Abortions

I guess there's a bit of the cynic in me. Coyness, too. I like to think that I am a genuinely optimistic person, with loads of faith in some things: the "laws" of science, that people will do the right thing (provided "the right thing" is perfectly circumscribed, known to them, within their purview, and not in conflict with some other "right thing"), that there is meaning in what seems so meaningless. But as with religious faith, I have no proof or evidence which could ground my faith with solid foundations. I guess that's okay, because that's what faith is after all: willingness to accept/believe things not in evidence.

The cynic in me sees all of the occasions upon which people did not do the right thing; the cases where the laws of science simply didn't govern, or were wrong, or just by application somehow made things worse; and those times when no amount of trying could find meaning hidden in the seemingly random, cold exercise of the forces around us. Furthermore, the cynic in me sees opportunity in these failings. In the first place, an opportunity to make things better just by helping to clarify what we mean by "the right thing" and how to go about doing said thing. In the second place, by looking at what we know and how we know it, and by asking when we revisit our thinking on that. In the third, by taking these things altogether and asking what "meaning" could "mean", if not somehow related to our experience, even if that experience is often qualified as enduring the meaningless machinations of a universe we don't understand, or can't understand.

The end result of our continued struggle to manage these paradoxes is what I mean by the term "abortions"--not the termination of a pregnancy via medical intervention. We have a tendency to see the "either/or", to laud the good and reject the bad, to admire those who succeed and disregard those who fail. Why? Well, obviously success feels a whole lot better for the most part. But we create these narratives that end up marginalizing the actual experiences of almost all of us, much of the time. The experience of not quite getting what we wanted or expected. The choices which turned out to be much worse than anticipated. The roads that led to dead ends. And the sad thing about disregarding these kinds of events is that they are far more determinate of eventual success than our past success. What happens when we didn't get what we wanted? What choices do we make after making bad ones? What does the road out from a dead end look like?

There are days when life seems full of promise, and others when it seems like what's left from an aborted suicide. It hasn't killed me, I haven't killed myself... now what? This may not sound very uplifting, but I don't intend to focus on why I ought to kill myself (or you yourself), but rather on the "now what?" And frankly, I cannot listen to the radio in the car anymore without wondering these kinds of things. The "science" of economics has failed us utterly, by failing first to answer the question about meaning. And today's journalism somehow doesn't ask that question either.

As if hourly reports on the number of new jobless claims, coupled with government pronouncements and stupid political ads could do anything other than make it harder to find the "meaning".