A lot of people think the economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006) was a god. In his lifetime he was viewed as the god of the free market. His economic theories were adopted by, to name a few, Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the U.S. Those economies, like may others, found new life with some of his suggestions, like those of monetary policy, tax cuts and privatization.
What first brought Friedman to prominence, and won him the Nobel Prize in Economics (1976), was his theory in monetary policy. He believed that the proper control of the money supply was the fundamental key to a healthy economy and a stable world. Good monetary policy was the key to keeping down inflation, an occurrence that has in the past caused great hardship and instability in many nations. Friedman's fame grew from his theory that if the U.S. had controlled its currency better during the Great Depression that event may not have happened. Likewise, it is believed that if Germany after WW1 had not printed money like crazy in order to fulfill the financial demands put on it by its vanquishers, it wouldn’t have descended into the economic abyss it did, making it ripe for a despotism like Hitler.
My thoughts are that we learn from experience. So I think one should take Friedman's idea, that the Great Depression could have been prevented if the U.S. had only managed its currency better, with caution and skepticism. What Friedman suggested is that the U.S. and others, in the 1920's and 30's, had the wherewithal to be good monetarists, but failed to act so. However, I think they had no such wherewithal in those days because people back then were still inexperienced in such matters, as in prudent monetary policies. Nevertheless, people still insist on transposing the knowledge we have today on a less sophisticated world of the past. I mean, sure, with the knowledge we have today we probably could have prevented WW1 or WW2. But that was a different world, absent of the knowledge and the dynamics we have today.
Friedman's policies have railed against socialism. Now, I am no socialist but I have socialist tendencies, like the belief in universal and state run health systems. Such coverage can lift an anxiety of people’s shoulders which potentially can free people to function better. And by what I see in the countries that do have it, for the most part, the practice of medicine works better than in the US and the costs are lower, and life expectancy is longer. I thus believe in a mixed economy in which aspects of capitalism and socialism are mixed and balanced off against each other. And this type of governance is what is spreading around the world, including in the U.S., albeit kicking and screaming all the way. After all, universal health care is one way to help balance the inequalities that the broader economy generates.
I appreciate and believe in some of Milton Friedman's ideas. And they would probably all work if conditions were perfect. One thing he did believe is that if you have a free and open market the facts and information about it should also be free and accessible. This is something that did not occur during the 'subprime market' in mortgages of the past decade. The information and facts surrounding subprime loans and their derivatives were not open to scrutiny and were dishonest. Many of the facts and realities about the subprime market and their 'toxic assets' were manipulated and hidden by Wall Street. This was the major reason for the financial calamity we have today, chiefly due to a lack of transparencies in the mortgage lending practices of the last decade.
Friedman realized that a measure of regulations and consumer protections had to be in place to keep markets honest, fluid and mutually beneficial. He knew that unfettered market on their own were not the 'hole grail' because of their potential for human abuses. This is something the Bush administration failed to see in its unquestioning acceptance of laissez faire, unfettered markets. As a consequence that unquestioning acceptance seriously destabilized the US economy due to the administration's blind faith that the free market on its own, with as little interference from government as possible, can solve society's major problems. (So blinded by faith was George W. Bush that he really didn't understand what went wrong.)
Milton Friedman's fundamental policies in the wrong hands have incurred a naive and reckless approach to economic activity. They have also encouraged abuses. But he would be the first to recognize that's what comes with the territory due the natural capacity to do wrong and get things wrong. Oh, if only we could hear from him today.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
Parsimony
In his article "Parsimony (In as few words as possible)", issue 81 of Philosophy Now, Toni Vogel Carey, wonders if nature loves simplicity. I'm sure it does, like any enterprise does, especially at the beginning when it's essential.
In business, particularly at the beginning, it is essential to be parsimonious. It helps keep one in business. There is an axiom we've all heard: If you take care of the pennies the dollars (pounds) will look after themselves. In other words, parsimony and taking care of the nominal stuff is an initial, important step in business.
There is a saying, Don't sweat the details. But that would be like not being parsimonious or taking care of the nominal stuff. Before one can have the luxury of not sweating the details one has to first make sure the details are looked after and are in place. After a business has taken off and started to succeed then one can stop sweating the details and pennies, but never take your eye of the ball, as the saying goes.
However, there is a balance involved. For instance, if one remains too parsimonious and frugal in business, as Adam Smith cautioned against, one will stifle development and growth. So one has to learn how to keep parsimony in the background while learning to spend and take risks so that the business grows. Nevertheless, parsimony should remain a core issue.
