Nate's Ten Trillion

I would like to respectfully disagree with Gordon's use of ten trillion dollars. While all of his ideas are good ones, and ones that I can get behind, the problem is he treats his money like he were just a billionaire only more so. He divides his money between multiple projects, and by dividing, his money loses its potency. Even among modern billionaires, this is a problem. They create a foundation that gives to multiple organizations, without ever providing the concentration of capital necessary to make sea changes. Ten trillion dollars is more than just an opportunity to spend billions here and there. It's an opportunity to give on a scale like never before. Thus I humbly submit my usage plan of ten trillion dollars.

I would like to forge Malawi into a industrialized nation. First let me describe why Malawi, and then we will get into the plan. Malawi is a smallish country Africa which has suffered a decade long drought and famine (some say due to human-caused climate change). It is heavily reliant on foreign aid and the vast majority of its 15 million people are rural. However it does have several things that set it apart from its neighbors. First of all, it is a constitutional democracy that has experienced changes in the majority party with civil unrest. It also does not break down along tribal lines, and has a robust sense of nationalism, both of which set it apart from its neighbors. Political corruption is also reduced compared to its neighbors, although by no means non-existent. All these factors make Malawi the best place to focus our attentions. But why in Africa? There are stable, still poor places that could use that money just as well (Bangladesh comes to mind). Indeed Africa has been viewed by many non-profits as a black hole for aid, with little progress and more dependency per dollar spent. But that is just the issue. It's possible that ten trillion is the magic amount required to actually see a monumental change in a country in Africa, and that kind of spending just is not possible on current not-for-profit scales. And once a model is created, it gets cheaper and more feasible to imitate. It's important to remember here that the goal is not a post-industrial, Westernized country, but merely a more developed, stable, not-starving-to-death country.

The plan would run something like this, although I would of course hire policy experts with all the details. First of all, one billion dollars would immediately go to food aid (it would probably take significantly less than that, but I have ten thousand of them, so might as well pad it). An additional ten billion or so would go to water treatment plants. (For all public works like this I would expect at least partial government subsidies.) Probably up to a hundred billion would go to energy production and infrastructure. Another ten billion would go to agricultural education and agricultural infrastructure each. Two hundred billion would go to transportation infrastructure and housing construction (I anticipate fast urbanization). One hundred billion would go to revamping Malawi's extractive industries, and another hundred toward industrializing. Another three hundred billion would go to setting up an educational system, with an initial focus on vocational schools, engineering, and medical schools. Many African countries suffer a serious lack of highly educated professionals. Probably two hundred billion (maybe more) would be required for security purposes, especially securing the border with Uganda, where they already suffer refugee problems. I think a half-trillion should go to funding Malawian businesses, along the model of micro-finance, only taking away the micro bit. Probably another half-trillion would have to go to founding hospitals and revamping the medical system, with an initial focus on family planning and contraceptives (AIDS is a bit of a problem in Malawi).Put another hundred billion toward environmental issues. And let's not forget a hundred million to fund a internal anti-corruption bureau. If any of these numbers seem small to you (they shouldn't. I padded them pretty heavily) realize that Malawi's GDP is only 13 billion. For those of you keeping score that's 2.1311 trillion gone, not much of a chunk out of my 10. If we add a hundred million for overhead and another for advertising (why not?) we're still only spending about a fifth of our money and we've built an entirely new country.

There are of course several problems with the plan. First and foremost I foresee a huge influx of people into Malawi from neighboring nations. This is actually at least partly a solution, because cheap labor is definitely part of building a nation. Civil unrest could also sink the ship, especially since I don't really want to step on the turf of the Malawian government. However, I think a well-designed plan to distribute the benefits across the population would help (toss another billion toward making that plan). Also extend similar but more limited funding toward neighboring countries for mirror projects, and we could found a movement that could shape the face of the globe. Another problem would be the possible appearance of colonial ambitions, something that most of Africa is very touchy about. My efforts would focus on home-growing all the projects from within Malawi, and doing all of the above over several years. The first focus would be on grade school education, sexual education, agricultural reform, and cheap, labor-heavy expertise-light projects like road building that provide jobs and endow people with a sense of purpose. For those of you who are critics of planned economies, I would also try and focus on funding grass-roots ideas. The goal here is toward sustainability after the money runs out, although the rest of the money would go toward a national endowment upon which the nation could draw for decades (hopefully). Any way, that's what I'd do. Oh and retire comfortably with a billion or so.

