Murmuration
On last week's podcast, Duncan and I yakked about an important concept introduced by Nicole Foss at The Automatic Earth
blog site. This concept was "the trust horizon," which outlines how
legitimacy is lost in the political hierarchy. That is, people stop
trusting larger institutions like the federal or state government and
end up vesting their interests much closer to home. Thus, life
de-centralizes and becomes more local by necessity. Your own trust
horizon extends only as far as other persons, businesses, institutions,
and authorities immediately around you - the banker who will meet with
you face-to-face, the mayor of your small town, the local food-growers.
At the same time, distant ones become impotent and ludicrous - or
possibly dangerous as they flounder to re-assert their vanishing
influence.
It is obvious that we are in the early stages
of this process in the USA (and Europe), as giant institutions such as
the Federal Reserve, the Executive branch under Mr. Obama, the US
Congress (the ECB), the SEC, the Department of Justice, the Treasury
Department, and other engines of management all fail in one way or
another to discharge their obligations.
The people of
the USA, having been let down and swindled in so many ways by the
people they placed their trust in, and even freely elected, appear to
be in a daze of injury. Maybe this accounts for the obsession with
zombies and persons drained of blood - who yet seem to carry on normal
lives (at least in TV shows). This odd condition is best defined by the
familiar cry from non-zombies: "where's the outrage?" Which brings me
to today's point.
Investment guru James Dines introduced another seminal idea on Eric King's podcast
last week. Dines's work over the years has focused much more on human
mob psychology than technical market analysis - which he seems to
regard as akin to augury with chicken entrails. Dines now introduces
the term "murmuration" to describe the way that rapid changes occur in
the realm of human activities. The word refers to behaviors also seen
in other living species, such as the way a large flock of starlings
will all turn in the sky at the same instant without any apparent
communication. We don't know how they do that. It seems to be some kind
of collective cognitive processing beyond our understanding.
Dines goes on to suggest that the political stirrings and upheavals
of the past year represent an instance of human "murmuration" that will
lead to even greater epochal changes in geopolitical and economic life.
Now, I've often said 1) history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes [thank
you, Mark Twain], and 2) that these times are like the 1850s. To be
more precise today, these two concepts of "the trust horizon" and
"murmuration" point to a moment in time that I believe we are now
rhyming with: the revolutions of 1848 and the events that grew out of
it.
The spring of that year was an inflection point when
discontent over the changes sweeping through European society broke
into open insurrection in France, Prussia, Austria, Italy, Poland,
South America, and other places all seemingly at once - despite the
absence of television and the internet. However, the upheavals of 1848
occurred not long after the first practical installation of a telegraph
line from Annapolis, Maryland, to Washington, DC (and then in Europe).
It was also a time when the first railroad networks were linking up.
In February that crucial year, the liberal "Citizen King"
Louis-Philippe of France was driven off the throne after an
18-year-reign characterized by tranquility and prosperity compared to
the decades that preceded it. In March, street protests and violence
spread through the grab-bag of kingdoms, dukedoms, and obscure
principalities (Prussia... Saxony... Hesse... Fulda...) that would
eventually make up the super-state of greater Germany. The Austrian
empire began its slide into senility as its constituent states rioted.
Even the people in Switzerland went batshit. And so on. Enter, stage
left, Marx and Engels with a new political theory, for the excellent
reason that the industrial revolution was reaching its stride and the
conditions of daily life were changing very rapidly. Country people
left farms for factory jobs all over the continent, and the ill-effects
of the new wage-slavery drove them into solidarity. The uproar of 1848
was widespread and left many changes in its wake. But it was short and
it produced odd instances of right-wing reaction.
In
France, for instance, Louis-Philippe was sent packing (to England), and
a new republic was established - but the president it elected was
Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Louis Napoleon who, in a matter of months
declared himself president-for-life, and then Emperor. He was not at
all a bad ruler, as things turned out. Among other achievements, he
presided over the massive physical renovation of Paris that produced
the "city of light" beloved today. But he was driven off his throne
twenty-odd years later from the ill effects of the opera bouffe known
as the Franco-Prussian War.
In any case, the main point
is that so many people across a continent got the same idea in the
first weeks of a particular year, and then set about expressing
themselves violently. More to my point is how things worked out in
America. You have no doubt realized by now that there was no uprising
in the USA in 1848 (though we did prosecute a war with Mexico). Yet, in
the best Fourth Turning sense of history, a new generation had
come of age and was producing the revolution in ideas that included
Emerson and Thoreau's Transcendentalism, and the abolition movement,
dedicated to ending slavery. This combination of broadly-held
idealistic notions boiled away for another decade and led to the
"mumuration" that precipitated the biggest bloodbath of the civilized
world in the 19th century: the American Civil War. The Revolution of
1848 expressed itself most horrifically in the place that thought
itself most specially insulated from its effects.
Hence, when you read an idiot such as Paul Krugman in Monday's New York Times
Op-Ed kindergarten, prating on the end of hard times in the USA,
swallow a good half-pound of kosher salt. James Dines is right, a great
human "murmuration" is underway, vibrating like a bass chord through
bodies politic all over the world. Wait until you see what breaks loose
at the Democratic and Republican conventions later this year.