If one examine any entity, whether in nature or in business, there is always a simple, parsimonious beginning. But there is a paradox. The option is not to remain simple and parsimonious. In order to survive and continue we must become complex and create intricate systems.
The opposite to parsimony is excess. Ironically, parsimony can has its own excess. For example, a simplistic, parsimonious mindset can lead to the excesses of fundamentalism and extremism, as we've seen with religions.
In business, particularly at the beginning, it is essential to be parsimonious. It helps keep one in business. There is an axiom we've all heard: If you take care of the pennies the dollars (pounds) will look after themselves. In other words, parsimony and taking care of the nominal stuff is an initial, important step in business.
There is a saying, Don't sweat the details. But that would be like not being parsimonious or taking care of the nominal stuff. Before one can have the luxury of not sweating the details one has to first make sure the details are looked after and are in place. After a business has taken off and started to succeed then one can stop sweating the details and pennies, but never take your eye of the ball, as the saying goes.
However, there is a balance involved. For instance, if one remains too parsimonious and frugal in business, as Adam Smith cautioned against, one will stifle development and growth. So one has to learn how to keep parsimony in the background while learning to spend and take risks so that the business grows. Nevertheless, parsimony should remain a core issue.
If one examine any entity, whether in nature or in business, there is always a simple, parsimonious beginning. But there is a paradox. The option is not to remain simple and parsimonious. In order to survive and continue we must become complex and create intricate systems.
The opposite to parsimony is excess. Ironically, parsimony can has its own excess. For example, a simplistic, parsimonious mindset can lead to the excesses of fundamentalism and extremism, as we've seen with religions.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
"Economics Does Not Lie"
There's an intriguing thought: Economics doesn't lie.
Such was the topic of an article written by economist Guy Sorman in the summer of 2008 in “City Journal”, a conservative quarterly magazine about urban affairs. It was written prior to the financial crisis that began to unfold later that year. Was it a coincidence that it was written just before the crisis or was it meant to be a warning about what was to come?
I’d say it was more a coincidence because it didn’t foretell anything about the looming crisis. In fact, it ignored and even praised many of the economic, laissez faire activities that were responsible for the greatest recession America has experienced since the Great Depression. So it got me thinking, how did economics not lie in this instance?
I'm not saying that the discipline of economics lies. On the contrary: basically it tells the truth. It’s built on natural law and reason. I know, for instance, that free market economics is far more truthful than the planned economics of communism and totalitarian states, which are easily manipulated. However, people can still make a liar out of the free market just by not telling the truth about what’s going on. It’s made a liar when it isn’t transparent, such as happened with the opaque transactions that led to the crash of 2008. It lies when it isn’t held accountable, when the rules and regulations are deliberately flouted and ignored. Those lies gave us the greatest economic turmoil in memory. Eventually, though, the chickens came home to roost. In the end market economics freed itself from those lies and told us the truth, that the crisis was a consequence of many questionable and unethical practices. Economics teaches us to be thrifty and good managers. Sadly, though, those prerequisites and truths were lost on many who should have known better, like the bankers and politicians.
One of Sorman’s heroes is Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate in economics who truly believed in the free market. But Friedman believed that if a free market was going to function optimally and truthfully information about business had to be transparent and up front. If business dealings are not open to scrutiny, cheating and lying are more likely to take place. Nevertheless, that’s what happen during the years building up to the financial/economic crisis of 2008. Information was withheld from investors, information that could have prevented or at least tempered the crash. Information was withheld was about ‘toxic’ assets pertaining to questionable financing. Duplicitous assets were hidden in derivatives that were then sold to unsuspecting investors. To further compound the lies, those dubious investments were approved by the very rating agencies that were meant to keep tabs on the financial industry. If Friedman were alive today he would be appalled at the breaches of trust and lies told to unsuspecting investors.
