desire and others... [Archive] - Two Plus Two Older Archives

08-10-2002, 08:09 PM

Consider the logic of a simple chain letter. If I send it to 10 people, and they send it to 10 people, and so on, I should get back 1 million dollars. In other words, if I ask everyone I know for a dollar, I won't get anywhere. But, for some mysterious reason, big works. If I can launch that letter beyond the atmosphere of my own reason, it will leave the world of tragic constraints and enter the world of magic.

The miracle of economics is, essentially, an act of faith. When I step onto the train platform in the morning, I take it for granted the train will be there. When I go to the grocery store after work, I take it for granted they'll have garlic for sale. There won't be massive heaps of garlic for free, there won't be one clove in the entire city at auction for 10 million dollars, there will just be plenty to cover my need, and at a price I am willing to pay.

Even things which are right under our noses are beyond our sight, such as computers. I can't build a computer, all I can do is lay bricks. But if someone pays me money to lay bricks, into the smoke goes the money, out of the smoke comes a computer. Where do computers come from? How do they work? The invisible world can manage feats which I could not begin to tackle myself in my wildest dreams. It is superior, it is the provider, I can lean on it.

The best explanation we have for why processes which are out of our sight, seem to be so superior to anything we can build ourselves, is because somebody is in control. That person is smart. That person is generous. Sometimes, that person is vengeful. If the price of garlic goes up at the grocery store, some evil person has probably interfered with the magic. The world of magic delivers garlic, so long as no bad person interferes.

So, given the choice between taking on a task themselves, and solving it by means constrained by their own reason, people would rather appeal to God. Of the two locations where problems can be solved, out of sight and beyond comprehension seems to offer so much greater possibilities. People would take any task and move it as far away as possible, thus enabling them to do something simpler and simpler, such as lay bricks, right under their own nose.

People would prefer, that anything possible, would be solved by the world of magic, meaning by processes beyond my sight. If the government can pay for my healthcare, it will be better than if I pay for my own healthcare. If I buy stock in a company I can't see, the profit potential is unlimited. The same thing, essentially, happens at the ballot box or in the stock market, these are chances for ordinary mortals to dip their grubby possessions in the magic looking pool of the remote and abstract and unlimited.

If ancient people could have mailed money in envelopes, rather than throwing virgins into volcanoes, they would have eagerly mailed everything they had. People are actually eager to pay more taxes, they hold out hope they are sending their money to a good place. The "economy" does not mean me specifically building a product my neighbor wants. It is some abstract, remote thing, which works best if I send money to Washington, and then we'll all be paid by strangers.

Moreover, people are, by necessity, bred to follow magic reasons. We learn to wash our hands before dinner long before we learn anything about microbiology. We stop at red lights regardless of whether or not we see any cars coming the other way. We must be willing to perform rituals of all manner and scope, simply because they are called upon by The World of Magic. These rituals of faith produce far superior results to the silly market-timing ideas we invent ourselves.

And so, the surprising irony, is that the best sale comes without an explanation, and is simply delivered in a firm tone of voice. Any process with a mechanical explanation is likely to be inferior. Mechanical explanations require people to know, and to participate, and so the outcome will be as sloppy and disappointing as that time they tried to decorate their own birthday cake. The best sale says you don't have to do anything, the magic will take care of it, because I love you.

And so, to gain the support of a billion followers, willing to kill just to keep you alive, all you have to promise is to command the magic for their benefit. It is so obvious, and yet exploited by so few, that the bigger and less concrete your promise, and the further away you can promise from - the more remote and abstract you can make the dais, the scratchier the phone line you call down to people from using their own name - the more you will fit their image of God.

This runs flat counter to your instinct, learned in the personal setting of talking to someone you know, that they will want to look under the hood, to see where the strings run to. For it is precisely because you are a mortal, governed by the same constraints as they are, that your neighbors are unwilling to place faith in you. If you appear surrounded in smoke like a rock star, on a high perch, with an army of security keeping back the rabble, they will assume you are capable of anything.

They will assume you command the magic, and will be ready to receive instructions as to what inexplicable fetishistic ritual will appease the Gods of malcontent, and deliver the hoped-and-prayed-for result. But it is more important to give them hope - and guilt for less-than-perfect obedience - than to produce results. A drowning man, given reason to believe he is swimming towards the surface, will be more content, more energetic, than a man floating on a raft without purpose.

And so, given that people must believe there is a Santa Claus, or else why else do good and bad things happen, they are just begging for some superhuman to show up out of the mists, and carry their letter to the North Pole. And the only thing stopping this person from being you is your own disbelief. For you can see what they cannot, that you are just an ordinary mortal in another little sphere, and you can't see or command any further into the mists than they can. You yourself fall for the lie that someone has the power, and you know it's not you.

And so the ultimate trick is that they can never verify your point of view, and so they can never know your point of view doesn't allow you to see and command where computers come from, and the price of garlic. For the one thing they will never believe is that nobody is in control of the price of garlic. And so there is no risk that the actual person who does control the price of garlic will ever show up and expose you for a fraud, because he doesn't exist. But a power with no one weilding it is a power just waiting to be seized, no?

YFL