I just finished re-reading The Myth of Sisyphus for my philosophy book club. It has been almost twenty years since I last read it. When I read it before I thought it was brilliant, a cri de coeur for everyone to go out and live an authentic life. Today it doesn’t feel nearly so effective. No doubt some of that is due to changes in myself but there are still some exogenous factors that seem worth exploring.

My first theory was that Camus is too tied to a specific time and historical setting. He wrote in the middle of World War Two, a war that almost defines the absurd. As Adorno once said, there can be no poetry after Auschwitz. For an existentialist there can be no life that doesn’t consider suicide and face the absurd universe head on after the searing experiences of World War.

Then I considered that his argument is only effective for those who are ready to accept it. Perhaps there is a certain psychological state that the reader needs to be in to see the full force of Camus’ arguments. Maybe this is why the absurd seems like the perfect adolescent philosophy. See Holden Caulfield and Paul Goodman. Another group that seems particularly receptive to the absurd message are the religious. The form and style of the Myth of Sisyphus reminds me a lot of the mystical writings of various Christians like Meister Eckert or Pseudo-Dionysius.

My next thought, and the one that feels closest to a possible answer, is postmodernism. Perhaps Camus and the absurd are a relic of the modern era when there was a general consensus, a grand narrative, of enlightenment and human melioration to believe in. Although Camus rejected the meaning of human life he was living at the end of a time when a meaning to human life was still a live question. Today, in the postmodern world, there is no consensus that meaning exists.

On the one hand this may be considered to be the triumph of Camus’ existential absurdism, everyone is now in the middle of an absurd world that seemingly can’t be escaped. It is the impossibility of escape that makes reading Camus so difficult. The idea of revolt against the absurd seems woefully underdetermined. I guess this means I need to keep reading The Rebel if I really want to find an answer.

From John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology by Larry A. Hickman

“What, in Dewey’s view, constitutes responsible technology? This book is an attempt to suggest some answers to that question. By way of review and conclusion, it may be said that Dewey rejected what I have called “straight-line instrumentalism,” or the view that neutral tools are brought to bear on ends that are valued for reasons external to the situations within which those tools have been developed. Drawing on the metaphors that accompanied Darwinian evolutionary theory, Dewey argued that human beings are organisms within nature and that their tool use is one of the developmental edges of natural activity. Tools and artifacts are no more neutral that are plants, nonhuman animals, or human beings themselves: they are interactive within situations that teem with values.

Responsible technology involves for Dewey the choice, the implementation, and the testing of goals that arise from those situations. There is no need of divine intervention to point the way, and the quest for absolute truth constitutes an impediment. Values arise out of inquiry, and once they are refined by inquiry they are brought back to the situations from which they originated in order to ascertain whether they are appropriate. Tools that are utilized in choosing, implement, and testing enter into the articulation of ends, or things to be done, modifying those ends as the need arises. Evolving ends demand the modification of existing tools. Responsible technology thus remains flexible because it must accommodate changing situations. In addition to being resilient, responsible technology is redundant: it does not allow undue risk, and it backs itself up, both in terms of parallel development and in terms of the establishment of plateaus as possible fallback positions. Responsible technology is not so much radical as regenerative.” (202)

Cognition in Practice, by Jean Lave, 1998

“So far I have described a series of dichotomously polarized issues that have sustained limitations on debate between paradigms and disciplines over a considerable period of time. I have yet to describe the sources of the coherence with which the issues reinforce on another. They take their shape, the great divides formed, in terms of a positivist epistemology which specifies a series of assumptions on which they are based: rationality exists as the ideal canon of thought; experimentation can be thought of as the embodiment of this ideal in scientific practice; science is the value-free collection of factual knowledge about the world; factual knowledge about the world is the basis for the formation of scientific theory, not the other way around; science is the opposite of history, the one nomothetic the other ideographic; cognitive processes are general and fundamental, psychology, correspondingly, a nomothetic discipline; society and culture shape the particularities of cognition and give it content, thus sociocultural context is specific, its study ideographic; general laws of human behavior, therefore, must be dissected away from the historical and social obfuscations which give them particularity. These propositions entail one another in complex ways. To challenge any one of them draws the rest into question as well. A quest for better understanding of everyday cognition in context that questions conventional relations between the socially organized world, culture and cognition — and hence the whole field of assumptions — is unavoidably, therefore, a fundamental epistemological question.” page 87

A quotation:

From the movie My Dinner with Andre

ANDRE: Well, I think that’s right! You know, it may be, Wally, that one of the reasons that we don’t know what’s going on is that when we’re there at a party, we’re all too busy performing.

WALLY: Un-hunh.

