Data-man: The Modern People
Stock Markets
Today, I want to talk a little bit about stock markets. No, I am not going to give some tips on how to make money in a short way. Rather, I want to talk some other aspects of it. I want to talk about people who are blinded by numbers, shares, stocks, companies and corporations.
Not that I am against investing or becoming a partner by owning share in a company. However, I want to draw your attention to the fact that there is something in the stock markets that makes people forget what is humane in them.
Three incidents that I’ve encountered on X (Twitter) recently in a row made me think and write about this. The last post doesn’t actually sound that bad. A guy was commenting on 2032 (oh! I can’t believe that we’re talking about 2032, is this a sci-fi novel or something!) UEFA European Football Championship which is announced to be held in Italy and Turkey. And he was saying something like “If I were to live in those times, I know the paper I would put my money on: Turkish Airlines.”
The other two incidents, however, didn’t seem so innocent. One of which was related to the latest developments in Israel and Palestine. One person commented on the war that broke out in the region as that “Tomorrow all stocks will start the day 5% down compared to today. So, which companies’ shares should one invest in at these attractive prices?” Another commented, “I would prefer to invest in gold, oil and the US dollar.”
The horrifying thing was that these words were uttered on the evening of the day when hundreds of people, mostly civilians, were killed on both sides. What I saw reminded me what Hannah Arendt’s argued in her “The Banality of Evil”. Is it really possible that being an ordinary person is enough to commit some of the world’s greatest evils, when all you have to do is to be impassive?
Unfortunately, the third incident was not just about some inconsiderate tweets. As many of you will remember, on February 6, two massive earthquakes (with magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.5 respectively) hit Turkey, killing more than 50,000 people according to the official estimates (some locals say it was actually more than 150,000). These earthquakes caused massive destruction, affecting 10 cities and 17 million people.
Can you guess what happened immediately after these earthquakes? A- The Turkish army and search & rescue teams came to the region to rescue people. B- Shares of construction and cement companies skyrocketed because the government did not stop trading on the stock exchanges. Yes, the answer is unfortunately not A.
With the emergence of modernity, people met with existential crisis and became alienated from what was going on around them and most importantly from themselves, as we see in Albert Camus’ “The Stranger”. What was the opening sentence of “The Stranger”? “Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.”
Meursault, the anti-hero of “The Stranger”, seemed almost indifferent to his mother’s death, or he didn’t know how to react. But as I said before, it was like a crisis. Now people are again indifferent to other peoples’ pain and grief, but it is more because people, including themselves, are just numbers who are only alive for a certain number of days. So, what is it that makes people overcome this existential crisis and transform them into what I call data-man? Lack of emotion in the hustle and bustle of the day? I don’t know.
Maybe it is the way people think: 5 people die, 10 people are born, the world population is 8 billon and they consume thousands of tons of this and thousands of tons of that. And that’s all we need to know about modern humans. The question “who” is overshadowed by the question “how many” or “how much”. As long as we know that hundreds of people who die in a battle or in the aftermath of a disaster will have an impact on the markets, it doesn’t really matter who dies. Are they babies, old people, the sick or the young? It doesn’t make any difference if they have a dream to fulfill or days to live happily, or not. It just seems to be that a certain type of number affects some other type of number.
At this point, I am not sure whether the stock markets are the cause or the effect of the data-man. I’ll leave that for you to think about.
Please share your ideas on this matter with me. I am looking forward to hear your comments.
The Works Mentioned
· The Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt
· The Stranger, by Albert Camus, translated by Stuart Gilbert
