Thursday, June 30, 2005
My Favorite Donald
Last night I was in a classroom, sitting on a bare plastic chair, and listening to an old man I know speak to an audience of no more then six.
He is a great purveyor of worldly knowledge, able to tame the ebb and flow of current events into a coherent trajectory. I think its fair to call him a prophet for our modern times.
I would be excited to have sat before him, and listened to him speak. But he wasn't as I expected him, he was old and frail and in a wheelchair. His hair was much whiter then in any picture I had seen, and his skin was much more wrinkled. He was wheeled up to the podium, where he spoke in a barely audible voice.
It occured to me that he looked a little bit like myself.
But he did not speak as I expected, he launched into a rageful tirade, condemning the poor for their stupidity and sloth, proclaiming that we have always dominated, and will always be the masters of men. He spoke incoherently, his ideas confused and without structure. 'Who is this man?' I thought, and when I looked in his eyes I saw nothing but vacancy and I thought this is not the same man.
So it was far from the well reasoned ideas that I had been expecting. And I thought to myself, how sad, and who is really to say what a man's views really are, for they are only words that are said in that very moment, and past that they are really nothing at all but memories.
And still, even on hearing this ranting fool, his poorly crafted barbs exposed in their shocking nakedness, it still seemed hollow that there were only six others sitting to take it in.
When his time was up, he was dragged off the podium by his moderator, who attempted to hush him as he refused to stop his speech. 'The time is up,' she pleaded quietly, but he wanted none of it, and seemed oblivious to the reality that no one was really listening.
Finally he was taken from the podium, and quieted down to a degree. Questions were taken, to which the moderator answered herself.
'Is the time not really up?' I thought. I felt suddenly overwhelmed by impatience. I looked over at this bumbling old man, the shell of who I thought I knew, he was still muttering and cursing under his breath, and I realised how brief the flame of that sort of knowledge is, it is good only for the moment of which it is current, and after the moment is done you have to prove yourself again, or accept your banishment to the asylum of history.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
I'm having a terrible time writing anything longer then a page. I blame it on the blog.
It was part of my reason for my hiatus. Or at least lack of posting. I wanted to write something real.
The ideas are coming well enough. I worked out an outline for a story, I even had some more detailed designs for the first few chapters. It was all just ducky.
Until I actually sat down to write.
I do very well for the first page or so. Let's say the first few hundred words. And then I run into a full on road block and I am stopped dead.
Its a funny kind of block too. Its not like a crisis of creativity. The ideas still there. Like I said, I had a pretty good outline going in, so it wasn't really a problem of not knowing where to turn the page to.
Nope, it more a problem of apathy. At about the 300 word mark apathy wells up in me and freezes my fingers from another stroke.
Its fear I guess. That's usually what apathy is with me. Fear. But I don't want to admit it so I just say I don't care.
Its all a damned lie though, cuz I do care, and I have a good idea and so I want to write another story. But I just can't seem to bring myself to do it.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
I am captivated by the events going on in Bolivia.
The street protests, the resignation of their president and subsequent refusals of the presidency by the next two candidates in line. The left wing leaders intent on nationalizing the country's gas production. The looming storm cloud of potential US intervention. And Chavez, cheering them on and proclaiming it all as more evidence that Latin America will no longer be a subservient colony of the North.
I read and read and read about it. I read and I cheer for Bolivia. But, and it strains me to the core of my being to admit it, it embarrasses me and chokes off my breath, there is a little part of me that cheers against them.
I feel like I need to come clean. As though this were some sort of forum for addicts unable to admit their addiction. A first step. To admit your disease.
I am a speculator.
I play the market to accumulate dollars. I accumulate dollars in a hope that with them I can escape from this meaningless existence of corporate schlock.
I am fully aware that the companies I invest in have adverse impacts on the environment. I am aware of their impact on third world workers. I am aware of their homogony that eats away at our culture. And yet, I want so much out of this cubicle dungeon, I want so much out of contributing to a world so fundamentally fucked up, where bad continually wins out and power and desire make mincemeat of morality and integrity, that I continue to speculate.
So I speculate in Bolivia.
In particular, I speculate in a company that has a large property claim in Bolivia. On that claim there's a large amount of silver and a large amount of zinc. The company, in my own opinion, is terribly undervalued, and silver fundamentals, in my opinion, are terribly ripe for a rise. So I buy futures in this company, and wait to see if my opinions are prescient.
This is all fine and good you see, until the Bolivian peasantry came along, these miners and teachers and indigenous folk, frustrated by more then a century of being pushed around, sick of the Washington Consensus and its free market idioms that took away their sovereignty to govern, that same concensus that Stiglitz and the like now admit so sheepishly that maybe, just maybe, was wrong.
So these good folks are fed up and they say NO. They look over at Venezuela and they see some hope for their own independence from the Western fist. They see a chance for better wages and some working conditions fit for humanity. They ignore the carnage that their past struggles have brought upon them, and in the face of the possibility of yet another, they stand up courageously to the ideal that they are human beings and they deserve more.
So I cheer them on.
