The talk these days is about the duel that is raging between
the proponents of big government and those of small government. I have
something to say about this subject but I ask myself if it is the time to write
on a topic as heavy as this. I know that to do it right, I shall have to expend
an enormous amount of mental energy as I put my ideas on paper because I must
make sure that the people who will read them will be able to make sense of
them. And I know from personal experience that an undertaking of this size and
this complexity is a tiresome thing to put together.
This is Summer after all, a time of the year when all the
sane people in the world instinctively think of slowing down to enjoy the
little things in life such as those we routinely neglect while going through
the other seasons of the year. It is by choice or by coercion that we pursue a
more hectic existence whether we normally engage in a physical sort of activity
or an intellectual one. And I have had a hectic year already not because I
chose it to be so but because the circumstances made it so for me. And so I ask
myself: What is there now which is pressing so hard that I need to maintain a
hectic schedule? But I refrain from answering the question for fear that I may
be proven wrong again.
When it happens that I get in this mood, my mind wanders off
to a time long ago when I used to do the things I liked doing -- the things
that remain vivid in my memory today as the day when they happened many years ago.
And it was by pure coincidence, believe it or not, that my mind wandered off to
a time when I began to formulate ideas about guess what -- the subjects that
relate to the dueling proponents of different ideas. Like I said, it was pure
coincidence that I wandered in this direction; and so I had no choice but to
thank the muse for giving me the opportunity and the obligation to write this
one more article before taking a Summer break. Thank you, my dear muse but
don't do it again.
Here is my two cents worth of talk about opposite ideas that
lead to a duel over the size of government or anything else for that matter. I
was well in my twenties when I lived on campus, having worked for a number of
years before returning to college. Thus, the activities that interested the
younger crowd did not appeal to me as much as they appealed to them, and I
preferred to spend my spare time learning new things. There was the classroom
where I learned the subjects I had come to study, but there was also the
library where I spent countless hours absorbing knowledge about the subjects I
happened to go over because I meant to, or went over because I was led to them
from previous readings.
The Japanese economic miracle was the topic of the day
during those years, and this may have been the reason why I pivoted toward the
Japanese subjects in general. Yes, I did read about the economy of that country
but I also read about its history and its culture – a violent past that is in
stark contrast to today's serene culture. I absorbed a great deal of knowledge,
much of which remains vague in my memory today till I look it up on the
internet at which time it comes back to me in whole or in part. But there is
the one thing which remains vivid in my memory today as it was on the day I first
learned about it; even though I do not look it up to refresh my memory. It is
that the Japanese metalworkers discovered the secret of making high quality
steel by making the sword of the samurai – the instrument of much violent
duels.
What sticks in my memory is not so much the technology that
leads to the making of a good sword but the fact that the method of making high
quality steel was passed from generation to generation not as hard knowledge
but as a precise ritual. Thus, lacking the ability to perform the ritual, and
missing the knowledge behind the making of high quality steel, I could not
explain how the sword of a samurai was made; and all I can tell is that the
people who developed the method learned the art (or the science) by trial and
error.
They learned that to harden steel to a perfect state, you
need to heat it to a given shade of a blueish color, beat it with a sledge
hammer in a ritualistic sort of way, fold it an exact number of times, beat it
a few more times and dip it in cold water. You then repeat the whole procedure
a number of times and voila, you have a perfect sword that is made of high
quality steel. Needless to say that the science of metallurgy did not explain
why the method worked so well till many decades later.
And there were the descendants as well as the disciples of
the original makers of Japanese swords who also made swords from perfect steel,
and made them in the same old way as did their ancestors. They did as good a
job as the ancient ones not because they knew what trial and error had taught
their ancestors but because the making of the samurai sword had become a
religious ritual whose every move was a secret that was taught to them and them
alone. There was no trial to do here and no error to commit or to correct; just
a series of moves to execute as precisely as they were written down.
And so, the successive makers of samurai swords practiced
the ritual exactly as described in the sacred texts from which they read as
they sat inside the temples where they worshiped the deities to whom they
chanted the pledge never to divulge the secrets of making the perfect sword.
