House of Eratosthenes

In case you hadn’t realized, it has somehow become uncool to sound like you know what you’re talking about. Or believe strongly in what you’re, like, saying. Invisible question marks and parenthetical “y’know”s, and “y’know what I’m saying”, have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences, even when those sentences aren’t, like…questions…?

Van der Leun:

If you focus on it, you realize that you hear this voice every day if you bounce around a bit in our larger cities buying this or ordering that, and in general running into young people in the “service” sector — be it coffee shop, video store, department store, boutique, bookstore, or office cube farm. It’s a kind of voice that was seldom heard anywhere but now seems to be everywhere.

It is the voice of the neuter…You hear this soft, inflected tone everywhere that young people below, roughly, 35 congregate. As flat as the bottles of spring water they carry and affectless as algae, it tends to always trend towards a slight rising question at the end of even simple declarative sentences. It has no timbre to it and no edge of assertion in it.

The voice whisps across your ears as if the speaker is in a state of perpetual uncertainty with every utterance. It is as if, male or female, there is no foundation or soul within the speaker on which the voice can rest and rise. As a result, it has a misty quality to it that denies it any unique character at all.

Freeberg:

What gives rise to all these “invisible question marks” and throwaway token mutterings like “y’know” is a heavy glut of external cognitions — things you know because the next guy told you they are so, and he must know what he’s talking about because someone else told him. These people can’t argue, because they don’t know why it is they “know” the things they are supposed to know. One guy “knows” Bush lied about WMD, another guy is willing to consider it but first insists on being shown what exactly the lie is — the argument is really over before the first syllable is tossed out in one direction or the other. It’s kind of like one of ’em brought a knife to a gun fight.

Gagdad Bob:

Moore ties the phenomenon of wimps and barbarians directly to the culture of divorce and the absence of male role models in boys’ lives. “Half of American boys growing up do not live with their natural fathers. The sons of single mothers lack strong men to usher them into the world of responsible, adult manhood. Divorce, whether in reality or in the acrimonious rhetoric of the mother, impresses upon the boy an image of the father, and therefore of all men, as being irresponsible, deceitful, immature, and often hateful or abusive towards women. For sons, the divided loyalties occasioned by divorce actually create profound doubts about their own masculinity. As the boy approaches manhood, he is plagued by subconscious questions which have no immediate resolution: ‘Will I be like Dad?’ ‘Do I want to be like Dad?’ ‘What is a man supposed to do?'”

This poisoning of masculine certainty is by no means intentional. That’s what is so dangerous about it. If it were intentional, you couldn’t recruit someone to do a little bit more of the poisoning, without convincing them of the righteousness of the cause, and inculcating in them some — ahem — certainty that the cause was just. You would have to, in effect, contradict yourself by asserting that certainty is a good thing where your recruiting was concerned, but something to be attacked by the recruited once the recruiting was done.

No, this trend is unintentional and passive, which makes it all the more potent, destructive and insidious. Swelling throngs of so-called “people” wear and tear away a little bit more at the very notion of being certain of what you’re saying and what you’re doing; at masculinity itself. And like those who condemned and executed Christ, they know not what they do.

Interesting…as ever. That said, here’s one thing I’m most certain about: The older I get, and the more I learn, the less certain I am about damned near anything. There are some absolutes, without a doubt, but they seem to getting very far and few between. Could it be our young people are getting smarter, quicker?

Nah. 😉
- Buck | 05/13/2008 @ 17:31
Yeah, as a thousand generations of old farts before us have said about the newer ones…they need to take on the responsibility of solving the world’s problems, while they still know everything.

I think there is a certain “egalitarianism” among certainties, such that all things “known” are equally certain. Around age 40, this egalitarianism dissipates so that the few things that remain certain, become extremely certain, but also extremely rare — all other things becoming questionable where they weren’t before.

When you’re young, it just seems unfair to assert Known A must possess a greater level of certainty than Known B. I’m pretty sure that’s why Gerard picked up this tinny, effeminate wispy droning during his peregrinations around town. Don’t forget, he’s living in the Queen Anne district of Seattle. 🙂 But he also specifically singled out the under-35 set.

