Nothing personal

I got a work email earlier this week exhorting us to celebrate the good news that my employer just received its largest ever capital fund donation. Meanwhile the colleague in the office right next to mine is being laid off due to a supposed budget shortfall. The other day I overheard a student, one I had in class this term, a real gem in all the ways students can be so, telling this colleague with excited sincerity how inspiring they found the colleague’s class.

No love for Biden, far from it, but his remark is on point here, for both its insights and its limits: “don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.” I think part of the point of budgeting, and of a great deal else in this hellworld, is to help the powerful to avoid admitting to themselves what their values are, or to help them continue to be people who don't notice that they don't have values at all. As Oscar Wilde put it, "a cynic is someone knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing." Another colleague calls it spreadsheet ontology - nothing exists to the cynics and philistines except what can be calculated in Microsoft Excel, no values except the budget.

Sometimes I wonder if we're under threat of drowning in our disgust, and sometimes I think that'd be okay, especially if the torrent of disgust were to take some of the hellscape out with it.