Another one bites the dust

Note: this picture of Wu has nothing to do with the subject at hand. I just thought it was cool.

These are tough times for true believers in the cult of the market god, although not quite as tough as one might expect if the moral arc of the universe really did bend toward justice.

(As far as I can tell, that arc tends towards randomness most days.)

We've seen the spectacle of Wall Street Masters of the Universe begging for the Visible Hand of government to rescue them from the Invisible Hand of their moribund deity.

Another sacred relic that has taken a few hits lately is the idea of humans as homo economicus, which is sort of a profit seeking organic bipedal calculator. He/she has shown up in many places in economic theory although not so much in the real world. Here's one definition from John Stuart Mill:

“a being who inevitably does that by which he may obtain the greatest amount of necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries, with the smallest quantity of labour and physical self-denial with which they can be obtained.”

While Mill used that purely as a model, it caught on and has become a tenet of prominent schools of economic ideology. As a recent article in Business Week put it,

This 19th-century concept, embedded in classic economic theory and still embraced today, rests on two assumptions about human nature. The first is that individuals are only motivated by self-interest; the second is that we're all rational decision-makers.

More and more scientific research suggests that humans are more like sentimental monkeys who can talk than organic calculators that can walk.

After all, the human brain wasn't manufactured from the top down; it grew from the ground up. First came the brainstem that we share with reptiles, then the limbic system that we share with mammals. Our enlarged cerebral cortex is, if you'll pardon the expression, an afterthought.

Real people have all kinds of motives, such as the desire for status, respect, fairness, honor, compassion, sex, love, fun, excellence, a good fight, knowledge, or any number of things. Don't take my word for it--just take a good look at human history. As Pascal said,

The heart has reasons that reason knows not of.

IN THE SPIRIT OF FAIR PLAY, if the idea of homo economicus has taken a hit, so has the idea of the Noble Savage. This item shows that chimp-like bonobos, sometimes viewed as a peace-loving paleo-vegan primates, have been discovered hunting and eating monkeys.

SPEAKING OF EATING. Here's a long one by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma (which, by the way, is a good book if you haven't tried it) on the politics of food.

THE WISDOM OF CROWDS? This item discusses the psychology of financial panics.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The bed of Odysseus

Odysseus and Penelope by Francesco Primaticcio (1563), courtesy of wikipedia.

Along with links and comments about current events, the ongoing theme at Goat Rope for quite a while now has been the Odyssey of Homer. El Cabrero is striving mightily to wind it up but it takes a while to stop at train or turn a ship around. I'm trying though.

Whatever else you can say about Odysseus, as strange as it may seem he really did have a loving bond with his wife Penelope. This is true despite his 20 years of wandering and the occasional dalliance with a goddess or two. After all, he gave up Calypso's offer of immortality to go home to her.

One symbol of the power of that bond is the story of their bed. Toward the end of the epic, Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, gradually reveals himself to his family and faithful servants. It's hard to tell when the recognition occurred since they are all operating under stress from the threat of more than 100 insolent suitors. It's sort of a game of classics geeks to speculate about what did Penelope know and when.

Penelope in particular is skeptical of anyone who claims to have knowledge of Odysseus after many years of lies and rumors. She also fears being deceived by someone who claims to be her husband. When at last they talk, she pretends to doubt him, which leads him to protest

"Strange woman! So hard--the gods of Olympus
made you harder than any other woman in the world!
What other wife could have a spirit so unbending?
Holding back from her husband, home at last for her
after bearing twenty years of brutal struggle."

As a way of giving him a final test (or of just messing with him), she asks the maid to move their bed so that the stranger can sleep on it--alone.

Now here's the thing about that bed. It is absolutely immovable by any mortal, have been built around the stump of an olive tree. He is devastated at the thought that anyone could have moved it:

"Woman--your words, they cut me to the core!
Who could move my bed? Impossible task,
even for some skilled craftsman--unless a god
came down in person, quick to lend a hand,
lifted out with ease and moved it elsewhere.
Not a man on earth, not even at peak strength,
would find it easy to prise it up and shift it, no,
a great sign, a hallmark lies in its construction."

With that, she knows she's got her man:

"...now, since you have revealed such overwhelming proof-
the secret sign of our bed, which no one's ever seen
but you and I and a single maid, Actoris,
the servant my father gave me when I came,
who kept the doors of our room you built so well...
you've conquered my heart, my hard heart, at last!"

The goddess Athena even gives the couple a special break:

She held back the night, and night lingered long
at the western edge of the earth, while in the east
she reined in Dawn of the golden throne at Ocean's banks.
commanding her not to yoke the windswift team that brings men light...

They had a lot of catching up to do. The lengthened night gave them time to love, talk and sleep.

There are some powerful images in the Odyssey, like Penelope's loom, and this is one of them. The image of this immovable bed symbolizes a deep bond between a couple that not even the ravages of the years can uproot. You don't see a whole lot of that these days.

OH GOOD. The US lost 159,000 jobs in September, the biggest loss since March 2003, according to this Jobs Byte from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

ON A SIMILAR NOTE, this snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute looks at trade deficit related job losses in 2007.

HOMO ECONOMICUS don't live around here.

WAKE UP. Here's an item on the medical utility of mindfulness meditation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED