Canada as an island of sanity in chaos

Walter, this reminds me of “counter-factual” or “what-if” history. As Taleb argues, we play tricks on the dead (Napoleon’s definition of history) when we impost a cause-effect logic on past events that in fact were not there and only reflect the angst of our times. We select facts, which is the theme of axiology in philosophy – we seek what is of value to us.

I just finished reading The German Crisis published in 1932. An American named Knickerbocker wrote it after a year’s field study of Germany, and the last chapter includes a person interview with Hitler by the author! I read this book with the same frame of mind you suggest. Nobody in 1932 knew what was going to happen, and this is reflected in the book.

Moreover, his observations of an economy in collapse may serve as a theme, warning for us today, which also overlaps with your interest. I happened to find it by “accident” at the Canadian Bible Society thrift store in Chatham, Ontario, one of our must stops when we visit. It cost $.50, but its intellectual stimulus is worth far far more.

The seminal ideas today are Chaos Theory and Complexity, which are at the heart of Taleb. We are in effect watching the crack up of highly-centralized systems as the network logic of Internet technologies begin to reshape how things work best now. I am not saying we are going to return to a pastoral life, but we are going to Reset as Richard Florida at U of T puts it in his latest book, 2010, The Great Reset, which I highly recommend.

Here, we are watching the collapse, ongoing, of the middle class, or what is left of it. We are also moving toward institutional failure, which is a byproduct of greed and over-centralization. Dalton Camp predicted both of these trends in 1976 when I lunched with him in Kingston, Ontario after a teacher conference. He warned about the trends toward middle class collapse and institutional failure.

Thank God, in Canada, the Scottish values of hard money have prevailed to shield, buffer you from what is coming here. In fact, I keep my sanity by knowing that a place like Canada does exist. It is possible to live peacefully, productively, sanely in this world yet. Yes, it is possible. Canada is proof.

Here, we more and more have social depression on top of individual depression. We have people who cannot find work, and those who have it are more and more exploited by the system, 60’s talk there.

So, as far as your humble servant here can see, chaos and complexity are in the saddle, and what comes from this, self-organization and creative destruction, remains to be seen, but we can pick up the pieces. We will not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Humpty Dumpty is yesterday. We can invent a saner future, tomorrow