Though it was due to a combination of events, the ‘housing bubble’ was the chief culprit of the economic crisis of 2008, the economics of which represented a catastrophic lie. The bursting of the housing bubble had a devastating ripple effect on all sectors of the economy, leaving banking, the core of an economy, especially vulnerable. And there were plenty of lies to go around, encouraged by fees, greed and poor monitary policy. People deceived themselves in thinking that the price of houses would keep going up indefinitely. Mortgage brokers lied when they made loans to people they knew couldn’t afford them. Ironically the loans were nicknamed ‘liar loans’ because they were based on, what else, lies. The mortgage brokers lied when falsifying documents about the credit worthiness of borrowers. Many borrowers lied about their incomes, as to whether they could afford the monthly payments or not. Each party suspected that the other was lying but the practice continued. And to further compound the lies, these liar loans were deliberately camouflaged and bundled up with healthier securities by Wall St. brokerage houses in the form of derivatives and then sold to unsuspecting investors. To add insult to injury, and more lies, these derivates were given AAA rates by supposedly independent credit agencies like Standard & Poor and Moody’s, companies that were literally working both sides of the street. Their behavior amounted to crony capitalism, which constituted another massive lie and a major threat to the free market.
The Attorney Generals of all fifty US states tried to put an end to the lies. They knew about the liar loans and their potentiality for economic disaster. They wanted to protect consumers from the predatory loans that were being made by mortgage companies and banks knowingly for the profits they generated. But the Bush administration blocked them from implementing such laws because it interfered with a major Bush agenda, an agenda to expand the ownership of homes. It was a veiled, clumsy attempt to enrich the middle class as it had done for the rich with a tax cuts. For all its good intentions, Bush’s dreams for an expanded ‘ownership society’ was predicated on a political ideology equivalent to a house built on sand. Oh, there were economists who warned about this policy but were roundly dismissed as killjoys.
In his article Sorman says that economics is no longer just theory but is now an actual science. (Being a science should have made it more truthful.) As he explained, we have learnt so much from past economic experience that the world can now depend on and ensure itself reasonable economic stability. Economists have developed models and equations that show precisely how the fundamentals work, that there is a certainty in economic outcomes. So what happened that we are now facing one of the greatest economic crises to hit modern civilization? What happened to the science we were supposed to have learned from, the science that was supposed to offset the lies?
What happened is that even though economics may not lie, humans still do. Humans still cheat and cut corners. Human are fallible and that fallibility can negatively impact economic outcomes if not kept in check. That’s why over the years, having gained a lot of experience about our weaknesses and less than truthful natures, we have formulated regulations and backup system to minimize and fend off economic disasters like the one we are experiencing today. Experience gave economics its status of science. But along the way, somehow, mostly due to political ideology, faith and hubris, the science and experience that we learned over the time was discarded in a matter of years, giving the world the economic crisis of 2008, the likes it hasn’t seen in some time.
Such was the topic of an article written by economist Guy Sorman in the summer of 2008 in “City Journal”, a conservative quarterly magazine about urban affairs. It was written prior to the financial crisis that began to unfold later that year. Was it a coincidence that it was written just before the crisis or was it meant to be a warning about what was to come?
I’d say it was more a coincidence because it didn’t foretell anything about the looming crisis. In fact, it ignored and even praised many of the economic, laissez faire activities that were responsible for the greatest recession America has experienced since the Great Depression. So it got me thinking, how did economics not lie in this instance?
I'm not saying that the discipline of economics lies. On the contrary: basically it tells the truth. It’s built on natural law and reason. I know, for instance, that free market economics is far more truthful than the planned economics of communism and totalitarian states, which are easily manipulated. However, people can still make a liar out of the free market just by not telling the truth about what’s going on. It’s made a liar when it isn’t transparent, such as happened with the opaque transactions that led to the crash of 2008. It lies when it isn’t held accountable, when the rules and regulations are deliberately flouted and ignored. Those lies gave us the greatest economic turmoil in memory. Eventually, though, the chickens came home to roost. In the end market economics freed itself from those lies and told us the truth, that the crisis was a consequence of many questionable and unethical practices. Economics teaches us to be thrifty and good managers. Sadly, though, those prerequisites and truths were lost on many who should have known better, like the bankers and politicians.
One of Sorman’s heroes is Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate in economics who truly believed in the free market. But Friedman believed that if a free market was going to function optimally and truthfully information about business had to be transparent and up front. If business dealings are not open to scrutiny, cheating and lying are more likely to take place. Nevertheless, that’s what happen during the years building up to the financial/economic crisis of 2008. Information was withheld from investors, information that could have prevented or at least tempered the crash. Information was withheld was about ‘toxic’ assets pertaining to questionable financing. Duplicitous assets were hidden in derivatives that were then sold to unsuspecting investors. To further compound the lies, those dubious investments were approved by the very rating agencies that were meant to keep tabs on the financial industry. If Friedman were alive today he would be appalled at the breaches of trust and lies told to unsuspecting investors.
