Debt of Society

Everybody but everybody likes to freak out about the national debt. My liberal friends, conservatives who aren't my friends, my anarchist friends, my semi-apocalyptic cult friends. "OMG THE DEBT, something-something CHINA!" has been a popular discussion topic for awhile.

Naturally, a lot of this distrust of the debt is stemming from a distrust of LARGE, CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY, and our mutual fear of the ILLUMINATI. Which is, of course, something to fear, and I would never begrudge people to give up their healthy conspiracy theories (not an ironic statement at all... conspiracy theories are healthy. In science they call these 'new hypotheses').

But, all the same, these are people with credit cards, who use currency, and who have no problem owing someone a 10 spot or a favor.

Debt is a quantification of guilt, and important to all of our relationships. It is the placeholder for value. The ability to have an economy is to be able to exchange things not only through space, but through time. e.g. I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. Without the ability to "pay on Tuesday", there would be no sense of value, because exchange would be limited to what we currently have in our possession. Whether it is a household economy, a political economy, a sexual economy, or monetary policy.

But rather than go on about that, I'll just point you towards Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality. There are very few "must read/watch/listen" items of culture in my estimation. But this should be required reading for the human race. Or at least those who claim to be educated. It's not the answers to the way the world works, but it is such a good push away from everything we think we know about the reasons we do things, you'll never look at the world the same way.

Instead, I just want to share a little fact of monetary data with you. To put things in perspective.

Here is some data on US debt, from The Financial Times' Alphaville blog. Though of course, this is data available to anyone. If they were curious.

At the end of 2009, the US gov't debt was $10.3 trillion. Whoa, right?

But at the end of 2009 the total of ALL US DEBT was $50.9 trillion. This means that gov't debt, while a seemingly huge figure, was only 20% of all US debt.

So where is the rest of the debt coming from? Well, from you, me, our liberal and conservative friends and non-friends, our anarchist and cult friends.

$2.2 trillion was from financial companies alone.

$13.9 trillion was household debt. That's right: our mortgages, credit cards, student loans, and whatever else is more debt that the combined state and federal deficit.

And the rest of it? The debt owned by businesses, large and small. Banks, stores, farms, gas stations, private schools, car companies, whatever.

Government debt, which fundamentally exists to not simply balance the budget, but to continue to provide the monetary policy support which makes US currency VALUABLE, is only 20% of all of US debt. The rest of the debt, is, as they say, the price of doing business. How would you get credit to buy raw materials for your business without a line of credit at the bank? How would you pay your bills on time if you didn't have a credit card? How would anybody invest in anything if they could only do it with the cash they had on hand?

The entire US economy, at $14.1 trillion dollars, is leveraged to the tune of 359%. The FT blog posting notes the interesting fact that only recently has American leveraging begun to shrink FOR THE FIRST TIME in the 50 year history of the recorded statistics, down to 345% percent.

Now, I'm not any sort of expert that could comment on what the optimal level of leveraging for the US economy. But, I can tell you that the Ron Paul types who think it is feasible that the government balance the budget every year are completely out of whack. This is not a matter of "belt-tightening" or "proper accounting" or reigning in "out-of-control spending". An American economy without any sort of rolling debt would be absolutely, fundamentally incongruous with the American economy we all know (and supposedly, love). The fact that US leveraging has been increasing for every year of the past fifty years shows that an increase in debt is part of the "growing economy" we consider the norm. The fact that only this year has leveraging decreased does not show that all of a sudden we have all "come to our senses" and decided to pay off our debt. It shows that there has been a sudden collapse of available credit, which we were using as the coal-snorting steam engine driving our so-called "prosperity". Otherwise, you can be sure we would have kept swiping that credit card. What changed? Did our consumer appetites diminish, so we were content with the amount of money we made last year? Did we strike gold somewhere, so that now we have enough "real capital" to assuage our need for debt? Or did our consumer society stumble, and a massive investment sector driving our economy's growth for the last nine years suddenly and cataclysmically collapse?

