House of Eratosthenes

And there’s a reason for this. While most anyone with any experience at all will understand the frustration involved in dividing bad ideas from good ideas, the bad ones often looking so much like good ones, this is a difficulty that tends to exist only in advance. Good ideas, as distinguished from bad ones, have a way of looking like good ideas in the aftermath, as well as in the currency of their execution. That’s why people say things like “this is / is not working out.” This is a rather durable trend with few exceptions, although there are exceptions to just about everything.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else, as the saying goes. This is to be expected. When you biff it, and you aren’t willing to admit you’ve biffed it but you want people to keep listening to you, of course it becomes politically necessary to come up with an excuse, be it good or bad. And if this is something that tends to happen over and over again to the same person, after awhile this person will naturally acquire some talent for coming up with excuses. It is also an inevitability that this person, or group, or ideology, will become very stubborn about always getting the last word in. There’s no other alternative for them, since controlling the narrative is important when you’re selling a bad idea.

Good ideas tend to speak for themselves. Yes, here and there you have to wait around a bit to find out if the good idea really was a good idea. That’s rare enough to be an exceptional case, and usually there is some defined test that can be run after this interval to prove the idea was good. And, yes, there are some exceptions to that as well.

Priorities in these things, though, are determined by the trends and not by the exceptions. And so we see these purveyors of bad ideas consistently lunging for, grasping for, insisting upon, control over the same things. Control over the definitions, of phrases, words, motives of their opposition. Control over the definition of the goal, and then the re-definition of the goal, and then the re-re-definition of the goal. If the idea being sold is a good one, of course none of this is necessary. The idea speaks for itself. The aftermath of its implementation says all that needs to be said, about what a good idea it was.

Well, ther IS that whole “phone call at 3:00AM ” thing.
You know, to keepers of “the (jurno) list”, “reporters” and editors.
- CaptDMO | 06/05/2014 @ 02:52
[…] But we do have to be told that about soccer. Controlling the narrative is important when you’re selling a bad idea. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 06/27/2014 @ 06:33
[…] controlling the narrative is important when you’re selling a bad idea, and making Hillary Clinton our next President is a very bad idea indeed. The two ways you can […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/27/2014 @ 09:57
[…] like they’re going to be needing some receipt-control laws or something. After all, controlling the narrative is important when you’re selling a bad idea, and letting the restaurant have the last word would be losing control of the […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/07/2014 @ 22:04
[…] Controlling the narrative is important when you’re selling a bad idea. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 09/30/2014 @ 04:21
[…] That’s why controlling the narrative is important when you’re selling a bad idea. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 10/28/2014 @ 04:32
[…] Controlling the narrative is important when you’re selling a bad idea. If making a girl into a “boss” requires controlling a narrative, that’s a sign, perhaps the first of many, that this is not what she should be doing. It’s a terrible, terrible disservice this “ban bossy” campaign is doing to the next generation, especially to the next generation of women who may be casually flirting with the “boss” role, perhaps allowing their knowledge of the subject matter to languish, longing to — as I’ve said before about the perverse desires of men & women alike — “Skip to the really fun part, you know, where I tell people what to do and then they go do it.” […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 12/05/2014 @ 06:59

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Controlling the Narrative is Important When You’re Selling a Bad IdeaWednesday, June 4th, 2014

Controlling the Narrative is Important When You’re Selling a Bad Idea
Wednesday, June 4th, 2014