Ever since the dawn of humanity there have been little guys. You can see them in museums. There they are, little guys from thousands of years ago. This means a few things. First, the little guys were as central to civilization as jars and knives. They're on the shelf: jar, knife, little guy. They were cared for and preserved and loved, to have made it this far, so they were precious. But also, for so many to make it this far, there must have been so many more. They were precious and ubiquitous. The making and loving of little guys is a defining human trait.
There are certain people who are very good at making little guys. This isn't surprising - there are some people who are very good at making pots. Sometimes we call people who are good at doing things great masters and sometimes we call them influential designers and sometimes we call them content creators. Sometimes they make the thing once and then it is mass-produced, copied a million times and someone (maybe the person who made the first thing, but probably not) gets very rich. Sometimes they make things all their lives and nobody cares. It's largely luck-based.
The point of this is that once economics gets involved the power of little guys becomes measurable and it's non-zero. Cultural and material and hegemonic power can be wielded through the medium of little guys. The wielders of little guys can decide whether you're allowed to get married. Little guys can buy up your water supply. This is the proof, if it was needed, that we are not human without little guys. The laws of economics dictate that value is value. If a little guy can be exchanged for a pumpkin the little guy is worth at least as much as a meal.
And so there is something divine about the makers of little guys, for they can create value out of nothing, just by reshaping it. And that value lives - where? In the air, in the space between us. It can appear and it can disappear. It can be recognized or it can remain unseen. It can lie dormant for a century and reawaken. What a bizarre thing to be, o maker of little guys. The world must be so fuzzy to you, the rules of value that bind the rest of us so abstract. No wonder you make so many wacky decisions about yourself.
With all this thundering in the background, we can detect some similarities between little guys and The Big Guy. Making a little guy is making a shape for something else to inhabit. It is hard to say what that thing is, but if enough people recognize it it must be real, by the laws of valuation. So the makers of little guys are divine in a couple of senses, but like any supplicants they must also be mad. A little, a lot. I remind you at this point that there is no difference between the makers of little guys and you. You have also made a little guy, at some point. We know this because it is a human behavior and you are human too. So at some point, whether or not you knew, you touched this madness too.
The world decides which holy fool to whack with the money hammer. This sends us all another kind of mad, as we duck and dodge. The spark rises. But we suspect that in some the spark is false. There is a bad little guy. We point at him and shout: demiurge.
I am certain in this fallen world that my chosen collection of little guys are pure and good. The masses worship at the feet of little guys who are hollow and empty and cynically made. My little guys are on a post-it note and they are safe there. I bend myself around them and whisper. Cat with stripes; bird with horn. Spotted snake and circle boy. Surely this has not all been for nothing. Surely you are the same as knife and jar, lamp and car, semiconductor and steamroller. And you are mine and only mine.
Moron is the word for artist. Believers in unverifiable rules, cargo cult economists. I know my bird is on the moon. Do you?
2087
tangentwithtanner
izzy806
dailybridgerton
