Diabolic Digest
Khaled Diab
Losing Face
Gas
particles
The difficult pregnancy – his mum was 41, and
her battered devotional frame could hardly take the extra load – and his premature
birth meant that Sven was an undersized and sickly child. He lacked the
striking dimensions of the rest of his family, each of whom was titanic in
stature.
His expectant, angry fans – the fanatics he
called his parents, that is – kept a demanding eye over this junior squad
member all through his formative years, criticising his every pass, jeering at
his dribbling skills, booing his missed shots at the net, mocking his game
plan.
“I don’t even think he’ll make the height
requirement at the Police Academy,” his father once remarked bitterly about his
eight-year-old son, as his wife was finishing up her prayers at the foot of the
bed.
Learning from experience was not something his
parents did often or well. And, rather than thaw for the son they picked up at
the last chance saloon, they became even more uptight. As a boy, Sven
constantly felt suffocated by the reverential air that filled the silent
corners – particularly during the daily ordeal of their family dinners.
When their child prodigy – their last
opportunity to mould, blasphemous as it was, a child in their own image, one
who would realise all their unfulfilled aspirations – failed to repay them for
bringing him into the world, they collected their debt in full by turning off
the remaining warmth during the harsh winter of his teenage years.
As an antidote to the invisible authorities
both his parents deferred to unquestioningly and unflinchingly, he found solace
in the certainties of facts and the crystalline beauty of mathematics. As far
as Sven was concerned, numbers spoke louder than scripture.
He found emotional and moral support in his
maths teacher – a childless and scholarly type who, disillusioned by his work
as a nuclear physicist, found escape in teaching youth to appreciate the
majesty of mathematics, but also to appreciate its lethal underbelly. Being a
fairly popular if unimposing boy, he found solace in his close schoolmates.
Two evenings a week, he got breast-thumping
Bible classes from his mother. Although he was sceptical of the certitudes she
preached, these were the only occasions in which he saw his mother gush
emotion, and he was happy to let the stream of passion flow over him on its way
up. But it was Mr de Meester who gave Sven unconditional affection and respect
and was to become his lifelong mentor, helping him find his way through
Academia. If it weren’t for de Meester, Sven may well have settled somewhere
else after uni.
Despite his parents’ loud objections, he went
to college in Antwerp to study his – and Mr de Meester’s – first passions:
mathematics and physics. “A man learns all the physics he needs in the Police
Academy,” his father tried. “And your mathematical mind would be an asset to
the force,” he said in a rare compliment.
Kind words or not, Sven wasn’t about to be
swayed. And, as the praise started flowing in from his professors, he was glad
that he’d managed to stick to his guns. For his MA and PhD, Sven discovered the
fledgling field of econophysics which drew him immediately.
Tired of his parents’ “It’s destiny, son”
explanation, he wanted to understand wealth distribution – why it was some
people had the most fabulous riches while others, equally or more talented,
wallowed in poverty – in the most scientific way he could. Sven, working with colleagues
in Europe, Africa and Asia, was beginning to make a name for himself in the
young field.
Their work was helping cast doubt on one of the
key pillars of economic theory: economic rationality. “The assumption that
consumers are rational beings is, at least in aggregate, a load of hot air,” he
explained to Tanja once. Hot or not, according to econophysicist like Sven,
income distribution follows the same pattern as the spread of atoms in a gas.
Looked at from a macro perspective, people, as
a mass, even if they are rational at the individual level act like random atoms
in a gas. According to the theory, so many factors affect people’s economic
decisions that the net result is random.
The first law of thermodynamics also applies
here: money, like energy, is never lost, just redistributed. However, with the
sorcery of modern economics, money can be created where it never existed
before, Sven reflected.
In gaseous economies, the rich get richer and the
poor get poorer because it is hard to shift the distribution of energy – wealth
– when there is thermal equilibrium, i.e. a status quo. And, of course, the
rich usually try to maintain the status quo. In more classical terms, capital
is more productive than labour, so people who own nothing else will suffer
plenty of sweaty brows just to stay where they are.
On the bright side, Sven argued, if people are
like gas atoms, they can jump class and, according to the model, saving money
is the best way to help them on their way up. But, of course, all systems are
unstable by nature, and if the gas becomes volatile then, well, you might have
a revolution or a popular revolt on your hands.
Opening his leather satchel, Sven took out the
letter from Professor Singh which he read with mixed emotions. The professor
was offering Sven an assistant professorship, and with tenure, if he joined his
department at the University of Delhi. Faced with the pear shape his life had
taken, Sven had written to the Indian scholar, who was one of the field’s
earliest and most-respected pioneers, asking if he had any openings. What about
Tanja, was the question that kept repeating itself.
ã2004 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.