ANDRE: You know, that was one of the reasons that Grotowski gave up the theater. He just felt that people in their lives now were performing so well that performance in the theater was sort of superfluous, and in a way obscene.

WALLY: Hum!

ANDRE: I mean, isn’t it amazing how often a doctor will live up to our expectation of how a doctor should look? I mean, you see a terrorist on television: he looks just like a terrorist. I mean, we live in a world in which fathers, or single people, or artists, are all trying to live up to someone’s fantasy of how a father, or a single person, or an artist, should look and behave! They all act as if they know exactly how they ought to conduct themselves at every single moment. And they all seem totally self-confident. Of course, privately people are very mixed up about themselves. [Wally says “Yep.”] They don’t know what they should be doing with their lives. They’re reading all these self-help books…

WALLY: Oh! God! And I mean, those books are just so touching because they show how desperately curious we all are to know how all the others of us are really getting on in life, even though by performing these roles all the time we’re just hiding the reality of ourselves from everybody else. I mean, we live in such ludicrous ignorance of each other. I mean, we usually don’t know the things we’d like to know even about our supposedly closest friends! I mean…I mean, you know, suppose you’re going through some kind of hell in your own life, well, you would love to know if your friends have experienced similar things. But we just don’t dare to ask each other!

ANDRE: No! It would be like asking your friend to drop his role.

WALLY: I mean, we just put no value at all on perceiving reality. I mean, on the contrary, this incredible emphasis that we all place now on our so-called “careers” automatically makes perceiving reality a very low priority. Because if your life is organized around trying to be successful in a career, well, it just doesn’t matter what you perceive, or what you experience. You can really sort of shut your mind off for years ahead, in a way. You can sort of turn on the automatic pilot! You know, just the way your mother’s doctor had on his automatic pilot when he went in and he looked at the arm, and he totally failed to perceive anything else!

ANDRE: Right! Our minds are just focused on these goals and plans. Which in themselves are not reality.

I just want to juxtapose two recent readings by Charlie Stross and Timothy Burke on organizations and institutions. Burke sets up the problem as the key issue of the twenty-first century.

but it really seems to me that the political problem of the 21st Century is not a problem of markets or capitalism, not of the state, not of ideologies or religions, but of institutions and organizations. Loosely speaking, what doesn’t work about government as a whole is also what doesn’t work about a local religious charity. What doesn’t work about financial capitalism is what doesn’t work about the Chamber of Commerce in a small town.

Why have executives at for-profit and non-profit institutions enriched themselves so greatly over the last twenty or thirty years? Is there any way for oversight to actually improve the situation?

The subtle problem that organizations and institutions pose to contemporary life is that people who live inside an institutional culture often are so sensitive to the nuances of the way things work, the limits and possibilities of change within the institution, that they let problems and failures slide or pass. No one wants to be that guy, the one who rants about everything. And that’s what often happens to someone inside an institution who blows the whistle on a bad practice or a growing issue, because that often ends with that person in a kind of internal exile, and in that circumstance, a loss of a sense of proportion is all but inevitable. Everything will come to look suspect or corrupt.

Stross poses the problem in the form a science fiction scenario: how would you design the society of a generation starship that is going to be traveling through space for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years? None of our current institutions have ever lasted that long. Even long lasting institutions, like the Catholic church or Japanese monarchy, have changed.

Consumer capitalism along our current model simply won’t work as a way of running a long-duration generation ship (the failure modes are lethal and non-recoverable). Communism (or rather, Leninism) has a slightly better prospect, but is still a long way from optimal. Monarchism is just a pretty word for “hereditary dictatorship supported by military caste”. What are the alternatives? And what do we need to consider when designing a society that can survive for a 500-1000 year voyage in a bottle without exploding?

It’s not hart to twist the generation starship scenario slightly and end up with Bucky Fuller’s Starship Earth. The problem of building a long-term starship is parallel to the problem of building a long-term lifeworld here on Earth. Both Stross and Burke agree that our current institutions aren’t up to the challenge.

Burke concludes his musings:

Institutions work best through and are safeguarded most by strong cultures of professionalism, loyalty, and honor. Institutions are most at risk from parasitic infiltrations which adroitly use professionalism and loyalty as shields and weapons, who act like cancer cells, turning healthy structures into diseased ones. Problems of cultural maintainance and cultural creation are the hardest of all, because they can only be worked upon through incremental action within culture, with a humble sense of the immediate horizons of plausible transformations.

But the fate of institutions can’t just be left to them alone, because even the least of them has some kind of consequential social and economic power. If we need to think about how to live better within our institutions, we also need to think about how to act more wisely towards the institutions of others, to concern ourselves with their workings and when necessary, find smarter and more humane ways to intervene in their affairs and even to shut them down. The tools we have aren’t up to it, and the habits we have even less so.

