Complexity, Symbols and Reality

This is the inside of my old wristwatch that no longer works. Kris gave it to me years ago, back when we were still dating. The name was Vostok, it's a Russian watch -- old Soviet, actually. I think stuff like this is cool. I still remember the first time I took apart a cuckoo clock. It just seemed so cool and complicated (oooo, look at all the GEARS!)

With new job and new classes our lives are becoming more complicated, with the added symbolic complexity of new and more complicated cellphones adding an exclamation point to the whole thing. And with classes now Kris has to study, study, study just about every day! My new job I have to worry about an annual plan, budget, and so on, things I never had to think about before. Between the phone and the new work laptop the office follows me everywhere now. No more just coming in to work and sitting down and doing stuff... I have to look at a calendar and try to figure out how many weeks it's going to take just to figure out something.

Then I look at things like the inside of this watch and feel a little bit of envy for the people who make things like this. I mean, at work, I work on a computer that has little lights on a screen that form letters and numbers that represent money... and money is nothing, really, a purely symbolic representation of work or value. On its face, money is useless, utterly worthless. Its worth is purely symbolic. The numbers on the screen are symbols themselves... symbols of the symbol. I do all this work, but in the end it's all just symbols that represent other symbols.

To make matters worse, with money, most of it doesn't even 'really' exist. Only about 10% of the money supply actually exists in physical currency -- dollars and coin. The rest exists purely in concept, as entries on accounts in various computers. Just numbers themselves -- it turns out if you're using symbols (numbers) to represent other symbols (money) which in turn represent value, worth or work, you don't really need the money to actually BE there anymore. We just make an entry to the books and act as though it's there, thus we all maintain this polite fiction to keep the economy and everything going 'round. It's weird.

But someone makes a watch, it's something that's real, that you can see and touch and hold in your hand. There is no question of it's reality or concreteness. I kind of envy my dad that way too -- he works with his hands, and afterwards there's something 'real' -- some cool wooden pens or ornaments or bowls, furniture, stuff like that that will be around for years. And before that was farming, where you know you're producing something tangible, something 'real' at the end of your work. Real stuff is cool.