Though it was due to a combination of events, the ‘housing bubble’ was the chief culprit of the economic crisis of 2008, the economics of which represented a catastrophic lie. The bursting of the housing bubble had a devastating ripple effect on all sectors of the economy, leaving banking, the core of an economy, especially vulnerable. And there were plenty of lies to go around, encouraged by fees, greed and poor monitary policy. People deceived themselves in thinking that the price of houses would keep going up indefinitely. Mortgage brokers lied when they made loans to people they knew couldn’t afford them. Ironically the loans were nicknamed ‘liar loans’ because they were based on, what else, lies. The mortgage brokers lied when falsifying documents about the credit worthiness of borrowers. Many borrowers lied about their incomes, as to whether they could afford the monthly payments or not. Each party suspected that the other was lying but the practice continued. And to further compound the lies, these liar loans were deliberately camouflaged and bundled up with healthier securities by Wall St. brokerage houses in the form of derivatives and then sold to unsuspecting investors. To add insult to injury, and more lies, these derivates were given AAA rates by supposedly independent credit agencies like Standard & Poor and Moody’s, companies that were literally working both sides of the street. Their behavior amounted to crony capitalism, which constituted another massive lie and a major threat to the free market.
The Attorney Generals of all fifty US states tried to put an end to the lies. They knew about the liar loans and their potentiality for economic disaster. They wanted to protect consumers from the predatory loans that were being made by mortgage companies and banks knowingly for the profits they generated. But the Bush administration blocked them from implementing such laws because it interfered with a major Bush agenda, an agenda to expand the ownership of homes. It was a veiled, clumsy attempt to enrich the middle class as it had done for the rich with a tax cuts. For all its good intentions, Bush’s dreams for an expanded ‘ownership society’ was predicated on a political ideology equivalent to a house built on sand. Oh, there were economists who warned about this policy but were roundly dismissed as killjoys.
In his article Sorman says that economics is no longer just theory but is now an actual science. (Being a science should have made it more truthful.) As he explained, we have learnt so much from past economic experience that the world can now depend on and ensure itself reasonable economic stability. Economists have developed models and equations that show precisely how the fundamentals work, that there is a certainty in economic outcomes. So what happened that we are now facing one of the greatest economic crises to hit modern civilization? What happened to the science we were supposed to have learned from, the science that was supposed to offset the lies?
What happened is that even though economics may not lie, humans still do. Humans still cheat and cut corners. Human are fallible and that fallibility can negatively impact economic outcomes if not kept in check. That’s why over the years, having gained a lot of experience about our weaknesses and less than truthful natures, we have formulated regulations and backup system to minimize and fend off economic disasters like the one we are experiencing today. Experience gave economics its status of science. But along the way, somehow, mostly due to political ideology, faith and hubris, the science and experience that we learned over the time was discarded in a matter of years, giving the world the economic crisis of 2008, the likes it hasn’t seen in some time.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Chicago -Toronto
Chicago-Toronto
I took a walk around the neighborhood this morning. It was a gloriously rich morning with not a cloud in the shy. I walked through the University of Toronto campus. It remained me of a walk I had through the University of Chicago campus last year. One could say that the Chicago campus is more beautiful. But it is miles away from the center of the city. Toronto’s campus is right in the middle of the city. It is more accessible to city folk like me. To get to the U of C from the city center one either needs a car or has to take the train. One, though, could walk the distance, as I did one hot Sunday we were there, the day of the Chicago Marathon on October 8, I believe. That was a long, hot walk.
Toronto has the distinction of being the condominium (condo) capital of North America. Buildings have been going up like crazy. As I walked around the neighborhood this morning I pasted three condo projects in the works. That was within a small radius. If I expanded my radius just a bit more I would have included four more projects. And within the last couple of years at least another five new condos had been completed in the vicinity. One of the developments almost nearing completion is the Four Season Hotel/Condominiums, a fifty-two story elegant glass skyscraper. Its penthouse recently sold for an astonishing 28 million dollars. Another project just about ready to get under way is a 70 story building at the main intersection of Yonge and Bloor. This development was originally slated to start in 2008 but was canceled because of the global financial crisis of that year. That project was financed by Lehman Brothers, an investment bank that when belly up in September 2008.
