Decadence and its Discontents: Societies and the Temptation of Inertia
Things work, until they don’t anymore. “Things” that all purpose signifier defined for the purposes of this article as economic values, ideological precepts, business activity, the behaviors and choices on the part of consumers, the routines of life in a society of all mod cons- can work quite smoothly under the conditions of loosely regulated capitalism, in a society of affluence and a value system that encourages material success* as its own reward ; the workings of markets been constructed by those already most successful to serve the vulgar utiliarian goal of maximizing their efficiencies by following the path of least resistance. That’s what pure inertial momentum is: downhill with the brakes off. Which works for a while. And then it doesn’t.
[*including, for a self-selected group of the most wealthy, a personal agenda of increasing their accumulation of private ends of status and power, evidently becasue they’ve talked themselves into thinking that it’s the only remaining goal worth striving for. And others just squander their wealth. And some even do both.]
At least at first notice, it’s easy to prefer such an inertial status quo in any given situation, because Entropy Requires No Maintenance. Entropy is a laissez-faire process which consequently encourages two ideological illusions; first, that its easygoing lack of injunctions is an indication of benevolence; and the shadow corollary that entropy’s encroachment is inevitable, and therefore not worth the effort to resist, impede, or delay. Entropy lets you off the hook. Entropy is a champion of personal freedom that encourages people to give in. Entropy does not require that anyone clean up their dirty dishes. Or any of their other messes. Entropy works so conveniently. Until it doesn’t anymore.
Entropy can be staved off or even reversed, but rust never sleeps, and and that’s entropy for you: it doesn’t pay to slack off, or sleep on it, or to compartmentalize to avoid confronting the reality of occasional inconveniences or burdens that’s an inextricable part of assuming responsibility for the problems arising from atrophying public infrastructure, corruption, and neglect. Entropy couldn’t care less about “sustainability” or “stability”, to name only two concepts that inertial processes are simply unable to relate to. Sustainability and stability are the values of cultivation and harvest, building and shared abundance. There’s no reason for humans to serve the conditions of the market; the purpose of markets is supposed to be to serve human values. Ultimately. Who among us prefers the first condition?
As expressed in terms of capitalist values- which not only exalt but practically mandate “monetization” as the foundational economic role- the top levels of “success” consist of maximizing personal material accumulation (as measured quantitatively, as fungible assets) as fast as possible. That’s an inherently inertial process. It’s the dark matter of Objectivism. The inertial process has no interest in the properties of Negative Entropy, and it’s oblivious to the power of negentropic events and their advantages; those properties are experienced only as impediments. The humans who are most addicted to inertial material accumulation call the workings of this process the Free Market. (oh, the irony.) Their idealism views the Free Market as the de facto final arbiter of conditions on any question of material and real estate transactions.
That’s the canned newspeak point of view challenged by biologist-futurist Stewart Brand, with this little whole grain:
“Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value - the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working?”
readers, take a little time out and meditate on the question in this quote. I need a little break, may be back as soon as later tonight…
(Trust me, I’m just getting started. I plan to add on to this post as long as I have something to say on the topic- and not all of it is going to come from the same ideological framework: if you think I’m hard on obsessively hegemonic Capitalist exploitation and neglect, wait until I post my opinions on the way Inertia plays out in end-stage “no such thing as too much” command economy Socialism, and my review of the course of youthful utopian experiments…I’ll also be examining mass cultural aspects of inertia: entropy in public school curricula, the rise of aliteracy, cognitive dissonance, cultural hegemony, destructive radicalism, the emphasis on “fame”, and more. )