Re: Re: Double-stranded Economics

[Ray Evans Harrell]

----- Original Message ----- From: pete <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 8:38 PM Subject: FWk: Re: Double-stranded Economics > You won't get people "somewhat pinned down" with any a priori > assumptions. You build your engineering structure to be able to > turn on a dime, and reflect the nature of people as you find them. > If the top-down (theory-first) economists had it right, economics > wouldn't be as lame as it is. That will continue to be the case, > as I've said often before, until economics is absorbed under > systems engineering, at which point the improvement in effectiveness > will develop so fast it'll make your head spin.   (underline and italics REH) >   Pete, I agree.    For me there is, however, an issue that bothers me greatly about these extrinsic models .   It doesn't work for there to be only extrinsically or intrinsically motivated people in any system.    The Extrinsic are often pathological or at the least sociopathological.   I guess you could say the same about obsessive inner motivation as well.   Too much of either side doesn't make for much of a value system.  When any system builds the values around one or the other as THE most important or the ONLY valid reason for action then it seems IMHO doomed to failure.     I suspect that nature has built into every civil system not only the differing talents necesssary for a society but the different types of motivation necessary as well.   They are in a constant renewal process remaking old realities in new ways.   There are old, mixed and new systems constantly being used and evolve.   There are problems with each and so each form a balance when a society "works".   The problem with older systems is that they become predictible and as the predictibility rises, the "information level" falls.   That is the issue in art as well.   Traditional art carries the past forward into the present providing an identity to the culture that it belongs to.   That is good but its predictability is numbing for the creative and reassuring for the mediocre.   It should, like fine old wine, be used with restraint.    Commercial art in its banality re-enforces the language of contemporary dialogue and should build the ability of the culture to encounter, enjoy and use contemporary creative art in their everyday lives.   But it all too often becomes simple commerce and is useful only as a toy or entertainment.    I am including the literary arts in this as well as what people normally mean when they say Art.   There is a huge problem today with contemporary art.   Comparing today's writing to Joyce or Melville, we find much less creativity and playfulness with the formal or systematic aspects.   Poetry is at an all time low and the literal is raised to the level of "real" with everything else being "unreal" , useless or in the economic language, "low in utility."    But if "utility" means pleasure and pleasure is related to Play-sure then the pleasure available today to people is the stock market, cable news and reality TV.     Play-sure is being related to advertising and even dramatic shows are being cut back in favor of what we in the business call "Industrials" or puff pieces for products.   Such people would never be able to understand Ulysses or Melville's "Confidence Man."    They simply wouldn't have the patience nor understand the pleasure.       When everyday activities on cable television are raised to the level of myth and that is the totality of our understanding of symbol and myth then "Information" is very low and the society is bound to have a high level of complexity in their everyday lives.   Contemporary art should not be predictible and should keep a high level of Attention, i.e. "information" in its examination and expression.   But often it is just too difficult for the average person, in fact they can't even imagine its play-sures.   Everyday is banal when compared to the great flights of human imagination relating to the systems of the present generation.  The past is banal only because it is old and recognizeable.   But today is banal because we are incompetant.     The study of great systems seems beyond the average person these days.    So we take refuge in the obviousness of the past.   I don't mean to say that Veblen, Wright or Beethoven are not eternal.   In one sense they are, as the mind enjoys the resonance of the overtone series available in Leonore's great aria from Fidelio or enjoys Veblen's fantastic search while Wright is inspiring even when his houses fall down.   But this is the comfort of the familiar, not the stretching of the mind trying to restate and re-evaluate the past in the language of the present age.    What is hard for me about old economists is their obvious mistakes.   It makes it difficult for me to read, given their historical limitations.   Their obvious cultural prejudices that are so wrong headed are often hard for me to get around.   I don't have the same problem with old music, perhaps I should but it doesn't have to "work" or be practical in the same way as science or architecture.      Maybe in all three it is finding our way to the kind of inner motivation of the child that learns because they have to.   Because success is enjoyable.   I would agree that the human propensity is to desire.   But I believe my desires to be so much more interesting that Henry George's even if only because my experience is so much greater in the present.   To Beethoven, the sounds of cannons were the most intolerable, can you imagine his reaction to the screech of a modern NY Subway?    I have no doubt that a Jazz band would be hard for him to accept.      But too often the idea of such desires is simple externals.    To desire an inner mastery of something or a balance of all of the systems of one's life for its own sake.   That interests me.  For example.   The reason to desire to sing at the Metropolitan Opera is because it is the one place in the country that has that orchestra, those conductors and fellow artists that will make the kind of art that you HAVE to bring forth from your inner life.   If the goal is acclaim then your thoughts are backwards.    The earlier article posted by Mike Gurstien had the point.    You struggle to get attention in order to DO significant things.    There is little achievement in owning significant things.   In fact my people suggest that anything that gains that sort of power over your life, should be given away.      The reason to know systems is first to know your own.   Then to accomplish for your family, community, people and nation.   Got to go to bed.   Thanks for helping me think.   Regards,   Ray Evans Harrell