The breakdowns and bailouts in the financial markets have created sky-high levels of fear, anger, more fear, and more anger. As the Dow drops, anxiety spikes. The situation is awful, dire, disastrous, catastrophic–a maelstrom of panic, collapse, more panic, and further collapse as investors act like crazed victims piling up against a door in a theater that has caught fire.

Don’t think that I had my money in CDs. I’ve been nailed badly and the prospects are not good for my family. But somehow, everyone needs to take a deep breath and exhale. For all the talk of pain, the term remains a metaphor for many of us. And the panic is a symptom not only of the obvious problems but also of what happens when a society becomes a market society instead of a society with a market economy.

If a photograph can help us regain a sense of balance, it might be this one:

The caption at The Guardian tells us that we are looking at a man performing with a horse at the Cavalia equestrian show in Lisbon, Portugal. The horse will be exhibiting superb training, but the roles almost seem reversed. The man looks like the lesser animal, almost like a monkey who has been trained to do tricks on the big ball. By contrast, the horse seems the epitome of nobility, a superior being who only has to show up to dominate the scene. He is the standard by which the man will be judged.

Perhaps this seeming inversion of a natural order appealed to me because of the financial world being turned upside down, and because of my wish to regain a sense of balance. And the scene is about balance–more specifically, about repose, with balance one means to that end. Indeed, the man could be a metaphor for the markets, as he balances precariously (however skillfully) on a globe than is at once unified and capable of punishing any sudden shift in his stance. Above all, however, it is something different from the madness of the markets. Sure, they will have sold tickets to the show, but for a moment a man and a horse stand in perfect equipoise. The man is on top of a small world, but not to get rich. Communion with the horse is more important than that. The sense of ritual harmony runs deep; Confucius would say that this sense of things is essential to restoring balance in the individual and the state.

I could end there, but there is need to go a step further. Repose in a theater may be too easy. The real test is real pain. This is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and observance has included this beautiful portrait:

The caption at The Big Picture says, “Nathan Gentry, age 6, sits by a window overlooking New York City traffic on September 8, 2006.” Nathan died after months of painful treatments. Although trapped in a disease that most children, thankfully, do not experience, Nathan captures so much of the vulnerability of childhood and the profoundly precious quality of life itself.

This also is a picture of repose. He is experiencing, it seems, a moment free of pain, of quiet reflection on the scene outside the window. And the scene is outside: the glass walls him in as much as it lets him see, and the outer world has shrunk to that small portal. Outside we can see scaffolding, and so he is looking at a building that will be sustained, though he cannot be. His repose comes not for keeping everything in balance, but from putting himself in relationship with what remains. He asks–and takes–nothing but a moment of peace. It seems that he has already learned how to live with less. Obviously, that is something many of us have yet to learn.

Photographs by Nacho Doce/Reuters and, via The Big Picture, Susan Gentry (©), who asked for a link to the Children’s Neuroblastoma Cancer Foundation.

 0 Comments

The science section can be a pleasant diversion from the overheated controversies on the front page of the newspaper, but this week there is a connection that shouldn’t be overlooked. Let’s start with the science.

This is a portrait of three langurs, an endangered species residing in southern China. Between hunting and deforestation, they were on a steep slope toward extinction. This population was down to 96 when Chinese biologist Pan Wenshi began studying them in 1996. Today, despite continued development in the area, they number around 500.

The picture above may look like a nuclear family but actually is a mother, child, and another female. Monkeys have social organization, one might even say polity, to survive, and this population may even be experiencing socio-political evolution from patrilineal infantide to negotiated power sharing. What is equally impressive is how Dr. Pan called on human social organization to develop a more effective strategy for saving the langurs. Instead of enclaving the endanged population and focusing all his resources on them, Pan worked at improving the infrastructure for the human population surrounding them. Soon the villagers had clean water, medical services, a school, and more sustainable energy–basic infrastructual needs that required only smart designs, effective advocacy, and not a great deal of money. One result was that the forests recovered and villagers started to protect the monkeys from hunting.

So why am I telling you this? Because in the front section of the newspaper you can read all about the $700 billion bailout plan for reckless financial corporations that is being pushed by the Bush administration. That’s the same administration that refused to regulate the industry or address any of the danger signs that have been accumulating for several years. I’ll let that go, because now the key question is how to protect the economy. And that’s why we need to pay attention to Dr. Pan instead of Treasury Secretary M. Paulson Jr. and company.

