I must tell you about the extraordinary vacation I had in February. For openers, it was extraordinary because I did something I said I would never do, go to the Caribbean. Why I never wanted to go there is because I am not a sun worshipper or one to sit around the pool. Anyway, I went to the island of Tobago.
English friends who have been going there for years finally persuaded my wife and I to holiday there. We first arrived in Trinidad and then had a four-hour layover before we continued on our journey to Tobago. I arrived grumpy at our final destination because of the long journey, the lack of sleep and our having to wait for our room. However, the grumpiness soon went as I became acclimatized to the place.
While on vacation I happened to read something about Karl Marx. I tend to search for connections between the things I experience simultaneously. In this case I was searching for a connection between Marx and the surroundings I was in. The connections I made made my vacation more extraordinary and memorable.
Marx was a utopian. The setting I was in seemed utopian to me. Marx believed that the recognition and emancipation of the proletarian - the common workingman, would lead to a utopia. According to Marx, the proletariat's struggle with its opposite, the bourgeoisie, for better pay and working conditions, would lead to a utopia. My feeling was that this vacation spot, Kariwak Village, was populated by the proletarians Marx believed one day would be liberated and become equal to the bourgeoisie. In fact, the proletariat bad become like the bourgeoisie, now also having the money to afford extended vacations in far away places.
The day before we arrived Freddy Laker had died. I read his obituary in The Times, which our friends brought from London. Almost instantly I made a connection between him and this holiday retreat, and also between him and Marx. He was deeply connected with this time and place. Moreover, perhaps he was the one most responsible for the sustainability of this place. You see, he is the one who really made air travel affordable to the masses and the proletariat so they could vacation in such places.
Laker convinced governments to deregulate the airline industry, thus bringing about lower airfares. Lower air fares to such destinations as Tobago also had its Marxist liberating effect on the people that lived in them. It helped bring employment and opportunities to the local people who otherwise wouldn't have them. As The Times put it, Laker saw himself as the champion of the 'forgotten man'. In that thinking he was not only a capitalist but also a true Marxist. Marx would have applauded his helping to emancipate the proletarians and his treating them better and as equals to the bourgeoisie.
Besides there being a connection between Laker and Kariwak there is also a coincidence. Laker's low priced airline, the first in the world, started in 1977. Kariwak Village was started in 1977. It's as though something was in the air; as if they anticipated each other. It's as though the founders of Kariwak sensed a growing need for destinations like theirs. It's as though Laker sensed a growing need for ordinary people to get to vacation spots like Kariwak. Both enterprises were preparing for a growing travel surge, from a public that had more leisure time and money to spend. Both needed the other to succeed. Laker supplied the low airfares and the Kariwaks of the world supplied the destinations.
Kariwak Village considers itself a holistic center. I am one who thinks in holistic terms about the world. Marx was a holistic thinker also, thinking of the world as one. He anticipated globalization and proletarians around the world thinking alike. The tourism that sustains the Tobagos and the Kariwaks of this world is truly a phenomenon of globalization
Our hostess and one of Kariwak's cofounders, Cynthia, is not only gracious but is also a holistic person. If she wasn't I don't think she could or would have envisioned such an enterprise, which require holistic thinking and many different components to succeed. When I mention the connections I had made she looked at me in puzzlement. However, I think I convinced her that all three players I have mentioned are connected, that all are part of the larger scheme of the world, one of globalization and interconnectedness. All have helped facilitate this holistic process.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Does it Matter?
John Maynard Keynes, perhaps the most celebrated economist of our time, once said something to the effect that “in the end it doesn’t matter because we are dead”. He may have said that as an after thought when he was explaining to governments how they could improve their economies. What he meant by that statement is that in the scheme of things it doesn’t real matter what we do to improve our situation because in the end we are dead and we wont know the difference. Nevertheless, I found it an extraordinary thing to say because it does matter what we do while we are alive. And he knew it. Talk about being paradoxical.
What Keyens said makes sense on one level, that in the end it doesn’t really matter. We all understand that. But what about in the interim, before we die, while we are alive? At some point it may not make a difference to the world when we die or whether we accomplish anything. But what about the future and the next generations? I think it makes a difference whether we leave this world with a working legacy or not? So in the end it does matter.
What made me think of Keynes statement is my own writing and whether it matters if I write or not. Who cares? Well, I care. Perhaps it may not mean anything to anyone else whether I write or not or what I write about. Why I write is because I am interested in developing ideas and discussing things that aren't generally thought about. In doing so I can see an enhancing process in me, one which parallels an enhancing process that occurs in society as it does its business and discusses things. What I am trying to say here is that the essence of life is in the doing. So what Keynes said, if taken too literally, is counter productive.
