Himself the Age Transfigured (#2)

We have come to be the movement,
The moment of the cosmos.
Each particle that exists,
Changes and touches all others.
And we are the awareness.

To each change, we give name.
We track each touch,
We push all levers,
Or learn them just the same.
We are the lever,
The hand that encompasses.

Each molecule flowing over and around
Every other molecule
Is perceived by us,
Measured by us,
Called into being by us.

Ours is the time in which
The Universe came into it own.
We ride the surf and,
At the same time,
Dive the waters.

That which we cannot do,
We can imagine doing.
Ours is the power and the glory,
To be true.

GMG 

A Conclusion to a Still Unwritten Book: An Interlude

What are we and what were we made for? For some, this question may be neither important nor interesting. That we exist is its own reality and sufficient explanation. The universe exists because it has always existed, no need to consider any creation story. One such person, a good friend, suggested after reading my previous post that I read Why Does the World Exist by Jim Holt. I had that on my bookshelf and reread it along with some Roger Penrose. These led me down some rabbit holes and thus this interlude, which I hope will eventually connect to the rest of my “conclusion.”

So, what about the Big Bang, doesn’t that seem to be a beginning requiring explanation? How can a grand explosion that became our universe be squared with an eternal universe that always existed? Well, our Big Bang might be just the most recent of a series without beginning or end, maybe one of a multi-verse of such. Perhaps “chaotic inflation” out of some “quantum fluctuation” created our universe from a tiny burp in the vacuum that “arose spontaneously from sheer nothingness.”

Or why assume, as I did in my previous, that “nothing is the more natural state because it would need no explanation.” Perhaps the universe exists because it has always existed and because nothing is itself not possible. The universe exists so why posit nothing as more natural? In any case, before the Big Bang, there was not nothing because there was no time, therefore no past. The singularity assumed to have exploded in the Big Bang was matter and energy infinitely compressed (just as it is in a black hole). Infinite compression of mass and energy means spacetime doesn’t exist so before the Big Bang there was nothing and no time. Therefore, the Big Bang requires no history.

Or perhaps the universe came into being through being observed by us. In other words, because we are here, it had to be.

None of these possibilities account for why they might have been the case. They do not explain why they should be true or what was their First Cause. But one could argue that any explanation of existence that leaves itself unexplained simply means that the ultimate wall has been reached and not that it is wrong. All explanations must end in such a explanatory wall. Just accept the one you choose.

Holt notes one rejoinder to this (Arthur Lovejoy, 1933) that if the universe existed as an accidental – it’s just-there – world – “uncertainty would infect the whole; anything...might exist and anything might happen, and no one thing would be in itself even more probable than another.” Indeed, the simplest alternative to Nothing is Everything, i.e., all possible worlds. In a multiverse of all possibilities, why not an entire universe – even ours – simple turning into chocolate cake?

Much more can be said about these conflicting positions. But as Holt notes, one way to escape the ultimate inability to provide a First Cause simply is to assume a self-explanatory something that would have to exist in order to explain everything else. That something would have to be eternal, infinite, powerful and – since the universe is ordered and includes intelligence – intelligent. In my last post, I suggested that such a thing is “what might be called God.” I should make clear that I would not suggest using that term as it carries a load of baggage that seems to me beside the point (more on that next time). I prefer to talk simply of a design and a designer.

For myself, I find the bare acceptance of a universe without explanation to be an ultimate abandonment of reason and intellect. We are capable of considering the infinite even if we cannot understand it. And I reject the notion that the effort to follow St. Thomas’ finger – science and reason – to consideration of a fundamental design and a designer is just an expression of a religious impulse. Man has long sought the answer to his Being. Religion did grow out of that but so has science and philosophy.

A Ruminations Credo

These are fancies of my own, by which I do not pretend to discover things but to lay open myself.... if I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no retention; so that I can promise no certainty, more than to make known to what point the knowledge I now have has risen.... I speak my opinion freely of all things, even of those that, perhaps, exceed my capacity, and that I do not conceive to be, in any wise, under my jurisdiction.  And, accordingly, the judgment I deliver, is to show the measure of my own sight.

 Michel de Montaigne

The Senior Citizen Event Horizon

A friend at work today mentioned a news report he saw about some driver-less car going up a mountainous road with no guard rail and with passengers on board but with no one actually driving. This comes as part of a blitz of developments in smart cars and appliances, bots, the Internet of Things, wireless everywhere and Artificial Intelligence. I recently bought a smart TV mostly because I finally wanted HighDef. The TV is a 2015 model so not so smart. As far as I am concerned, this is a good thing. With OPM, the DNC, banks and businesses, etcetera, falling victim to an alarming array of professional and military hackers, I really am comfortable with all the inanimate devices I use being dumb and unconnected. I've come to realize that the ever-increasing wave of technological change has swept by me and that's okay. I'm comfortable in the world of pre-2016 things. I really don't need to live in the world of future tech. It's beyond my event horizon. I don't mind doing my own shopping list and don't see myself buying a fridge that will do it for me. My washer and dryer have settings I can set. The house thermostat responds directly to my pressing its buttons. My car does allow hand-free calls and hooks my music through Bluetooth from my iPhone. But I like driving it myself. (I even have stick.)

Those who have grown up after the time when users could write his/her own programs – I used Basic to do a recipe program on my Commodore 64 – and even more those now getting iPads in school will feel quite comfortable traveling through a world best captured in the sci-fi series of The Golden Age. Hopefully, it won't all collapse into a singularity.

