House of Eratosthenes

…and I think this goes for all children. We have an unfortunate tendency, as parents and caregivers, to conceal from them the things they’ll need to know whey they grow up.

Is it shame? Probably. This seems, to me, to be the stuff we have that we weren’t designed to have. Like it’s the stain we painted on ourselves the day Eve got Adam to eat that apple. We tend to be very weak when it comes time to look at people who are better than we are, and say to ourselves “I am flawed, for I am not like that; I shall put great effort into trying to improve myself.” We tend to think highly of the way we do things, when we see others who do things better; and, to think more highly of the other, when we find out he makes a bigger mess than we do.

1. People who litter, don’t want anyone else picking it up.
2. People who break the law, tend to act superior to people who do not.
3. People who don’t read anything, don’t want anyone else to be well-read.
4. People who don’t work hard, don’t want anyone else to work hard either.
5. People who don’t believe in God, don’t want anyone else to believe in Him either.
6. People who don’t engage in free trade, don’t want anyone else to engage in it either.
7. People who follow arbitrary rules, want everyone else to be forced to follow the same rules.
8. People who wear ugly, ratty and dirty clothes all the time, don’t want anyone else dressing up.
9. People who don’t write anything down, get upset and frustrated when they see someone else has.
10. People who talk a lot, have a tendency to form acrimonious relationships with people who do not.
11. People who don’t exercise their right to free speech, don’t want anyone else speaking freely either.
12. Women who are ugly because they don’t take care of their bodies, don’t want anyone going to Hooter’s.
13. People who don’t and can’t show any class, have a strong likelihood to feign offense on behalf of someone else.
14. People who don’t make a material success of themselves and their efforts, don’t want anyone else to prosper either.
15. People who have been duped by something and have come to realize it, want everyone else to be duped in the same way.
16. People who are overly concerned about their emotions, don’t want anyone else to be overly concerned with thinking.
17. People who will not protect their families from harm, come up with creative and ingenious ways to condemn those who will.
18. Students who get poor grades, have been known to show some nasty behavior toward fellow students who get better grades.
19. People who live in the same town where they were born, have an envious and vituperative attitude toward people who do not.
20. People who don’t take care of their health and physical appearances, tend to have some pretty harsh words for people who do.
21. People who won’t take the initiative to see what needs doing and do it, don’t want anyone else to take the initiative either.
22. People who wear the latest fashions, tend to get nasty and vicious toward other people who spend their energy on other things.
23. People who are lazy when it comes to teaching their sons to be men, don’t want masculinity to be appreciated by anyone else either.
24. People who imagine themselves as part of a group, with no individual identity, don’t want anyone else to have an individual identity either.
25. People who can’t solve problems because they don’t think rationally, work pretty hard to avoid acknowledging that someone else solved a problem.
26. People who have taken mind-altering drugs, have a tendency to show an imperious, snotty and condescending attitude toward people who never have.
27. People who make a conscious decision not to offer help or defense to someone who needs it, don’t want anyone else to help or defend that person either.
28. People who have never built anything and don’t imagine they ever will, have a desire to destroy that which builds, and preserve whatever is likely to destroy.
29. Wives who diligently avoid doing anything that might make their husbands happy, engage in delusion when excoriating other wives who will do those things.
30. People who imagine they’ve been “oppressed” in the past, single out supposed beneficiaries of said oppression, and imagine themselves entitled to their property.

Update 7/3/08:
I should add something about words, because I know a lot about people that I wasn’t told when I was a child about what people mean when they use certain words. Some of the words we use don’t mean what they are supposed to mean. Among those words, some of them never mean what they’re supposed to mean. They mean, if anything, the exact opposite.

Everyone/body: This one has to come first because it is, by far, the most abused. This is annoying to everybody, this is the only meeting date we found that will work for everyone, we need to put this guy someplace where he won’t piss everybody off, everybody agrees this is a good idea, everybody’s tired of you, we need to form a policy that will work for everyone. The word “everybody” does not mean everybody, and “everyone” does not mean everyone. Those words mean “me; an elite club of people I’ve met who agree with me; and anyone I meet from here on who agrees with me.”