In contrast, Chicago has not faired so well in its building projects due to the financial crisis. Another reason could be is that it had already been over built. One notable project that was canceled was the Spire, a 2000 feet skyscraper on the waterfront. When there I remember seeing the huge hole that was to be its foundation. Recently, though, the Trump Tower in Chicago was complete. It is now the second tallest building in the city, at 90 stories. Toronto too will soon have its own completed hotel/condo Trump Tower at about 57 stories high, located in the financial district.
We visited Millennium Park in Chicago. A major attraction in the park is a steel sphere-like sculpture, which you can walk inside and under. It is intriguing because once inside it you can see yours and everybody else’s reflection on its shiny metal ceiling. Looking at it from outside it looked like a helmet. It reminded me of Darth Vader’s helmet in the Star War movies. Millennium Park is built on reclaimed land, reclaimed from railroad lands and parking lots. The railroad and the station are now beneath it. It has really revitalized the area and the city. Toronto has a similar revitalization going on with the reclaiming of old railway lands near Lake Ontario for development of condominiums, parks and entertainment facilities.
I decided to walk the distance from Millennium Park to the University in the south Chicago. Walking the distance was an eye opener. I started it just as the marathon was winding down. The Park was inundated with runners who had just finished the race. In my walk I went through multiple neighborhoods. One of the most dramatic things I saw was the convention center, McCormick Place, the largest convention center in the United States and surely North America. Its size was unbelievable. I also went through some well-to-do districts and some not so well-to-do districts. The contrasts in neighborhoods is something we don’t see in Toronto.
I reached Hyde Park, the area in which the U of C is situated, about two and a half hours later. We were staying with a friend who had located there from Toronto. We were spending our Canadian Thanksgiving weekend with her. The other day I was walking through the Annex area of Toronto, which is situated quite near the U of T, and I had memories of Hype Park in Chicago. Both areas are similar, well manicured and inhabited by intellectuals and professionals.
Chicago and Toronto are similar in may ways. Both names are derived from native Indian words. They are both Great Lake cities. They both lost in their bids to host the Olympics. They both had Great Fires that destroyed much of their city centers. Both are major transportation hubs for air and rail traffic. Because of their railroads both are large, pivotal freight distribution centers. Apart from being two great university towns they are both great cultural centers. Both cities at one time had the similar moniker of ‘hog town’.
Chicago has one thing Toronto never had, a famous gangster, Al Capone. Chicago is famous and notorious around the world because of Capone, probably the most famous gangster in the world. I don’t think Toronto has anything to match that notoriety. However, one area Toronto beats Chicago in is theater. Toronto is the third largest theater production center in the world, next to New York and London. And Toronto does have the famous CN Tower and a sports arena with a retractible roof, build side-by-side on former railway land.
I took a walk around the neighborhood this morning. It was a gloriously rich morning with not a cloud in the shy. I walked through the University of Toronto campus. It remained me of a walk I had through the University of Chicago campus last year. One could say that the Chicago campus is more beautiful. But it is miles away from the center of the city. Toronto’s campus is right in the middle of the city. It is more accessible to city folk like me. To get to the U of C from the city center one either needs a car or has to take the train. One, though, could walk the distance, as I did one hot Sunday we were there, the day of the Chicago Marathon on October 8, I believe. That was a long, hot walk.
Toronto has the distinction of being the condominium (condo) capital of North America. Buildings have been going up like crazy. As I walked around the neighborhood this morning I pasted three condo projects in the works. That was within a small radius. If I expanded my radius just a bit more I would have included four more projects. And within the last couple of years at least another five new condos had been completed in the vicinity. One of the developments almost nearing completion is the Four Season Hotel/Condominiums, a fifty-two story elegant glass skyscraper. Its penthouse recently sold for an astonishing 28 million dollars. Another project just about ready to get under way is a 70 story building at the main intersection of Yonge and Bloor. This development was originally slated to start in 2008 but was canceled because of the global financial crisis of that year. That project was financed by Lehman Brothers, an investment bank that when belly up in September 2008.
In contrast, Chicago has not faired so well in its building projects due to the financial crisis. Another reason could be is that it had already been over built. One notable project that was canceled was the Spire, a 2000 feet skyscraper on the waterfront. When there I remember seeing the huge hole that was to be its foundation. Recently, though, the Trump Tower in Chicago was complete. It is now the second tallest building in the city, at 90 stories. Toronto too will soon have its own completed hotel/condo Trump Tower at about 57 stories high, located in the financial district.