Currency is only as valuable as the indications and perception that it will be valuable in the future. Offering to pay debts in US dollars is one way of maintaining that value. Another way is by finding or producing an excess of capital. I don't see anybody spinning straw into gold.

We've been riding the wave of debt for fifty years. And still our schools and highways are falling apart. I'd like to say, along with everyone else, that this is unsustainable to continue with debt like this. Maybe increasing the debt forever is sustainable, maybe it's not. But if trailing the pack of currencies heading off to slow, inflationary infinity isn't sustainable, then that means that anything familiar, anything we would like to think of as economically positive, good in society, part of our American status quo, would also turn out to be not sustainable.

Of course, we friends of the anarchist persuasion have known this for a long time. You might say we're ready for it, and have been looking forward to capitalism and the credit market's collapse for some two hundred years now. The contradictions of debt and capital have been visible to some for a while now. There may always be some form of conscious debt, as the antithesis to value. But building an entire economy on currency, quantitative value and debt seemed a bit... reckless, maybe?

And the benefit of this history is that we've already thought ahead to a life without debt. Maybe in a utopian way, maybe in a primitive way, or maybe in a downright sci-fi way. But at least we've thought about it. We know it would be a major cultural shift, and there would be fundamental changes in a society without a debt-based economy, either good or ill, that would make it unrecognizable from the way it is now.

But those tacking Ron Paul signs next to the freeway and complaining about the deficit while in the car on the way to the mall, have not. They see the system of capitalism as a giant checkbook. It must be that straight-forward, and that logical, if it is the status quo, right? The debt, for them, is as much a matter of honor, as it is not paying taxes. Because capitalism, after all, is as simple as working hard and pursuing the American dream, is it not? You shop the bargains, while you raise your own prices to afford the remodel on the house. You get the good deal, while sticking it to the other guy. It's called profit. Profit makes itself, as long as you don't have to look at the debt that pays for it. We've built an entire culture founded on this concept.

You buy into the culture, you gotta pay the price.

Technology and Its Discontents

A little reinterpretation of Nietzsche for the long weekend:

"The means employed by the ascetic priest that we have discovered up to now--the general muting of the feeling of life, mechanical activity, the petty pleasure, above all "love of one' neighbor," herd organization, the awakening of the communal feeling of power through which the individual's discontent with himself is drowned in his pleasure in the prosperity of the community--these are, by modern standards, his innocent means in the struggle with displeasure; let us now turn to the more interesting means, the "guilty" ones. They all involve one thing: some kind of orgy of feeling--employed as the most effective means of deadening dull, paralyzing, protracted pain; hence priestly inventiveness in thinking through this single question--"how can one produce an orgy of feeling?"--has been virtually inexhaustible."

"Fundamentally, every great affect has this power, provided it explodes suddenly: anger, fear, voluptuousness, revenge, hope, triumph, despair, cruelty; and the ascetic priest has indeed pressed into his service indiscriminately the whole pack of savage hounds in man and let loose now this one and now that, always with the same end in view: to awaken in men from their slow melancholy, to hunt away, if only for a time, their dull pain and lingering misery, and always under cover of a religious interpretation and "justification". Every such orgy of feel has to be paid for afterward, that goes without saying--it must make the sick sicker; and that is why this kind of cure for pain is, by modern standards, "guilty." Yet, to be fair, one must insist all the more that it was employed with a good conscience, that the ascetic priest prescribed it in the profoundest faith in its utility, indeed indispensability--and even that he was often almost shattered by the misery he had caused..."

