Call Me Ozymandias

Disclaimer: Just the fact that I write a blog, to be read by the public, that I do not simply keep to myself (even though many would probably like me to), shows that in some way, even a little, I am a victim of my own hubris.

In the movie Watchmen, the character Adrian Veidt, a retired superhero and the world’s smartest man, has figured out a way to “save” the world from destroying itself through nuclear war. His convictions are so strong that he is willing to sacrifice dozens of lives, as well as half of New York City to do it. At the end of the movie, his calculations prove true and the United States and the Soviet Union begin disarmament and cooperation. Even Dr. Manhattan, a time-travelling, multi-dimensional, almost godlike being, agrees with Veidt’s actions.

Watchmen is fiction.

For years, very financially-smart people have been interviewed on financial news shows, to give advice as to how the not-so-financially-smart people should be financially smarter. Some of these financially-smart people are now being blamed as contributors to the current economic crisis. These same financially-smart people, when asked nowadays, are hesitant to commit to giving any advice and have no definite answer as to how the crisis happened or how it will end. As John Stewart, a comedian and talk-show host who professes to not be an expert on anything except comedy and hosting a show, puts it, “It’d be like turning on the Weather Channel during a hurricane, and they’re just doing this: ‘Why am I wet? What’s happening to me? And it’s so windy! What’s going on, I’m scared!’”

The current economic crisis is not fiction.

To me, the major difference between the above scenarios is the element of unpredictability that transcends calculation. Another movie, The Dark Knight, mocks the trust that society often places on calculations. I like that movie.

Calculation is me reading books on something, then taking classes to get better on that same thing, then teaching classes on it, doing surveys on it, making money on it, then winning awards about it, and spending more time on it than anyone else. Then thinking that because I did all this, my advice will be better than anyone else’s.

Carl Sandburg, American poet laureate, never earned a college degree and couldn’t get into West Point because he failed a grammar and math exam.

Does this mean that one should never learn anything? No. It just means that anything learned is not immune to the follies of chaos. Anything that has rules, especially man-made rules, especially especially really really strict man-made rules, when it topples, is gonna hurt like hell. No matter how much we learn or think we know, no matter how much we plan, calculate, and devise, we cannot know everything, and we cannot control everything.

Back to fiction: In Watchmen, Adrian Veidt’s superhero name was Ozymandias, after Egypt’s Ramses the Great. Veidt thought he knew what was good for everyone else, so he took it upon himself to impose his ideas on others, whether they liked it or not.

Back to now: Millions of dollars have been spent on developing, marketing, and basically bulletproofing web sites to corral the biggest audience and get the best placements on search engines, as well as winning awards, fame and notoriety. But ask Google a simple question, like “What is the best way to fix a television?” and you will likely get your first answer not from a company, or an institution, or even a group, but from an everyday person with unknown credentials who just happened to have an opinion and put up a clunky little web page. Google is very democratic this way. Try it, see what happens.

The more I work with the Internet and the older I get, the further away I am to becoming an Ozymandias of my work. The further away, I hope, from becoming a victim of my own hubris.

Also in Watchmen is a character named Rorschach, whose mask changes unpredictably with each second, because each new second is unpredictable. Whose superhero gear consists of a flashlight, a grappling hook and an aerosol can. Who gets his ass kicked as much as he dishes out. Who inevitably gets obliterated while trying to reveal the truth, as chaotic and unpredictable as it is.