We visited Millennium Park in Chicago. A major attraction in the park is a steel sphere-like sculpture, which you can walk inside and under. It is intriguing because once inside it you can see yours and everybody else’s reflection on its shiny metal ceiling. Looking at it from outside it looked like a helmet. It reminded me of Darth Vader’s helmet in the Star War movies. Millennium Park is built on reclaimed land, reclaimed from railroad lands and parking lots. The railroad and the station are now beneath it. It has really revitalized the area and the city. Toronto has a similar revitalization going on with the reclaiming of old railway lands near Lake Ontario for development of condominiums, parks and entertainment facilities.
I decided to walk the distance from Millennium Park to the University in the south Chicago. Walking the distance was an eye opener. I started it just as the marathon was winding down. The Park was inundated with runners who had just finished the race. In my walk I went through multiple neighborhoods. One of the most dramatic things I saw was the convention center, McCormick Place, the largest convention center in the United States and surely North America. Its size was unbelievable. I also went through some well-to-do districts and some not so well-to-do districts. The contrasts in neighborhoods is something we don’t see in Toronto.
I reached Hyde Park, the area in which the U of C is situated, about two and a half hours later. We were staying with a friend who had located there from Toronto. We were spending our Canadian Thanksgiving weekend with her. The other day I was walking through the Annex area of Toronto, which is situated quite near the U of T, and I had memories of Hype Park in Chicago. Both areas are similar, well manicured and inhabited by intellectuals and professionals.
Chicago and Toronto are similar in may ways. Both names are derived from native Indian words. They are both Great Lake cities. They both lost in their bids to host the Olympics. They both had Great Fires that destroyed much of their city centers. Both are major transportation hubs for air and rail traffic. Because of their railroads both are large, pivotal freight distribution centers. Apart from being two great university towns they are both great cultural centers. Both cities at one time had the similar moniker of ‘hog town’.
Chicago has one thing Toronto never had, a famous gangster, Al Capone. Chicago is famous and notorious around the world because of Capone, probably the most famous gangster in the world. I don’t think Toronto has anything to match that notoriety. However, one area Toronto beats Chicago in is theater. Toronto is the third largest theater production center in the world, next to New York and London. And Toronto does have the famous CN Tower and a sports arena with a retractible roof, build side-by-side on former railway land.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Frankenstein
I started reading Mary Shelley’s gothic classic Frankenstein for the first time on a cruise ship we boarded in Barcelona. At the time we were bound for Tenerife in the Canary Islands. In a wine museum on the island I discovered that Mary’s future husband, poet Percy Shelley, had visited there. I was aroused by the connection and wondered how many others there might be.
Mary Shelley was the daughter of Mary Wollestonecraft, a famous philosopher and feminist who advocated women’s equality late in the 18th century, a person I had read and written something about.
In the introduction to this edition of the novel Wendy Lesser explains that the name Frankenstein may have been derived from two German words, frank — which in English means giving currency to, and stein - which means stone. So the name, I am thinking, comes from the idea of giving life to an inanimate object with a galvanizing currency of electricity. (The ‘en’ was probably added to make the pronunciation easier.) As Lesser added, Shelley was fascinated with lightening storms. But that doesn’t explain how Shelley herself came upon this name. Perhaps she was influenced by the knowledge that Benjamin Franklin at the time was experimenting with electricity. Perhaps the first draft of the title might have been ‘Franklinstein’. Subsequently, though, I discovered from a Google search that Frankenstein was the name of an aristocratic German family whose ruined castle Shelly used to pass on her way home. The name literally means stones of the Franks, people who had settled in Germany after the decline of the Roman Empire.
The electricity/stone explanation reminded me of something I had learned earlier, an idea that the physicist Niels Bohr introduced, the complementarity principle. My first introduction to this principle was furnished by none other than a stone and someone explaining that when a stone becomes other than an inanimate objected and useful, like a door stop or a weapon, it’s due to a complementarity or supplementary action. In the case of the motionless mass that Frankenstein’s monster was, it was given life and currency by the complementarity of an electric current.
It’s not easy to understand what motivated Mary Shelley to write a book about a monster. Lord Byron, a close friend, suggested she write a ghost story. She said she was inspired by a dream. But perhaps it had to do more with the times, a time in which science's progression was outstripping human knowledge and wisdom to handle it, a lack that at times ended up with disastrous consequences. Nevertheless, it is astonishing that a nineteen year old girl, when she started it, could have image and written such a story. (Somewhere it is said that Byron ran out of the room screaming when he read it.)
