If I were to have any idols, Wendell Berry would be one of the few at the top of my list. I have collected his essays over the many years, and they are a regular source of personal re-centering for me. This past year produced two collections from Berry. This volume and
Imagination in Place, which I intend to read in the next few months. The theme for
What Matters? is the economy - or, in Berry’s mind, the lack of one. Berry asserts that “our economy has become an anti-economy, a financial system without a sound economic basis and without economic virtues.” We have seen evidence of this in our lifetime - the Internet bubble, Japan’s bubble economy, Wall Street and the financial crisis. Our belief in unlimited economic growth is something Berry calls “Faustian Economics”, the title of one of his essays. I think it was Dirty Harry who said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” I recently read a
Wired article on algorithms and flash trading. I find it somewhat disconcerting that computer-aided high-frequency trading accounts for 70 percent of total trade volume, using algorithms that result in complex systems we do not comprehend and cannot predict. But that doesn’t seem to stop us from using them. During Christmas, I got
The Twilight Zone: The Complete Definitive Collection and have been watching a lot of episodes, one of which was “
Valley of the Shadow” (and looks to be on
YouTube). If you get a chance, watch the episode. I regard it as a nice parable and commentary on how we often regard technology - and, perhaps, economics.
Happy New Year!
