Category — The Good Life

Holocaust surviver and psychologists Viktor Frankl delivers an amazing speech on searching for meaning and thinking the best of people. And as Goethe agrees with him, it must be true.

If you haven’t read his memorial from Auschwitz, Man’s Search for Meaning, you should

The Norwegian Government Pension Fund, managed by Norwegian Bank Investment Management (NBIM) sold off more than half of it’s 133 billion kroner position in Greek, Portugese, and Spanish government bonds during 2009. The funds chief executive, Yngve Slyngstad, explained that while Eurozone government bonds in 2008 were priced as if they gave risk-free returns, “we said they were more like return-free risks”. Well done, Nassim Taleb would have been proud – there are arguably no such things as risk-free returns anyway (at least not in Southern Europe).

Yngve Slyngstad, not yet fifty years old, started his career as a junior researcher at Norges Bank at the age of 31 after completing a whopping four Master’s degrees in Law (University of Oslo), Economics (UC Santa Barbara), Business Administration (NHH) and Political Science (University of Paris, Sorbonne), spending years backpacking around Asia, and living by himself in the wild and weather-torn Northern Norway reading Wittgenstein. Needless to say, we here at Evolution-Revolution think this is a pretty awesome guy.

In connection with this year’s women’s day celebration in March, my younger sister who is a Seargeant in the Royal Norwegian Air Force was interviewed by an “investigative journalist” from NRK making a piece about women in traditionally male occupations. She recounted to me a part of the interview that did not make it past clipping. It went something like this:

Interviewer: Have you ever experienced gender discrimination?

Sunniva, female Air Force Sergeant: No, I can’t recall any situation where I have been discriminated against.

Interviewer (a little surprised): But, you must have… Eh, well, I have heard stories about women in the military…

Sunniva, female Air Force Sergeant: I can only speak for myself, but I have never experienced anything like that.

Interviewer: Well, have you ever experienced ALMOST being the victim of discrimination?

Sunniva, female Air Force Sergeant: Eh, no…

Interviewer: OK, so you don’t feel like you are being discriminated against, but do you think that some other women perhaps could feel like they were if they had your job?

…

I feel so much safer now that I know that the media is investigating hypothetical gender discrimination.

Some recent and interesting articles, all very recommended:

An excellent article on zoophiles, animal lovers – there is more to human sexuality than I would ever have expected and somehow horses are particularly attractive

Steve Randy Waldman explains why measuring bank balance sheets (capital) is impossible

A report from Morgan Stanley on the emerging global trends of internet usage, especially mobile

Dani Rodrik on the return of industrial policy – governments can pick winners

How to make a  freestanding handstand Push-Up – my goal for the next year

Stiglitz on an agenda for reforming economics at the newly established, Soros-financed, Institute for New Economic Thinking (video)

The following were (seriously) the top three headlines last night on the RSS feed I get from Dagens Næringsliv, Norway’s biggest business and economics newspaper:

LONG, LONG LINE OF GOOD WINES

(Lang, lang rekke med gode viner)

-

APPEALING SYRAH-WINES

(Tiltrekkende syrah-viner)

-

ABDUCTED FINANCIAL ADVISOR

(Bortførte finansrådgiver)

That last link is foreign news, of course, about a something that happened in Germany. So far, it appears we are still living the good life.

Above: “I am *this* much more awesome than all of you guys!”
Picture from unattributable.com

Attending a small rock concert this weekend (a good one, with the Estonian band Mild), I was struck by tremendous amount of unabashed ego displayed by the lead singer of the band. Now, in the case of an aspiring rock star, this is of course not a bad thing. In fact, I would argue that a big, proud, and unapologetic ego is mostly a very good thing for a most live performers, especially [Read more →]

The Future State of Humanity? Photo by Aaron Haussman

Friedrich Georg Jünger, translator of the Iliad to the German and expert on Pre-Socratic philosophy has written one of the most powerful critiques of technology named “Failure of Technology: Perfection without Purpose.” I will present some of his most important criticisms of technological progress in general and their relevance for the technological development we are seeing today.

