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On Making Things Up
May. 11th, 2013 05:54 pmA friend of mine recently pointed me to this TAL podcast on the invention of money. Its most important topic, which I plan to ignore in almost all of this post, is coverage of how the Federal Reserve, without printing a single scrap of paper, created 1.25 trillion dollars - $1.25 million million, $180 for every human being on the planet - without receiving any media coverage. I'm more interested in the first half, where Ira and company explored the creation of money as an imaginary thing that we make up and pretend has value.
The example they covered was Brazil, which transitioned from a dysfunctional currency inflating out of control to a virtual currency to an actual currency again. There's no such thing as "money" in abstract. There is only a collection of numbers that people agree have value because they can trade the numbers for things they want. Money has no proper existence; it relies on our faith to make it work. That's true whether you think of money as numbers in a spreadsheet or collections of paper or representative of metals like gold or silver.
It's not just money that wouldn't exist without our efforts. We make up a lot of things, either so society can work, or to explain things, or to guide our actions. For instance:
Clearly, just because something is made up, doesn't mean it's bad or useless or dishonest. It does mean we have to be aware that there may be circumstances when it breaks down, and we have to be open to polishing or fixing it. So when I say as an atheist that I think religions (organized or disorganized, high or low faith) are things we've made up, I don't claim that religion poisons everything. I do think treating any particular expression of faith or religiosity as sacred is about as wise as taking the first or second draft of a story and insisting it's absolutely perfect the way it is.
Because that's the thing about our fictions - and remember, "fiction" isn't a synonym for "lie" - there are always limits to how much we can trust them, how useful they will be. Money is indispensable for everyday life, but currency fails when inflation or deflation rates get too high. Corporate personhood is getting us into trouble in that our elected representatives tend to represent corporations more than flesh-and-blood people. Human rights don't protect North Koreans in death camps. Lord of the Rings is a deep and layered story, but you will never find Aragorn's bones, nor find Moria, nor recreate the wizardry of Gandalf and pre-fall Saruman. And even if you believe in God or gods, you can't talk to them like you can talk to people, and you can't predict their actions like you could a person's.
Figuring out how to use our fictions wisely is one of the most important challenges we face.
The example they covered was Brazil, which transitioned from a dysfunctional currency inflating out of control to a virtual currency to an actual currency again. There's no such thing as "money" in abstract. There is only a collection of numbers that people agree have value because they can trade the numbers for things they want. Money has no proper existence; it relies on our faith to make it work. That's true whether you think of money as numbers in a spreadsheet or collections of paper or representative of metals like gold or silver.
It's not just money that wouldn't exist without our efforts. We make up a lot of things, either so society can work, or to explain things, or to guide our actions. For instance:
- Our legal system depends on legal fictions that we just make up in order to keep things running smoothly.
- Mathematical logic is a collection of rules we've made up to try to explain why math works.
- Human rights don't really exist. The U.S. and to an extent the U.N. use them as shorthand for "If you abuse your people, we'll kill your leaders and replace your government, at least if you have valuable resources." Don't get me wrong, it's good that we do that, in theory anyway - the practice is often messier. Governments shouldn't oppress their people, and "human rights" is the explanation we've constructed to justify taking military actions when they do.
Clearly, just because something is made up, doesn't mean it's bad or useless or dishonest. It does mean we have to be aware that there may be circumstances when it breaks down, and we have to be open to polishing or fixing it. So when I say as an atheist that I think religions (organized or disorganized, high or low faith) are things we've made up, I don't claim that religion poisons everything. I do think treating any particular expression of faith or religiosity as sacred is about as wise as taking the first or second draft of a story and insisting it's absolutely perfect the way it is.
Because that's the thing about our fictions - and remember, "fiction" isn't a synonym for "lie" - there are always limits to how much we can trust them, how useful they will be. Money is indispensable for everyday life, but currency fails when inflation or deflation rates get too high. Corporate personhood is getting us into trouble in that our elected representatives tend to represent corporations more than flesh-and-blood people. Human rights don't protect North Koreans in death camps. Lord of the Rings is a deep and layered story, but you will never find Aragorn's bones, nor find Moria, nor recreate the wizardry of Gandalf and pre-fall Saruman. And even if you believe in God or gods, you can't talk to them like you can talk to people, and you can't predict their actions like you could a person's.
Figuring out how to use our fictions wisely is one of the most important challenges we face.