To Call Each Thing By Its Right Name

It's very hard to think about an abstract concept without a word for it. And it's easy to never think about this effect, because... there's not a word for it.

It seems obvious that it’s hard to talk about something that we don’t have a word.  This is common with new ideas, technologies and the like – until a phrase catches on and becomes common-place, all discussion is coupled with a tone of uncertainty, the feeling of “if that’s what we’re calling it”. It’s the difference between something being the name of a product and simply a noun. Ten years ago (yes, it's been (just short of) ten years) the word iPod was a quirky curiosity. Now it's just a word I use; sure, it refers to a specific company's gadget, but it's a unique enough gadget that it is all-but-officially a noun. And think: "mp3 player", too, has since entered our collective vocabulary - for such a syllabic phrase, it sure seems awfully ordinary nowadays. 

What about something more conceptual? After all, whether we have a good word for an iPod doesn't affect our thoughts much - we don't do a lot of deep thinking about iPods anyway. How about "schadenfreude"? If you're not familiar, schadenfreude describes pleasure at another's misfortune - a very familiar concept, I'm sure, but one that is tricky to express in English. Well, not that tricky, but rougher than, say, "happiness" (...or is it?). I first heard the word in the Avenue Q soundtrack, which came out in 2003, and as far as I know that musical was largely responsible for making the concept so widely known nowadays. Though, it's possible that I was just too young to expect to have heard it prior to that. "Schadenfreude" gives us a word for describing pleasure at another's misfortune - and also a word for condemning it, for confessing it, for preempting it. It allows us to think about "pleasure at another's misfortune" as a single concept, rather than a combination of words whose meanings interfere. 

Let me see if I can convince you with something even more arcane - at least, until it became a novelty on the Internet. May I present: Mamahlapinatapai, a word from the language of the Yaghan people, found off the southern tip of Argentina. It means a look shared by two people, both wishing the other would initiate something that both desire. The funny thing about this concept, mamahlapinatapai, is that I'm certain I'm familiar with it. The idea is not that strange, but we'd never think to recognize it for what it is, to talk about it, without a word for it. Incidentally, this word is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "most succinct word"; I'm going to trust them on that one. I have to wonder if they have a word for the one-sided version: where you want to initiate something but you don't know if you should. I suspect that look is far more commonplace.

I'm glad we incorporated schadenfreude into our language, and I'm glad we left mamahlapinatapai out. But while the latter is a bit too complicated for us to regularly want to use it, there are surely hundreds of words in their respective languages that we would gladly incorporate into English, if only they would make the rounds in one generation's vocabularies. And I'm certain there are a great many ideas that we can hardly think about, for lack of a word to think about them with. http://betterthanenglish.com/ catalogues some of these fascinating words; it's interesting as a novelty but I'm woefully unsure of how to actually incorporate any of their words into my life. I especially like:

Parea (Greek): a group of friends who gather purely for each other's company.

Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi):  “nature out of balance” or a “way of life that is so crazy it calls for a new way of living”. (Or a peculiar film with a particularly haunting, mesmerizing soundtrack by Philip Glass.)

Sigurista (Tagalog): a person who is extremely concerned with making sure everything goes as planned.

Won (Korean): a person's reluctance to give up an illusion.

This book seems to have more of the same, but I haven't obtained a copy yet.

Of course, there are thousands of words out there that we could find useful, and hundreds that might be easy enough to speak that we would actually adopt them. And sure, there are also hundreds or thousands of nearly unknown English words that could be useful too - but I suspect the foreign words are better. The English words must have faded out of usage for a reason, right? (okay, maybe not. Nevertheless...) It would not take much to bring a word to widespread recognition - a single popular work using it is enough. If it's a good enough word, from there it will spread itself.

