I was off sick all last week. I'd been at a wedding in the UK the previous weekend and woke up the the next day with what seemed to be the Mother of Hangovers. It was only through bouts of shivering, hot sweats and numberless calls of nature that gradually the truth dawned. I was stricken with a particularly nasty gastric condition. Immodium just about got me home without mishap, but I had to ring in sick the next morning.
I sank into that langourous, decadent state of passive self indulgence which non-incapacitating illness brings with it. I could with an entirely clear conscience abandon the 1001 chores, responsibilities, projects, plans, letters, bills, emails, telephone calls, and blogs which hound my everyday existence and do exactly as I pleased. It is a useful, if salutory, experience for a man to have first-hand knowledge of his default position. Mine's pretty vacant - float around doing nothing in particular, a laboured sudoku or two, read a bit, nothing too challenging, mindlessly zap around daytime TV etc. It was in the course of one of these brain-dead zap sessions that I stumbled over a fascinating programme about a back-to-nature community in some remote part of Alaska. A score of young idealists had decided to move to the wilderness of Alaska in order to live an authentic life close to nature. They didn't live in a commune, but in relative proximity to each other (100 miles or so!), each family in its self-built log cabin, in a mutual self-help network. My heart skipped a beat. It was pure "Whole Earth Catalogue". They were seeking to live a freer life, free from the trammels of vulgar materialism and conspicuous consumption. They wanted to get back to the land and set their souls free.
But they were very practical and competent about it, the harsh nature of the climate not permitting of casual improvisation. They shot and killed their own food (moose etc.), but without pretending to total self-sufficiency. They traded animal furs in order to buy fuel for a generator in order to enjoy certain modern comforts such as a washing machine and a hi-fi. I didn't see any computers, but I suspect it was an old piece of documentary from before the "computer revolution" or maybe they just couldn't get broad-band! On reflection, there weren't any phone lines. Inevitably numbers dwindled over time. The critical factor was the children's education. Parents were able to teach their own children up to certain age, with the support of a sort of itinerant government back-up system, but once the children reached the age of 12 or 13, the parents generally felt that they couldn't decently deprive them of a peer group with which to socialize. Very responsibly they moved into town for the good of the children. The programme ended with a quotation from Thoreau's "Walden" to the effect that: when I come to the end of my days, I would want to feel that I had lived before I died.
It all reminded me of how as a young man I had a secret hankering after being American. It was all bound up with a notion of freedom. From my own hide-bound, stiff-upper-lip, public school background, Americans seemed so relaxed, so not uptight, so uninhibited in their right-on, can-do attitude. That's how I wanted to be, and still do in a way. Certainly, when people talk about freedom and America in the same breath (which is much too frequently), that is the only freedom which makes any sort of sense to me. What other sort is there? The freedom to make a lot of money (if you're lucky)? The freedom to practice loopy religion (God help us)? The freedom to think you're great just because your Umerkan (please)?
In my reduced condition I was able to read "Freakonomics", subtitled "A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything". It's by a self-confessed economics nerd, Steven Levitt, in collaboration with New York Times journalist, Stephen Dubner. It's the sort of dreadfully overhyped thing that I try to avoid as a matter of principle, pedantically refusing to succumb to publishing industry overkill: "A phenomenon", "Brilliant", "Prepare to be dazzled", "A sensation", "The mot du jour", "Total controversy" etc. etc. etc. Despite the gush, it's really a book about methodology. Levitt basically expands the notion of economics beyond the study of mere pecuniary exchange and investigates the broader field of "incentives". People do things for money, but also for reasons such as peer-group respect or to conform with certain moral principles. Given sufficient information, these incentives can be identified and measured, helping to explain why certain things are the way they are - a methodology, in other words, for measuring why people do what they do. So we learn of the hidden side of a number of disparate phenomena: how and why teachers and Sumo wrestlers cheat; how real-estate agents and the Klu Klux Klan are essentially exploiting an "information asymmetry"; why drug dealers live with their Moms (because the drugs industry is a very broad based pyramid with only the very top guys making a pile of cash); that the drop in the crime rate is largely attributable to easier abortion; that, in bringing up children, nature is much more significant than nurture; that there is a fascinating, though inconclusive, statistic on the names given to children by various socio-economic groups at various times. The charm of the book is its weakness. It is gloriously unsystematic, but it actually falls well sort of a methodology of human behaviour. What it does show is that inspired interpretation of statisitics can reveal some unexpected truths. It also confirms for me that Steven Levitt is my kind of American - brilliant, unaffected, original and fearless. God bless him!
