[A-List] Two Worlds

[Bill Totten]

by Charley Reese

King Features Syndicate (March 26 2004)

Watching Alan Greenspan testify before Congress recently provided me
with an insight into both his problem and ours. The Federal Reserve
chairman lives in an abstract world, and we live in a flesh-and-blood
world.

Thus, like two travelers, one of whom speaks and understands only
Chinese and the other only Swahili, there simply isn't a lot of
communication and mutual understanding going on

When Mr Greenspan speaks of the "economy", which itself is an
abstraction, he is talking about something constructed of statistics,
concepts, definitions and computer modeling. That economy has no
relationship whatsoever to an unemployed man in Arkansas, to a farmer
facing the loss of his land in Nebraska, to a homeless person in Los
Angeles or to an elderly person trying to survive in some Florida flea
trap.

To Greenspan, if he is aware of it at all, such a world exists only in
theory. He might have read about it in The New York Times. Perhaps he
has seen a homeless person through the window of his limousine. If Mr
Greenspan's numbers tell him that productivity is up, that personal per
capita income is up, then the economy must be improving.

Of course, in our flesh-and-blood world, an increase in productivity can
be the result of your co-worker losing his job and you being told to do
your work and his for the same pay. Or it might mean both of your jobs
are eliminated and replaced with automation. Per capita personal income
can go up when billionaires are created on Wall Street while millions of
others suffer a loss of income.

When I talk about abstractions, I'm referring to words that don't
directly refer to a specific object or condition. "Productivity" is a
good example. It doesn't refer to any one person's productivity. It
refers to a formula in which the number of widgets produced is divided
by the number of labor units. More widgets and fewer labor units is the
definition of higher productivity. In theory, it leads to pay raises. In
practice, it rarely does.

Far too much conversation goes on in Washington in the abstract, and
that's something we should avoid. If we talk about the "economy", we are
talking about a mental concept that by definition involves the sum total
of all economic transactions at any given time. How useful is that? Not
at all, really. If we talk, on the other hand, about, say, Steubenville,
Ohio, we can go there and find out for certain what the situation is in
that town.

If there are problems, they are problems involving specific people in
specific places. We can do something about those. But you can't reform
in theory or in the abstract.

We can, to switch topics, do something about Osama bin Laden. He is a
flesh-and-blood person who occupies space on our planet. We can find him,
and we can kill him. But if we talk about "terrorism", we are talking
about a mental concept that is used to described random acts of violence
committed by different people in different places for different reasons
at different times. What kind of useful strategy can you develop in the
abstract? Nothing, really.

Language is a system of code words that refer to objects and conditions
in reality.

The word "tree" is not that thing sticking up out of the ground. It is
easy for intellectuals to forget that, and the first thing you know,
they are living inside their heads instead of the real world and
believing that the concepts they have created in their own heads are an
accurate description of reality.

If it were possible to pass a law requiring all conversation and writing
to be in concrete terms, most of the experts and think tanks in
Washington would have to close their doors and go home. Most of them
don't know anything specific. They know theories, position papers and
talking points.

Without getting more specific, I'm sure there are at least two rooms in
Greenspan's apartment where he connects with flesh-and-blood reality,
but when he speaks to Congress, he's in a world that exists only in his
head.

http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040326/index.php

Please also see "Greenspan's Con Job" by William Greider in The Nation
(March 4 2004) http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040322&s=greider