Why Aren't They Smarter?
by Michael LeStrange

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
everybody knows the war is over
and everybody knows the good guys lost
everybody knows the fight was fixed
the poor stay poor and the rich get rich
that's how it goes
and everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
everybody knows the captain lied
everybody got this broken feeling
that their father or their dog just died
everybody talkin' to their pockets
everybody wants a box of chocolates
and a long stem rose
and everybody knows
    -Don Henley, Everybody Knows

I was thinking about the great conspiracy recently and was persuaded to believe there really isn't any great conspiracy.  The reasoning is based on a reductio ad absurdum argument, and consequently of dubious heritage.  If there really was a great conspiracy, then they must be very dumb.  From what I can tell, the general trend is pretty anti-economic.  So if there is a great conspiracy, its goal must be something akin to becoming the great Bozo the clown of the known Universe.

So my model for the great conspiracy is one of single cell behavior, not the behavior one would expect from a large population of cooperating cells, such as the higher apes on this planet.

Granted, the organism is huge in space and time.  The one on this planet has been around in its present form for at least 100,000 years, which is a pretty long time by anyone but a geologist's standards.

It's like watching the evolution of single cell organisms all over again.  We already have some form of global consciousness.  Have ever since we had a population of humans large enough that had a common language.  At first, it was probably like one would expect the first random attempts by chemicals to self replicate and organize.  The first primitive cell walls formed, and there was an internal and an external.

Likewise in human development, when language first developed a higher form of distinguishing and integrating what was internal, and classifying and manipulating that which is external became possible.  Like it or not, the whole notion of "us and them" is extremely basic and extremely useful.

But flipped on it's head when you consider organisms who are integrated from multitudes of "thems".  Complexity is what gives "us" the supposed evolutionary advantage when compared to those composed of only one.  But like the great wheel tells us, it's all a matter of perspective.  The more complex we become, the more general and homogenous we become.  We start to recapitulate our early evolution as we spiral into a new phase of existence.

I guess this is always happening, and the number of spirals around any given point just keeps getting bigger and bigger as time progresses locally.  I'm reminded of a line in a song by the Indigo Girls...  Ending up where I started again makes me want to stand still.

But stand still we can't.  Not even in death, I would guess.  I think that when we die, we'll find out that we were on vacation, and we have to get back to work again.  We'll be back on the office the following Monday, wondering why we ever left.  And so another cycle will likely start, and we'll be saving bucks until we can afford to get born again into another cycle of reincarnation back in this vacation reality.

We always have to maintain some sort of objective observation, despite living in the guts of some planetary scale amoeba.  Yes, the current administration is trying to control the government with as much secrecy as they are allowed to get away with.  Every administration does this to various degrees.  The simple fact of war is that information is of tantamount importance.  Which is why it's really hard to wage war in a democracy.

But on the flip side, one gets very good at manipulating and hiding information under this environment.  Which can only be good for us as a species, I suppose.  Otherwise it wouldn't be selected for.

One has to wonder, though whether things have swung too far towards the tendency of secrecy.  Vice Pres Cheney is fighting with the GAO and several other NGOs to keep records of what went on in determining the administration's energy policy secret.  The administration's stated position is that they have a right to secrecy in how they came up with their policy.  If they don't have this secrecy, then they won't be able to get the unvarnished opinions they require to develop their policy.

Uh, where do they think we live?  Anyone who's not willing to stand up and be counted for what they are advising our leaders about should not be trusted.  Sorry.  We just don't need that kind of advice.  Quite frankly, the administration's policy is the product of a democratic government, not the musings of some corporate board. 

Well, at least that's what we're supposed to be.  People have been screaming for years that government should be run like a business.  Careful what you wish for, I guess.

In a democracy, we have this pet theory that our government should be accountable to the people.  And if we don't know how decisions were made, we can't judge much about the end result.  It isn't just a quaint theory that the American people should know as much as is possible about how the administration came up with their policies.

It's way to easy to be swayed by clever arguments and the ever present spin doctors.  The issues are incredibly complex and reasonable people can come to quite different conclusions based on the same data.  It's really easy to tell people "this is the best solution we have" when you can hide embarrassing facts or shady decision mechanisms or ethically questionable objectives from those who ultimately make the decisions and pay the cost.  You can get a good statistical advantage in swaying arguments by hiding information.

I was struck this week by the reaction to the so-called "Shadow Government" activated in response to 9/11.  On the one hand, I was well aware of the governmental contingency plans formed during the cold war.  And given the fact that they flew a plane into the Pentagon, and almost flew another one into the white house (or some other high profile government symbol of our country), our government would be stupid to not have done so.  No matter what side of the Bush you find yourself on.  You have to understand the devastation the USA would face if we lost a functioning government.  What we have is a hell of a lot better than the chaos we'd inherit if we lost a majority of our elected executive branch.

So these guys are really lucky.  I mean, as a species, we're probably the luckiest on this planet.  Doubly so for this administration.  So far they've managed to a) get appointed by the Supremes b) have terrorists save their ratings  and it looks like they will pull off c) the mildest recession in history despite the dot com bubble followed by an unprecedented terrorist attack.

You can't credit this to skill.  The battle over the appointment to the presidency took place conveniently in the backyard of Bush's older brother.  Remember the army of lawyers that camped out in Florida?  This was the same party that hates trial lawyers, remember.  That's why this administration is like the movie Forest Gump.  It's like everything just happens to fall into his lap.

Easy to believe in the great conspiracy with coincidences like these.

But if there is a grand conspiracy, I think they must idiot savants.  They may be really good weasels, but they are terribly shitty planners for the future.  There's an awful lot of evidence that their strategies are nothing more than the standard rape and pillage scenarios we've seen played out over and over in our collective past.  They base everything on monotonic growth functions.  Bigger, more and concentrated.

Which is, I guess, what one should expect from a proto-nucleolus.  Homogeneity and insulation from their surroundings by a semi permeable membrane that is strictly controlled.  Shuffling interns and aids perform much the same functions as strands of RNA being shuffled between the nucleus and the rest of the cell.

I guess we may be heading towards an insect like state.  Kind of a federation of specialization, all under strict control.  The idiot's eyes everywhere, making sure the workers are doing their assigned tasks.

But the thought of Dick Cheney as the queen ant just doesn't sit right with me.  Maybe one of the Bush twins should be tasked with the job.  I hear Jenna is quite the party animal.  Maybe she'd be a better candidate.  I mean, we mine as well have a decent babe cracking the whip.  Better than the old, balding white men in my book.

March 3, 2002