I can’t remember the name of the book, but it is a book that basically said the same thing I said above, that the essence of life is in the doing, in remain engaging and pushing the envelope. The author of this book wrote that when societies work to increase economic production and strive to expand thier lot in life, societies tend to improve and advance. Some might argue the opposite, that expanding our economic capacity and individual wealth, instead, creates more problems for society, like further ruining our environment, creating material shortages and spawning new social ills, rather than advancing us.
The idea that society becomes worse off because of economic expansion and because of our striving for more material wealth was questioned by Julian Simon. He was an optimist. However, as an economist he was also a realist. A colleague of his explained that Simon “believed that the world needs problems because they make us better. Problems make us better off than if they had never occurred.” Simon's conclusion fits right in with my theory that we develop through perverse means. If things were always right, humans wouldn't have to struggle or do anythings. The essence of living is in the doing and resolving, more so than in the final outcome.
Here is one example of Simon's optimism and his not being wrongheaded. In 1980 he bet a group that in ten years the commodity prices of five metals would be below where they were then. During the decade that followed the world's population grew by 800 million, the greatest increase in history, and the store of metals didn't get any larger. And economic production grew during that time. Yet in 1990 the price of those metal dropped by more than half. Shortages and escalating prices brought about a positive effect, conservation, innovations and alternatives. This example turns Malthusian theory on its head, which believed, some 250 years ago, that Civilization would not be here today due to it not being able to sustain itself because of its growing population and increasing consumption of dwindling resources.
I am sure Simon would agree with the author above, whose name I can’t remember, that the expanding of economic activity is good for us because it engages us in new ways, with new problems that require new problem solving. The knowledge gained in one area, like economics, has a way of finding its way to other areas of life, translating itself in other social areas, overall expanding and improving our management and communications skills.
What Keynes said has sort of a defeatist attitude about it. By thinking that way, that in the end it doesn’t matter, because we are dead, sends out a negative signal, like what’s the point of living or trying to resolve problems. I am still puzzled by what he said. However, I think he said it partly in jest and partly in the fact that he knew he was dying.
What Keyens said makes sense on one level, that in the end it doesn’t really matter. We all understand that. But what about in the interim, before we die, while we are alive? At some point it may not make a difference to the world when we die or whether we accomplish anything. But what about the future and the next generations? I think it makes a difference whether we leave this world with a working legacy or not? So in the end it does matter.
What made me think of Keynes statement is my own writing and whether it matters if I write or not. Who cares? Well, I care. Perhaps it may not mean anything to anyone else whether I write or not or what I write about. Why I write is because I am interested in developing ideas and discussing things that aren't generally thought about. In doing so I can see an enhancing process in me, one which parallels an enhancing process that occurs in society as it does its business and discusses things. What I am trying to say here is that the essence of life is in the doing. So what Keynes said, if taken too literally, is counter productive.
I can’t remember the name of the book, but it is a book that basically said the same thing I said above, that the essence of life is in the doing, in remain engaging and pushing the envelope. The author of this book wrote that when societies work to increase economic production and strive to expand thier lot in life, societies tend to improve and advance. Some might argue the opposite, that expanding our economic capacity and individual wealth, instead, creates more problems for society, like further ruining our environment, creating material shortages and spawning new social ills, rather than advancing us.
The idea that society becomes worse off because of economic expansion and because of our striving for more material wealth was questioned by Julian Simon. He was an optimist. However, as an economist he was also a realist. A colleague of his explained that Simon “believed that the world needs problems because they make us better. Problems make us better off than if they had never occurred.” Simon's conclusion fits right in with my theory that we develop through perverse means. If things were always right, humans wouldn't have to struggle or do anythings. The essence of living is in the doing and resolving, more so than in the final outcome.
Here is one example of Simon's optimism and his not being wrongheaded. In 1980 he bet a group that in ten years the commodity prices of five metals would be below where they were then. During the decade that followed the world's population grew by 800 million, the greatest increase in history, and the store of metals didn't get any larger. And economic production grew during that time. Yet in 1990 the price of those metal dropped by more than half. Shortages and escalating prices brought about a positive effect, conservation, innovations and alternatives. This example turns Malthusian theory on its head, which believed, some 250 years ago, that Civilization would not be here today due to it not being able to sustain itself because of its growing population and increasing consumption of dwindling resources.
I am sure Simon would agree with the author above, whose name I can’t remember, that the expanding of economic activity is good for us because it engages us in new ways, with new problems that require new problem solving. The knowledge gained in one area, like economics, has a way of finding its way to other areas of life, translating itself in other social areas, overall expanding and improving our management and communications skills.
What Keynes said has sort of a defeatist attitude about it. By thinking that way, that in the end it doesn’t matter, because we are dead, sends out a negative signal, like what’s the point of living or trying to resolve problems. I am still puzzled by what he said. However, I think he said it partly in jest and partly in the fact that he knew he was dying.
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