Words&Dirt

“The picture he conjured now came back with special vividness, as if it had been cleansed of all dust by last night’s rain.

Unease and expectation and fear scattered to the farthest corners of the spacious classroom, and hid themselves in the room’s many objects like cowardly little animals. Tengo was able to re-create the scene in meticulous detail––the blackboard with its partially erased mathematical formulas, the broken pieces of chalk, the cheap, sun-damaged curtains, the flowers in the vase on the teacher’s podium (though he couldn’t tell what type), the children’s paintings pinned to the wall, the world map behind the podium, the smell of the floor wax, the waving of the curtains, the children’s shouts coming through the window. His eyes could trace each omen or plan or riddle they contained.

During those several seconds when Aomame was holding his hand, Tengo had seen many things and accurately seared each image on his retinas, like a camera taking a photograph. These images comprised one of the basic landscapes that helped him survive his pain-filled teens. The scene always included the strong sensation of the girl’s fingers. Her right hand never failed to encourage Tengo during the agonizing process of becoming an adult. Don’t worry, I’m with you, the hand declared.

You are not alone.”

––1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, pg. 524-5

“We need not be victims of impersonal ‘market forces’ over which we have no control. The market is a human creation. It is based on rules that human beings devise. The central question is who shapes those rules and for what purpose. Over the last three decades, the rules have been shaped by large corporations, Wall Street, and very wealthy individuals in order to channel a large portion of the nation’s total income and wealth to themselves. If they continue to have unbridled influence over the rules, and they gain control of the assets at the core of the new wave of innovations, they will end up with almost all the wealth, all the income, and all the political power. That result is no more in their interest than in the interests of the rest of the population, because under such conditions an economy and a society cannot endure.

The coming challenge is not to technology or to economics. It is a challenge to democracy. The critical debate for the future is not about the size of government; it is about whom government is for. The central choice is not between the ‘free market’ and government; it is between a market organized for broadly based prosperity and one designed to deliver almost all the gains to a few at the top. The pertinent issue is not how much is to be taxed away from the wealthy and redistributed to those who are not; it is how to design the rules of the market so that the economy generates what most people would consider a fair distribution on its own, without necessitating large redistributions after the fact.

The vast majority of the nation’s citizens do have the power to alter the rules of the market to meet their needs. But to exercise that power, they must understand what is happening and where their interests lie, and they must join together. We have done so before. If history is any guide and common sense has any sway, we will do so again.”

––Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, by Robert B. Reich, pg. 218-9