I sank into that langourous, decadent state of passive self indulgence which non-incapacitating illness brings with it. I could with an entirely clear conscience abandon the 1001 chores, responsibilities, projects, plans, letters, bills, emails, telephone calls, and blogs which hound my everyday existence and do exactly as I pleased. It is a useful, if salutory, experience for a man to have first-hand knowledge of his default position. Mine's pretty vacant - float around doing nothing in particular, a laboured sudoku or two, read a bit, nothing too challenging, mindlessly zap around daytime TV etc. It was in the course of one of these brain-dead zap sessions that I stumbled over a fascinating programme about a back-to-nature community in some remote part of Alaska. A score of young idealists had decided to move to the wilderness of Alaska in order to live an authentic life close to nature. They didn't live in a commune, but in relative proximity to each other (100 miles or so!), each family in its self-built log cabin, in a mutual self-help network. My heart skipped a beat. It was pure "Whole Earth Catalogue". They were seeking to live a freer life, free from the trammels of vulgar materialism and conspicuous consumption. They wanted to get back to the land and set their souls free.
But they were very practical and competent about it, the harsh nature of the climate not permitting of casual improvisation. They shot and killed their own food (moose etc.), but without pretending to total self-sufficiency. They traded animal furs in order to buy fuel for a generator in order to enjoy certain modern comforts such as a washing machine and a hi-fi. I didn't see any computers, but I suspect it was an old piece of documentary from before the "computer revolution" or maybe they just couldn't get broad-band! On reflection, there weren't any phone lines. Inevitably numbers dwindled over time. The critical factor was the children's education. Parents were able to teach their own children up to certain age, with the support of a sort of itinerant government back-up system, but once the children reached the age of 12 or 13, the parents generally felt that they couldn't decently deprive them of a peer group with which to socialize. Very responsibly they moved into town for the good of the children. The programme ended with a quotation from Thoreau's "Walden" to the effect that: when I come to the end of my days, I would want to feel that I had lived before I died.
It all reminded me of how as a young man I had a secret hankering after being American. It was all bound up with a notion of freedom. From my own hide-bound, stiff-upper-lip, public school background, Americans seemed so relaxed, so not uptight, so uninhibited in their right-on, can-do attitude. That's how I wanted to be, and still do in a way. Certainly, when people talk about freedom and America in the same breath (which is much too frequently), that is the only freedom which makes any sort of sense to me. What other sort is there? The freedom to make a lot of money (if you're lucky)? The freedom to practice loopy religion (God help us)? The freedom to think you're great just because your Umerkan (please)?
In my reduced condition I was able to read "Freakonomics", subtitled "A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything". It's by a self-confessed economics nerd, Steven Levitt, in collaboration with New York Times journalist, Stephen Dubner. It's the sort of dreadfully overhyped thing that I try to avoid as a matter of principle, pedantically refusing to succumb to publishing industry overkill: "A phenomenon", "Brilliant", "Prepare to be dazzled", "A sensation", "The mot du jour", "Total controversy" etc. etc. etc. Despite the gush, it's really a book about methodology. Levitt basically expands the notion of economics beyond the study of mere pecuniary exchange and investigates the broader field of "incentives". People do things for money, but also for reasons such as peer-group respect or to conform with certain moral principles. Given sufficient information, these incentives can be identified and measured, helping to explain why certain things are the way they are - a methodology, in other words, for measuring why people do what they do. So we learn of the hidden side of a number of disparate phenomena: how and why teachers and Sumo wrestlers cheat; how real-estate agents and the Klu Klux Klan are essentially exploiting an "information asymmetry"; why drug dealers live with their Moms (because the drugs industry is a very broad based pyramid with only the very top guys making a pile of cash); that the drop in the crime rate is largely attributable to easier abortion; that, in bringing up children, nature is much more significant than nurture; that there is a fascinating, though inconclusive, statistic on the names given to children by various socio-economic groups at various times. The charm of the book is its weakness. It is gloriously unsystematic, but it actually falls well sort of a methodology of human behaviour. What it does show is that inspired interpretation of statisitics can reveal some unexpected truths. It also confirms for me that Steven Levitt is my kind of American - brilliant, unaffected, original and fearless. God bless him!
posted by asbo at 1:46 AM
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