Torture: This word has no definition save for “stuff I wouldn’t like having done to me if it was me.” That’s not really a problem, except it tends to be tossed around rather breezily as an argument for doing away with some sort of punishment or aggressive interrogation, and both of those are rather pointless if they aren’t unliked right?

Constitution: “Shredding the Constitution” means “doing something you wouldn’t be allowed to do if I had my druthers.” It has nothing to do with that old piece of parchment or anything metaphorically based on it. It’s a buzzword thrown in to make it sound like you’re sagaciously citing an historical document, when all you’re doing is expressing a personal taste.

Civil liberties: What you use instead of the word “Constitution” when you’re afraid that, if you actually use the word “Constitution,” someone will ask for a more specific citation. There is no “civil liberty” document with all those pesky articles and sections and amendments, so you can just opine away about “civil liberties” until you’re blue in the face and no one will ever call you on your crap.

Common-Sense: What I want, and hell with everyone else.

Tolerance: This is another one of those “opposite” words. Usually, when you’re accused of being intolerant it means you’ve tolerated something someone wishes you didn’t. And, if you’re credited with being tolerant, it means you’ve refused to tolerate something.

Open-minded: Another “opposite” word. Open-mindedness is demonstrated by a steadfast refusal to be told certain things. If you weigh the evidence even-handedly and show a fair consideration to all possible conclusions, you haven’t long to wait before someone will call you closed-minded.

Diversity: If “diversity” means anything at all, it certainly doesn’t refer to actual diversity, especially with regard to skin color. Today you can claim to be embracing “diversity” if everyone in your office has exactly the same skin color, as long as it’s a “good” color.

Science: Has two definitions, an old one and a new one. The old one has to do with learning facts and forming reasoned conclusions from the facts…testing them with theories…all that good stuff. The new definition has to do with keeping a ++ahem++ open mind (see above) about possible explanations…which means, of course, safeguarding sacred cows against reasoned challenge. Or, as I put it in the glossary, “a credentialed collective of academic elites who use democratic, political and coercive techniques to decide amongst themselves what is so.”

Skeptical: Another “opposite” word. Skeptics, once told what to think, dutifully think that and nothing else. If you’re told what to think and you start coming up with these annoying problems with it and pesky questions, you are not showing proper “skepticism” — although this is the essence of the classic definition of the word.

Fascist: Nobody has the slightest clue what this word means anymore. It’s just something liberals call you when you back them into a corner.

Greed(y): Nobody knows what this word means either, it has lost all definition. If we are pressed to come up with one, it would be “expressing or acting on a desire to keep your property after I’ve decided you should be deprived of it.” Protesting or resisting theft.

Solidarity: This means, according to the dictionary, “union or fellowship arising from common responsibilities and interests”; but in real life there’s a twist to it because you have to have communist goals. There is no “solidarity” if you are forming a fellowship for the purpose of…legalizing the private possession of firearms, setting up a system of private school vouchers, petitioning Congress to drill stateside for oil, or abolishing the capital gains tax. Solidarity means upholding no standards of performance save for that which is mediocre. A perfect example is all those nitwit teenagers changing their middle names to “Hussein” to show solidarity. “Showing solidarity” has to have something to do with sameness — you don’t set a new bar and challenge people to make themselves better, in any way, for solidarity.

Wealthy: It no longer means having a high net worth or enjoying a high income. If I tell someone you are a “wealthy” person, what that really means is you have something I wish you didn’t have. On your economic status in relation to me, or to that other person, it says nothing. You can be much poorer than me, and I can still think you’re “wealthy” if I have ambitions about making you even poorer than you are now.

You could have saved yourself a bunch of time and simply said “people like conformity,” or, “people like others who are like them.” Everyone is like that, including you and me, Morgan. What’s important is realizing when our differences of opinion matter, and when they don’t.
- dcshiderly | 06/03/2008 @ 05:12
Hmmm, maybe. On the other hand, it was a lot more fun looking at the details.

#13 and #24 really stuck out in my mind.

Do all people not like conformity? … ’cause … if that’s the case, I don’t like that 😉

Yes, people don’t like to be forced to conform. But I think the things Morgan has illustrated here goes deeper than that. It’s selfishness and laziness. These are both inherent in human nature (and in the nature of just about any other living thing — it’s in our survival wiring). However, humans, at least, have something else in their survival wiring which is a duty to the community. We’re social beasts, at least most of us are.

