(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

"Even then [in the mid-nineteenth century], the market seemed an unlikely candidate [to replace God], immersed as it always had been in the short-term needs of utilitarianism. After all, the weakness of the marketplace, when it comes to great issues, is the possession of a memory somewhat longer than a dog's, slightly shorter than a cat's. But that's also its great strength -- its ability to pick itself up after every fall, to recapture its enthusiasms, to move in circles without being bothered by the self-evident repetitions, even repetitions of error. That dogged, not overly reflective, willingness to just keep on trying is admirable.

What is the memory of the stock market? About that of a dog.

The money market? What was the question?"

--- "A Short History of Economics Becoming a Religion." The End of Globalisation

I love John Ralston Saul :D

In other news, my employers, who are letting me go because they can't afford to keep me, are calling me in for extra shifts because of all the extra work. What are they going to do after I'm gone? Especially when their best worker is resigning because she's having a baby in three months?

Comments

[foi-nefaste.livejournal.com]

You'll have to let me know how The End of Globalisation is - I was drooling over it at Chapters earlier today, but decided that I should pay rent before buying books. :)

... in a somewhat related manner... d&d. This weekend. Saturday or Sunday? As a general heads-up, though, I'll probably have to leave around 4 if it's on Saturday.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Probably Sunday -- at least that's what I'd prefer. I'll have to call em_fish and Matt R tonight, but everybody seems to have an easier time with Sunday. It would also give me a day to prepare.

[jc2004.livejournal.com]

I'll have to read some John Ralston Saul. He's been on my list for a while but I haven't had time.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

His strength is that he brings intellectual energy to a lot of common-sense concepts. Like the idea that we live in a dicatorship of reason -- a world so coldly, calculatingly rational that it's become irrational.

Start with Voltaire's Bastards. His ideas are so are so different from anything we get exposed to in this culture (and yet so intuitively correct) that he's hard to understand at first. That book has the most thorough explanation.

Unconscious Civilization is just a transcript of his lectures on his first book -- it mostly recaps. Doubter's Companion is a set of brilliantly funny short comments on a variety of things arranged as a dictionary ("Dictionary: Opinion presented as fact in alphabetical order").

Then there's his book about Canada -- Reflections of a Siamese Twin. Best book ever written about this country, but hard to understand without a grounding of Voltaire's Bastards, and a handy reference book on the history of Canada. I don't think Mr. Saul realizes how much Canadian history courses have deteriorated. I didn't know half the names he mentioned until I looked them up.