The Eternal Sunshine of the Collective Irrational Mind

-->

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