An Alphabet of Bullshit

[Lenin McCarthy]

This is gold.

[LMNO, PhD (life continues)]

I find myself wanting to print it out to give to people on the street.

[Cain]

G is for Growth, Economic.

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.”
- Edward Abbey

Economic Growth; (noun) the 21st century's version of the philosopher's stone.

The unshakeable conviction of economists and graduates of BUSINESS SCHOOL is that growth is the way out of our current economic crisis.  The “green shoots of growth” will lead to economic recovery, which will lead to more jobs.  Then, once the crisis is over, we can search for more ways to improve and build on growth rates to become fantastically wealthy.  This wealth will have a positive impact on society and everyone will be happy.

It is interesting to note then, that growth has typically been associated not with wealth and plenty, but instability and social chaos.  Indeed, one can trace the rise of Communism to the dislocation that arose as part of the Industrial Revolution, and the brutal treatment of the Luddites as a response to it.

Indeed, modest growth or even stability were preferred by societies looking to preserve their existing social structure.  Many of these societies did not necessarily have a social structure which was worth preserving, but that is a separate point.

Our attitudes in growth stem from the post-WWII period, where the need for reconstruction, an empowered military-industrial CORPORATIST complex and the fledgling field of Propaganda came together in shared purpose.  The underlying theme of much advertising of the period is that of self-satisfaction via unending consumption – an advertising technique which is still popular to this day.

However, there are limits to the amount a society can consume – especially one where economic wealth is not as widely distributed as it could be.  A concentration of wealth among the ELITE is a particular problem, as there is only so much they can consume before the act becomes a burden to them, that items lose utility value which said ELITES prize so much.

As a consequence, economic growth stalled in the 1970s, helped along by other factors naturally.  To stall this, new methods of increasing growth, such as an increased emphasis on the arms industry and financial speculation were introduced.  Clearly, this worked out very well for everyone involved, except those who ended up paying for the bailouts in 2008 to finance this ponzi scheme.

Obsession with economic growth is often aided by an obsession with efficiency.  Given we are in a position where we are already overproducing yet suffering from unemployment, such a focus is misguided, to say the least.  Equally, while the United States has managed modest economic growth during the economic crisis, it has also been suffering an extreme unemployment crisis.

Clearly, there is something very wrong with our assumptions about growth.

[Cain]

H is for Hard Work

“I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.”
- Margaret Thatcher

Hard work; (noun) the belief that humans can achieve their highest potential by emulating ants.

Hard work isn't so much a description of a type of labour, but a kind of moral statement about one's worthiness, couched in the faux-economic terminology so popular in this age.

The world is full of very poor people, who spend their entire lives doing nothing but working hard, often at jobs which require a great deal of skill.

Meanwhile, large investment banks are mostly non-productive and it is not entirely clear that their executives do anything except engage in risky gambles and lecture society on how great they personally are. 

These executives do spend long hours in the office, but this is largely so they can boast about how many hours they work as a matter of personal prestige and to further their career.  It is not immediately obvious that they are doing anything economically productive for their company during that time.

To the extent that the west has developed faster than the rest of the world, it has been due to innovation – frequently the kind of innovation which a) makes something easier to achieve and b) makes the innovator in question rich.  Innovation frequently requires people to have time to both think and experiment, something which is prevented by spending 80 hours a week in the office, processing paperwork and sending out unnecessary emails.

Given the focus on hard work by our ELITES it is interesting to note that neither hard work, nor innovation are necessarily rewarded in the workplace. 

[Cain]

I is for Instrumental Reason

An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
- C. S. Lewis

Instrumental reason; (noun) a way for philosophers to avoid a sense of responsibility

We live in an Age of Reason.  Much like a Dictatorship of the Proletariat or a self-regulating free market, Reason is a term which increasingly has to be rescued from its last defeat at the hands of a reality too cruel to care for its assertions and carefully contrived definitions.

These defeats have been many.  Applying reason to industry resulted in social tumult and dislocation.  Applying reason to the military has resulted in a century with more civilian and military deaths than any other in history.  Applying reason to education has resulted in a renewed, resurgent and ever more popular religious fundamentalist influence around the world.

