Fractal Boy

I've always been fascinated with fractals, which are patterns that replicate themselves at different component scales. So that, say the inlets of the coast of Norway, viewed from space, resemble what you might call the "detail work"--that is, the smaller inlets on each separate fjord. Or the structures you see on a fern--say the curly cues on the leaf--at a distance of six feet, are the same structures you'll note when you view the fern leaf up close in your hand, or under a lens. Once you start noticing fractals, it's hard to stop. They transfix. They enchant: http://fractalfoundation.org/images/

It's a pet homespun theory of mine that the concept of fractals can be extended to the analysis of human behavior. Meaning this: identify any behavior of any individual human being, and you're going to find it reflected in the behavior of larger and larger human groups too, at almost every scale. Turmoil within ourselves has its parallels in relationships between spouses and partners. Feuds between individuals have their parallels in wars among clans and countries. And of course the virtues too--cooperation, generosity, good-will, mercy--are reflected upwards and downwards in scale. We even speak of nations as friends and individual human friends as allies.

So think back to the previous post, and let's put the theory to the test. Here's the nine-year-old me, expecting a great deal of juicy entertainment from a nine volt, and so desiring to have that nine-volt now, jetzt, pronto, after all why wait, why hold my horses, why defer, why suffer yearning, why pine? The question is this: can we draw a parallel between that boy in that impatient, go-cart-envisioning moment and society at large today, craving its resources and energy? Why yes, I believe we can. Although I must say I find the boy more charming. At least he can claim ignorance of the laws of thermodynamics.

By the way, I didn't get the advance. No, (sigh) what a difference just a few minutes makes sometimes. You cross the threshold of the interview room head held high and almost whistling with confidence, but exit the place like a deflated balloon. You take a chance and kiss the girl, but rats, she doesn't really kiss you back. Or you turn onto that rural road without the map, hum-de-dum just trusting to your nose; two hours later, you want to cut your nose off.  Well, that was how this nine-volt business went, I mean regarding who would advance me my capital. Not mein Volksbank. 

No, I wouldn't be given my allowance five days ahead of time on a Tuesday afternoon, said my parents.

"Why not?"

"Because allowance comes on Sundays, and if we started making exceptions we'd never hear the end of it."

"But my request is for something valid and real."

"Well I'm glad you brought that up," said my father, "because a nine-volt isn't going to be enough to run a go-cart."

"Yes it will be."

"No it won't be."

"But a car battery has twelve volts right?"

"True enough."

 "So why won't a go-cart go on nine?"

"Because there's the non-trivial matter of amps as well. It's amps times volts that equals watts, and watts is what you're most interested in when you're talking about power."

He let this little rainstorm of physics sink in, then went on with the most difficult news.

"Anyway, it's not the battery that makes the car go."

"What is it then?"

"Really it's the gas."

"Oh."

"What did you think it was?"

"I don't know. I guess it must have been dreams."

Now of course there are those who are going to say "well that's a charming story and all, but excuse me there is a real difference between the boy who wants to run a go-cart on a nine-volt, and a society that runs its transport systems and everything else on proven technologies." And okay sure, there is. Some. But I maintain that the two are not so different as we might like to believe.

The truth is that this two-hundred-year-old project that we call the modern industrial economy will not keep growing forever; the planet is a limited system and so perpetual growth is not even mathematically possible, much less practically so. Also, calling out "more more more!" louder and louder day after day, when it comes to irreplaceable resources, is both morally corrupt and stunningly irresponsible. Folks really it's time we all grew up. Time to stop demanding and expecting an advance.

It is the central conviction of this blog, that the world needs a new definition of progress: one that will look maybe to most people like regress, but no is really progress, moral adulthood, a growing up out of the perceived need for go-carts, by which of course I mean our power-hungry lifestyle heavy on the speed and the thermodynamic expectations, but also amazingly stingy with time, which is by the way the primary resource of love, in fact the only medium in which love can really be exchanged: love is to time-set-aside as waves are to water. We need a philosophy of material limits and we need to adopt it now, starting at home, with ourselves, one big change at a time. And we need to have faith that such change is possible, and not just possible, but potentially enlightening and full of visionary rewards: of work that will involve the whole of our being and resurrect in us an appreciation for the dignity of the physical body, of food that will taste like food again, of useful and beautiful things made by human hands.

So maybe you come to this blog as someone passionate about preserving the planet.

Or maybe you're someone who by choice and for a wider Simplicity's sake, stays at home with your kids, but always finds it hard when someone asks "so, what do you do?" meaning what do you do for money.

Or maybe you're a young person with no prospects for work and a lot of empty time on your hands. It seems as though the world ought to be a more promising place, but so far it's not giving off vibes of ever becoming so.

Or maybe you're living the life you always thought you wanted, but now that you've achieved it, find yourself vaguely and disturbingly disappointed. Is it the wrong stuff that you've been after?

Or maybe you're sick of the city you live in, its essential lifelessness, its sad language of sterility and loss written into every inch of its architecture and urban design, yes every vinyl drywall concrete asphalt plasticated inch of which says something trite about the great gray gods of money that care not a whit for us, no not a whit.

Welcome. And welcome to anyone at all who can imagine that simplicity and honest plain living with say vegetables and dirt and straw and cheerful catbirds and human conversations conducted free of interruptions and beeps might translate into an increased chance for human happiness; is it by the way possible that human happiness and systemic complexity may in fact be inversely related?

From the study window where I'm writing this I can look out and see a stop sign. It's bold and bright red, being reasonably new. Some drivers, when they arrive at the sign, duly note the intent of its message, and actually come fully to a stop. Others who are perhaps more impatient see the sign and slow down, but then, on noting no immediate threat from cross traffic, pretty much roll on through. Still others, it seems, just ignore the sign altogether. Do they not see it at all? Or do they just not care?

Now look to the left. That's my house. White and unassuming. Dandelions dot the yard, some of them the cheery essence of yellow and some of them white and ghostly and gone to mysterious billowy seed. It's June now and our small irises are blooming too--upright and prim. Our door is red. Come in, I'd love to talk: about creatures great and small, societies past and present, literature like slow food, and yes about dealing with hard changes we're up against at every scale, but also about all the allies that we still can rely on, oh say the sun and the sky above us for instance, and the dark rich life of the garden soil, which says to me along with Hopkins "there lives the dearest freshness deep down things" because it's true and all you have to do to see that and smell it is to dig. And of course you and I have one another too, as well as this sturdy project of conversation...

HB