Folks …. some of you will have heard of this guy Robert King in the past week (PDF attached) and his fictional book about the financial system, based on some fascinating research into the “quants” who play the markets with computer algorithms. It has been heavily covered on Radio 4. Ian King in the Times thinks the argument is overrated – that there is no evidence, he says, that computer trading has increased market instability.

What interests me is not whether or not the system is unstable, so much much as the sheer mindless mechanisation of it all. Walter Wink’s theology of the Powers that Be as emergent inner properties of reality comes to mind. So does the old Quaker idea of the demonic as the purely rational (the “Devil” – I use the term metaphorically, which is more powerful - as “the Great Reasoner”). Audre Lorde’s sense of the pornographic as being sensation without the heart’s engagement (see slides I sent yesterday on the Crisis Forum list) as distinct from the truly erotic. And the fact that any one of us who might have money invested at the highest rate of interest, or a pension, or a life insurance policy (as I have) is a part of this system. To me the most chilling paragraph in the article that underscores these reflections is in the penultimate paragraph of the first page. I found myself, as I read it, also substituting the word “psychologists” for physicists and “human nature” for laws of the universe.

What is so exciting, and potentially life-giving, about this kind of discourse, is that inasmuch as it accurately reflects “the state that we are in” it pegs out the parameters of dehumanisation, and that, in turn, helps us to see more clearly where rehumanisation might be found. I am minded, however, of the cartoon of Robin Hood swordfighting the Sheriff of Nottingham on the castle stairs with a young woman hiding behind the latter and the caption: “Maid Marion told Robin that much though she loved the poor, she preferred to stay with the rich.” That is the challenge of liberation theology’s “preferential option for the poor.” It is one that I, at least, constantly wrestle and usually compromise with.

Alastair.

Ps. if within reach of Glasgow don’t miss our CHE-organised international conference 21-23 October: Kandinsky in Govan: Art, Spirituality and the Future. We’ve now shifted somewhere between 60 and 100 tickets with capacity limited to 250, and coverage coming out in The Guardian and the BBC over this next week.

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 * Alastair McIntosh      
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