THE ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE COLLECTIVE IRRATIONAL MIND
By Michael R. Moore
"The
transformation of waste is perhaps the oldest pre-occupation of man"
-Patti Smith
" I am...in a
world...of shit."
-Private Leonard
Lawrence, Full Metal Jacket
"Where did all that borrowed Greek money go?”, you
ask? It was spent on coffee and
cakes by prematurely retired civil servants and went the way of all such
entertainments: into the pie-hole
and out the other end and down the toilet to whatever sewage arrangements had
been made when the Greek infrastructure was still functioning. Getting it back requires a new alchemy
whereby excrement is changed to something of value that will placate the
bankers. Perhaps someone in Greece would be working on such a project if they
weren't in the streets tossing Molotov Cocktails at the bearers of the bad news
from Germany.
Meanwhile the central banks elsewhere are engaged in the
metaphoric exercise of this same sort of alchemy, printing what amounts to
deodorized and dehydrated excrement which will shortly have as it's sole useful
purpose the wiping of one's behind, at least while there is still food on the
shelves. The irony and recursive allegory of everything amounting to shit would
be amusing if it were not so accurate and present.
That no rearranging of the beads on the abacus will solve
the problem, no matter who takes a stab at it or how many permutations and
combinations and patterns they generate, seems to be impossible for any of the
politicians and Nobel prize winning economists to accept and admit to
publicly. Each month we're told of
the finance ministers of Europe convening to try to figure out a way of
avoiding a Greek "collapse."
They've tried almost everything - including turning the abacus upside down
and sideways, painting the beads different colors, and looking at it through
various fisheye and other distorting lenses, which by mutual agreement gets
them through another month while they all secretly hope that something will
arrive and distort the space-time continuum in a such a way that the whole
thing just disappears. At home
they are hiring extra security personnel and stocking up on canned food and
converting paper assets to gold in case someone or something does not arrive
and perform the loaves-and-fishes miracle they are hoping for. In the United States where attention
spans are measured in seconds and concern for the future extends only out to
the next weekend, the populace is being pacified by endless unemployment
insurance payments and food stamps, and entertained by the quadrennial ritual
whereby it is allowed the illusion it has some say about which head of the same
monster will be featured on television for the ensuing 4 years.
Politicians figured out long ago that the public could be
hypnotized by recitations of numbers containing the syllables, "-ill-ions",
even while its education has been degraded by design to a point that few could
pass a quiz on how many zeros go with which "-ill-ions" number is
being recited, let alone comprehend what such numbers mean in reality or apply
grade school arithmetic to spot the absurdity of the associated lies and
promises. Every plan everyone has
will save trillions over the next ten years, while their opponent's plan will
cost multiple trillions over the same interval. That for some time it seems we have been unable to
accurately project what will happen in the next fiscal quarter doesn't seem to
alter everyone's assertion that they know enough to forecast the next ten
years. Whether the promises and
projections of someone's economic plan is the distillation of hundreds of hours
of calculations based upon the most complex of econometric models, or rather is
just something improvised by a speech writer the night before, matters
little. If all the PhD's and
policy makers haven't managed to fix anything in the last 5 years, how is Joe
six-pack supposed to decide which recitation of millions, billions, and trillions
(note:"millions" is not heard much anymore) is more likely to be
coincident with reality? Since
votes are cast based on likeability rather than policies, why don't the
candidates just get up and tell jokes and humorous anecdotes? The repetitions of the "-ill-ions"
words turns into a drone of meaningless noise much less entertaining than
Gregorian Chant and containing less useful information than listening to a
prolonged repetition of Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō by a Nichiren Buddhist. At
least the Buddhist isn't trying to hoodwink anyone.
The gifted and now sadly departed writer David Foster
Wallace wrote a book entitled, "Everything and More," which dealt
with the mathematics of infinity. He
noted that historically, many mathematicians who investigated the subject ended
up going insane. One wonders if
the European finance ministers have reflected on the infinite hole they are
constructing by lending Greece the money to pay the interest on its debt each
month. The mathematicians that
Wallace reported on all possessed brilliant intellects. Such may not be said of the finance
ministers. It may be that they do
not see infinity even when it is staring back at them, or that lesser
intellects are not so uncomfortable with the subject. One wonders exactly what goes on at their meetings: are these just shows for the public,
and once the doors are closed, do they break out the booze and in shout in Dionysian revelry, "Après moi, le déluge!" Or do they actually open their
briefcases and seriously consider the question of how to "solve" the
Greek crisis, and while they are at it, how many angels can dance on the head
of a pin?
It is a continuing surprise that each day passes without
this ending badly all at once. No one can say the hour, but the time will
arrive where things do end badly,
and possibly with little warning. Allowing Greece to fund its Endless Club-Med
Vacation with Euro denominated bonds was the equivalent of hawking sub-prime
jumbo mortgages to the janitors and waitresses aspiring to the American Dream,
but who clearly didn't actually have the price of admission. All of the
economists who claim genius status based on what alma mater gave them a stamp
of approval didn't see this coming? Rewriting the exponential function in an
endless number of ways does not alter the mathematics. Greece, and the rest of the world, is
going to face the consequences of the years of living in LaLa land where it was
thought the rules of compound interest had been suspended, or at least could be
ignored indefinitely. Unless the
new alchemy falls from the sky, the excrement will overwhelm the assets and we
will all get to live in a world of shit.
Copyright 2012, Michael R. Moore
