Funerals

We were chatting about funerals today, Mrs H and I. Not that we were feeling gloomy, but we have been to many funerals over the years and in just over a week we have another to attend. At our age this is no great surprise, funerals occur fairly regularly now but our memory of them is surprisingly hazy. Many funeral details we can’t recall at all even when we organised them.

It is as if we drift through them from a sense of duty and a kind of sombre inattentiveness. A diminished inclination to observe and remember the day, an underlying inclination to have done with it and move on.

The caravan rolls on

From the BBC - it seems the caravan migrants have missed their bus.

Thousands of migrants from Central America heading for the US-Mexico border have had an offer of free bus transport to Mexico City withdrawn.

The governor of the Mexican state of Veracruz, Miguel Angel Yunes, said on Friday buses would be provided to carry migrants to the nation's capital.

However, Mr Yunes cancelled the offer just hours later, blaming a water shortage in the city for his decision.

The caravan, now some 5,000 people, set off from Honduras several weeks ago.

They say they are fleeing persecution, poverty and violence in their home countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

It has been obvious from the beginning that this caravan is likely to be a stunt timed to have a political impact on the US mid-term elections. The logistical problems of moving 5,000 people over that distance on foot suggest considerable sums of money and and a considerable degree of foresight and planning would be essential. Food, water, navigation, footwear - the logistical list is a long one.

It is all too transparent and even the BBC has spotted that whatever its underlying purpose or dynamic, the caravan stunt may in the end favour Trump and the Republicans.

The mid-term elections are now just days away and critics have said that Mr Trump has used the threat of illegal immigration to fire up his supporters.

At a campaign rally in Miami on Friday, former President Barack Obama accused Mr Trump of cynical politics and a political stunt over his plans to send troops to the Mexican border.

If it does favour Trump and the Republicans, what conclusion do we draw from that? A complex Democrat stunt which seems likely to backfire or something more subtle engineered by Trump supporters? It's a guess but I'll go for the former.

Stage six

From Wikipedia.
Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth model is one of the major historical models of economic growth. It was published by American economist Walt Whitman Rostow in 1960. The model postulates that economic growth occurs in five basic stages, of varying length:

1. Traditional society
2. Transitional society
3. Take-off
4. Drive to technological maturity
5. High mass consumption

Although we are familiar with these five stages we seem to lack economic gurus who are prepared to elucidate the sixth – not publicly anyhow. This one has been with us forever but has always lacked what one might call textbook prominence in the field of economics. Current thinking suggests that the six stages of economic development are –

1. Traditional society
2. Transitional society
3. Take-off
4. Drive to technological maturity
5. High mass consumption
6. High mass fantasy

Although fantasy has been around for a considerable time, it is only in recent decades that its early promise has gained distinction as the final engine of economic growth. I am no economist and can barely begin to analyse the vast ramifications of fantasy economics, but surely there are a number of important fields would-be fantasy gurus might explore.

The European Union
As a fantasist construct the EU is at the forefront of fantasy economics. A bureaucratic structure built to insert bureaucratic hands into national pockets? A rather obvious product of fantasy economics I’d say. Hard to miss that one even though many do but skipping the obvious - that’s the nature of fantasy.

In which case one might assume that such as vast structure with no real purpose apart from weaving bureaucratic fantasies would attract academic interest. One might expect academia to swarm all over it, aiming to harvest new and academically lucrative areas of expertise. Yet we have not seen the overt development of fantasy economics based on the EU as its key paradigm.

This then gives us our first clue as to the nature of fantasy economics. Fantasist thought tends to be covert in that fantasy always masquerades as some kind of reality rather than pure fantasy. In this way, major fantasist paradigms are hidden from view simply because camouflage is a structural aspect of the fantasy.

Climate Change
An important and obvious aspect of the fantasy economy has been handed to us on a plate by climate change fantasists. This development in fantasist thinking is part of a wider drive by the UN to promote fantasy economics on a global scale. However, with climate change we have a similar problem to the EU - camouflage. Climate change is a good example of the phenomenon.

