But just thinking may not be adequate to the interdependencies at work - interdependencies so unsettling that the wrong approach to them makes things worse, in misguided attempts to flee them through denial, fantasies of self-reliance or the fideism of private-vice-public-virtue. Maybe what we need is some meditation, so that our interdependence might be experienced (and lived) not as an opaque sense of powerlessness or privileged irresponsibility but as connection and responsibility. (Source of the pic, available for $7800.)
Monday, October 06, 2008
Transparency needed
The economy seems to be coming down all around us, bit by bit by enormous bit, and the repercussions are starting to be felt all around. Things whose connection I never suspected (not to mention institutions and economic practices whose very existence I was unaware of), along with rising costs of things from every sector of the economy, make me feel exposed, vulnerable, entirely powerless - and I have a job with something like tenure! I'm not sure which is more unnerving: the reminder of the impossibly intricate interdependencies of the modern economy, or the sense that many with powerful positions within that economy have been working it for gain at the expense of others. It would be tempting just to focus on the latter (down with greed!) but I think that's naive. Can anyone really make sense of the whole and their place within it? What can we do without such a sense? Many who contributed to the problem didn't know what they were doing, or didn't think about it, actually thought what they were doing was harmless or even, in some convoluted way, even contributed to the common good. High time to think about it!
But just thinking may not be adequate to the interdependencies at work - interdependencies so unsettling that the wrong approach to them makes things worse, in misguided attempts to flee them through denial, fantasies of self-reliance or the fideism of private-vice-public-virtue. Maybe what we need is some meditation, so that our interdependence might be experienced (and lived) not as an opaque sense of powerlessness or privileged irresponsibility but as connection and responsibility. (Source of the pic, available for $7800.)
But just thinking may not be adequate to the interdependencies at work - interdependencies so unsettling that the wrong approach to them makes things worse, in misguided attempts to flee them through denial, fantasies of self-reliance or the fideism of private-vice-public-virtue. Maybe what we need is some meditation, so that our interdependence might be experienced (and lived) not as an opaque sense of powerlessness or privileged irresponsibility but as connection and responsibility. (Source of the pic, available for $7800.)