But wait! Not so fast. Then I read that they want to nationalize the gas industry. Its their gas, after all. But that gets me to thinking. Well, if they want to nationalize the gas industry, well then maybe they'll want to nationalize some of their other resources. Its all under the ground you see. So maybe they'll say, 'Well what about the silver? What about the zinc? All of that is in the ground and it is really ours too. Why should we let some American company reap all the spoils for that?'
What would happen then?
Well I'll tell you what would happen. This little speculation of mine would go very sour.
And suddenly the cheering becomes a little more muted.
So there it is. I'm not going to say anything more about what I'm going to do. I don't know. The morality of investing in a world that promotes such inequalities is difficult to reconcile. Where do you draw the line? If you buy a government bond, you're supporting expenditures that are going to the military. If you put the money in the bank, they are lending it out to who knows who to support god knows what atrocity in the name of a return. Where's the line? No return at all? Go live in a cabin off the shores of the pacific where you can shut the door and pretend it all doesn't exist?
I don't know.
What I am going to say is this. I have learned a lesson here, and that is this -
Whenever the rich elite jump on their podiums and talk about how they are doing it for humanitarian reasons, well don't believe a word of it.
So don't give me that bullshit about how you're looking out for the best interests of the country when you send in the troops and restore your 'order'. Or when you attach those Washington Consensus conditions to your next third world loan. Or when you prop up your next puppet government with money you call 'aid'. It doesn't work with me, cuz I can see it all with speculator eyes. And its terribly clear that when those eyes are painted dollars, the only 'best interests' of your concern are the one's you're looking through.
So where does that leave me? I little more clear maybe. Still cheering for Bolivia. But also aware of this little part of me which is reluctant to cheer. The cynical piece that wants only for myself and doesn't give a care for others. So I've done what I can do; I pinpointed it, it is in my sights and quarantined. You have to keep your enemies close, and this one's not going to grow on me.
In the meantime, Bolivia fights for their independence from our Western free market death grip. I hope they win, speculators be damned.
Monday, June 13, 2005
I could never understand how some of these young folk, my age and such, were able to create so well.
Take the F. Scott Fitzgerald, for instance, and the Great Gatsby. He wrote that when he was 28. He had already written a number of other books by that time.
Anyways, where I'm going with this is, I was reading an article a couple weeks ago that put forth the theory that there were two types of creative genius. They called one type conceptual, while the other they referred to as being analytic. I'm not too sure about the terms they used, but the definitions make sense.
Fitzgerald was a conceptual genius. This is why he was able to write so well, so young. There was no learning curve. He just knew, it was hard wired into his brain.
Dostoevsky, on the other hand, was analytic. His greatest art came after years of honing his craft. The ideas he expressed were too careful to be unconscious, they were ideas that came after time, from hours of solitary thinking and years of experience.
As for my comment on the matter, I don't have much to say, except that it makes sense and is interesting, and that I think that I respect the latter type a bit more. If only because it implies a struggle to the peak, instead of being born there.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
The Broken Prism of Economics
Last night I sat in a mammoth church with high ceilings and stained glass walls and I listened to John Ralston Saul declare the end of globalism. It was ironic.
Through the prism of economics. That is the foundation of our dogma, the one that's driven us for the past 35 years. He's right about that. Globalism is not a new idea, transcontinental corporations, taking advantage of cheap resources abroad are not a sudden development over the last 10-15 years. This country was built on the Bay, and that was 300 years ago.
What is new is that everything be viewed through the prism of economics. That all decisions be made through the prism of economics. I remember talking to a friend a few years back, he was an avid and active environmentalist, and he talked about how we had to put environmental impacts into economic terms so we could quantify and prove the losses. Its a very tidy idea, but I thought at the time that while it may be well intentioned, it is also giving in to the premise that economics exists as the root of all decisions, as the root of all life.
The environment should not have to be counted like beans. You can't quantify air, and if you think you can, then its time to take a step back and evaluate what reality you're in.
The end of globalism that Saul is talking about is not the end of free trade. It is not the end of currency markets. It is not about the end of economics. What it is about, is the end of the prism. The end of letting the markets dictate our decisions. The end of the notion that capitalism is an inevitable force beyond the control of any of us. It is the realisation among citizens that economics is an important 'aspect' of life, it is not life itself.
It sounds to me like a hopeful future. One that's much more balanced. I only hope that there isn't too much chaos blocking our way to get there.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
'Mankind’s indomitably optimistic spirit has a habit of postponing foggy days until the gloomsters’ warnings and ultimate sanity are called into question. Crying wolf must be done infrequently and with relatively precise timing to be effective and to merit the “Order of the Savant.”' - Bill Gross, bond expert and closet philosopher
I think most bond men and currency men worth any salt are closet philosophers. The problem with this world is that it doesn't have any room for philosophers any more, so those with such a bent have to find another persuasion to put their firepower to work. Bonds and currencies, which are essentially prices derived from just about every economic and political factor you can imagine, are well suited to such a mind.
His point, of course, is that it doesn't pay to be pessimistic. The underlying truth of our existence is that we, as human beings, have a real bias for optimism. Even irrational optimism. Even in the face of obvious obliteration, we still can conjur up a way at looking at the sunny side. At least I'm going to heaven.
We have to remember this, as the shit really begins to hit the fan in the next few years. Just keep looking at the bright side. Reality is created by perception, and so it won't do nobody any good to get all down about it.
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