These two natures are in constant conflict. However, the duty to self is in the more basic wiring … the duty to community is mostly override circuits to temper those tendencies for the good of all. Both are necessary. Going too far either way is destructive.

Social status is in large part a function of how well we override those basic instincts while staying balanced enough to be successful. A lot of what we see above are percieved short-cuts… either looking for credit for something one has not done to elevate his status, or seeking to discredit everyone else to improve one’s relative status — at least in his mind.

A healthy religion tends to re-enforce those override circuits. Obviously, things can and do go terribly wrong sometimes — but they also go terribly wrong when people move in the other direction — away from this re-enforcement.

It can be done without organized religion, for sure. I, for one, think it is much more difficult, though. The more further society removes itself from such institutions of re-enforcement, I think, the harder it will be for individuals to rise above the selfish survival instincts. I think (and I might be wrong about who, but) it was probably G.K. Chesterton who made an analogy between such people and a cut rose. The plant raised the flower and nurtured it and it can still be beautiful for a while after it has been harvested from the plant. But in the end, it’s not going to bear any fruit.

I’m not sure we’ve done our children any favors by basically “killing God” over the past 100 years. As a matter of fact, I think we’ve probably done them a great disservice.
- philmon | 06/03/2008 @ 09:28
Hmm. Think you’re failing to pick up on a pattern, dc. The common thread is sharper than that — it is diminutive conformity. Lazy Larry likes to sleep until noon watching cartoons. Lazy Larry comes to find out about Busy Bob who gets up every day at 5. Then he learns about Fisherman Fred who gets up at 2 in the morning, and Jogger Jennifer who runs eight miles every morning, year ’round.

There’s no instinct for LL to conform to the more ambitious and productive lives of the others. It’s the opposite. He thinks they should be more like him.

Religion does play a role, though…in an effort to eradicate God, the evolutionary fundamentalists who are unwilling to compromise, insist (out of necessity) all of the attributes we have as a species we acquired out of survival-of-fittest. But when you go through the details of our instinct to conform, you see whenever we are compelled to conform, we conform downward — we’re tempted to jettison our individual habits that are productive and acquire new ones that are unproductive…not vice-versa.

I’d love for someone to pipe up and explain to me what that has to do with survival of the species and strengthening of the gene pool.
- mkfreeberg | 06/03/2008 @ 10:09
Oh wait…heh. Were you demonstrating #9 in action? 😀

Phil, I can think of a few human endeavors, both in modern times and in the days that would’ve taken place before recorded history, in which a hybrid between individualized behavior and tribal behavior would have been inappropriate and counterproductive. For example, if you lived IN a tribe, there would have been little or no advantage to maintaining individual abilities, cognitive styles, and aptitudes. Early gold miners and cowboys, on the other hand — they could not have afforded to measure every li’l thing they did against social codes or taboos. The fence goes up. The branding iron goes into the cow’s side. The bull’s testicles come off. And that must have gone for the first guy to invent…a lean-to, so food could be hunted down more than a day’s journey from the nearest cave. Or — whatever passed for a “boat” thousands of years ago.

Seems to me the hybrid situation is a relatively recent concept. Social customs take precedent over individual thought processes when we can afford for them to do so; when we’re no longer in the same situation as the cowboy trying to get his roof patched before the storm comes in, or the caveman trying to hunt for food before his family starves. There is a need for social custom charters as well. You and I and three others can go on some kind of an “all-guy” without agreeing on too much, beyond a few rules beginning with “You have to turn in your man-card if…” and coming to some agreement about how to pay for gas to get to the trail-head. If we go out on an excursion with a larger group, like ten or twenty, we’ll have to have more rules. And at some point, the rules will “pop up” in the way “soft” conventions do — when certain things become, all of a sudden, “not done.” Nobody knows who made the rule and nobody cares; it’s stated in passive voice whenever it is mentioned.

I’m of the opinion that it changes, from one to the other, as a society progresses from birth to death. People think things out for themselves when society has not yet been made possible — when nothing’s been paved yet, and there are still animals, diseases, savages, etc. Once there are private domiciles and public thoroughfares, there arises a need for a complex web of codes, and then the next thing is “Ignorance Of The Law Is No Excuse” — people are bound, with penalties, to rules that are ancient or new, and nobody’s obligated to inform them of the newer ones. Then it becomes more difficult to learn of the newer ones, and easier to ratify them…and to be tripped up by them.

