Unseen Hand

Over on my Guelphi blog I posted some of what is below, but since it was posted in relation to Guelph building issues I want to expand the concept here.

The part I'm focusing on is the so-called 'unseen hand' of the market, that mystical entity that is allegedly so good at deciding what's good for us...

And now bear with me for a second,

"To someone like me, who insists that people need to understand that human beings are symbiotic life forms, with zillions of proto-bacteria in our cells breathing for us, metabolizing our food for us, the "unseen hand" is made up of the array of bacterial symbionts alive in every human cell. It is an array that is adept at transmitting and receiving myriad bits of energy-information, but in the end it has the understanding of a bacteria. Humanity derives mutual benefit from their existence in our cytoplasm, but human ingenuity in service to basic bacterial imperatives are what has brought us to the edge of the ecological Armageddon facing humanity.
And rest assured, bacterial symbionts will survive the disappearance of humanity, they are in every other life form on the planet.
The unseen hand of the market is mindless because it has the brain of a bacteria, it is unseen because we don't look for it in biology, in life, we look for it in economic abstractions.
The unseen hand of the market is simply bacterial life intent on eating and drinking and consuming every resource required by... human beings..."

In the other post I also talk about the issue of controlling growth, but speak of it in terms of extreme or moderate control. In essence, because we all need self-control for all manner of reasons from anger to passion to whatever field of human endeavor you want to describe, the idea of controlling the 'unseen hand' is one of moderating the future, facilitating sustainability. The 'unseen hand' as mystical force also tends to hide the reality of all kinds of economic machinations from all levels of the spectrum, those with money, gangster capitalists, buck-passers of the manageriat avoiding tough problems by deferring them to the future etc. etc.

The most common 'unseen hand' is the one concealed by the loudest proponents of unseen hands.