The science Mary Shelley had Victor Frankenstein preform in her novel would today be called pseudo-science or junk science. It was science fiction (the first of its kind), because it was impossible and could not achieve reality or sustainability. However, it did have a legitimacy about it. In a sense it laid out a dangerous scenario for humankind if it continued to tinker with things and combination of things ( playing God) it had no understanding or mastery of . Since then civilization has witnessed many instances of Frankenstein-like human constructs that have had disastrous consequences, both abstract and physical.
It was pointed out that Frankenstein is a novel devoid of strong women. That is especially interesting in the fact that it was written by the daughter of an important feminist. All the women in it are passive. Like sometimes happens a quirky thought came to mind: Perhaps there was a hidden meaning here, portent to the future, about the monstrous consequences to the world’s order if feminism were to flourish. (Conversely, if equality were denied women no doubt it would be a more monstrous world.)
From the outset the word Frankenstein became a metaphor for freaky occurrences and jarring changes to the order of things. Today we talk about things like Frankenfood, which is genetically modified food, a modification not unlike Frankenstein’s monster. Metaphysical events that have defied explanation and rationalization, like the attacks on 9/11, often summoned Frankenstein type explanations. The financial crises the world experienced in 2008 was a product of weird Frankenstein-like financial derivations.
I was coincidentally remained by a friend of an architectural style known as Brutalism, a subcategory of Modernism that came into prominence in the 1960s and 70s. Today architects and observers alike are running away from this style because it doesn’t bowed well with today’s sensibilities about design. Its appearance conveys an architecture of bigness, large proportions and brutality. I was struck by a similarity with the monster I was reading about, that people are shunning architectural brutalism today in the same way that they were shunning and running away from the brutalism of Frankenstein’s monster.
Frankenstein is a novel with many story lines. That’s probably what made it the sensation it became, because it offered many overlapping narratives of life. One of them, often hidden, is about the paradoxical nature of life — its simultaneous beauty and ugliness, good and evil, meaningfulness and meaninglessness. The monster was sensitive to both, simultaneously experiencing the creative and destructive aspects of life, which he saw in himself and had difficulty reconciling . The monster’s predicament is emblematic of life and the world. Perhaps Shelley was genetically disposed to understand the paradox because of her mother’s situation in which she was a feminist but couldn’t live independently of a man because she needed one to survive.
I imagine that Shelley also wrote this book to show what she had learned from reading science and the world’s great literary works. But she may also have written it the way she did to provoke empathy, her point being, even though one is disfigured or different from others, like the monster was, that doesn’t mean one doesn’t have feelings or shouldn’t be treated with respect and dignity. The “Hunchback of Notre Dame” was another novel that elicited empathy in much the same way.
Since I found and read this book onboard ship I thought I should make a connection between the two. It’s not an aesthetically pleasing one but neither was the appearance of Frankenstein’s monster. Nor is it a very kind one. Nevertheless, here goes: As I looked around the ship I saw people that looked disfigured and moved awkwardly like the monster did, mostly because of their age. I thought about the modified bodies many of the passengers had, like Frankenstein’s monster, with alien parts like artificial hips, refurbished knees and transplanted organs.
I am surprised that Shelly didn’t give the monster a name. That explains why all these years it has been erroneously called Frankenstein. I also pondered a subject Shelley omitted that I thought might have made the monster a little more human. She never mentioned his bodily functions.
Mary Shelley was the daughter of Mary Wollestonecraft, a famous philosopher and feminist who advocated women’s equality late in the 18th century, a person I had read and written something about.
In the introduction to this edition of the novel Wendy Lesser explains that the name Frankenstein may have been derived from two German words, frank — which in English means giving currency to, and stein - which means stone. So the name, I am thinking, comes from the idea of giving life to an inanimate object with a galvanizing currency of electricity. (The ‘en’ was probably added to make the pronunciation easier.) As Lesser added, Shelley was fascinated with lightening storms. But that doesn’t explain how Shelley herself came upon this name. Perhaps she was influenced by the knowledge that Benjamin Franklin at the time was experimenting with electricity. Perhaps the first draft of the title might have been ‘Franklinstein’. Subsequently, though, I discovered from a Google search that Frankenstein was the name of an aristocratic German family whose ruined castle Shelly used to pass on her way home. The name literally means stones of the Franks, people who had settled in Germany after the decline of the Roman Empire.