At some point, you don’t need any authority to create new “rules,” and you don’t have to have any ownership of your new rule because whenever people mention it it’s in passive voice, or in some other way leaves out the identity of who thought the rule was a swell idea — as well as what disaster might transpire if the rule is violated. “You’re not supposed to wear white after Labor Day,” “Don’t tear the tag off the mattress,” etc.

That could be fine…in fact, it is necessary for that situation to arise for civilization to continue to mature and evolve. Maybe. But it’s undeniable that when this occurs, what people are doing is expunging their culture of the actions, as well as the principles, that made their associative enclave possible in the first place. Had everybody conducted themselves according to social taboos, all the time, everlastingly, the roads would not have been paved and the swamps would not have been cleared and the serpents would not have been killed.

But the real price to be paid in conformity, is (the subject of this post) we have a tendency to conform according to dysfunction. Watch a gaggle of four or five people, men or women doesn’t matter…see what happens when, every once in awhile, someone slips up and mentions a unique ability. Typing 180 words a minute, driving 900 miles in a day…whatever. Someone will interject — pretty much everytime — a magic “throwaway” phrase, something that makes everyone else feel good about throwing this away, as an attribute of strength they might have considered emulating. Usually “Oh, I could NEVER do that!” It’s not meant to castigate the one person who can do it, it’s meant to ease off the pressure that might be involved in being in the group; to make it clear that the group will not insist on this ability as a condition of membership.

It’s very rare for anyone, in a group setting, to say something more ambitious, that might inspire others — like “Huh. I wonder how hard it would be for ME to learn to do that.”

Thing I Know #130. The noble savage gives us life. Then we outlaw his very existence. We call this process “civilization.” I don’t know why.

Thing I Know #236. When a society first learns to walk, it denies all potential advantage to followers of convention; those who live there can achieve efficiency only by finding their own way. When lying on a deathbed, society twists around from this arrangement, reserving efficiency only for those who follow convention, denying all advantage to those who would flout it. In all the days in between, it becomes progressively friendlier to those who conform, and more hostile to those who do not, until there’s no benefit at all to deciding things for yourself. To think. To observe. To infer. To decide, outside of echoing what others have said. Therefore, to live. At this point the society dies, for it must.
- mkfreeberg | 06/03/2008 @ 10:43
I think maybe you were taking me a little to literally.

I’m not talking about anything so sophisticated as a formal hybrid. I’m talking about something more basic. “I gots t’ eat” and “if I cooperate with these people, my chances of getting somethin’ t’ eat will be better” … things like that. The effiiencies of the group. If it’s just me standing watch at night while my woman takes care of the baby in the cave, it’s a lot rougher than if we have a bunch of families together and we take turns watching at night so the rest of us can get some sleep.

I’m talking about tendencies… the rules we come up with are merely recognitions of those tendencies. But that doesn’t mean that the rules can’t get out of hand, and they are, IMNSHO, getting out of hand.

If I were in an ancient tribe — it’s really no different than today. I’m an individual as well as a part of a tribe. I’m both. Particle and wave. Sometimes it works out better to theorize that light behaves like a wave, sometimes it works out better to theorize that light is a particle. It depends on the situation.

The cowboy and gold miner moved away from their tribes to a place where the social codes and taboos in the “tribes” they left behind no longer mattered. A new social code was formed by the people who headed west. One where you could spit tobacco on the street and a gut shot was just treatment for cheatin’ at cards. New tribes. New rules. But rules nonetheless. Still, each decision was weighed against how important it was to MY survival or success, and what is the cost to my (new) tribe? (whether it be from fear of the enforcement of the new tribe’s rules however extensive or sparse they might be, or out of genuine concern for the tribe. Doesn’t matter.)

Not too many of us are for out and out anarchy, but on the other hand I have a basic right to defend myself if I need to. If you’re not going to have anarchy, you need group rules. The formal manifestation of this is government. But if you try to make government take care of everything, you lose your right to self-defense. Or even to feed yourself. So there must be some sort of balance. And balance doesn’t necessarily mean “in the middle” distance-wise. There are weighted factors. Some things are more important than other things are.