For better or worse, it is certain that technological development is truly changing our society and the way we live. [Read more →]

Above: Nanotech is coming to get you

One of the first definitions of Economics I came across in my life was “the study of scarce resources and unlimited wants.” That is, how choices are made with regards to which of the unlimited wants are to be met and not, or in other words, how resources are allocated. Here, markets come in as one of many possible mechanisms for making such choices socially.

In the context of Technology Governance, another way of understanding economics appears. That is, in recognizing that in the presence of innovation and changing technology, economic systems are not static, the extent to which resources are scarce depends on our ability to produce. As such, economics in this context can be better described as the study of how humans mitigate scarcity of resources by means of technology. Here, the core questions do not so much relate to allocation of scarce resources but to our changing capacity to make available those resources.

However, technology does not only change which resources or goods are available in which quantities, they also strongly influence the market (or other) mechanisms by which they get distributed. [Read more →]

Picture by Eric Pouchier

As we are being told that global warming looms, fossil fuels are running out, people are starving all over the world, and a global recession may not be over for a while;  encouragements to only take for oneself what is really necessary are becoming increasingly common. On the surface, this sounds nice. If we only consume what is necessary, then there will be more of everything left for those in greater need, we won’t pollute as much, and so on.

Nevertheless, whenever I hear someone urging others to restrict themselves to what is necessary, I can’t help but think: “necessary for what?” Necessity, by definition, means something you can’t do without. However, in order for such a word to make any sense at all, one needs to define what something is necessary for. For example, gasoline is necessary for most cars to drive. It is not, however, necessary for bicycling. And so on.

Now, when we are urged to only take what is necessary, then what are we really imagining as whatever we take being necessary for? The “good life”? In that case, how is “what is necessary” different from “what we want”? Perhaps it is necessary for a lot of us to have a summer house in Tuscany and drink expensive red wine for dinner every day. Or are we talking about what is merely necessary for survival? In that case, pretty much all conveniences that have been discovered during the last  hundred thousand years are not necessary. Forget about needing a cellphone, you don’t even get a house – your ancestors did just fine in a nice, warm cave. Is it necessary to live beyond age 80? Is it even necessary to be alive at all?

By all means, conserve all you want. But all this talk about restricting ourselves only to what we need is – at the very best – both quite absurd and a little intellectually annoying.

I recently read Siddharta by Hermann Hesse,  a wonderful book set in ancient India about a young man’s search for understanding and inner peace. Amongst other profoundities, the book also contains some interesting insights on trading and investment. After a thorough brahmin education, followed by three years of life as an ascetic sadhu, the young Siddharta becomes an apprentice under a rich merchant. Only knowing how to, according to himself, think, wait, and fast, he quickly becomes a highly successful and very rich merchant. Importantly, he does this not by using greed or a hunger for “success” as a motivation, but rather by means of cool detachment. Hesse, of course, describes this far more eloquently than I could ever hope to:

“This Brahmin,” [the master merchant Kamaswami] said to a friend, “is not a proper merchant and will never be one; never is his heart passionately engaged in our transactions. But he has the secret of those to whom success comes of ts own accors, be it that he was born under a lucky star, be it magic, be it something he learned among the Samanas. He seems only to be playing at doing business. Never do the transactions have any real effect on him; never are they his master; never does he fear failure or worry over a loss.”

There is an interesting connection here, of course, to modern “practical investment” literature, in which the virtues of emotional control and self discipline are frequently emphasized as being of critical importance to success. The lesson to be drawn from Hesse, then, is perhaps that one possibly extremely effective way of achieving this just this is to not care very much about money – in a Siddhartian sense, “rise above” is perhaps a more appropriate choice of words.

It might not be so easy, though. In Hesse’s work,  Siddhartas spirituality is almost completely killed off by many years of hedonism and financial success – and he becomes so emotionally and philosophically tortured that he abandons his life as a wealthy merchant and almost commits suicide.