And they never inquired about the science behind the ritual because they
considered the operation to be a religious dogma that could not be questioned or
altered in any way. The ritual had, in fact, become a dogma as sacred to them
as the sacraments are to us who grow up in the Catholic religion.
As I studied the other subjects in the arts and the
sciences, be they about Japan
or someone else, I began to sense that there exists a pattern repeating itself
in many of the instances. Like the exact steps of a ballet or the recipe of a
dish, the pattern begins with an observation that turns into an experiment
which is refined by trial and error to become a ritual that is then transmitted
to later generations. It is received by the latter like a dogma which they
apply as described not knowing why the things they do are done this one way and
not another way – knowing only that the instructions must be followed to the
letter without question and without alteration.
In fact, the morphing of an observation from an early
beginning and passing through the intervening steps to a mature dogma can end
up being an open ritual like the saying of grace at meal time, or end up being
as secretive as the recipe of a soft drink which remains hidden in a vault for
centuries. These realities are so much a part of our character as a species, we
experience them and learn about them from the day we are born.
The truth is that our education begins to take place from
the instant that baby is born, and continues at every moment that the baby
remains awake. The infant senses the world around it and soaks in the
peculiarities of the environment surrounding it by seeing, hearing, smelling,
tasting and feeling its way through a maze of perceptions it takes in and
synthesizes into a human culture of one kind or another.
And then as toddlers, we are told what to do and how to do
it; even learn about the dogmas of the catechism we are warned never to reject
or question in any way. No, we are not taught how to make a samurai sword; only
how to live an impeccable sort of life and grow up to be a good Catholic. Other
than that, we ask the grownups the how and the why of things but we do not always
get a full answer because the grownups themselves may not have all the answers.
But the children keep growing, they keep maturing and they
eventually develop into one of two kinds of people. There will be the kind to
whom knowing that something is there will be enough to make them accept it as
dogma. And there will be the kind to whom knowing the why and the how of things
will be of paramount importance, and will not give up searching for answers
till they find out what is there and how it all works out.
In real life, the first kind of people will not seek to go
past knowing that E is equal to MC square; the second kind will want to see the
proof of that equation. And the odd part of this phenomenon is that many of the
first kind will go on to talk about Einstein's equation as if they had
expertise on it when, in reality, they would have none. Whereas the second kind
will go on to study calculus, learn integration by parts and prove the equation
for themselves. A few people in this last group will even go beyond the
accepted proof and ask if everything about it is beyond question. Until they
have a satisfactory answer, they will hesitate to say they know as much about
the equation as there is to know.
Now, my friend, we get back to the concept of big government
versus small government which is the topic of this discussion after all. The
first thing we must be mindful of is that a government does not sprout like
mushroom in the forest. It is an organization that begins with an idea –
possibly a revolutionary one that itself mushrooms into a movement and develops
into a full blown dogma by going through several steps of the ritualistic kind.
Depending on the circumstances that sparked the movement, and the time it takes
it to mature, it may evolve to become a big government or a small one.
Whichever direction the movement takes, there will be
disciples who will surround it and duel to the death if they must to defend it
as if it were a religion. They will call it a political movement of the Left if
it liens towards the dogmas of big government, or call it a political movement
of the Right if it liens towards the dogmas of small government. The prophet
that the first group will adopt as patron saint is the economist John Maynard
Keynes. The prophet that the second group will adopt as patron saint is the
economist Milton Friedman. Thus, it can be seen that the way an economy is run
has become the religion of our time.
When election time approaches and political trickery
multiplies, the hardcore members of each political religion will seek to define
themselves with the use of a single word, a one-liner or an idea that is short
and simple such as you can write on a bumper sticker. They will also seek to
define their opponents with the use of a single word, a one-liner or a short
and simple idea. The difference between the way they will treat themselves and
the way they will treat their opponents is that they will define themselves in
flattering terms and define the opponents in damning terms.
In the scrimmage, expressions like big government and small
government along with many others such as the nanny state, fair share, personal
responsibility and class warfare will become laudatory terms or pejorative ones
depending on who use them and the context in which they use them. No, these are
not prayers to some deity; they are weapons as sharp as the sword of the
samurai with which they cut the opponents down to size.
It is all a part of the rituals of our culture; the dogmas
of our tiring existence. And this is why I need to take a break.