Clearly, this is something of a problem.  If reason and rationality are not delivering as promised, there are only two possible reasons why:

1) there is something wrong with our conception of reason.  Since reason provides all the ANSWERS, questioning it in any way is the same as declaring we should go back to superstition and beating on logs.  That's not acceptable, so...
2) There is something wrong with the way we are using reason.  We're not trying hard enough to live up to what reason promises we can, so we need to identify the smaller area of reason that is leading us astray and then work from there on implementing pure rationality.

This smaller area of rationality that is failing us is, according to the philosophers, Instrumental Reason.  It's a kind of plebian form of reason which is debased by being applied to actual problems.  As every good Kantian knows, Reason exists as a pure and philosophical concept, unsullied by contact with reality, and Instrumental Rationality is to blame for all our ills.

If one follows this logic, this actually ends up undermining reason entirely, since Instrumental Reason has an awful tendency to go wrong, and Pure Reason actually doesn't help at all. 

Though often blamed on Max Weber, this division of reason can in fact be traced back to Aristotle, meaning Instrumental Reason is in fact a form of SCHOLASTICISM, a bad habit best left to medieval times.

[M. Nigel Salt]

This is one of my favorite threads! Cain, these are just great.

[Juana Go?]

What Nigel said! I look forward to more.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

When this is done, I'm going to print it off and make a calendar out of it (for my own use, of course).

Every month, a new glimpse on human stupidity.

[Cain]

Thanks everyone, more to come at....some other time.  Tomorrow, probably.

I've got all but five letters planned out, and most of those come near the end of the alphabet.  I'm going to have to spend some time with a dictionary over the next few nights.

[ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S.]

I'm learning, and being challenged at the same time. Excellent.

[LMNO, PhD (life continues)]

Once this gets done, would you mind if I took a shot at assembling it for physical distribution?

[Cain]

J is for Jobs

“What I'm getting at is, you know, if we really want to get serious about helping all the people living in the street and getting people jobs, we could just hire half the people in the country to spy on the other half.”
- Jello Biafra

Jobs; (verb) an increasingly expensive lifestyle to maintain.

It used to be nearly everyone had a job.  They were plentiful and easily available.  Not always pleasant, or flashy, or exciting, but within the reach of even the most modest person.

Nowadays jobs are a luxury item increasingly tailored towards the affluent.  However, like in so many parts of the world, the creation of luxury brands leads to cheap knockoff copies, frequently sold in Third World Nations.  These are especially valued by children, who I am reliably informed love them.

[Cain]

Once this gets done, would you mind if I took a shot at assembling it for physical distribution?

This is either a great idea, or will lead to me being lynched.  Either sounds like a plan.

[LMNO, PhD (life continues)]

Cool.  Once we hit Zed, I'll throw it up on the Project Board.

[Cain]

K is for Kant, Immanuel.

Kant clung to his university, submitted himself to its regulations, kept up appearances of religious belief, bore up under colleagues and students: so it is natural that his example has produced above all university professors and professional philosophy.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Immanuel Kant; (person) founder of an influential mystery cult.

Kant was the first philosopher to live his entire life closeted in the University system, sheltered from the realities of the world to which his ideas would apply.  His example suggests this is not a good idea, despite its many imitators since.

Kant was no doubt an intelligent and talented man.  But unfortunately he turned his genius to dragging philosophy back into the obscurantist methods of SCHOLASTICISM, after two centuries of effort to free it from those shackles.

Furthermore, living his entire life in University, Kant did not understand the importance of making his ideas readily understandable, instead preferring to couch them in almost impenetrable and incredibly dense terms.  It is not known whether Kant founded the modern usage of Jargon, but he certainly spawned a form of writing referred to as “Academic German”, a crime against letters which has almost no parallel in history.

Kant's major philosophical contribution is his systemization of reason into distinct and separate parts, most notably noumenal and phenomenological forms.  Or, to put it in more understandable English, pure and INSTRUMENTAL REASON.