By the same logic, I'm advocate the invention of new words and the repurposing of old ones... and, also, the rampant borrowing of words from other languages. If something needs to be said, someone needs to find a good way to say it. And, if it's going to take a good word to allow for good thought, it needs to exist. Language is a chaotic, evolving thing - no, that doesn't excuse "refudiate") - and there is nothing inherently wrong with a well-justified modification. Words like "blog" have to come from somewhere. Of course, getting anyone to adopt your new word or definition is another trick entirely. For that reason it's going to be easier to get new words from other languages than by inventing them out of thin air.

I like to repurpose the word "pornography" to mean "any sort of creation which appeals to senses and delights"; something that unapologetically pleases or satisfies. For example, the movie Avatar was essentially pornography - delightful, beautiful, and amazing to look at, even though its plot was largely trite and unimaginative. I always defend the movie by saying - if you were expecting a wonderfully original plot, you missed the point of the movie. Its archetypal, formulaic narrative was a superficially pleasing, like a children's movie (since that's what it came from...), unabashedly allowing the audience to see as much of the visual capabilities as possible. In being simple and satisfying, it succeeded wonderfully, and I'll say I loved it because I did (in the theater). If this goal of "pornography" is something you simply reject in a movie, then it wasn't for you. This definition also works nicely for EarthPorn.

Even if a good word doesn't exist, it's going to be useful to know what we want a word for. Here are some requests; maybe somebody can find them for me, in English or elsewhere:

I want a word for a politician's hubris, the kind that makes him/her serve money while pretending to fight for the poor. A word we can accuse a politician of when they vote for tax cuts for the rich in a depression, that sort of thing. It's a concept that needs to be demonized, and it's hard to demonize something without a word for it.

I want a word for a feeling I get when I'm trying to work very hard without a deadline. I focus on something and try to make it important, but I get an impulse in the back of my mind that wants me to do something destructive instead of focusing on what I'm trying to think about - to tab over to Facebook or Gmail, or to go play another round of a video-game. Something actively counterproductive. I can't explain it, but it happens and I'm certain it's not just me. It's much harder to recognize this happening, though, without a word for it.

I want more words to take over the purpose of the word "happy". I think it's a great shame that the word "happy" is considered the summarizing opposite of "depressed" by many; I think the concept of "happiness" is so vague - in that it describes a number of individual states that all work - that it becomes something unattainable. This idea was inspired by a Reddit post by a depressed individual who couldn't figure out how people could be happy. The fact is, there's a lot of things people can be, and none of them are described by what we think of by the word "happy". Among others, there's:  ignorance-is-bliss happy, happy simply because being there was never a question otherwise, not caring; constant-wonder happy, where a person is so in love with life they feel positively all the time; a sort of zen-understanding happy, where everything makes sense leaving the bearer content; etc. Not everyone will be capable of most of these, but, aiming for a nebulous concept of "happiness" is a quest destined to fail, and unfortunately in the case that inspired this, that failure was considerably exacerbating the problem.

The Written Word

In order to further our understanding of art, it is important to examine the mediums which we use to express ourselves. Divorcing art from the vessel in which it is imparted is nigh impossible, and so to truly understand, the art we must understand the medium. Many classic mediums appeal directly to our senses, whether it be visual (paintings, sculpture, etc.) or auditory (music). Some might argue that food or perfume making are arts on this basis, although I would be inclined to disagree, just because I think our sense of smell and taste are not fine enough to make art in those categories particularly meaningful, although I am well aware that many chefs might consider me a fool. However, one medium stands out as unique: the written word.

The written word is not a direct appeal to any senses, although we use our sight to process it (although not necessarily, see braille). Still, it can be used to describe visual effects, sounds, tastes, etc., which in the hands of a skilled writer, can be nearly as effective as being actually presented with those sensory inputs. The real advantage of writing however, comes when it speaks directly to emotions our thoughts in a way that other mediums simply cannot. By simply writing the word “love,” I can conjure a whole idea that would take a great deal of effort to relay visually, and even more to do audibly. This makes writing unique, and gives it its own special issues and difficulties.

The issues arise from the origins of writing. As far as classical art mediums go, it's relatively new on the scene, with only about 6,000 years since its inception, as opposed to cave painting, which is about 32,000 years, and music, which is possibly 40,000 years old (a bone flute was found dating to then). It is no coincidence however that the much of the first written art is actually oral story-telling written down. Writing is inextricably linked with speaking, and it is this relationship that must be explored to truly understand the medium.

