Page 31 - Ruminations

29. The invisibles

The combinations of seeing and believing are numerous, mediated
by the intervention of mental activity between sight and identification.
Invisibility therefore is a cultural phenomenon as well as a personal
non-experience of perceptibility, its meaning complex and contested.
Here are three examples.

1. The invisible hand: a naively or cynically promoted idea that an
impersonal force akin to natural selection is the optimal method of
achieving economic justice. It is based on the absurd assumption that
the ideal economy has a self-regulating dynamic, creating a “level
playing field” upon which no player would seek to game the system. If
this quite obvious fantasy is unperceived, the real unseen hand
belongs to the kleptocrats pulling the wool over the eyes of the sheep
they shear.

2. The invisible man: opacity and transparency relate to invisibility in
the social realm. Pre-internet, although the poor had no means of
maintaining a personal, private life, they were not seen because they
had nothing of interest to hide, and were therefore not objects of
curiosity. Now that has been reversed: the well-connected and well-off
actively demolish walls between themselves and the rest of the
world—and they are the ones without secrets, almost desiring total
revelation. Their transparency, to the processors, human and
mechanical, of all that personal data, has no limit. As individuals they
are not worth seeing. Only the poor retain their unique solidity, highly
visible as intractable and insoluble obstacles to etherealization.

3. The invisible world: people commonly believe their physical
medium is permeated by mysterious unseen entities: within, a spirit or
soul unaffected by organic decay; without, a deity or eternal verity of
cosmic proportions, also incorruptible. Between them lies their
fraught and fragile human life, animated by the interplay of those
invisible forces. Credibility in this case depends upon invisibility,
reinforced by emotional investment; such fixed ideas are difficult to
dislodge by logic and evidence. The sudden and profound
disillusionment that may sometimes occur is best portrayed in stories
for children: The Emperor’s New Clothes and the Wizard of Oz.
Perhaps only the young can see what to believe.