
Hmm not Wow
It’s Labor Day, and this Meta-tation might not seem relevant. It is; it’s just that it’s, you know, kinda meta.
We’ve been in Alaska this week, taking part in Alaska’s alternative to the mining, logging, and fishing that once kept those 100 year old towns alive -tourism of course. (The “original” three activities are still there, but not enough to support the populations.)
There’s plenty of Wow on a trip like that, but I can’t help but dwell on the Hmm instead, like any respectable nerd.
Oh sure, there’s the physics, geology, and biology behind the northern lights, mountain uplift, mineral deposition, and exceptional ecosystems, but there’s also the social phenomena of economic behavior from the gold rush days until now. This isn’t about history though. It’s about people and our lives.
That’s the real source of Hmm for me, particularly since I had read Woody Tasch’s SOIL on the way out and finally finished Chuck Klosterman’s But What If We’re Wrong: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past the first day there.
Our lives are about economics in the truest, deepest sense of the word. It really just means choices in providing for our needs or wants. In this sense, the truest since, there is no “Economy”. That concept is a derivation, and some might say corruption, of the original concept.
Meanings of words change, and that’s fine, but the replacement of economics in the basic sense of choosing vs. the national, aggregated, Depression/WWII era sense of “The Economy” brings some blind spots. I believe we are beginning to notice these blind spots.
But back to Alaska
Klondike gold rushers didn’t intend to lose their lives, wives, and assets, but that was the cost for many. It was a national phenomenon which some would mistakenly dismiss as “greed”. Our simplistic terms hide or separate us from deeper elements in true economics.
A similar phenomenon keeps us from recognizing the decision-making mechanisms involved in all of those behaviors or patterns which we label as virtue or vice.
The meta function in all this is the combination of cognitive and emotional elements in all decision making. Breaking these down further into processes of file retrieval and neurotransmitter production (do I “feel good” or “feel bad” when I imagine the future outcome) gives some people a sense of dehumanization -but it is what we are. It is not dehumanizing.
It’s the opposite. The human ability to “go meta” and ask why, why, why -without a leap to the spiritual (not that it doesn’t exist), is our thing. It gives us the ability to see how things work, make them work better, or make things worse.
For the vast majority of gold rushers, things got way worse. Some had “nothing to lose”, but others simply miscalculated both the odds and the potential rewards. Some went for the adventure or to support a friend. (That is, not all of the vast failures were miscalculations in terms of yield of gold.)
The context, the ups of downs of personal and national economics during the time of the gold rush, isn’t usually discussed, but like so many other economic or social phenomena, only a tiny fraction of people will read a thorough analysis of the dozens of factors at play in national movements or “origins” of social phenomena.
TL;DR -every time. TL;DW might be more accurate even (too long; didn’t write).
Another short-hand thing we do is assume that people who write about the topics I write about are providing another grand Should for everyone, everywhere, all the time -a new prescription for a panacea. Nope.
But I am (always) suggesting that we’re going to be better off with more people going “Hmm” and not “Wow”. I’ve recently realized that the phrase “Bread and Circuses” isn’t known by nearly anyone. If you click on that, you might notice some irony in the unfamiliarity. Most explanations focus on how a government might use the insight, but the more important thing is that people allow it to “work” on them -with or without government manipulation.
For some spice here, I’ll add that the current “empathic outrage” strikes me as a popular placebo. This will sound strange to most readers, and I hesitate, for now, to explain.
The point please?
The type of why in Simon Sinek’s classic Start With Why (as in purpose) has vastly overshadowed the why that helps us understand how things work. There’s usually a ton of background (why) in anyone’s Why, but people get a little anxious when asked to consider of the Why of their Why.
Up until the last ten years, psychologists and especially amateur psychologists would use (often with ulterior motives) labels of “type” to explain(?) behaviors and choices. Popularly, we’ve tended to use these labels against people or to seem to know more than someone else -maybe even about them (the ultimate win, right?).
Thankfully, things are changing. However we have to have a why mindset (not the old labeling mindset of the last few decades), if we want to see something good come out of this shift in behavioral understanding. It’s not dehumanizing. We don’t get turned into robots by understanding brain system processes anymore than we did when we discovered how our organs work.
I think the 2020’s are going to be a good decade (Hmm, what does good mean really?). The Bread and Circuses mindset can keep us from getting there, but it’s not like great meals and great circuses aren’t great moments for thinking about the why’s.
(Hey I want to mention that my parents celebrated their 60th anniversary by taking “us kids” with them on this trip. Here’s to Mom and Dad and a great marriage.)

Thanks for reading.
Tim
I’m a mostly normal nobody. My sort-of vocation since leaving teaching is restoring vintage windows, helping with restoration projects, pushing towards more alternative agriculture, and talking up relocalization in general. I’ve referred to my general focus as Urbal Remix (urban-rural re-imagined). If you’d like to visit our website and learn more, it’s ReGroup.Farm. Thanks for reading and I really hope to hear from you.

