Bill
01-06-2009, 10:04 PM
One of the great cyberpunk sf authors - and a brilliant social analyst, as such authors often are - has something terribly sweet to say about how the bankers and consumers and captains of industry are "taking it in the neck".
I especially appreciated this sentence - "Suddenly they've got the precariousness of creatives, of the underclass, without that gleeful experience of decades spent living-it-up.".
Because I've been self-employed most of my adult life, I know the "precariousness of creatives" - and I've had an interesting life filled with adventure and love, but not so much security. Certainly nothing like the security of a corporate employee.
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/343/Bruce-Sterling-State-of-the-Worl-page01.html#post4
I'm a bohemian type, so I could scarcely be bothered to do anything
"financially sound" in my entire adult life. Last year was the first
year when I've felt genuinely sorry for responsible, well-to-do people.
Suddenly they've got the precariousness of creatives, of the
underclass, without that gleeful experience of decades spent
living-it-up.
These are people who obeyed the social contract and are *still*
getting it in the neck. The injustice of that upsets me. The
bourgeoisie who kept their noses clean and obeyed the rules, I never
had anything against them. I mean, of course I made big artsy fun of
them, one has to do that, but I never meant them any active harm. I
didn't scheme to raise a black flag and cut their throats because they
were consumers.
I even fret about the bankers. Seventeen percent of the US works in
financial services. That's a lot. I've got friends and relatives who
work in those industries. I frankly enjoy tossing myself into
turbulent parts of life, because I'm a dilettante who bores easily, but
jeez, bankers are supposed to be the ultimate humorless brown-shoe
crowd. They're not supposed to wake up on a sleeping roll and scrounge
breakfast.
If the straights were not "prone to hostility" before that experience,
they might well be so after it, because they've got a new host of
excellent reasons. The sheer galling come-down of watching the Bottom
Line, the Almighty Dollar, revealed as a papier-mache pinata. It's
like somebody burned their church.
I keep remembering the half-stunned, half-irritated looks on the
faces of those car execs when they were chided for flying their company
jets to Washington to beg. I felt sorrow for them. Truly. These
guys are the captains of American industry at the top of the food
chain. Of course they fly corporate jets. Corporate jets were
*invented* for guys like the board of General Motors. And now they're
getting skewered for that by a bunch of punk-ass Congressmen they can
usually buy and sell?
*That's* the issue at stake, a few jets? General Motors built the
aviation industry in World War II. General Motors aircraft pounded
Nazi Germany into a flaming ruin. Here they get this off-the-wall,
total-hokum act of peanut-gallery gotcha humiliation about the
corporate airplanes they've used for fifty years. That must have felt
surreal, even nauseating.
There are going to be so many nettling, humiliating experiences for
similar people, people congenitally unable to laugh at themselves and
roll with the punches. Nowhere is safe any more, not even the
mirrorglass skyscraper, not even the boardroom.
I wish I could make them feel safe, but since I've lived in parts of
the planet with no-kidding, real-deal economic collapse... I dunno,
does reading Dmitri Orlov feel safe? I love that guy's writing, I
really get it about him, but the prophets of doom have so little
comfort to offer people. Last thing I heard about Orlov the guy had
chucked it and was living on a small boat.
Orlov is that russian engineer who analyzed the USSR collapse and drew comparisons with what he suggests will happen in the US.
I especially appreciated this sentence - "Suddenly they've got the precariousness of creatives, of the underclass, without that gleeful experience of decades spent living-it-up.".
Because I've been self-employed most of my adult life, I know the "precariousness of creatives" - and I've had an interesting life filled with adventure and love, but not so much security. Certainly nothing like the security of a corporate employee.
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/343/Bruce-Sterling-State-of-the-Worl-page01.html#post4
I'm a bohemian type, so I could scarcely be bothered to do anything
"financially sound" in my entire adult life. Last year was the first
year when I've felt genuinely sorry for responsible, well-to-do people.
Suddenly they've got the precariousness of creatives, of the
underclass, without that gleeful experience of decades spent
living-it-up.
These are people who obeyed the social contract and are *still*
getting it in the neck. The injustice of that upsets me. The
bourgeoisie who kept their noses clean and obeyed the rules, I never
had anything against them. I mean, of course I made big artsy fun of
them, one has to do that, but I never meant them any active harm. I
didn't scheme to raise a black flag and cut their throats because they
were consumers.
I even fret about the bankers. Seventeen percent of the US works in
financial services. That's a lot. I've got friends and relatives who
work in those industries. I frankly enjoy tossing myself into
turbulent parts of life, because I'm a dilettante who bores easily, but
jeez, bankers are supposed to be the ultimate humorless brown-shoe
crowd. They're not supposed to wake up on a sleeping roll and scrounge
breakfast.
If the straights were not "prone to hostility" before that experience,
they might well be so after it, because they've got a new host of
excellent reasons. The sheer galling come-down of watching the Bottom
Line, the Almighty Dollar, revealed as a papier-mache pinata. It's
like somebody burned their church.
I keep remembering the half-stunned, half-irritated looks on the
faces of those car execs when they were chided for flying their company
jets to Washington to beg. I felt sorrow for them. Truly. These
guys are the captains of American industry at the top of the food
chain. Of course they fly corporate jets. Corporate jets were
*invented* for guys like the board of General Motors. And now they're
getting skewered for that by a bunch of punk-ass Congressmen they can
usually buy and sell?
*That's* the issue at stake, a few jets? General Motors built the
aviation industry in World War II. General Motors aircraft pounded
Nazi Germany into a flaming ruin. Here they get this off-the-wall,
total-hokum act of peanut-gallery gotcha humiliation about the
corporate airplanes they've used for fifty years. That must have felt
surreal, even nauseating.
There are going to be so many nettling, humiliating experiences for
similar people, people congenitally unable to laugh at themselves and
roll with the punches. Nowhere is safe any more, not even the
mirrorglass skyscraper, not even the boardroom.
I wish I could make them feel safe, but since I've lived in parts of
the planet with no-kidding, real-deal economic collapse... I dunno,
does reading Dmitri Orlov feel safe? I love that guy's writing, I
really get it about him, but the prophets of doom have so little
comfort to offer people. Last thing I heard about Orlov the guy had
chucked it and was living on a small boat.
Orlov is that russian engineer who analyzed the USSR collapse and drew comparisons with what he suggests will happen in the US.