The Meridian of her Greatness

  • If people are getting richer and richer with every generation, then why are they still unhappy?
  • If capitalism lifted all of us from grinding poverty, then made some much richer than others, then is that so bad?
  • The interesting thing to note is that these critiques are evergreen – they seem just as valid today as they were when they were originally made in the late 19th century
  • Karl Polanyi attempts to answer some of these questions, and figure out why people seem to remain unhappy even as their material circumstances improved
  • The economic prejudice
    • Tendency to judge everything in terms of finance
    • Wealth is defined by “market value”
    • “Blurrier” forms of wealth, like usufruct land and social ties cannot be quantified financially, and are not considered
    • “Quality of life” becomes a solely economic concern
    • As a result of the economic prejudice, our ability to make explanations becomes restricted and confused
      • Treat economics, politics and society as three different domains
      • Have trouble saying that people can have economic complaints in spite of their getting richer
  • Polanyi points out that, in the past, society controlled and overrode markets, but today markets control and override society
  • Because the society that, in name, regulates the market is guided by the market, the market has become self regulating
  • In order to create this market society, social relations have to be ignored or eliminated
  • Example: enclosure laws in Britain
    • Eliminated informal safety net for peasants
    • Improved agricultural productivity
    • Led to the “paradox” of more people being poor and hungry even as food was cheaper
  • The free market is not a natural state, as many (straw) libertarians contend
  • Instead the natural state is that of a market constrained by social forces
  • In order to create a “free” market, governments have to dissolve those social forces
    • This frees markets to generate more wealth, but it also causes social dislocation
    • This social dislocation causes a backlash
  • Polanyi’s assertion is that the history of capitalism is the “extension of markets in respect to ‘genuine commodities’, and the restriction of markets in respect to ‘fictitious commodities’”
    • To Polanyi, “fictitious commodities” are land, labor, and money
    • These commodities are “fictitious” insofar as they don’t follow the normal rules that other commodities follow, because they’re so closely tied to human survival
  • Through things like enclosure, contract law, and labor organization, states liquidated the pre-existing social ties that embedded the market into a deeper society
  • This led to a backlash, leading to the creation of social regulations which restrict the market
  • However, these social regulations are also subject to the economic prejudice, and thus make the problem worse
  • This leads to an ever-escalating cycle of market destabilization and social regulation that eventually leads to a catastrophe
  • Out of that catastrophe comes Stalinism and fascism
  • Polanyi doesn’t offer solutions, but he does offer explanations
  • Polanyi shows why people are right to vote against their “rational economic self-interest”
  • Rich people voting for higher tariffs, not because they’ve been tricked by demagoguery, but because they value the welfare of their less-well-off neighbors more than their own
  • People want richer social lives than they can obtain under market conditions
  • That social void is the root cause of dark ideologies

Scraps II

  • Newton and the sun
    • Newton studying astrology and alchemy was not an aberration or an artifact of the time
    • Rather, Newton saw the study of astrology and alchemy as a necessary scaffolding for the natural sciences
    • Newton turned to hermetical texts in order to investigate perception, so that he could assure himself that his senses were reporting truths about the world
    • From these texts, he extracted and popularized the phrase, “So above, as below”
    • The insight he gleaned from these texts and his experiments with perception was that humans were not separate from nature, but that humans were ruled by the same natural laws as everything else
  • From the Burned House Horizon
    • Burned House Horizon
      • Refers to a particular part of eastern Europe/western Asia where settlements were routinely burned
      • Overlaps with region in which Proto Indo-European language (PIE) is thought to have developed
    • Ancient peoples recognized two aspects of the sacred: that which is holy and that which is forbidden
  • Is Metis Possible
    • Eyes Again
      • Humans are unique among primate species in having a much greater color contrast between our sclera and our irises
      • Indicates that our eyes are not just for seeing, but also for being looked at
      • Eyes communicate social knowledge, often in ways that we can’t control
    • On Being Martin Guerre
      • Martin Guerre was a person who disappeared from the Basque region of France in 1548
      • Reappeared in 1557
      • Although he resumed his relationship with his wife, Bertrand, many suspected that he wasn’t the real Martin Guerre
      • In 1559, there was a trial, where Martin Guerre was accused of being an impostor; he was acquitted
      • In 1560, after more evidence, there was a second trial; he was convicted in the trial, but was acquitted upon appeal
      • At this point, the real Martin Guerre returned and the impostor, now revealed to be Arnaud Du Tilh, was hanged
      • The case is interesting because the villagers long suspected Martin Guerre of being an impostor, but had no way of convincing the authorities of this
      • This case was used by Michel De Montaigne as a way of illustrating the limits of rational inquiry
    • The Rise and Fall of Behaviorism
      • Behaviorism is the notion that all responses are instinctive responses, and that consciousness does not exist
      • What convinced behaviorists that they were incorrect in the strict interpretation of their theory was not evidence – after all, the evidence of consciousness is available to every person
      • What overturned behaviorism was the evidence being presented to the proper authorities in the proper form, much like how the authorities only believed that Martin Guerre was an impostor only after the real Martin Guerre returned
      • What we admit to be “rational” evidence is not chosen by rational means
    • One of the problems with modernity is that we rely on authorities to tell us who we are and why we do what we do
    • In such a world, the creation of new metis may not be possible