Chaos is a Friend of Mine

-- By StephenSevero - 16 Apr 2010

"Complexity so intricate no one can fathom it."

In "Something Split", a chapter of Lawrence Joseph's Lawyerland, we are introduced to transactional lawyer Carl Wylie through his apathy. He doesn't care about some grand academic theory of what "law" is, or even "money" - what interests him is chaos, the chaos embedded in everything he does. At first, this interest seems strange - why would a transactional lawyer, someone who deals with complex and intricate business deals on an almost daily basis, place his business beyond his ken? Like Prof. Moglen's story about Marty Lipton admitting he just didn't know when the deal had been struck, Wylie's interest seemed to belie his value. What good is a lawyer who doesn't fathom what he does? But approaching the story through the lens of Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class, this interest in impenetrable complexity stands as an almost necessary career trait.

"He is especially prone to accept so much of the creed as concerts the inscrutable power and the arbitrary habits of the divinity which has won his confidence."

In many ways, transactional lawyers can be seen as occupying the same position as the priests and holy men of Veblen's book. Like the shaman, the lawyer stands between people who want something and an amorphous power that can satisfy their desires - inscrutable but propitiable. The lawyer is intimately familiar with the power not because of an academic understanding (indeed, the power is too complex to ever be understood that way) but because he has continually subjugated himself to it. He can manipulate the power within certain limits but he can't explain how he was done so. He sells his expertise - not logically or studiously obtained, but intuited through years of experience with and relationship to the power.

"The animistic habit acts in all cases to blur the appreciation of causal sequence; but the earlier, less reflected, less defined animistic sense of propensity may be expected to affect the intellectual processes of the individual in a more pervasive way than the higher forms of anthropomorphism."

Veblen sees this animism as a hereditary holdover from our more primitive days, Wylie just sees it as effective. Even his description of espresso is filled with religious fervor. "I time when it hits - the extent to which it speeds the thought process. That precise point when consciousness is heightened and everything glows." He downs multiple espressos a day just to keep up with his work - which is constantly accelerating. Intense, detail oriented concentration at an ever increasing pace - sag behind and "you're irrelevant fast - real, real fast."

"The sporting man's sense of luck and chance, or of fortuitous necessity, is an inarticulate or inchoate animism. It applies to objects and situations, often in a very vague way; but it is usually so far defined as to imply the possibility of propitiating, or of deceiving and cajoling, or otherwise disturbing the holding of propensities resident in the objects which constitute the apparatus and accessories of any game of skill or chance."

This animism can also be seen in the treatment of the "gray box" of CDOs and the stock market in general. Flipping stocks is a gamble, and one which allows the gambler to affect the outcome. The more people who want a stock, the more valuable it is. This satisfies the gambler's desire that his bet is not in vain, that it has influenced the outcome. "It is felt that substance and solicitude expended to this end can not go for naught in the issue." Veblen feels that this animism hampers rational thought. If the "gray box" isn't just a machine, but a being - one capable of at least some sort of clinamen, then there is little value in close scrutiny of the moving parts. It is enough to have seen it work often before, even if its wealth generation defies the laws of thermodynamics.

"Which goes to show that you can make a million dollars a year by pretending to know what you're doing, and being able to sit through interminable meetings without developing any serious maladies."

Wylie works entirely with "businesses", which Veblen sets up in opposition to "industry". Business is predatory and parasitic, and owned by the leisure class through "the 'soulless' joint-stock corporation." Through the years, Wylie has become a master at what he does - and what he does certainly requires a lot of knowledge and experience. But Wiley's knowledge seems more intuitive than rational, and his productivity is more based on the appearance of relationships than his knowledge. "You have to do things, be part of things, you don't want to be part of. You have to pretend to be what you're not."

Wylie's position is tenuous - and the exiles and emigrants of his trade seem eager to pounce upon that. "Partnership isn't worth shit. You do business with a partner or an associate to the extent to which you get more from them than what you're giving." As technology connects people from all over the world, firms no longer have to rely solely on the nearby generalist. A priest who dabbles in all the gods isn't as useful and pecuniarily valuable as one who specializes in the god I need to woo.

"The evolution of society is substantially a process of mental adaptation on the part of individuals under the stress of circumstances which will no longer tolerate habits of thought formed under and conforming to a different set of circumstances in the past."

Carl Wylie is being forced out by societal evolution, his niche becoming ever more threatened. The relationships which support his trade will be increasingly strained by pecuniary pressures. He already feels the acceleration, commenting on how much harder he works and how much faster he must move to stay relevant in the ever-expanding world. Even in relation to his own law firm (and not the whole of lawyerdom), Wylie is receding. Currently, Wylie earns his living by transferring money "in a way no one else in the world knows how to do quite as efficiently." If he continues to be the most efficient, his position will be secure. His animism, his treatment of the law as indeterminate chaos almost capable of independent conceit, may still convince his business partners of his skill - but the value of the show is rapidly decreasing. A business doesn't care about the process involved in its appeasement, it is only concerned with the result. If some lawyer can do it faster, cheaper, "better", then Wiley loses his value. "The astute man, it may be remarked, is of no economic value to the community - unless it be for the purpose of sharp practice in dealings with other communities." Increased globalization and evolution beyond predatory exploit would sound a death knell for the Carl Wylies of the world.

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