Marginalia: The Essay, Myanmar, Petrol Pump
The Age of the Essay
An essay doesn't begin with a statement, but with a question. In a real essay, you don't take a position and defend it. You notice a door that's ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what's inside.
If all you want to do is figure things out, why do you need to write anything, though? Why not just sit and think? Well, there precisely is Montaigne's great discovery. Expressing ideas helps to form them. Indeed, helps is far too weak a word. Most of what ends up in my essays I only thought of when I sat down to write them. That's why I write them.
In the things you write in school you are, in theory, merely explaining yourself to the reader. In a real essay you're writing for yourself. You're thinking out loud.
But not quite. Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces you to think well. So it does matter to have an audience. The things I've written just for myself are no good. They tend to peter out. When I run into difficulties, I find I conclude with a few vague questions and then drift off to get a cup of tea.
Paul Graham, The Age of the Essay
Myanmar's polycrisis
The current escalation of violence means that Myanmar’s economy is now under even more intense pressure. According to the World Bank: “In the Myanmar Subnational Phone Survey (MSPS) conducted at the end of 2022 and early 2023, about half of surveyed households reported a decrease in incomes over the past year, while only 15 percent reported an increase.” And the impact of the current crises is to further reduce the potential for long-run growth: “Public spending on health and education has fallen from 3.6 percent to about 1.8 percent of GDP between fiscal years 2020 and 2023.” The latest World Bank survey (May 2023) found that “48 percent of farming households worry about not having enough food, up from about 26 percent in May 2022. The survey also shows a notable drop in the consumption of nutritious foods such as milk, meat, fish, and eggs.” Roughly a third of Myanmar’s population is currently in need of relief aid.
Adam Tooze, Chartbook 256: Myanmar's polycrisis
Petrol Pump
So let me say that right now I am experiencing simultaneously the rise, apex and decline of the so–called opulent societies, the same way a rotating drill pushes in an instant from one millennium to the next as it cuts through the sedimentary rocks of the Pliocene, the Cretaceous, the Triassic.
Italo Calvino, Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories (pdf)