The gist of the administration proposal is that we have to save the few in order to save the many. The few don’t deserve to be saved, that that’s not important; they are likely to salvage enormous personal fortunes despite financial malpractice, but that’s a separate issue; there are no obligations in place of continuing incentives for mismanagement, but this is not the time for that; the costs are excessive and are to be paid by millions of people who have done no wrong and will be harmed by the payout, but we don’t have time to do anything else; this is contrary to the reigning ideology that is one cause of the disaster, but we must be practical rather than principled or “partisan.” Or so we are told.

I’d like to think that this debacle is one of the last vestiges of the political economy of twentieth century oligarchy. That’s too optimistic, of course, but it does suggest that the complex problems of the twenty-first century require smarter, less resource-intensive, and–let’s say it–more democratic solutions. The approach taken by Dr. Pan, for example. His basic idea is that in order to save the few, you have to save the many.

There has been a lot of talk about prudence lately in respect to both Wall Street and the presidential campaign. The administration’s bailout is not prudent. In the name of saving the system it puts system sustainability at risk. While claiming that the issue is of the highest seriousness, it refuses to take the time for adequate deliberation. Instead of concentrating on foundational issues such as a fair distribution of wealth, maintaining essential infrastructure, providing adequate regulation for a modern economy, and otherwise protecting the basic social contract that undergirds the society, it ransoms all that for a quick fix.

The plan may go through. A similar propaganda campaign led to another trillion dollar disaster not too long ago, so the cynical money may be on Paulson. Whatever happens, the rest of us need to start emulating Dr. Pan’s approach. He had specific advantages that favored its development, of course: he was far from the center of power, had little money, and cared about more than his own self-interest. Come to think of it, we may have a lot in common.

Photograph by Peking University Chongzuo Biodiversity Research Institute.  The accompanying story is here.

 2 Comments

“Several national restaurant chains were shuttered last Tuesday, possibly offering a early taste of what’s in store this year for businesses that depend on free-spending consumers whose budgets are now being squeezed.” Clever puns aside, this lead-in to a New York Times report says a lot. So does this photograph that accompanied the story.

We know what we are supposed to observe here: ordinary people who are glum. Some may have lost their lunch and others may have lost their jobs, but no one can see a ready alternative. The photograph itself reinforces a mildly depressive reaction: it seems a banal, cluttered, diffused shot with the lighting either dull close in or too harshly white in the background. No one of the three figures holds our attention, yet they don’t form a coherent group either as they each are alone, left with their thoughts as they go their separate ways. Arrayed along a line of sight that leads only into the open street where others go about their business, the prospects for a new start close by seem slim.

Other elements of the picture add more to the story. Look at the garish ad for $4.99 burgers. That probably includes fries as well, and in any case it’s a good example of how the US has been awash in cheap food. Look also at the guy’s supersized drink. Or her large bag–the fashion this summer–or the fact that no one in the picture has been going hungry. Even as the restaurant closes, it does so amidst signs of overconsumption. Add the American eagle from the sign in the upper right of the photo, and you’ve got a small allegory. An entire way of life based on cheap food, cheap gas, and constant consumption may be shutting down.

Bennigan’s was the casualty this time, with Steak & Ale to follow and other brands in the “causal dining” category also in jeopardy. In addition, the neighborhood or strip mall typically loses a familiar place that will help anchor the local community or business district, while the space will be hard to rent in the downturn. The sad fact is that the housing crisis, the oil crunch, the commodity price hikes, the devaluation of the dollar, the drain on the national treasury from the trillion dollar war, and similar the big-picture troubles are hardest on the little people. This closing isn’t the first and won’t be the last, and every time it happens more people have to go home and tell someone they love that that things just got worse.

I dream of the day that Main Street Republicans figure out that their interests are not served by the party of Wall Street. Maybe if enough stores close and enough people vote their interests, then local businesses can start up again, this time with health insurance and the economic security that comes from regulation, conservation, and other proven measures for a sustainable society. I’d drink to that–and maybe even go out to eat.

Photograph by Roger Mallison/Star-Telegram via Associated Press.

 3 Comments

It is a stock image. We see it every time there is an abrupt jump in the price of gasoline (which has been a great deal lately). The only thing that changes are the numbers as they move ever higher (always ending in 9/10th of a penny as if that somehow minimizes the impact of the increase.) This sign is in San Francisco, but of course there is nothing in the photograph that would give that away. It could be “Anywhere, USA” for all we know, and that is part of its rhetorical appeal as it functions as a cipher for the state of the national economy.