"The ascetic ideal has a goal--this goal is so universal that all the other interests of human existence seem, when compared with it, petty and narrow; it interprets epochs, nations, and men inexorably with a view to this one goal; it permits no other interpretation, no other goal; it rejects, denies, affirms, and sanctions solely from the point of view of its interpretation (and has their ever been a system of interpretation more thoroughly thought through?) [...] Where is the match of this closed system of will, goal and interpretation? Why has it not found its match?--Where is the other "one goal"?
But they tell me it is not lacking, it has not merely waged a long and successful fight against this ideal, it has already conquered this ideal in all important respects: all of modern is supposed to bear witness to that--modern science which, as a genuine philosophy of reality, clearly believes in itself alone, clearly possesses the courage for itself and the will to itself, and has up to now serviced well enough without God, the beyond, and the virtues of denial. Such noisy agitators' chatter, however, does not impress me: these trumpeters of reality are bad musicians, their voices obviously do not come from the depths, the abyss of the scientific conscience does not speak through them--for today the scientific conscience is an abyss--the word "science" in the mouths of such trumpeters is simply an indecency, an abuse, and a piece of impudence. The truth is precisely the opposite of what is asserted here: science today has absolutely no belief in itself, let alone an ideal above it--and where it still inspries passion, love, ardor, and suffering at all, it is not the opposite of the ascetic ideal but rather the latest and noblest form of it. Does that sound strange to you?
Today there are plenty of modest and worthy laborers among scholars, too, who are happy in their little nooks; and because they are happy there, they sometimes demand rather immodestly that one ought to be content with things today, generally--especially in the domain of science, where so much that is useful femains to be done. I am not denying that; the last thing I want is to destroy the pleasure these honest workers take in their craft: for I approve of their work. But that one works rigorously in the sciences and that there are contented workers certainly does not prove that science as a whole possesses a goal, a will, an ideal, or the passion of a great faith. The opposite is the case, to repeat: where it is not the latest expression of the ascetic ideal--and the exceptions are too rare, noble, and atypical to refute the general proposition--science today is a hiding place for every kind of discontent, disbelief, gnawing worm, despectio sui. bad conscience--it is the unrest of the lack of ideals, the suffering from the lack of any great love, the discontent in the face of involuntary contentment.
Oh, what does science not conceal today! How much, at any rate, is it meant to conceal! The proficiency of our finest scholars, their headless industry, their heads smoking day and night, their very craftsmanship--how often the real meaning of all this lies in the desire to keep something hidden from oneself! Science as a means of self-narcosis: do you have experience of that?

--On the Genealogy of Morals, third essay

Like Nietzsche or hate him, the great thing about him is that his words are written in such a polemic style as to be timeless. I'm no Jungian, but there definitely seem to be repeating aspects of culture, especially with such concepts left over from previous centuries we haven't fully dealt with.

So when the man rants against the "ascetic ideal", a morality of guilt and debt encompassing the span of human emotions and violences in society, I of course read him as speaking about Christianity (still a problem), but also of Capitalism, Christianity's second coming. If "orgy of feeling" doesn't find its expression in our culture of rampant consumerism, then I must be looking at a different mall that you. And as for its expression as an overarching ideal, wiping other interpretations clean off the map, one need look no further than its continual reign in the shadow of its recent overarching failure of exuberance. I can accept the facts of history, but clearly the "free market" is a hopeless excuse for a lack of thinking.

But the "scholars of science" really spoke to me in the last section I quoted. Not in terms of scientists, who were the erstwhile champions of reason in half-hearted handholding with Christian morals during the 19th century. These folks have, amazingly, really come around. I think it has something to do with the last eight years. The onslaught of abuse by the ruling powers in this country against science and learning as a whole let scientists finally shrug off their "culture war"detractors, not so much refute post-modernism as eagerly conscript it, and turn around to fight against its true enemies, and promote actual, useful learning. We're facing some pretty harsh trials on the natural science front, and for a good eight years, the scholars had to learn to stand up for themselves. The scientist is no longer the patsy of the science-industrial complex, and now the hero of mankind against the ignorant tyrants. I think they've done admirably, all things considered. They held their ground, and now seem to be preparing to be humanity's only hope. Whether they succeed is another question--but I do believe they are finding a good motivation within themselves. As the idiot anti-choicers and the creationists dash their own brains out upon the infinite progress of history, science steps over their fallen corpses with grace.

But there is a set rising to take the place of science--to triumph the ascetic ideals within their own head music, tooting their own horns in obliviousness to the motions of traffic around them.

