Severe Mental Incarceration

A friend of mine said about the NextEra-HELCO docket (the proposed purchase of our local electrical utility by a large corporation based in Florida), as he looked at my t-shirt supporting a co-op alternative to that power transfer, “Oh, I see you’ve drunk the Kool-Aid.  I agree with Mina Morita.  She said this decision is about economics and physics and that’s all, you know.”  

I was ashamed of him for being such a simple-minded reductionist. I was even slightly ashamed of Mina Morita, as much as I admire her.  (Mina Morita is prominent locally, having held important state-level political positions in energy and the environment, and known for her thoughtful pragmatism.)

There is a sense in which I could agree with him, it is just about “economics” and “physics,” if we were to take “economics” and “physics” in their fullest meanings.  If by “economics,” we would be talking about the most effective and carefully considered use of our limited physical resources so as to minimize further environmental degradation of our island and global commons, the distribution of costs and benefits fairly and appropriately among energy users, and the continuing work on our system of symbolic exchange so that it helps us to move us towards our social goals, and if by “physics” we would be talking about the attempt to discern the nature of physical reality and how it relates to our symbolic systems, then yes, of course, this decision is about economics and physics.  

I know that’s not what he meant though.  What he meant by economics was whether NextEra (the name by itself says it all) could provide a projected lower cost of energy per a kilowatt based on their “purchasing power” and “economies of scale.”  And by “physics” he meant, basically, burning stuff to turn it into electricity and running it down wires.   All important, practical considerations, of course, which can be reduced to boxes and functions in Excel, and therefore must be true and real and  logical, right?  But nine spreadsheets out of ten are as fantastical as a Maxfield Parrish painting. I hope that this civilization is about more than spreadsheets, because if that’s what our mental abilities have devolved to, then we have put ourselves into a prison of little black Excel boxes.   That will be impressively logical but truly pathetic of us.  

I, for one, am not going to back myself into that corner. Which doesn’t mean I’ve drunk any kind of Kool-Aid.  Especially not the kind that turns you into someone that only sees the world as economics and physics. 

Language games

I've also been trashing "science" pretty regularly, especially as its become the religion of modernity, but the core idea of science, as I understand it, is a language game that is democratic in its power structure and transparent in its methods and rules, i.e. any scientific claim should be potentially verifiable by anyone.  This is the source of any authority or credibility a scientific claim may have.  This is valuable mode of speaking, writing,  and thinking together. But it is just that and no more.   Generally speaking it's a better language game than pontifical announcements (even if our current pontiff seems inspired by all kinds of goodness). "The economy" is another language game, played with money as well as words. Language games are necessary for anyone who is not the last person left on earth or a desert island. The rules and conventions by which we structure our language games determine everything about human society and how we even perceive our individual selves.  But they still are only language games.

There are language games and then there is primary production and extraction of the physical necessities of life.  Most people work at various kinds of language games - politics, administration, marketing, etc. - and a lesser number of people actually produce or extract the raw materials from which we maintain human life and construct civilization. (In between these two are various sorts of middlemen, processors, and "service-providers." Then there are those that refuse to play by the rules of the language games currently popular - criminals, rebels, gypsies.) Production is shaped by language games of course, just as the continued possibility of engaging in language games depends on production and extraction.

There is a great deal of misunderstanding in our society because so few people have experience of, or even really recognize the work of production and extraction that goes on quietly supporting civilization.  Urban populations live almost entirely within the framework of language games - "the economy," national politics, academia, etc. Production and extraction has been moved off-stage, outsourced to other countries or to the country.  Language games shape production and extraction (the methods of production which are socially acceptable, for instance) but there are limits to this shaping beyond which a language game can prevent production and extraction from happening, and thereby undermine the conditions - of physical survival - necessary for the language games to exist at all.  Likewise there are limits to pure practicality, beyond which production and extraction falters, over-produces, or produces the wrong things, for lack of a framework to guide communal effort.

Producers, in disgust at the ignorance of actual objects,  of "reality," that those who trade in language games betray, can forget that what they do, the often silent work of production, is non-sensical without the language games it supports.  On the other hand, urban consumers are puzzled and frustrated by the recalcitrance of producers to change their production methods to conform with changing economic circumstances or consumer preferences, when all too often  these circumstances
and preferences are part of language games formed far away from the practicalities of production.

Ultimately, language game and raw material are no different from each other.  But we have a dangerous disconnect presently between the two, which traces back to our venerable tradition of de-coupling, in the current trendy phrase, mind from matter, and allowing our language games to enforce that distinction and de-coupling.  Any means that we might have to tie the two together again will do us good, I think, including science, carefully used as one mode, among others, of speaking together about the world we live in and that we make with our words.