It is possible to argue that the written word is not a different medium than the spoken word, and indeed the boundary is neatly straddled by poetry, which in some cases is clearly made to be read aloud (here I usually think of Poe's “The Bells,” which is a tour de force of auditory effects) while some is much more obviously meant to be read on a page. (here I think of “When Lilacs Last in the Doorway Bloomed,” whose complicated and cerebral associations are nigh impossible to follow while listening to it, although I'm sure some would disagree.) Indeed, to anyone who suffered through Shakespeare in high school and hated it due to the inaccessibility of it written down, I strongly recommend going to a play of it, and watch what were unintelligible phrases come alive when spoken by an actor. (Plays in general are a fascinating medium, and one that on which I'm afraid I'm woefully undereducated .) It is also interesting to note that, with the use of onomatopoeias, nothing exists in one medium that cannot be instantly transferred to the other, except possibly laughter, which I have never seen convincingly written down. However, I think that the two mediums must be treated differently, for two reasons; first and foremost, intonation is so critical to any sort of spoken word, and it's a dimension that the written word is completely lacking. Consider the phrase “Where do you think you are going?” Now imagine that spoken playfully by a man to his lover as she rises from their bed. Now imagine it spoken by a store employee as a shoplifter tries to slip out. The words are spoken in completely different, divergent fashions, and yet they are written in exactly the same. This to me is proof that the two mediums must be treated separately, because the spoken word is much more information dense than the written form. The written word is also different in that it can be reread, which also totally changes the experience. Ideas can be presented in written form, that are frankly, much more complex than could ever be spoken, because you as a reader can go back and figure out the argument.

However, the main issue surrounding using the written word as a medium, the main obstacle to surmount, stems from its origins in the spoken word. The problem is that neither were created as mediums for art at all. Both were made to communicate ideas quickly and efficiently (like “Look! A lion!”) , but not necessarily fully. If we go back to our example of love, the issue is brought into clarity. While writing the word “love” does convey the idea, it's flat and emotionless, as well as pointedly non-specific as to the nature of that love (platonic, maternal, romantic, etc.), while even the simplest sketch meant to convey love would have to recreate the emotion in a much more meaningful way. In case you think this is only true for words that have no visual or auditory counterpart, think on the word “face,” where even the simplest drawing will impart more information than the word itself. Context and connotation thus becomes everything in writing.

Since we are using love as an example let's examine Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous poem as a case study of the medium and how it communicates:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the end of being and ideal grace.

I love to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right;

I love thee purely as they turn from praise.

I love thee with a passion put to use

In my old griefs and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!-- and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

One of the all time great love poems, and one mostly devoid of visual or auditory imagery, so perfect for our uses. I think it important to note that the first line has become so trite and overused that it is laughable, mainly because it lacks all of the context provided by the following lines. In the poem, she links her love to the pursuit of good, her own religiosity, and the both the infirmity of old age and innocence of childhood, all while keeping it pointedly humble. It's this linking of ideas that gives the written word its strength, and you would be hard pressed to find any other piece of art in a different medium with so many ideas cohabiting, especially so explicitly, and in such a brief work. As already mentioned too, it purposefully keeps any sort of sensory imagery out of it, maintaining a straight emotional argument unfettered by the senses. This is what makes writing so unique; its ability to appeal to the mind without directly. Thus the direct representation inherent in writing is both its weakness and its strength. However, this poem neatly makes the transition to the spoken word, and it's interesting to note that the punctuation here seems specifically designed to facilitate the process, thus negating the point that the two mediums are separate (as I said, poetry can be troublesome that way). Still I think it unlikely that a listener would catch all of Browning's layering in a listening, thus hearkening back to writing's advantage of being re-readable.

One last thing must be mentioned when discussing the written word, and it is such a complicated idea that it most certainly requires its own post. Nearly every novel and many poems have a plot, or at the very least some sort of framing story, and this narrative instinct helps give the written word its unique flavor. Sure, paintings and music might have a story to them, but it's mostly just hinted at and secondary, not critical to its existence the way it is in writing. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a written work longer than ten pages without a character of some sort. (Some people might argue that philosophy is art, to whom I say hogwash.) The story, however, is for all intents and purposes its own medium, and ought to be discussed separately.