Freeday 6 October 2000

Pic of the day: The cover of Livin' It Up, the British version of the expansion pack for The Sims. Better known in the western world as:

Livin' Large

The long awaited expansion pack to Game of The Year 2000 has come to Norway, and (no surprise) to my humble computer. (So humble, in fact, that I deleted two other games to get room for it. The American name certainly hits the nail regarding disk space.)

The expansion pack will be reviewed in time on my Sim fan site. I just thought the title was unusually appropriate for the times.

***

For starters, I eventually bought that outdoors jacket. Now I know I've come across here as basically saying that buying new clothes is a sinful luxury when you have as much as I have. Now this may be a poor comfort for the starving poor, but jackets are the second thing (after shoes) that I actually wear out. I have a large pile of worn, torn, old outdoors jackets that could make people cross to the other side of the road. I have a couple whole ones, one of which is a really heavy midwinter jacket and the other in desperate need of washing. This is the second quality jacket I buy, and if I now could just avoid filling the pockets till they burst, it could last until the world changes beyond recognition.

The fact that I spend this space defending myself rather than boasting of the great jacket (and it is quite good) probably reveals that I wasn't quite sure. I feel I'm living a bit large here and that it does not really behoove me. Along with the wood perfume it is a disturbing trend. Too human.

***

I'm certainly not the only human living it up these days. Norwegian readers are probably aware of the mounting cry for spending around here. The state finances are in very good shape, and people with good causes are clamoring for money. Not surprisingly, the taxpayers also want their money back. Politicians wobble and waffle, unsure what to do. The least realistic policies get the most support.

I was therefore most intrigued to notice, while reading The Economist, that a similar development is underway in the USA. Not quite as dramatic, but as they also have an election coming up, promises abound. They too intend to give back to the public a large budget surplus that is mostly conjecture yet. Money that does not exist yet but is expected to be there in the future. One wants to give tax breaks, the other wants to give to all manner of good causes. At least they don't have a major party combining the two, which probably means that Americans are not quite as dumb as Norwegians. This is hardly a genetic thing, it is temporary and comes from the sad fact that Americans are not quite as rich as Norwegians. Money is a blight on reason.

***

Of course, compared with our ancestors, we are all living it up. Well, all of us who have Internet access at least, and then some. For virtually all of recorded history, the human condition was scarcity and hunger for most people. The history books are usually about the rich and powerful: Kings, popes, emperors. I guess some of them had a level of luxury vaguely comparable to ours. For starters, they had more slaves. On the other hand, they did not have magic mirrors showing them things that happened elsewhere in the world, and things that only happen in dreams. They could not fly around the world or look at Earth from outside. They could not talk to people miles away. They did not have medicines against even common diseases that we largely ignore today. And much as they wanted to, they could not walk among glass spires reaching far higher than the highest tree.

The list of wonders just go on and on, and there is no end in sight. Well, unless the Large Hadron Collider actually manages to create a microscopic black hole, in which case it is anyone's bet whether it will evaporate harmlessly or grow by eating our planet whole. Around 2005 we should know - or die trying.

But apart from that, there is no end in sight to the wonders of modern age. Where progress was once a rare and shocking sight, it is now taken as a given. You expect a car to be somehow better than the model of 10 years ago, quite apart from being new from the factory. Better safety, perhaps, or fuel economics. More comfort, easier handling. And in other parts of life, the differences are even more striking. Compare the personal computer today with the 1990 model. Not to mention the Internet. Mobile phones.

Once upon a time, economic growth was a temporary thing: This year the crops were good, but next year they might fail and the people would starve. With the industrial revolution, economic growth became possible, at least for the upper class. Now, people balk at the thought that economic growth may slow down. Not at the thought that it might stop or reverse. No, we expect it to grow faster and faster. We expect to have more money to spend in the future than we have today, which is why most of us borrow money despite significant interest rates. We expect that in the future, we will be rich, so we can pay both the loan and the interest. Perhaps so. Or perhaps we fool ourselves.

(Note to my fellow foreigners to the English language: "Living it up" seems to mean going on a spree, living above means, or living too intensely. Sums up the zeitgeist quite well, don't you think?)

(Note to my fellow strangers to the German language: "Zeitgeist" means the spirit of the times, that is, the prevailing thoughts and emotions and understanding in the people at any given time.)