The electricity/stone explanation reminded me of something I had learned earlier, an idea that the physicist Niels Bohr introduced, the complementarity principle. My first introduction to this principle was furnished by none other than a stone and someone explaining that when a stone becomes other than an inanimate objected and useful, like a door stop or a weapon, it’s due to a complementarity or supplementary action. In the case of the motionless mass that Frankenstein’s monster was, it was given life and currency by the complementarity of an electric current.
It’s not easy to understand what motivated Mary Shelley to write a book about a monster. Lord Byron, a close friend, suggested she write a ghost story. She said she was inspired by a dream. But perhaps it had to do more with the times, a time in which science's progression was outstripping human knowledge and wisdom to handle it, a lack that at times ended up with disastrous consequences. Nevertheless, it is astonishing that a nineteen year old girl, when she started it, could have image and written such a story. (Somewhere it is said that Byron ran out of the room screaming when he read it.)
The science Mary Shelley had Victor Frankenstein preform in her novel would today be called pseudo-science or junk science. It was science fiction (the first of its kind), because it was impossible and could not achieve reality or sustainability. However, it did have a legitimacy about it. In a sense it laid out a dangerous scenario for humankind if it continued to tinker with things and combination of things ( playing God) it had no understanding or mastery of . Since then civilization has witnessed many instances of Frankenstein-like human constructs that have had disastrous consequences, both abstract and physical.
It was pointed out that Frankenstein is a novel devoid of strong women. That is especially interesting in the fact that it was written by the daughter of an important feminist. All the women in it are passive. Like sometimes happens a quirky thought came to mind: Perhaps there was a hidden meaning here, portent to the future, about the monstrous consequences to the world’s order if feminism were to flourish. (Conversely, if equality were denied women no doubt it would be a more monstrous world.)
From the outset the word Frankenstein became a metaphor for freaky occurrences and jarring changes to the order of things. Today we talk about things like Frankenfood, which is genetically modified food, a modification not unlike Frankenstein’s monster. Metaphysical events that have defied explanation and rationalization, like the attacks on 9/11, often summoned Frankenstein type explanations. The financial crises the world experienced in 2008 was a product of weird Frankenstein-like financial derivations.
I was coincidentally remained by a friend of an architectural style known as Brutalism, a subcategory of Modernism that came into prominence in the 1960s and 70s. Today architects and observers alike are running away from this style because it doesn’t bowed well with today’s sensibilities about design. Its appearance conveys an architecture of bigness, large proportions and brutality. I was struck by a similarity with the monster I was reading about, that people are shunning architectural brutalism today in the same way that they were shunning and running away from the brutalism of Frankenstein’s monster.
Frankenstein is a novel with many story lines. That’s probably what made it the sensation it became, because it offered many overlapping narratives of life. One of them, often hidden, is about the paradoxical nature of life — its simultaneous beauty and ugliness, good and evil, meaningfulness and meaninglessness. The monster was sensitive to both, simultaneously experiencing the creative and destructive aspects of life, which he saw in himself and had difficulty reconciling . The monster’s predicament is emblematic of life and the world. Perhaps Shelley was genetically disposed to understand the paradox because of her mother’s situation in which she was a feminist but couldn’t live independently of a man because she needed one to survive.
I imagine that Shelley also wrote this book to show what she had learned from reading science and the world’s great literary works. But she may also have written it the way she did to provoke empathy, her point being, even though one is disfigured or different from others, like the monster was, that doesn’t mean one doesn’t have feelings or shouldn’t be treated with respect and dignity. The “Hunchback of Notre Dame” was another novel that elicited empathy in much the same way.
Since I found and read this book onboard ship I thought I should make a connection between the two. It’s not an aesthetically pleasing one but neither was the appearance of Frankenstein’s monster. Nor is it a very kind one. Nevertheless, here goes: As I looked around the ship I saw people that looked disfigured and moved awkwardly like the monster did, mostly because of their age. I thought about the modified bodies many of the passengers had, like Frankenstein’s monster, with alien parts like artificial hips, refurbished knees and transplanted organs.
I am surprised that Shelly didn’t give the monster a name. That explains why all these years it has been erroneously called Frankenstein. I also pondered a subject Shelley omitted that I thought might have made the monster a little more human. She never mentioned his bodily functions.
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