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The Radical Boy Manifesto: Individuals Err & Institutions Learn
What is to be done?
If wisdom is folly and the Heart Misleads? What’s the point? Why should the artist even try to go for the gut? What is his motivation after all? So he’s a worldwide phenomenon and everyone learns that everyone is just as important as everyone else, a new Enlightenment, it dawns on everyone and… then what? Wisdom fails, remember?
And one day the wise will die and the young never listen anyway and what good is it? Old men retire and young men make new mistakes and it all repeats all over again. Right?
Well, sort of.
Individuals err and err again. They err in the exact same ways. Again and again. Why? Because stories are finite. Over time, though, society starts finding ways to prevent the mistakes or at least to lower our cost when making them
Lenny Bruce can get you started on this one. Take a listen to “How the Law Got Started,” if you can find it somewhere (the link just samples its beginning). Societies find from time to time that they have a problem. For example, people need fire, but sometimes they lose control of it and the things we live in catch on fire. That’s real bad. It’s even worse when we live close to each other and the places we live in ablaze set other homes on fire.
People aren’t going to stop losing control of fires, but we can start fire departments. We can develop fire codes. We can discover fire retardant materials. We can… in fact… get better at better at managing the consequences of the same accident.
Once upon a time, a kid left a candle burning and the whole block burned down. Now, a kid leaves a candle burning and he just loses a bunch of crappy CDs he was over anyway because good doors slow the flames enough for the fire trucks to stop it.
Individuals err, man. Individuals will always err and they will always err in pretty much the same way. The story of human progress is not one of human self-improvement, but institutions human built getting better and better at dealing with our constant mistakes.
So where does the artist fit in? The artist lubricates. Over here, we got the cops. The cops beat up on the immigrants when they come into town in the turn of the century, but that’s okay because everyone knows the immigrants are the source of all the trouble, right?
Over there, we got the University. Now, in the University, folks are talking about the immigrants and learning. Some of them have figured out they aren’t really the source of too much of the trouble and some others have figured out this whole idea of anti-discrimination. What’s that got to do with the cops, though? The cops got nothing to do with the University.
The artist travels in all the worlds. He travels through the Ivory Towers and he walks the Mean Streets. He can hear in one place and say in another. He smooths it up. He makes it work. He brings the ideas learned in one place across.
In other words, over time the artist gets the idea around that its not okay to smack people up anymore because of what they look like. The cops don’t quit thinking maybe they ought to (mostly), but they do it less. Because of laws. Because of things they’ve been taught. Because of ways they figure out to watch each other. Whatever. That’s all institutions learning, but a lot of times it takes artists spreading the learning around so one institution gets convinced it needs to pick up what another has learned.
Or, look at it another way. Over here you got the credit card companies, right? They fill a need. At a certain point, though, their profit motive drives them not to just provide the service of smoothing the crossing between paychecks and spreading out the payments on big purchases. Profit motive turns credit cards into rocketfuel for spendthriftiness that’s paying credit for Ipod Cozies and singing eletronic bunny rabbits for one Easter and it all stacks up into needless waste and a looming financial crisis.
Can policymakers fix it with simple policy?
At a certain point, artist will also have to make the spend-craze uncool, like in the 60s when an anti-materialism vibe managed to slow the two-cars-one-garage dream, just a bit. The artist can also bolster the position of nascent institutions (like co-ops, community orchards and car-sharing) that make it easier to distribute less resources to more people. The artist can facilitate the rise of the new institution that fixes the mistakes left behind of the old institution.
And when an institution outlives its worth, an artist will always be the first say “Bollocks on All the Rubbish” and get the reactionary thing torn down. That is a part of how institutions learn. One destroys another when it sees it isn’t needed anymore. As in the proverbial buggy whip maker. Or the ladies sewing circle. Or the Barca Lounger.
Humans may be prone to self-defeating greed, but we have the lucky habit to building things that outlast that make us all better despite ourselves. Roads. Libraries. Grocery Stores. The post. Duct tape. Band-aid.
The things we make make things better, despite their makers.
Radical Boy Manifesto