So much for the doubts about the possibility of understanding the past. But to understand is not to accept. Vico experiences no intellectual discomfort – nor need he do so – when he damns in absolute terms the social injustice and brutality of Homeric society. Herder is not being inconsistent when he denounces the great conquerors and destroyers of local cultures – Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne – or glorifies Oriental literature or primitive song. This would not be consistent with conscious (or, shall I say, conscientious) relativism of values, but is compatible with pluralism, which merely denies that there is one, and only one, true morality or aesthetics or theology, and allows equally objective alternative values or systems of value. One can reject a culture because one finds it morally or aesthetically repellent, but, one this view, only if one can understand how and why it could, nevertheless, be acceptable to a recognisably human society. Only if its behaviour is not intelligible at all are we reduced to a mere ‘physicalist’ description and prediction of gestures; the code, if there is one, which would yield their meaning remains unbroken. Such men are not fully human for us; we cannot imaginatively enter their worlds; we do not know what they are up to; they are not brothers to us (as Vico and Herder supposed that all human beings were); we can at most only dimly guess at what the point of their acts, if they are acts, may be. Then truly do we have to confine ourselves to mere behaviourist reports of unexplained brute fact, or, at best, resort to the language of pure relativism, to the extent tht these men’s ends, somehow grasped as ends, seem wholly unrelated to our own. I repeat, pluralism – the incommensurability nd, at times, incompatibility of objective ends – is not relativism; nor, a fortiori, subjectivism, nor the allegedly unbridgeable differences of emotional attitude on which some modern positivists, emotivists, existentialists, nationalists and, indeed, relativistic sociologists and anthropologists found their accounts. This is the relativism from which I hold Montesquieu, Vico and Herder to have been free. This is no less true of other, more reactionary, critics of the Enlightenment: of Justus Moser, for example, in his polemic against Voltaire’s disparaging references to the absurd variety of laws and customs in the various little German principalities; or Burke, in his indictment of Warren Hastings for trampling on the traditional ways of life of the natives of India. I am not attempting to judge the validity of their objectivism or their pluralism, only to report it. Je ne suppose rien, je ne propose rien, je n’impose rien, j’expose. [Isaiah Berlin. Alleged Relativism in Eighteenth-Century European Thought. 1980]
This is truly a bonked up world. Sometimes it is as if humanity as a whole does not really know what it really wants. No, what it wants, what the market wants, is to have its cake and eat it too. Ever since quantitative easing became orthodox monetary policy, signals have been mixed up that it confuses the whole market.
Take QE for instance and its effects in Asia. Experts were worried that the expansive monetary policy in the US and more so in Japan these days were fueling asset inflation in across emerging Asia and elsewhere. There is also effectively a manipulation of exchange rates even if it is unintended and done indirectly (do not call it competitive devaluation!), which helps the export sectors of economies which are committed to QE. Those who see their currency appreciating by too much blame QE.
But now that the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said will end when the economy recovers, the equity markets of the whole world are tanking.
From 10,000 feet high, the ridiculousness comes in the form that good news is bad news and bad news is good news. The exact reason for the end of QE is a recovered economy. Judging by the equity and bond markets’ response to Bernanke, it seems that those markets are afraid that the market is recovering.
This highlights how QE has truly detached from the real economy.
As a digression, that does not mean that the QE is not working. It merely means that QE has caused these markets to be divorced from the so-called Main St. The real economy in these QE countries with its high unemployment rate and stuff clearly does not go in tandem with equity market. In the same line, I am the accusation that “Abenomics” has failed only because the Nikkei has jumped off the cliff as missing the point about the function of QE. The QE remains an expansive monetary policy aimed at improving output and not pushing the stock market up, however the function of the stock market as a leading indicator. The fact that the stock market and all of those investment papers are not part of the GDP calculation only stresses the actual intention of QE.
Looking closer, the detachment is understandable I suppose. It is a world of cheap money where the transmission of monetary policy is imperfect. Not all of those money get to the real economy, however it lowers long-term borrowing costs.
Anyway, in non-QE countries, oh, boy! It is almost like a boom. Domestic demand is strong, the stock market goes crazy (relatively because, when the KLCI is compared to regional bourses, all one can say is meh) and yields are so low that it makes sense for the government like Malaysia to expand its borrowing.
But now with the speculation of a tapering and Bernanke’s statement of the end of QE, the same those who complained about asset inflation are panicking, begging, Ben, please, don’t send the ‘copher back home. Stock market is down, yields on government bonds are up and the ringgit got spooked.
And yes, who can forget the craziness of the Treasuries are an insurance to its own downgrade? The magic of reserve currency!
Oh well. Just another day in this crazy world of ours.
At least gold is going down and I am extremely delighted of that. And that is not crazy.
Enough ranting. I have work to do.
Categories
[2695] Mountains greet thee
Bali was my final destination after two or three weeks travelling all the way by land from Jakarta. As I crossed the Bali Sea on a boat from Banyuwangi, Gilimanuk and this greeted me:
I do not remember the name of this mountain. It could be Prapat Agung but looking at the map, the twin (even three?) peaks might suggest it is not.
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[2694] Rocks smash romantic words
When I first read of Prambanan, in my mind there was an amazing structure that overwhelmed everything. But my expectation of it proved too much. I felt too many words had romanticized blocks of big ancient rocks.
Please do not get me wrong. Prambanan, from afar, looks amazing, mysterious. It imposes itself on its surroundings.
It is just that the experience of actually being there erodes the very air that makes it out of this world. It likes being awed by a rainbow but once you have learned that it is merely an interaction between light and water vapor, it ceases to be mysterious. It becomes just physics. And here was Prambanan representing the gods of Hindu built by the Sanjayas, once rival to the mighty Sailendras and Srivijaya: a pile of ancient rocks.
It does not help that I have been to Siem Reap. There, reality was grander than anything I had imagined. Rightly or wrongly, experience informs expectation and Angkor pushed my expectation of everything else that came from that particular era of Southeast Asian history even higher. Whatever expectation I had of Pagan, Borobodur and Prambanan got pushed up no thanks to the Angkor temples.
My expectation was Icarus. Reality was the sun. Prambanan is not as impressive as I had first imagined.
But I am glad that I visited Prambanan anyway. As always, it is always good having something concrete to back up the stuff I read in books to reaffirm that things out there are not just some fancy imagination concocted by the human mind. They are real and once upon a time, they were the centers of the world.
I have not been updating this blog of mine as often as I would like to. I have been busy with work and life in general.
Still, I have lots to say but just not enough time to write. I partly blame Twitter for that, which allows me to blow some steam off so that none accumulates to make me really wants to write anything in full. It is surprising how 140 characters can do wonders sometimes.
The fact that I have stopped writing for The Sun and Selangor Times after the May 5 election does not help in pushing me to write more.
But there is stuff in the pipeline and I want to warm up before things get too fast on that front. So, blogging is a good way to give me a giddy-up moment.
Also, one thing with me is that I feel ashamed if I see somebody works harder than me. And here is a self guilt-tripping for me:
He is a farmer somewhere in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia, some time late in the morning. And he works way harder than me.
This was pretty far off from the main road. I was on a bicycle, exploring the place and took a nap somewhere under a coconut tree. It was an awesome in-between jobs vacation.
Okay. I want to take more holiday. Crap.