Reflections 26th May

Something about the cosmology of work

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

At the start of the pandemic, I started two small groups, each with members from very different backgrounds in science and the humanities, to talk about how we were witnessing what was then an existential unknown and what we could learn from each other. Initiated as a short experiment, we are approaching our fourth year of meeting weekly, and I’m still curious about that liminal space between disciplines.

I have a feeling that we are entering a Copernican moment—a modern equivalent of the moment when good old Nicolaus rocked up and said something like, “You know that thing about the Earth being the centre of the Universe? Well, I’ve noticed something…” Cue all sorts of angst for those who listened, as the Spanish Inquisition, as HR was called then, invited them in for an appraisal…

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Today, it’s “The Economy” that is the dogma that must not be questioned, even as the evidence of the harm that blind obedience to it is doing on our streets, countryside and society.

The Third Body Problem

The "third body problem" refers to the challenge of predicting the gravitational interactions and resulting motions of three celestial bodies. Unlike the two-body problem, which can be solved with precise mathematical equations, the addition of a third body introduces complex, non-linear dynamics, leading to chaotic and unpredictable behaviour. This complexity arises because each body influences the others, creating a system where small changes can result in vastly different outcomes. The problem is fundamental in astrophysics and celestial mechanics, with applications in understanding the dynamics of stars, planets, and moons in multi-body systems.

Summary by ChatGPT 4o

We seem to have a “third body problem” as our current notions of the Economy, the Natural World, and our understanding of our part in it as individuals fall ever more out of balance. The price of denial plays out in our morning headlines. Something has to give.

I’ve been wondering what “has to give” and what the consequences for us as individuals and communities might be if it does. Obviously, this is speculation on my part, but I’m hoping to create enough of a hypothesis to act as a vehicle that can be challenged and leave enough behind it to build a better one.

“The Economy” is a construct—it is whatever we as a society decide it is. Today, it remains a legacy of work done in the 1930s in an attempt to provide a degree of reliable quantification. It was cemented in place first by the need to manage a wartime economy, then by the creation of the IMF, and the drive to rebuild economies in the aftermath of the Second World War. It was, in many ways, a “crappy first draft” that was brought into use by circumstance. The criticisms of it are long-standing and numerous, from its failure to measure income distribution and well-being, its focus on quantity, not quality, its short-term focus and failure to consider issues of debt and sustainability. In the management mantra of “what gets measured gets managed”, we have been measuring only a fraction of what matters.

The Natural World is an organic system that reacts to whatever it experiences. Its only intent is its own survival.

Which leaves us.

We have to decide whether the economy or we are the “third body”. If we accept the current construct of the economy as fixed, then we have to adapt to it, as we are currently encouraged to do, or we have to determine that we are the second body and change the construct we use for the Economy.

The Economy is a big beast to try to move. It is entrenched, and the financial wealth that has been generated is effectively owned by a tiny proportion of the population and managed in a feudal way via an aristocracy of organisations and the technologies they control.

I’m writing this while listening to the evidence being given by a former CEO at the Post Office Inquiry, and the fractal nature of the centralisation of power strikes me. Large organisations develop and rely on complex governance structures operated by fallible individuals. The larger the organisation, the more complex the structure, and as we see from the Inquiry, those who rely on it have little understanding of the details of what they are responsible for.

A little research into why Feudalism failed suggests remarkable parallels to today, including complexity and inefficiency, disconnection from local needs, resistance and regionalism, the concentration of power and the corruption that attends it, the wild cards of pandemics and conflicts that put the system under strain, and the social unrest the combination of these factors generated.

This brings me back to Copernicus and the notion of our cosmology in relation to the world of work.

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We find ourselves in orbit around the organisations we work for. Our education and training are centred on their needs. We are assessed and analysed, from psychometrics to performance appraisals, in the context of their needs and retained and made redundant on their terms. Organisations have become the de facto locus of work for the vast majority, and our authority over our own lives has become subservient.

Why do we accept this when the evidence is becoming so clear that whilst organisations are vital, they have grown to proportions that make them dysfunctional? The ones that dominate the economy have reached levels where the risk they expose us to as communities, as we all become potential equivalents of sub-postmasters, or haemophiliacs, or football supporters, or any one of an increasing number of disenfranchised groups. Risks increasingly outweigh the benefits of scale measured in very narrow economic terms that benefit so very few.

None of us knows how this unfolds, but it seems like a good time to examine the constellations we are part of, the assumptions about what is at the centre of our individual universes, and how we recover our personal authority in writing the story of our own lives.