Sam Smith - I am repeatedly struck by the repeated use of the term artificial intelligence these days. Struck but not shocked, because I have felt for some time that our society was moving in the direction of words replacing reality, Here’s an excerpt from my 2001 book, Why Bother?
I once bought a used car sight unseen over the phone from R&D Automotive in Freeport because I figured I'd do better that way than shopping around at Washington area lots. The 1983 Chevy station-wagon got both my sons back and forth to college and made two and half trips across the country.
From childhood on I have run into traits that, while not unique to Maine nor universal in Maine, were nonetheless in considerably greater supply there than in many other places. I make no claim as to the persistence of these traits nor do I to wish to romanticize them. After all, when I first went to Maine as an eight-year-old there were four times as many acres in farmland as there are today and much else has disappeared as well. Still certain Maine values still float on the surface of my experience like lobster buoys off the starboard bow. Among them:
§ Integrity: Integrity is not just honesty but a quality in which all the parts fit together. Watertight integrity on a ship, for example, means that the bulkheads are not three feet thick in one place and rusted out elsewhere. Today those at the top often undervalue completeness, consistency, reliability – preferring the momentary impact, the single-minded pursuit, or the exceptional event.
§ Community: Contrary to current mythology, community traditionally has had a great impact on the nature of business. Today's rhetoric denies it a place and derides those who advocate it as "community activists," as if maintaining the social compact was some sort of revolutionary act. I once observed the conflict between old and new ways of business at a meeting in a small Maine town. The CEO of a chain of boat yards had flown up from Connecticut to tell the community why his firm could not save a 19th century building that was the last link with the town's shipbuilding past. The evening progressed as such debates do until a young contractor arose and spoke directly to the CEO. He earnestly explained how, in a small town, business was done in a different way. Everyone was connected to everyone else. Then he added, "I work knowing that if I do a bad job on a house, somebody is going to tell my parents about it." Can you imagine a big businessman saying that?
§ Respect: The prevalence of independent farmers, craftspeople, the fishing industry, and small business – as well as the absence of plantation agriculture and relative lack of industrial capitalism -- helped to create a culture of respect and a flattened social hierarchy. Authority grew out of competence and reputation, not power. Maine humor, interestingly, centers on the foolish acts of the powerful stranger compared to the often less powerful but wiser native.
§ Cooperation.The relationship between farmers or fishing boat captains defies the simplistic competitive rules of capitalist economics. Yes, there is competition, but at the same time there is an unusual degree of cooperation, described well by anthropologist James Acheson in The Lobster Gangs of Maine:
The relevant social unit for most fisherman is not the fishing industry as a whole; it is the men fishing for the same species with the same gear in the same area. They share skills and a common knowledge of the means to exploit and market a certain product . . . Although they are direct competitors, lobstermen are the most useful people in one another's lives . . The men in each gang are involved in an elaborate dance-like interaction in which cooperation must be balanced with competition, secrecy with openness, and sharing with self-interest.
§ Ecological wisdom: One can not spend much time in Maine without learning what Barry Commoner called the four lessons of ecology:
Everything is connected to everything else
Everything must go somewhere
Nature knows best
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
In Washington and corporate America, on the other hand, the environment is treated as just another special interest group with which to negotiate, to ignore if you can, and to appease as cheaply as possible if you can’t.
§ Self-reliance and appreciation of the real. My time in Maine has been graced by an extraordinary number of men and women who practiced the art of self reliance. I was taught how to get through hurricanes, how to move a house on skids, how to jack up a barn –all before I even got to college. I am reminded of the importance of simple skill and effort each time I look at the loose stones still holding a 100 year-old barn upright. On the other hand, when I return to Washington, all around me I find people who deeply believe that words can substitute for competence. It doesn't work.
1 comment:
I took a class on political anthropology from James Acheson more than 50 years ago. He talked a lot about the lobstering industry. But what I remember most was that he really objected to discussing the politics of non human primate societies. I still think he missed the boat.
Post a Comment