Speculating Existence

Serendipity strikes again. Missing the link I wanted brought me to The Crypting Point, Max Read's column on Bookforum. How could I not stay there when I read the following?

The role of chaos in contemporary political and economic thought

The book being reviewed was SPECULATIVE COMMUNITIES: LIVING WITH UNCERTAINTY IN A FINANCIALIZED WORLD by ARIS KOMPOROZOS-ATHANASIOU. Its thesis is described as:

Komporozos-Athanasiou’s point is not so much that every sphere of life is programmatically ordered as a speculative market, but that we find ourselves assuming—sometimes by choice, sometimes by default—the attitude of speculators in everyday life. If the world in the years before the global financial crisis was defined by the business-minded rationality of the entrepreneur—save and invest now, reap and profit later—activity in the years since is better characterized by the creative imagination of the financial speculator, who embraces, seeks to profit from, and perhaps even attempts to intensify volatility. John Stuart Mill’s infinitely rational, “risk-taking, entrepreneurial agent” homo economicus is giving way to a new species of hominid, which Komporozos-Athanasiou names homo speculans: “a politically disoriented, speculative subject who accepts rather than averts the future’s radical uncertainty.” 

I get the idea. I think I agree with. There was a time I thought the world had gone crazy, all was chaos, that gambling one's actions was all one could do, and now I think maybe I was not so crazy. I do wonder if homo speculans has not always existed, gambling always being a part of human nature: Alexander the Great invading Persia, Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Putin invading Ukraine. But there is always rationality in a gamble. What I see different is the internet magnifies the bets made and the subject of those bets. Damned interesting essay.

sch 6/12/22