From an article on networking by John Seely Brown and John Hagel III at HBR.

In the classical networking approach, the game is about presenting yourself in the most favorable light possible while flattering the other person into giving you their contact information. This approach quickly degenerates into a manipulative exchange where the real identities of both parties rapidly recede into the background, replaced by carefully staged presentations of an artificial self. These staged interactions rarely build trust. In fact, they usually have the opposite effect, putting both parties on guard and reinforcing wariness and very selective disclosure.

A learning disposition leads to a very different approach. Now the effort focuses on understanding the needs of the other, with a particular focus on understanding the biggest issues others are wrestling with. This requires intense curiosity, deep listening and empathy that seeks to understand the context that other person is operating in. It also requires willingness to disclose vulnerabilities, since it is often hard to get the other person to share their most challenging issues without a sense that you are willing to do the same.

Whenever I go to a networking event there is a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that something is wrong. I’m there for the wrong reason or telling other people the wrong things, especially if my goal is to get work out of the encounter.

It’s the same when I tell friends that I’m looking for a job. I just don’t know what to say that translates into a business referral or a forwarded resume. I can talk about the things that interest me but none of them seem to connect quickly enough to actually generate money.

In some sense I feel that Hagel and Brown are correct but they are talking about the issue from the level of the successful. For the people, like myself, who are still trying to find success the approach to networking promoted by Hagel and Brown just gets strange looks and bafflement.

Stephen Downes adds an interesting gloss.

But what they get wrong, I think, is the nature of this interaction. It’s not about finding common ground, working collaboratively, or ‘acquiring’ tacit knowledge. Rather, it’s about putting yourself into a position where you can have (even if vicariously) similar experiences, leading oneself to become similar to the other person (which is why it is so important to choose one’s associates with care). Tacit knowledge, remember, isn’t declarative or even procedural. Rather, it is more like ‘having a feel for’, and each person develops this sort of knowledge individually.

James Fallows published an interesting essay in the January/February 2010 Atlantic on “How America Can Rise Again.” I think it’s one of the best pieces I’ve read on the American penchant for declension narratives. He points out that Americans have been engaging in jeremiads about the decline of the nation since before there was a nation. The Puritans were complaining about the lost golden age of the colonies just six years after landing in the New World. So from the historical perspective there’s nothing new under the sun. To bolster this argument Fallows mentions The American Jeremiad by Sacvan Bercovitch (another book for the to be read pile).

On the positive side of the ledger Fallows puts America’s openness to immigrants and our schools.

“We scream about our problems, but as long as we have the immigrants, and the universities, we’ll be fine,” James McGregor, an American businessman and author who has lived in China for years, told me. “I just wish we could put LoJacks on the foreign students to be sure they stay.” While, indeed, the United States benefits most when the best foreign students pursue their careers here, we come out ahead even if they depart, since they take American contacts and styles of thought with them. Shirley Tilghman, a research biologist who is now the president of Princeton, made a similar point more circumspectly. “U.S. higher education has essentially been our innovation engine,” she told me. “I still do not see the overall model for higher education anywhere else that is better than the model we have in the United States, even with all its challenges at the moment.” Laura Tyson, an economist who has been dean of the business schools at UC Berkeley and the University of London, said, “It can’t be a coincidence that so many innovative companies are located where they are”—in California, Boston, and other university centers. “There is not another country’s system that does as well—although others are trying aggressively to catch up.”

The main problem he sees in contemporary America is public-private partnerships or the lack of them. There are major problems that need to be addressed: jobs, debt, military strength, and overall economic independence. What will happen if America is no longer the wealthiest nation on the planet or the consumer of last resort? We could address these problems but there is no sign that the political infrastructure is up to the task.

That is the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke. One thing I’ve never heard in my time overseas is “I wish we had a Senate like yours.” When Jimmy Carter was running for president in 1976, he said again and again that America needed “a government as good as its people.” Knowing Carter’s sometimes acid views on human nature, I thought that was actually a sly barb—and that the imperfect American public had generally ended up with the government we deserve. But now I take his plea at face value. American culture is better than our government. And if we can’t fix what’s broken, we face a replay of what made the months after the 9/11 attacks so painful: realizing that it was possible to change course and address problems long neglected, and then watching that chance slip away.

He goes on to cite another interesting book by Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations. According to Olson special interest groups gain power over time in any governmental system and eventually they nibble away at the public institutions that were once capable of coping with our problems. Fallows concludes that the only way forward is to muddle through as best we can with the gangrenous system.