This might be my own yin and yang theory. Hmmm.

We’re all interested, ultimately, in staying alive. Civilization … interactive cooperation between individuals to a certain degree … increases our chances. Plus we seem to get something out of chumming around with each other. As a matter of fact, the older I get, the more I understand that that’s what it’s all about. The chumming around. Family and friends. That’s what makes getting the next meal worth it. I’ll live to get another chance to chum around again. (yeah, yeah, the food might taste good, too — there are few absolutes) Not saying solitude isn’t good or even necessary. I enjoy it from time to time. But in the end I want to get back with loved ones. Have a party. Share experiences and thoughts.

At any rate, what I was getting at in that context is that life forms try to gain as much as they can and expend as little energy as they can gaining it. That’s wired into the cells of mice, tigers, elephants, and humans. Its our animal nature. But we form these groups, and we have a group nature as well. But the animal part of us still wants to get as much out of the group as it can while expending the least amount of energy. Many of us overcome that animal part and work hard at it anyway. What I was saying was that what you’re citing in your list is the manefestation of those who give in too easily to laziness. We all (in general, okay) want acceptance in the (a) group … it’s worth something to us. But we don’t wanna work at it. So we wish that the bar were lower rather than striving for the bar. I don’t want to walk to a trash recepticle, so I drop the candybar wrapper on the ground. If more people did that I wouldn’t look as bad relative to the rest of the group and I’m still accepted. But if somebody picks up the wrapper, it makes me look REALLY bad. So I hate them. See how that works?

You’re probably right about societies progressing… “Progressing” … there’s that word… “Progressive” … from emphasis on the individual to emphasis on the group and I’m not arguing that that is not the case. I’m just talking about the basic, wired-in forces within us that compete throughout the process and how they often oppose each other, and how one might expect to see certain people acting certain ways because of it.

It used to be that childhood was all about getting trained to try to live up to, as closely as reasonable, the social ideals of the group while not sacrificing too much of yourself in the process. In our deteriorating culture it seems the ideal is heading fast toward: get what you can get, and split and hope nobody notices. And leftist government promises to give you something for nothing, so the lazy and the guilt-ridden opt for that at the ballott box. By removing responsibility from any individual, nobody can be castigated for laziness. In doing this, we lose the individual, and we eventually lose the benefits of the group as well. Nobody has incentive to do any work … until there’s enough hungry people hungry enough to start a revolution, I suppose. Or die trying.
- philmon | 06/03/2008 @ 23:23
You know, as far as the progression goes from individual to group … here’s an analogy….

A free society gets started. Some basic rules are hashed out and that society tries to ensure that everybody knows the rules and the consequences of breaking them. And at first it’s pretty good.

But nothing’s perfect. And we, as observant beasts, see that and we’re never satisfied. So we see how the system can be abused or sometimes produces results we didn’t intend or don’t like.

So we tweak it.

Not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, depending on the situation. But it can and does get out of hand, since we often don’t think of what the consequences… what the tweak might cost us, vs just sticking with the previously defined imperfect situation. ‘specially if I get somethin’ for nothin’ out of it. 😉

Each tweak adds a light or a bell or a whistle to the rules of the society. The laws, if you will. But of course the machine is now more complex. It’s not as efficient as the original design. Like Winamp. Or ACDSee. They started out as simple, small, fast, robust programs that were good at what they were designed to do. But they got more and more features, until they became huge resource hogs and slowed down and crashed and nothing special anymore. (disclosure: I still do use both of them anyway.)

But when you keep adding bells and whistles to things eventually they get too complicated to maintain, much less operate, and they must eventually collapse under their own weight and increased vulnerability to one part of it stepping on another part of it. Fragility.

Perhaps it is inevitable. So in that case voting Republican is effectively only voting to slow the train down vs voting Democrat. There’s sadly a lot of truth in that.

So do we vote Democrat and just speed the train over the cliff so we can start over sooner, or do we vote Republican and hope that buys us enough time to convince enough people to get the train steered in a more individual-friendly direction?

Or do we vote Libertarian and go over the cliff anyway with either the Donks or the Elephants driving?
- philmon | 06/03/2008 @ 23:40

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Everything I Know About People, Minus What I Was Told When I Was A Child
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