If everything is a national security issue, nothing is a national security priority. Economic analysis might be better if underpinned by complexity theory rather than the search for equilibrium. Smart phones replacing smart parenting. Ageing spikes at 44 and 60 worth knowing about. Why today fascination with and affiliation to the Faustian tale is stronger than ever.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Daniel Drezner, How Everything Became National Security
(Foreign Affairs, 12 August 2024)
… and national security became everything. US focused but true for much of the rest of the world as well. “From climate change to ransomware to personal protective equipment to critical minerals to artificial intelligence, everything is national security now.” But if everything is defined as national security, then nothing is a national security priority. The academic argues that a more considered discussion among policymakers is required about what is and what is not a matter of national security, otherwise governments risk spreading their resources too thin across too broad an array of issues (metered paywall that requires prior registration).
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Peter Coy, Is Chaos the Key to Better Economics?
(The New York Times, 12 August 2024)
A presentation of Doyne Farmer’s key idea (Farmer is the director of complexity economics at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford’s Martin School). In “Making Sense of Chaos” (his new book), Farmer contests the mainstream models in which the economy always tends toward equilibrium. He says that a lot of the economy’s ups and downs come from internal forces, not external ones. As a result, the economy never settles down into a quiet equilibrium. It behaves chaotically (gifted article, reads in 5-6 min).
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Chandran Nair, The global collapse of parenting and the rise of the device
(Pearls and Irritations, 15 August 2024)
For years, the head of Global Insitute of Tomorrow had in store an article on the global collapse of parenting due to the rise of the smartphone. Nobody wanted it. Then, two things promted him to push for its publication: (1) the US Surgeon-General’s call for warnings to be placed on social media products (like with tobacco); (2) the forthcoming measures on screen time and device use in Singapore. Read on to understand why Chandran thinks that “the mobile device is now used as a default by parents who are too busy, unwilling, unaware, or lazy to perform their parental duties, let alone talk to each other” (free access, 7-9 min).
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Leo Sands, Feeling old? Your molecules change rapidly around ages 44 and 60
(The Washington Post, 16 August 2024)
The markers of age do not increase at a steady pace, but more sporadically. A new study shows that shifts in abundance – either increasing or decreasing in number – of over 135,000 types of molecules and microbes related to age did not occur gradually over time, but clustered around two ages when the human body undergoes two dramatic bouts of rapid physical transformation (on a molecular level): 44 and 60. These findings underscore the importance of lifestyle after entering the 40s, with the need to improve diet and exercise around this age, when the body begins to change (gifted article, reads in 5 min).
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Ed Simon, Why the Faustian Bargain Has Captivated Our Minds Since the Dawn of Time
(Next Big Idea Club, 8 August 2024)
The author of “Devil’s Contract: A History of the Faustian Bargain” shares five key insights about his book. (1) The story of Faust is an intimately human story, explored in thousands of plays, poems, novels, stories, films, and musical compositions; (2) Faust story is our story: an account of what it means to be human in all our failings; (3) Faust is an artist whose magic deals in illusions; (4) The Faustian tale is particularly adept at allegorizing totalitarian politics – “Fascism is the politics of the Faustian bargain, the national soul exchanged for fantasies of the nation made great again”; (5) Faust’s tale is increasingly an account of humanity today (free access, reads in 10min-ish).
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