The Art of Economics

More and more I think about the grossly misperceived art form of economics. Some folks believe economics is a precise science of money, governed by mathematical formulas, the furthest opposite of art they could possibly imagine. They forget that ultimately all science is a form of art, and when science forgets that, it just becomes tyrannical nonsense.

I'm deliriously happy to see that top drawer economists Joseph Stiglitz and Jeff Madrick apparently agree with me. They did a teach-in for the Occupy Wall Street movement over last weekend. Stiglitz said "We have too many regulations stopping democracy and not enough regulations stopping Wall Street from misbehaving." Although what I'd rather see than more regulations is just remove the money and let the traders instead spend their time gambling with paint and clay and stuff like that.

The ancient Greek word roots that eco- and -nomics come from mean "home management" or "dwelling place law" so the word really means study of the fundamental laws of sharing our beloved planet with all life forms. That requires a very high level of art skills. Money is not the measure, it's just a lubricant. Wall street, where this lubricant is slung around at excessively high speed, is a very slippery place.

One slippery idea is that the only healthy economy (personal or national) is one in which money is constantly growing. Such an economy just skids the rich into being richer, the poor poorer, and our shared air and water dirtier and scarcer on a global scale. I'm all for growth economies if something else besides that slippery lubricant is what's growing. Things like fairness, intelligence, creativity, ability to care, diverse kinds of identity, rewarding relationships, and knowledge of what is needed to preserve good things of this planet for our descendants. These are characteristics recommended for the President's Cabinet that I've redesigned, in the Appendix to my book. In my opinion that would provide the only growth economy that could really help preserve for us a healthy range of art resources, over the long term.

Science as Art

In the news last week was an announcement that physicists at CERN’s huge particle accelerator in Switzerland believe they have observed neutrinos exceeding the speed of light by about 60 billionths of a second, in traveling about 730 miles. Theoretically since 1905, light speed, 186,282 miles per second, has been the limit. With such a rift looming within accepted science, of course this announcement is provisional and the team is asking other physicists to test their results.

Well! I’m always thrilled when a sacred tenet of science is jostled on its pedestal, suggesting that science after all is the art of discovering really new stuff, rather than being a repository of unchangeable fact. After all it is a form of art, not art’s opposite.

In the 1960s and 70s, for seventeen years my life was entangled with that of an astronomer whose colleagues were leading physicists of the time. On hearing I was a sculptor, some of these esteemed beings would volunteer their opinion that science is actually a branch of art. Some would even encourage my inclinations toward trampling in their fields. So I take great pleasure in expressing my opinions about this new violation of the rules, for if the CERN observation is confirmed, it might open windows for some ideas proposed in my Artist for President campaign!

But first: that’s a big if … maybe the observation has an explanation. How about time dilation? The neutrinos get to their destination having traveled at least at light speed. The internal clock of each neutrino runs slower at that speed. Meanwhile the time recorded by clocks at either end indicate the neutrinos get from start to finish slightly faster than expected. Is this a false reading coming from relying on stationary clocks, when clocks aboard the neutrinos moving at light speed could be the only ones recording the correct travel time? The calculation needed, it seems to me, is whether the 60 billionths of a second of excess speed can be explained by the tiny difference in what the stationary and moving clocks would have recorded.

Hmmm. Have I just talked anyone out of the idea that the light speed barrier may actually have been penetrated? I hope not, ‘cause I do want to explore possibilities that are suggested if the barrier is permeable after all. Might we find out that spooky things like extra sensory perception, psycho-kinesis, karma and the like actually have scientific explanations? We need such spooky things to keep us on our toes, so we don’t sink as readily into conviction that we already know all we need to know.

Is there a difference between science (or politics) and other arts? I suggest the only difference is that each art has its own disciplines, and we get better at whatever art we practice by pursuing and growing its particular disciplines zealously, over time.

Helloooooo fellow democrats—that is—fellow small-d democrats!

Entry #1, 23 September, 2011

Helloooooo fellow democrats—that is—fellow small-d democrats! I don’t care what your party affiliations are, only that there is a creative political spark left in you, after all the mean-mouthed muck that’s been tossed around the political arena and the internet, thoroughly gunking everything up.

Would you like to see things be different? Would you like to experience some sort of civil dialogue about the art of politics in the public interest, or for the common good?

Impossible! You say. Naïve! Soft-headed! Well … maybe so. Maybe not. Let’s find out.

In 1983-84 I conducted a campaign as “An Artist for President”, to advance the idea that if every citizen were truly an artist, any president we elect will also be an artist. The only difference between an artist and those who are not artists, to my mind, is that artists are willing to take aesthetic responsibility for what we create, whether it is art, or simply a mess. My impression today is that almost everything becomes a mess because too few people view themselves as artists, understand the discipline, or take collaborative aesthetic responsibility for anything.

In 1983-84 my co-creators and I wanted to challenge the foregone conclusion that Ronald Reagan would have a second term. Reagan, though highly skilled as a practitioner of the arts of acting and persuading people to believe things that had little to do with reality, was not an artist. He was an artifact. He took no personal responsibility for the consequences of his administration’s policies. I detail some of those consequences in the upcoming book about our Artist for President campaign. Reagan’s policies set the nation firmly on the course that is bringing us, and the whole planet today, toward a fearsome reckoning.

Of Course the Artist for President campaign was invisible in the national political arena of the Reagan years, except as minor entertainment. Nevertheless the views and ideas that fueled the campaign have, to my mind, been proven ever more valid as the nation has moved into this rancorous new millennium.

On November 1, 2011 my book, AN ARTIST FOR PRESIDENT, will be published by Hyphen-Media. The book is a recap of the campaign, but I hope it is also a persuasive argument of why the ideas that drove that campaign are even more relevant today. I recommend everyone should read it.

Over the next I-don’t-know-how-many weeks I will be posting blogs to highlight the relevance of ideas about art practices of all kinds, including the arts of economics, politics, spirit, and anything else involved in the Artist for President campaign or that grabs our attention. I hope you will weigh in with your responses to these blogs.

If we live as if the future will reveal itself as the consequence of rigorous art practice it just might do that!