on the table and it changes what you say to the core. You need a special permission for that but it poisons the well nevertheless.