I think that’s the lesson. As one accumulates age, one becomes acclimated to the idea that “knowns” can possess different levels of certainty…and that’s just fine. As you and I accumulate years together, we become “virtually” closer together in age, but for the time being you do have some years on me. So that’s how I see it; how say you?
- mkfreeberg | 05/13/2008 @ 20:10
Interesting…as ever. That said, here’s one thing I’m most certain about: The older I get, and the more I learn, the less certain I am about damned near anything.

Are you sure about that, Buck? 😉

I noticed this endless qualification bit a long time ago in my step-son and his friends when they were teenagers. They added “-er sumthin'” to the end of anything that approached any kind of assertation. This way they couldn’t be pinned down if they were wrong.

I’ll second what Morgan said in the last paragraph of the last comment.

Absolutes are ideals to help us categorize things. We can’t know reality precisely, but we can get a pretty good idea on a lot of things. If we couldn’t, we wouldn’t have cars and airplanes, much less TV’s and computers. I always allow room for adjustment, but I stand by what I know when the knowing is called for. Sure, there are shades of grey in everything, but some shades are pretty darned dark, and others are pretty darned near white. Enough to make a really good judgement call. Yeah, there really is a lot of stuff in the middle shades… but not nearly as much as some would have you believe.
- philmon | 05/13/2008 @ 20:26
Agreed on your last, Morgan…and you, too, Phil.

What I think Phil is touching on is the “certainty” of the “hard” sciences, wherein facts is facts and as such, aren’t debatable (“climate change” aside). It’s only when we get into the softer areas of life and thought…like, say, philosophy or politics… where the wishy-washyness comes into play. And the uncertainty.
- Buck | 05/14/2008 @ 15:19
I, of course, was teasing Buck about being certain about uncertainty.

I was in church last Sunday — a place where I spent much time as a child and little time as an adult. I was raised a Catholic, got derailed along the way, went nigh-on to atheistic (but not quite), wandered around in the realms of agnosticism and dabbled in eastern philosophy for quite some time. And I’m coming back around, albiet from a different angle.

And so here I am watching my grandson being baptized in a Lutheran church (which I consider a good thing) … and I’m listening to the minister talk. And I realize that he sounds certain about a lot of things that I practically dismiss at a hard, factual level. And yet I know that there is something else, underneath all that that is good and right … and uncertain. But definitely pointing in a good direction.

And what I mulled as I was observing this about what he was saying and what I was thinking was that Religion isn’t mere symbolism. It is layer upon layer of symbolism. It doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile. It’s like training. It’s like learning a musical instrument. A method. Repetition. Like “muscle memory”. Neuron memory. So you don’t even really have to think hard about what the right thing to do in a situation would be. You just naturally gravitate twoard that thing and you’re not even sure why. And it’s not only a method, it’s a method others can help you with if everybody’s basically using the same one. And you don’t need to be trained in philosophy to “get” it.

It’s powerful. And like most powerful things it can be abused, and obviously has been at times. Still, on the balance… I think it is a good thing.

Philosophy is similar to religion — it’s down further in the layers of symbolism — it’s what you get when you start thinking more about the reasons for why we came up with the symbolism in the first place. And it’s all the in the realm of things you can’t put your finger on. Or (often) even wrap your mind around.

But they’re good things. They teach us things like respect, and kindness, and generousity, and sacrifice. They are cultural “glue”. In western culture, Christmas is glue. St. Peter is glue. The prodigal son is glue. It’s common symbols that help us communicate. Help us celebrate. Life. … -er somethin’. 😉

I don’t sweat too much over whether it’s “true” or I’m “certain” when it comes to symbolism. I just take note of where the road leads in general, and decide whether or not that’s a comfortable road to be on.

Woah. Dude. Gonna have t’ lay off the cannibis! -er somethin’
- philmon | 05/15/2008 @ 16:50
I’ve been noticing for awhile that when those who demand others “Question Authority” — become the authority — suddenly, they don’t want people to question authority anymore.

Thing I Know #235. What a self-parodying mess it is when a command hierarchy is constructed within any rebellion, for there it becomes undeniable: The rebel is only a fair-weather friend, at best, to the act of rebelling.
- mkfreeberg | 05/15/2008 @ 22:14

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Certainties About CertaintyTuesday, May 13th, 2008

Certainties About Certainty
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008