Who are these noisy, agitating chatterers? The newest and noblest form of the ascetic ideal? The technologists.

I give the same caveat as the philosopher: far be it from me to disparage the happy craftsperson, hard at work. I do approve of their products--in certain ways. But yet, while science has perhaps found its true calling, to keep us from asphixiating ourselves off the planet, the technologists are tinkering, talking, and more often than not thinking very highly of themselves.

We see some benefits, and to argue against the existence of positive technology is just to be ignorant. It is lovely that our gardens are starting to tend themselves, that we can twitter composting recipes across the planet, and that our human-powered transportation processes waste oil into biofuel while we ride. But what is the goal here? The majority of the Instructables, the Maker projects, and other DIY, open-source, crowd-sourced, personal-tech, haker-savvy projects are somehow linkable to greeness, sustainability, and some flavor of democracy. But to what goal? They are mostly parlor tricks, or bragging rights, or homages to the very technologies they claim to be advancing a "cause" against.

I'm already feeling guilty for opening a line of complaint against these folks, who are doing their best to refute capitalism with the tools they have. Surely there can't be anything wrong with simple creativity. It's a technological arm of artistic expression, right? If not purely harmless, it has to be a good thing.

And it is. Like I said, I could never tell a worker that s/he is wrong for working on what s/he chooses. And yet, the ascetic ideal rears its ugly head.

Again, I slap myself as I open my mouth, but a create example of the ascetic ideal is the TED conferences. Here is a yearly gathering of very smart people, getting together to share ideas and promote feelings of generally making the world a better place. I am currently listening to all of the TED talks, via their audio podcast, and I love them. I've learned about some great stuff, and some of it is really inspiring.

But you know what is also a feed for learning about new, inspiring work? Gizmodo. Can you believe they made a TV that big, that light, that crystal clear? How about the new handheld device that will change the world? Did you hear about the new wireless service that will revolutionize how you get information?

Technology is interesting, it's ex'citing, and its moving very rapidly, spurred on by some really creative and talented people. And, it is, first and foremost, a business. Technology is capitalism. This is an unavoidable fact.

Let's just skip the arguments about consumer culture, and greenwashing, and carbon footprints. We know how technology affects these. Let's talk about the culture and its proponents, the technologists.

Every person who takes the stage at TED is there to promote something. What they are promoting maybe be as overtly capitalist as a Hollywood movie, or a VC startup. Or, it could be as benign as an art exhibit about climate change, or as positively helpful as a new mapping software to help aid organizations. But yet it is a something, a particular technological object promoted for its abilities, and a fetish as a datapoint of personal ingenuity. "Hi, I'm ___, and I'm here to tell you about my amazing invention." Or take the Maker culture. "Hi, I'm ____, and I'm here to show you how I warped this technology into something new." This is how new technologies come about, but it also how the ascetic ideal is renewed, and perpetuated.

The words I am looking at are "new", "invention", "hack", "creative solution", and "technology". All of these things are objects, no different in their literal objectivity from a piece of rock, or a rotting plant. Except, these things are meant to grab our attention, because of their specific, amazing quality of being on the cutting edge. "Hey! This is different! Look over here! Be an early adopter of this! Tweet this url to your friends! Buy one today! Make your own! Add your comments!" Technologists' tools may be the soldering bench, the drawing board, and the creative faculties of the mind, but their real domain is the orgy of feelings. They seek to excite you, draw you in, distract you, and in the end, sell you something (even if it is for free).

Technology is changing our world for the better. But you don't need a single bit of it. The only technology you need are molecules. Oxygen. Water. Proteins. Maybe some sunlight. This is not the domain of the technologist--this is the domain of the scientist. Twitter might revolutionize mass protest, but you know who is still computing your dietary needs? No, not an iPhone app. A scientist, working somewhere, not holding press conferences, and not networking for VC at a light and sound show in California.