Premature Globalization

Globalization has come too early in humanity's history and gone too far. It is unsustainable with burdens and benefits distributed too unevenly to provide a basis for global stability. Globalization of the market has concentrated wealth in some places at the cost elsewhere of erratic consumer- and export-driven growth that distorts economic development and entrenches poverty. Free trade has meant cross-border transfers of jobs that have left many struggling to make ends meet in the “new economy” while helping others in low wage markets to enter the cycle. The resultant distortions have thus both concentrated and generalized inequality. Globalized media greatly magnifies the perception of inequality by delivering clear images of what is available elsewhere thus potentiating large-scale population movements. Globalization in the 21st Century benefits only some at the cost of the many who have been encouraged to believe that they too benefit from the increased availability of cheaper goods that they can't fix but must constantly buy anew. The majority of humanity still must struggle to attain or maintain a decent living for themselves and their families and a future offering hope for their children.

Within countries, those who directly benefit from the various facets of globalization face a rising tide of political opposition. In what may turn out to be a seminal offering, Peggy Noonan in a recent WSJ piece outlines an important distinction between what she calls the "protected" and the "unprotected." Taking this concept perhaps a little further than she would, the protected are those who make public policy or have purchased the people who do. Through their decisions and predominant political power, the protected impose mechanisms, processes and conditions that provide them direct benefit. The unprotected are those who must survive in the world that the protected make for them. The protected live the good life secure in their own communities. Because they are mostly insulated from any negative effects of their policies, they feel they can inflict anything on the rest. The unprotected live with none of these advantages and all of the fallout. Populist political movements from the left and the right have arisen in may places as the unprotected have lost their patience with traditional politics and politicians. In the US that includes Trump and Bernie Sanders, in Europe populist parties from France to Poland threatening or wresting political power from the “centrists.”

The root problem could be termed premature globalization. It might seem that the tying together of the world's economies might have been the result of some inevitable natural force. But the lowering of trade barriers and opening of borders has been the result of a myriad of political decisions by the protected. They have been able to move jobs to places with lower labor costs and to “import” – through legal and “illegal” migration – cheap labor to where they need it. Free trade always means that jobs move from one place to another. All those Chinese “lifted” out of poverty through years of high growth have come directly from jobs moved from America and elsewhere. The benefit to the unprotected – including the many in the developing world not able to compete with China or the West – has been slim and often fleeting. But as a friend has noted, free trade is only Pareto-optimal if the gains are broadly shared. The gains have not been broadly shared but the costs have.

Who benefits from free trade: the owners of capital and their public servants. They reap the profits and gain extra from buying favored treatment (openly or through corruption). Also, the local political elites of developing countries who monopolize power and skim off what comparatively little wealth trickles in from the global trade channels. Some from supplying raw materials (often mined or grown in ways wasteful and injurious to the environment and local populations), some from importing those planned-obsolescence consumer goods. (I freely admit to “benefitting” from the endless series of iPhones.) In America, they use their advantage to win favorable tax rates (or move operations elsewhere) while pushing to reduce “wasteful” government expenditure on things like infrastructure, healthcare or social welfare.

The primary role of government should be to ensure that all citizens can earn a basic living while helping them provide a suitable and nurturing environment for their children. This means the economy needs to provide a range of jobs from the highly skilled to the basic to mirror the natural mix of abilities and interests. Taking just the United States, over the last decades the Democrats and Republicans both have failed to meet this test. They have pushed the “benefits” of free trade at the cost of millions of jobs lost. Their mantra has been the benefits of those cheaper consumer goods and the possibility of newer jobs in the advanced economy. Even before the 2008 financial tsunami, those newer jobs were hard to find and most were lower pay.

When I was a lad in the 1950s and 60s, my parents raised five children on the salary of a truck driver plus the occasional factory employment of my mother. Try raising five children today on a working stiff's salary, even if both parents work. (How many political hacks rail against abortion but don't care a whit about how to pay for raising those children once they are born?) The protected also benefit from cheap imported labor, often forced to work off the books or as “contractors” without benefits. They do the jobs “Americans won't do.” Translation, they do the jobs Americans won't do at wages too low to allow a decent living.

Globalization would work well in a world of less pronounced inequality. But we have been pushed into it prematurely. The world of the 21st Century perhaps just does not produce enough wealth to share sufficiently for most people to have a decent life where they were born. Thus the wave of refugees – who come from the ranks of the unprotected whether because of conflict or poverty – overwhelming the gates of Europe or trying to somehow get through Mexico to the US. Maybe the only recourse is for societies that can afford to go it alone to raise the walls, close the doors and pull those jobs back to the homeland by ending free trade. Leave China to deal with its population without the benefit of those jobs imported from America. This is the appeal of the Trumps. It's hard to argue against and certainly the same old refrains from the protected – Democrats and Republicans – have lost their popular appeal. No matter who wins the American presidency or how hard Europe tries to prevent migrants from trying to cross, the unprotected are not likely to be denied forever.

Branching Out

I have been blogging here at Everything Rum since 2007.  My first posting was a Consciousness Riff.  I used to blog at Outside Walls, mostly on Kosovo, but closed that down a while ago.  In the Everything Rum space I've blogged on quantum physics, cosmology & space/time, biking, the state of the world, capitalism, the Articles of Confederation and sometimes on politics.   State Department cables (cleared through FOIA) and other related material from my time serving as a US diplomat can be found at Real Diplomacy.  Since 2009, I was writing on international issues at TransConflict. 

Now I am branching out.  I've tried Twitter and Facebook in the past but didn't stay with them.  I'm now returning to Twitter to connect and to accompany my expanded blogging here.  I'll be commenting as I see useful and perhaps will find others who if not in agreement at least have some reason to stop and reflect.  My first effort will follow shortly on the US and Russia.