With climate change, fantasist thinking is presented in what now passes for science - such as a sciency death gas emerging scientifically from vehicle exhausts into an atmosphere of sciency drama. Yet although camouflage is essential to fantasy economics, it does present certain difficulties when it comes to academic analysis.

Democracy
One of the great triumphs of fantasist thinking has been the invention of parliamentary democracy. Here we see people elected to do something in government yet as soon as they are elected they go off and do something else. Although the phenomenon is well known its prominence as a product of fantasist thought is perhaps less familiar.

This rather neatly explains the Donald Trump experience. As a non-fantasist candidate Trump was not supposed to be elected as US President. His election represents a clear and unambiguous breakdown in fantasist thinking and the ramifications are still working themselves out.

It is most unlikely that Trump’s election signals the collapse of fantasy economics itself. It is far too well entrenched for that. Much more likely is that it is anomaly which will be analysed and corrected with some new variations on fantasist thought and methodology. Anything else would upset an enormous number of influential people who have bet their futures on fantasist thinking.

Units
A major weakness of fantasist thinking is the lack of units by which the amount of fantasy can be measured over time. One suggestion for a basic unit might be the Dork which would represent one person infected with one fantasy. Obviously a single person may be infected with more than one fantasy so a more useful unit for populations numbered in millions could be the megadork (MD) or even the gigadork (GD). Clearly an undeveloped area of research which may repay deeper investigation.

The end game
The future is impossible to foresee unless one is a committed fantasist, but an obvious possibility is that the sixth stage of economic development will eventually cycle back to what is really the first – hunter gatherer.

All good things –

Three headlines

Undercharged

I was undercharged again today - while in a cafe with Mrs H seeking coffee and a light lunch. That’s the third time it has happened to one of us in the past month or so. In these days of contactless card payment I tend not to notice exact amounts unless a discrepancy is obvious but it surprises me how often the person behind the till doesn’t notice an undercharge until it is pointed out.

It’s the old mental arithmetic habit I suppose. One coffee, one tea, two lunches – no that can’t be right. The error flag seems to pop up in my mind without conscious effort then the mental arithmetic clicks in and out jumps the error. 

As a cafe owner once said to me - contactless isn't like spending money. For the young people behind many tills it probably isn't like receiving money either. I wonder if it ever goes the other way - overcharged without noticing? I should check but the mental arithmetic habit would probably take care of that too. I hope so.

Hols

We are in Norfolk at the moment on a short break. Took a few moments to admire steam locomotive Black Prince. I'm not sure what it is about these machines, because after all they are only machines, but something about them stirs the blood and I'm not even a steam buff.

The siren song of certainty

I’ve been too busy to post over the past few days but the story about Sinéad O'Connor converting to Islam caught my eye.

Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor has announced she has converted to Islam.
The artist, who is best known for her 1990 hit version of the song Nothing Compares 2 U, said she had changed her name to Shuhada'.

In a message on Twitter, she thanked fellow Muslims for their support.

She has said that her decision was "the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian's journey". and uploaded a video of herself singing the adhan, or Islamic call to prayer.

Her stated reason for converting is nonsense of course and as such is uninteresting, but there is a wider aspect because there appears to be a global fear of uncertainty. 

This fear seems to be evident in hostility to Donald Trump because he is seen to represent uncertainty where the emollient but ineffectual Obama did not. It seems to be evident in the Brexit debate where the EU is presented as a bastion of certainty while Brexit is not.

Yet progress requires us embrace uncertainty, requires us to embrace even tentative knowledge over political doctrine, faddish social memes or superstition. It requires us to tease apart uncertainties and discover what can be known in the hope that future generations will face their future knowing more than we do. In too many areas of life this is not the ideal being pursued but without it Western civilisation won’t work.