Who traffics in "anger, fear, voluptuousness, revenge, hope, triumph, despair, cruelty"? Psychologists might study these things. But technologists market them. (I like to think that although writers traffic in these as well, they could do so with the psychoanalytic skill of a scientist... but perhaps this is too much wishful thinking). A handheld device triumphs you over your world, and others. An open-source hack is your revenge on the proprietary marketers. Your biodiesel car is your bandaid against the fear of climate change, and your live-tweet of the election is your libidinal investment in hope. The real material which technology interfaces with is not the world in which we live, but our emotions. Technology is not a mere tool or a thing, but it is a fetish, an idol, a signifier standing in for thousands of emotions we are channeling, thanks to the efforts of technology's proponents. A portable phone is now a tool, but a smart phone is TECHNOLOGY! Wikipedia is now simply a reference, but CitizenTube is a Democratizing Technology! A light bulb goes on and off, but a power-saving LED bulb built from repurposed film canisters is a Technological, Open-Source Hack!

Don't get me started on black hoodies with circuit boards sewn to them.

Look--technology is good. Experimentation is good. Open-source is great (when compared to proprietary copyrights, anyway). As the man said, these technological priests act with good conscience, and don't intend the harm in which they take part. The greatest lesson that Nietzsche teaches, which is the true timeless lesson, is that our biggest enemies are those closest to us, and those that lie within ourselves. It would be easy enough to rail against Christians, or Capitalists, or some other easily indentifiable enemy. But Nietzsche is not asking us to fight the Christians. He's showing us how to win our ongoing fight against that tyrannical priest within ourselves.

But the fact remains--we live in a world which is locked within an ascetic ideal. We live in a world which privileges pain, individual achievement, and glosses over the facts of reality with a debasing appeal to our lower instincts. We are distracted from our power to think clearly, and to look at the human species as a magnificent engine, by the ideals telling us our individual dramas are a sign of our own worth. We are encouraging ourselves to take our material things as the objects of our desire, to channel all of our efforts into mere products, and to attain the highest state of fetishistic engagement with these things, which is promoted not as the religion that it is, but as real love, and real desire.

When a social network develops that encourages its members to throw down their gadgets in the same wild abandon with which they will throw off their clothes and make love in the streets, when the Internet actually starts connecting peoples' body parts, rather than selling them porn for behind closed doors, and promoting opportunities for individualized, closeted alcoholic repression, and when we start hacking our bodies so that we can better express our desires, rather than to better sublimate them, then I will believe technology has become free from the fetters of the ascetic ideal, and found its true internal purpose as part of the pursuit of humanity. Until then, it's just a bigger and more HD TV.

Spake, Spoke, Sprake

I'm reading Nietzsche's Zarathustra right now. It's not a perfect piece, but it is very lovely in many respects. As a critic of a certain source of modernism, he often gets labeled as one of the fathers of post-modernism, or at the very least, lumped in among other such characters. (The actual father of the term as it is now used, in my opinion, is Lyotard, but, like so many things, this is another story for another post). I tend to think of Nietzsche as the first humanist; though certainly others may also fit the term. Let's call it the ideal humanist then, if for no other reason than that the liberal democratic persuasions of current humanists would most likely make Frederich puke.

I tend to disagree with Nietzsche, as much as I admire the ire and, often, pure rage that is his writing. I find humanism and individualism repugnant in our time; though in the author's time it most likely would have been a welcome and revolutionary concept. (And, even in this day, I would no doubt find other unrelated admirable qualities in anyone who could honor one's own will as much as Nietzsche offers that one should.) I am reading the work currently for a project of my own that will deal with Zarathustra himself: the founder of Mazdahism (otherwise known as Zoroastrianism). More on that later.

Today I want to post this aphorism because despite its place within Nietzsche's humanistic project, it is still a lovely piece of work on Value, a fallacious concept that was very easily adopted by the individualism that Nietzsche helped bring into the world. Value is important, especially semiotic values; but this does not extend to such strict and powerful compartmentalization such as commodities. The notion of the awesome power of the individual aside, we could still learn a thing or two about such "poison flies". Especially in such a market as this one--a subject of some of my recent posts.