While reviewing my philosophy weblog news feeds I came across a link to the live webstream of a brain dissection on the internet. H.M., a famous neuroscience patient, died a year ago. He was famous in brain studies because a surgery to cure seizures resulted in his being unable to form new memories.

“He loved to converse, for example, but within 15 minutes he would tell you the same story three times, with same words and intonation, without remembering that he’d just told it,” said Suzanne Corkin, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studied and followed Mr. Molaison in the last five decades of his life.

Each time he met a new acquaintance, each time he visited the corner store, each time he strolled around the block, it was as if for the first time.

Before H.M., scientists thought that memory was widely distributed throughout the brain, not dependent on any one area. But by testing Mr. Molaison, researchers in Montreal and Hartford soon established that the areas that were removed — in the medial temporal lobe, about an inch deep in the brain level with the ear — are critical to forming new memories. One organ, the hippocampus, is especially crucial and is now the object of intense study.

I am a neophiliac by personal inclination and this story cuts both ways. I’m astounded by the very fact that this procedure is being webcast on the internet in real-time. I watched as one of the scientists climbed onto the laboratory bench to adjust the apparatus just a few minutes ago.

On the other hand I’m terrified whenever I try to imagine myself as H.M. How would I feel if I could no longer form new memories? Would I even be able to tell the difference between my life today and my life after losing the ability to form new memories?

If there is more convincing evidence for the biological basis of the self then I don’t know it.

This article for the San Diego paper goes into more detail on the procedures used to preserve the brain and scan it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the problem of expertise. Alvin Goldman, a philosopher at Rutgers, has written some interesting papers on the interaction between novices and experts. Next week I’m going to be leading a discussion on the topic.

I restarted my research on this topic after participating in some other recent discussions about economics and the reactions to the recent recession. How can economists propose such dramatically different explanations and remedies to the current crisis? The result is Paul Krugman asking How did economists get it so wrong?

Chris Dillow posts some interesting thoughts on whether economics is more certain about it’s conclusions now than it was 80 years ago when John Maynard Keynes was writing his General Theory.

To answer the question Dillow looks at two recent papers by economists about the rationality of markets. In comparison to Keynes the contemporary papers are more advanced, referencing more empirical data and having greater theoretical clarity. But they reach opposite conclusions by studying the same data, one finding evidence of rationality and the other finding evidence of irrationality.

Keynes wrote without any reference to empirical data. So which case is better? Someone of prestigious economic intelligence writing without any empirical data or two contemporary economists analyzing the data but reaching different conclusions.

This suggests that, if it is firm beliefs you want, economics regresses. Reading Keynes, you’d infer clearly that markets were somehow not rational. Reading the later papers you wouldn’t know whether they were or not. 70 years of advances in economics has merely generated doubt.

This kind of situation puts the novice economic observer into a major pickle. The novice must rely on the experts to analyze the information and data because the novice lacks the knowledge to even begin the analysis. But after the experts finish the conclusions are contradictory. Is there a way for the novice to resolve this problem?

I wanted to like the new version of The Prisoner on AMC but so far it’s been a failure.

A big part of the problem is the absence of Patrick McGoohan. He was the key to the success of the original series and Caviezel is an inadequate replacement. What made McGoohan so good was his anger and a sense of danger. You really felt like he wanted to destroy the whole village if he didn’t escape. Caviezel is upset but never really angry, he yells a bit but it doesn’t feel genuine. McGoohan’s anger was always on the knife edge of erupting in unexpected ways.

And consider the opening credit scenes. In the 1960s series McGoohan stalked down the hall and sped away in his sports car through the streets of London. In the 2000s series we get intercut visuals of Caviezel spraypainting “resign” across the windows of his office and blurry surveillance video. The former reeks of danger, risk, and spy games a la James Bond. The latter is corporate, the panopticon.

Perhaps it’s an indication of how spying has changed in our imaginations as well as reality. The glory days of the spy were the height of the Cold War; when the enemy was well-defined and the game had rules as portrayed in the works of Ian Fleming, John LeCarre, Alistair MacLean. McGoohan even played a role in a film of a McLean novel - Ice Station Zebra.

Today spying is pervasive. The city of London is constantly monitored by CCTV. No one is followed by a “tail”, instead it’s just recorded on video. We’re living in the Foucauldian panopticon where everyone is being watched. Spying and data-mining are a way of life, hidden beneath every thing we do in the West. It is the water we swim in. During the Cold War we could at least pretend that we were fighting for something else, fighting against the reds to be a free economy, fighting against becoming a number. Today the fight is mostly over. We’re all numbers now and either don’t know it or are resigned to it.

Perhaps that’s why the remake of The Prisoner feels so empty. This time around it’s less about finding the truth, if it’s really out there, then doing our time in purgatory.