The disruption of routines is a guide to the things I am most worried about. Without the routines as railings, I’m walking along the edge of a canyon and periodically looking down. The river has made the canyon pretty grand, and one doesn’t truly come to understand one’s relationship with the entire cliff’s face and the view of the bottom until there isn’t a railing and there’s a little bit of a breeze. My canyon has been carved by value. Each of the permutations was a snowmelt upriver, a rainy season: being valued by others, valuing myself, valuing abstractions (like time), valuable habits, the Financial Times, “values”, scare quotes (and valuable/value-less fear). Geological time has been accelerated by my intimate relationship with value and in just under thirty three years (plot point for those of you who value time) I’ve carved (and had carved in front of me) an enormous gap in the earth.
It’s precisely the reason I’m constantly talking shit about economics and economists: I’m a dyed-in-the-wool economist. Show me a problem and I’ll map out a solution that maximizes the value of whichever subject. I’ll even stir in the even more pernicious behavioral economics and talk about confirmation bias. I’m always looking for “better” infrastructure that might take into account the tendencies and narratives and needs of humans in a given context and create a more caring, thoughtful, and joyful society. Classic economist stuff. Sure, I think GDP is just about the silliest thing since sliced bread (tearing fresh bread is magical). But so do most economists these days. I get excited about insurance for economist-ish reasons. Doughnut Economics is the best book I’ve read recently. And I can’t stop thinking about whether my ways of living will result in high levels of utility for myself and others. And wondering if I should pick a different society to live in, with a more personally resonant culture, and higher levels of government and private decency; the picture of Albert O. Hirschman’s economic-thinking-Exiter.
I’ve seen my shadow. But I’m not going back into my hole. I’m learning loyalty and voice (do read Hirschman’s book). I’m learning to understand the history of my learning and understanding (and understanding that “learning to understand” is not as ridiculous as it appears). I’m still completely addicted to strategy games, corporate strategy, and stochastic route-finding on foot & bicycle. And even when I’m on a break from corporations and watching the flowers grow in springtime, the foxes play in the fields, and the birds flying & dancing, I’m wondering how I might become more aware to make the experience more valuable. The principle of survival of the fittest dies hard, particularly when one has read far too many biographies (self-constructed availability bias echo chamber development is my specialty).
I’m hiking to the bottom of the canyon, and I’m bringing my kayak. The value river must end at the ocean. I’ll see you on the open water.
Roman Ryan 