So without further ado, here is Book One, Chapter 12 from Also Sprake Zarathustra. I am retyping the Thomas Common translation from Wikisource, mostly because it is free, and in ebook form (how I'm currently consuming it). The work is in the public domain.

The Flies in the Market-Place

Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you deafened with the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones.

Forest and rock know how to be silent with you. Be like the tree which you love, the broad-branched one--silently and attentively it overhangs the sea.

Where solitude ends, there begins the market-place; and where the market-place begins, there begins also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.

In the world even the best things are worthless without those who make a sideshow of them: these showmen, the people call great men.

Little do the people understand what is great--that is to say, the creator. But they have a taste for all showmen and actors of great things.

Around the creators of new values revolves the world:--invisibly it revolves. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory: such is the course of things.

The actor has spirit, but little conscience of the spirit. He always believes in that with which he most strongly inspires belief - in himself!

Tomorrow he has a new belief, and the day after, one still newer. Like the people, he has quick perceptions and fickle moods.

To defeat--that means for him: to prove. To drive to frenzy--that means for him: to convince. And blood is to him the best of all arguments. A truth which glides only into refined ears, he calls falsehood and nothing. He believe only in gods that make a big noise in the world!

Full of clattering fools is the market-place, and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour. But the hour presses them; so they press you. And also from you they want Yes or No. Alas! Would you set your chair between Pro and Con?

Do not be jealous of those unyielding and impatient men, you lover of truth! Never yet did truth cling to the arm of the unyielding.

On account of those abrupt ones, return into your security: only in the market-place is one assailed by Yes? or No?

Slow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they to wait until they know what has fallen into their depths.

Far away from the market-place and from fame happens all that is great: far away from the market-place and from fame have always dwelt the creators of new values.

Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee to where a rough, strong breeze blows!

Flee into your solitude! You have lived to closely to the small and the pitiful. Flee from their invisible vengeance! For you they have nothing but vengeance.

No longer raise your arm against them! They are innumerable, and it is not your task to shoo flies.
Innumerable are the small and pitiful ones; and rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin of many a proud structure.

You are not stone; but already have you become hollow from many drops.

I see you exhausted by poisonous flies; I see you bleeding and torn at a hundred spots; and your pride refuses even to be angry.

They would have blood from you in all innocence; blood is what bloodles souls crave--and therefore they sting in all innocence.

But you, profound one, you suffer too profoundly even from small wounds; and before you have healed, the same poison-worm crawls over your hand.

You are too proud to kill these gluttons. But take care lest it be your fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice!

They buzz around you also with their praise: obtrusiveness is their praise. They want to be close to your skin and your blood.

They flatter you, as one flatters a God or devil; they whimper before you, as before a God or devil; what does it come to! They are flatterers and whimperers, and nothing more.

Often, also, do they show themselves to you as friendly ones. But that has always been the prudence of cowards. Yes! Cowards are wise!

They think much about you with their petty souls--you are always suspect to them! Whatever is much thought about is at last thought suspicious.

They punish you for your virtues. They pardon you entirely for your errors.
Because you are gentle and of honest character, you say: "Guiltless are they for their small existence." But their petty souls think: "Guilty is every great existence."

Even when you are gentle towards them, they still feel themselves despised by you; and they may repay your beneficence with secret maleficence.

Your silent pride is always counter to their taste; they rejoice if once you are humble enough to be vain.

What we recognize in a man, we also irritate in him. Therefore be on your guard against the small ones!

In your presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleams and glows against you in invisible vengeance.

You did not see how often they became silent when you approached them, and how their energy left them like the smoke of a waning fire?

Yes, my friend, you are the bad conscience of your neighbors, for they are unworthy of you. Therefore they hate you, and would rather suck your blood.

Your neighbors will always be poisonous flies; what is great in you--that itself must make them more poisonous, and always more fly-like.

Flee, my friend, into your solitude--and there, where a rough strong breeze blows.
It is not your lot to shoo flies.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.