Critical Mass: A Wake Up Call

It's a shame that most people will not read the book Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another by Philip Ball. In essence it's an antidote to media hype and academic air-spinning, a physics-based approach to social science capable of emancipating the individual and seeing with our eyes wide open.

The desire to simplify for the sake of analysis - to categorize, if you will - explains to a large extent why the human race has survived. Yet too often, our categorization contradicts the essence of how things are.

For example, our binary approach to science (empirical or rational); our metaphysical dichotomies (Darwinism or God); and friction-less utopian assumptions (economics), still bitterly divide us.

In truth, we are both made and simultaneously make ourselves. We are free to be who we are while, at the same time, are subject to inexorable laws.

Choice and certainty are both part of the same package.

Even if things are going to end up in a foreseen manner (e.g., death, taxes), we can't be sure just where along the path we are at any given moment. Just as snowflakes conform to mathematical laws, so too humans, each unique as individuals but, as a general population, often predictable.

In this way, even the logic of game theory becomes no more than an expendable tool in the shadow of ideology. Why? Because people turn things and ideas to their advantage. Isn't that part of our nature? 

As Napoleon Bonaparte once said: "all great captains have performed vast achievements by conforming to the rules of nature -- by adjusting efforts to obstacles". In the same way, all great thinkers must test their ideas by adjusting to how things really are. 

But they often don't. As Mr. Ball puts it: "Once we acknowledge the universality displayed in the physical world, it should come as no surprise that the world of human social affairs is not necessarily a tabula rasa open to all options"

In sum, this book may help liberate readers from "the propensity for linear thinking and to encourage a greater sophistication in their perception of cause and effect".

Which is exactly what we need, now more than ever.
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Filed under  //   economics   philosophy   physics   social science  

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The Poor Taxista

In Polanco along Mazarik, I climbed into a taxi driven by a diminutive man resembling an Indian of the lowest caste with wide creases in his face and ragged clothes. If he wasn't driving the taxi I'd have mistaken him for a homeless person.

It was before 8 am on a Sunday morning, and as I settled into the back seat, he began talking with quiet urgency about how the rich suffered and how things flow in cycles. Imagine an impoverished man talking about the ebb and flow of wealth at 8 am in the morning!

I tried changing the conversation, but he always turned it back to the wealthy. At the corner of Reforma and Río Tiber, he pointed to the front entrance of the St. Regis, the newest (and perhaps most exclusive) residential development in the city.

"What will happen if they can't fill up this place?" he asked, almost to himself.

As he spoke I peered at his reflection in the rear view mirror. I asked him about his childhood.

"Oh yeah, my boss had it tough alright..., my dad left when I was 2," he said. "I remember how it felt when I had to leave my friends at school". His "boss" couldn't afford to eat without removing her kids from elementary school, so he and his siblings did hard labor each day for 12 hours. "I started when I was about 7," he said. "And I've been working all day ever since".

Although in his 50's, he appeared much older, with deep creases in his forehead and practically no teeth, a thinker without education, reflecting calmly on the trials and tribulations of the well-to-do.

I looked down at my clothing: worn denims, a Levi's shirt, faded sneakers.

We met in Polanco, the swanky part of town. He spoke to me with calm intensity, broken in body but lucid in mind.

As I left the taxi, I couldn't help but remember a Buddhist phrase about cycles of "conditioned existence"; about people who understand the noble truth that causes both suffering and the way leading to its end. 

Somehow this poor man - in his own fashion - had discovered the way out. 

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Filed under  //   economics   Mexico   society   spirituality  

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Mexico's internal consumption to hit lows in 2010
via eluniversal.com.mx

As another confirmation of the long-standing idea that when America sneezes, Mexico catches pneumonia, the Mexican business association of Mexico State (AIEM) believes that Mexican spending on goods and services in 2010 shall fall between 3% and 20%.

Surely the Mexican authorities share a fair share of the blame, as they were much too slow to react to the greatest global recession in 50 years. But no worries... most of these high-flyers and bureaucrats are immune to the recession's devastating effects. For ordinary Mexicans, however, it's a different story.

Cuevas Dobarganes, VP of the Ecatepec region, recently commented that "if people aren't buying now, it's because they're out of work, earn less or have decided (as a precautionary measure) to spend less". In his view, this diminished spending shall severely affect the internal market.

"While businesses can expect lower sales, consumers shall be forced to pay higher prices, as establishments begin to charge more money to cover operational costs."

During 2009, the worst hit sectors included automotive, construction and furniture manufacture, which sustained losses up to 80%. In 2010, tourism-related businesses such as hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues shall be most affected. 

The Mexican people once again must bear the brunt of its leaders' mistakes. 

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Filed under  //   business   consumption   economics   Mexico  

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I'm a professional residing in Mexico City. These are some thoughts about life in a big Latin American metropolis.