Shot from a low angle, it puts the price of gasoline—and the oil companies that bring it to us—out of reach of ordinary consumers who have little choice but to look up and to pay up. But what is perhaps even more interesting than the billboard which features the price of gasoline, is the social surround that fills out the photograph: there are no long lines of people waiting to buy gasoline; and there are no angry consumers protesting the price or challenging the legitimacy of the cost or price hike. In point of fact, there is nothing that would point to a crisis or serious discontent of any kind as consumers—pedestrians and drivers alike—go about their business calmly and without any apparent concern for the price of fuel. Indeed, if anything, the sheer repetition of stock photographs like this one across time has a normalizing effect on such price increases that suggests that there is really nothing out of the ordinary here. Sure, prices go up, and sometimes it is inconvenient, but it’s happened before and life goes on. And the proof, of course, is in a photograph that we see over and over again.

But of course we know that most people are feeling the pinch of increasing fuel costs, especially the most recent spike in prices at the pump—nearly 20% since January 1, 2008—and so we have presidential candidates from both parties advocating a summer gas tax holiday designed to give consumers “much needed financial relief.” The details for how to pay for such a holiday vary, but however it would work the appeal for such a policy smacks of the worst kind of political pandering as it is designed to address short term, personal needs (votes in the coming election and marginally cheaper fuel for individual U.S. consumers/voters) rather than longer term public interests (a sustainable national energy policy in a global economy). And what all of this ignores is one of the primary reasons that we face a problem with rising energy prices: years of excessive and uncontrolled consumption fueled by a normative sense of national entitlement, a belief in the infinite renewability of oil and gas resources, and the assumption that in the end market driven price increases are … well, altogether legitimate and … normal.

That said, one would not think that it would take a Noble Prize in economics to figure out the obvious corollary that lowering the price of fuel with something like a tax holiday will increase consumption—a prospect that can only have the oil companies licking their chops as, once again, it reinforces the natural and normalizing tendencies on display in the photograph above. And, of course, it will do nothing to undermine the sense of national entitlement or the false belief in infinite renewable oil resources. After all, it is just another day in “Anywhere, USA.”

Photo Credits: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

 2 Comments

Every spring and fall the photographic record in the US includes a few stock images of agriculture. Spring images include tractors turning the earth and kids holding newborn lambs; typical autumn fare includes combines moving across the Great Plains and pumpkins waiting to be carved. Modern agribusiness and a mythic county life each get their due. For the most part, however, we don’t see where our food comes from. The near-complete separation of the production and consumption of food is more than a distribution of labor–it is one of the things that makes us feel modern. Not surprisingly, it also ensure that “food” becomes very elastic, so much so that the local supermarket can have over 100,000 different products for sale.

The absence of images about food production is part of this willful dislocation of eating from growing, killing, and preparing food. It also isn’t a big loss much of the time. Who wants to watch wheat grow? Even so, once in a while an image comes along that can stop me in my tracks. Like this one:

The photo is of a rice field in Yunnan province in Southern China. It’s displayed both as a photo of the day at National Geographic online and at the Yunnan entry at Wikipedia. I think it belongs in the tradition of Chinese fine art. Indeed, if it seems familiar that probably is because it evokes earlier art works. Those paintings also may have captured terraced fields on landforms that seem so dynamic that they might be clouds. They, too, will have showed a place as if it were both uniquely particular and some fantastic otherworld. They also have mastered the exquisite tension between energy and order that makes the scene appear at once airily ephemeral and so beautiful that it could be eternal. The photograph stands alone, however, because of how it captures the light. The bright-hued light doesn’t so much shine on the landscape as radiate from within it.

The photo’s sense of aesthetic harmony amidst powerful natural energies might carry over, through the caption, to the idea that this also is an image of the good life: carefully manicured fields hug the wild mountain, and one can imagine that farmers are serenely engaged in sustainable agriculture as they have been for millennia except when drunk on sunshine. In fact, Yunnan has been a poor province that only now is producing enough rice to feed itself thanks to the addition of high-tech seeds and other modern practices. And so we get to the next photo:

This image from North Dakota seems almost funereal. The land is cold and empty, the sun is setting, and all that remains are a line of metal railroad cars that are evenly spaced as if sprockets in some cosmic abandoned factory. This is mechanized commodity crop production, and it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to be in the picture. The image accompanied a report on North Dakota’s population decline; the story was entitled Not Far from Forsaken.

That’s not the whole story, however. This barren winter desert is an unbelievably productive source of food that is shipped all over the world. So let’s look at the photo again, for it, too, suggests the promise that was so vivid in the first image. As Kathleen Norris learned, Dakota also is a place of heavenly energy. Look at the sun in this photo as something radiating constantly through the land, through the networks of exchange that define every meal we eat, and, most important, through the wheat that lies in the rail cars waiting to be converted into food and all we can do when we don’t want for food.

Photographs by Eugene Richards/New York Times; Jialiang Gao.

 4 Comments