A fine graduate student of mine at SUNY-ESC, Mitchell Belgin, sought to make this very substantial comment recently, but the system's character limits prevented him from doing so. Mitchell then emailed me the missive directly. I have chosen to post the entire comment as a Guest Posting, and I will address the key issues in a subsequent posting. Note that I have adopted the convention of using only first names, but in this case his authorship of so substantial a comment suggests a surname is also appropriate.
Comment by Mitchell Belgin:
The discussion parameters of altruism and egoism bring immediately to mind the polar economic ideologies of communism and capitalism. As history has shown us, the ‘altruism’ of pure communism readily brings about (at least until the present) dictatorships, and not benign ones, either of individuals or of bureaucratic entities, whereby the good intentions become hell quite quickly. As well, that ‘altruism’ has thus far produced little empathy to the ‘fate’ of our planet. Capitalism, on the other hand, brings about egoistic entities whose sole purpose is to create profit from labor and resources, responding to environmental and health issues only when those issues are threatening the profits of the entity. Judicial and regulatory apparatus are in place to varying degrees in nation states to regulate those behaviors. In the present world economy, the ability to regulate transnational corporations is constantly being addressed, while global hegemonies and monopolistic practices as well as intellectual theft still go on quite rampantly. At the very least, attempts are made to rein them in. Socialistic democracies have paved a path to this altruism, but they are often in countries with basically mono-tribal dominant cultures (e.g., Sweden, Denmark). Welcome to the USA my friends, we got issues here. And guess what, they’re starting to get them there (again) too. The Nazi era could be thought of as just another of Europe’s ethnic cleansing wars. It’s easy to wish well for your countrymen when you think they’re somehow related to you. That isn’t exactly the case in other important locations, thence the problem with world government.
In the gulf between these two extremes we find ourselves attempting to find a way to develop a world economic order that can address the perilous issues we face as humans have brought humans to the edge of calamity, perhaps with the help of some mold and fungus. I refer to the 5/25/09 New Yorker article “The Sixth Extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert. As Kolbert points out, we may simply be the carriers of our own downfall, as we inadvertently transport mold and funguses into virgin territories as we expand our traveling capacity vectors and continue to invade the world’s habitats. Curiously, she points to the prime carriers of this mold as doctors, an extreme example of the law of unintended consequences.
As poignant is the inability to adjust ourselves to evidence that contradicts our assumptions and vested views. Many other logic of failure symptoms are exposed. We presently find ourselves in another extinction of sorts, whereby a chain of ‘brilliant’ fools in a chain of linked economic hedging megaliths played liars poker until the house could no longer back its stakes. Malcolm Gladwell’s recent New Yorker article “Cocksure” (7/27/09) http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/07/27/090727fa_fact_gladwell points again to the familiar theme of hubris, but as well elucidates the issues of the necessity of hubris in the world of finance.
In my recent class (Failures and Crises) with Dr. Fortunato, we read several books that exposed the chain of behaviors in failure. I posed in my papers that the one issue I did not see mentioned was narcissism, not merely as a psychological trait, but as part of a range of personality disorders, thus pathologies, that infect the structures of our economies. Gladwell touches on the issue of psychology as a missing topic when discussing corporations-- I agree. We are also missing in this altruism versus egoism discussion the issue of power- a necessary but potent issue, at the root of all psychology in my opinion, and the question of how to direct it in a socially beneficial way. As we see from John Cayne’s example, we send a bigoted narcissistic ‘killer’ (albeit an economic killer) to lead a corporation. How can we expect ‘good’ corporate behavior from that? Clearly we are at a brink, and we wonder if perhaps a benevolent dictator could do the trick. That problem of benevolence and dictatorship, however, is a doozey. It begins with people, homo-sapiens, in groups with other homo-sapiens. It is psychological, it needs therapy, and it is analogous to mature adulthood and the psychiatric socialization steps involved. And yet, as Leonard Cohen sang 15 years ago, “Democracy is coming to the USA!” He sang, I think, in jest, but perhaps he was a fortune teller. On the other hand, the hour is getting late.
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