House of Eratosthenes

FrankJ’s “peace plan” should be required reading in all grade-school classes, from third on up to about tenth. And of course beyond that, for the benefit of folks who still somehow don’t get it…which, sadly, many do not. Go read it now.

His premise is that it is an intrinsic quality of the human condition that a target must be acquired, and attacked. In my personal experience, those who are most vehement in denying this, actually do the best job of enshrining and sustaining this passion and then psychologically projecting it onto others. He goes on to point out a second intrinsic compulsion, which kicks in when the target is being selected, to put the cross-hairs on the “weenie.” Which, in the status quo of world politics…is the United States. Yes, we’re a “superpower.” Yes, we still have the greatest military might and our standard of living is the highest. But we are the world’s weenie because we are engaged in the most intense effort to avoid conflict. A bunch of loudmouths around the planet, most of them nameless, faceless, anonymous and unaccountable, have saddled us with the responsibility to engage in this conflict-avoidance — which means, they have proposed that if we are found to be locked in conflict with any other entity, the fault is to be automatically assumed to be ours.

And we have accepted this burden.

This is somewhat parallel to, and perhaps identical to, the Picard vs. Tazmanian Devil Doctrine we observed here…much later, and not nearly as articulately. Wherever conflict occurs between two parties, one of whom is more “civilised” than the other, the more cerebral party is dependent on diplomatic resolution whereas the savage is not. If the conflict degenerates into a physical contest, it’s not necessarily the mightier party that prevails, but the one more willing to use force. Which means that, while the diplomatic alternatives are explored, the more powerful of the two contestants is going to be the one least interested in participating — this is true of all employment/contracting situations, marriage engagements, anything cooperative — and again, this will be the savage.

So the philosopher/poet guy, you see, is going to be screwed every time.

FrankJ accurately points out that on the schoolyard playground, it is the “nerd” that is put in the cross hairs. It isn’t because of his physically diminutive stature, or his lack of fashion sense, or his social awkwardness…although these all do help contribute somewhat. The primary motive is the target’s reluctance to engage in conflict.

The little nerdling endures the torment, waits for one of his tormentors to let his guard down, and delivers a swift chop to the solar plexus — the bullying stops. The nerdling does not grow six inches taller overnight, or sprout new muscles. But the bullying stops then & there. Trust me on this. I was that nerdling in fourth grade, and then (new school) in the seventh grade. Lay down one wallop…just one…and the bullying stops.

I should also add that school administrators, like any other authority figure, have a way of laying down cross hairs just like any bully. They’ll pick on those they’ve pre-judged to be most interested in avoiding conflict. And so the nerdling will end up in the principle’s office, receiving a stern lecture for that one whallop, that the pudgy former-tormentors never received throughout the course of perhaps hundreds of noogies, lings, wet-willies, indian burns, pink bellies, etc. etc. etc. Part of this is because the nerdling is far less experienced than the bullies at figuring out when the teacher isn’t looking. But that’s a tiny part of it. Most of it is that people in authority tend to be cowards. They wield that authority over the entity most likely to yield.

Just as a sailboat has right-of-way over a power boat, the likely victor in a conflict is the unthinking one. FrankJ pointed it out years before I did, and he did it better.

Update: I was given cause to think back on these pre-dawn ravings of mine a few minutes ago when the cashier of a major national retail chain noticed my tee shirt…one of the more clever anti-Clinton designs you can purchase here. She didn’t take exception to it, actually sympathized with it so I would assume she’s no fan of the Clintons. But she launched into an anti-dirty-rotten-scoundrels rant of sorts, about how “it never seems to get any better no matter who we put in” and so forth. Well, I had to agree with that one, and maybe that was my mistake. She started going on about how the one we got now is the “worst ever.” And then looked back at me with a mixture of snickering and pleading, waiting for me to agree to that too.

I giggled a little as I signed off on the sale, and muttered an audible “…so they tell me.” Incredulously, she wailed at me “well, look around! Can’t you tell?”

Yeah…I’m a passionate believer in recognizing when something is busted. Some of my friends who are perpetual optimists, end up in conflict with me in this area. They know something isn’t right, I know it isn’t right, I complain about it, they lecture me that I shouldn’t be occupying my energy with it unless I have a solution. This is where I can start to see their logic; you see, I have ugly bedfellows in the pessimism department. I want to bitch and moan so I’ll stay motivated to spot a solution, if & when one manages to float within arm’s reach. Some other people like to bitch and moan just to bitch and moan.

And you have to join that crowd, and you must have already lost all of the perspective they are in danger of losing, to live in 2007 America and snark and snipe away about how tough we have it especially in contrast to the generations who came before. Sorry, I don’t care who’s in the White House, I can’t join in on that.

Go on, try to do some bitching. What’ve you got? The price of gas just went down and you’re afraid it might go up again…the environmentalists have just discovered bottled water is bad for the environment…there may be a square mile on this great continent with fewer than eight Starbuck’s coffee shops in it…and the global warming ManBearPig. The number of persons uninsured for their health care is in eight digits, a figure that can be obtained only by counting all the young adults who don’t have health insurance because they’d rather be spending the cash on other things.

Now, perhaps I could’ve inspired a welcome paradigm shift in my newfound gloomy friend, but there is the matter of the Golden Rule to consider. See, when I’m in line waiting to buy something, and the person ahead of me wants to be a Chatty Cathy with the cashier, it pisses me off. It’s wrong, and see above — when I notice things are wrong I complain about them. I bitch and moan and squeal…and you see, I’d have to stop doing that if I were to make the lady in line behind me wait longer. You can’t complain about other people doing things if you yourself are going to be doing that same thing.

So, I simply smiled and said “well…I dunno about that.”

The cashier beamed, handed me my receipt, and wished me a nice day. Later I’m sure she’ll brag to her friends about how she got a knuckle-dragging red-state Republican to be sheepish by speaking truth to power. I suppose she’d be right about that. I did what it took to keep the line moving. Someone had to.

But it occurs to me. Above, I’m discussing some of the personal dynamics that go on when one side of a negotiation process is saddled with all of the burden to avoid conflict. That’s exactly what happened in my dialog with the cashier, when you think about it. I could have reminded her that things aren’t so bad, challenged her world view, and the process by which she places blame on the President for whatever grievances she thinks she might have. These are positive thoughts. But there’s no way to express them positively. There simply isn’t any way to reply, substantially, while keeping things pleasant.

WEP40 So I think an important battle has been lost here. You can say some incredibly vicious things about President Bush now, and about Republicans in general, and still be widely perceived as a pleasant person saying pleasant things. To inject some logic into such a dialog, is something you can’t do without being perceived as some kind of a nasty little butt hole. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. The retail establishment I visited, after all, is unionized…which is going to have a big effect on things. You go on one of those six-times-a-day smoking breaks, you get tired of making idle chit-chat about the weather, the next subject is politics. And so reality takes a back seat, as you manufacture lots of make-believe codswallop so you can do some bitching.

And the level of comfort people feel, that everyone around them is going to have exactly the same take on things as they do, is pretty alarming. And as I keep saying on this blog that nobody actually reads anyway — President Bush’s aptitudes, his depth of character, his moral leanings…is well on the way to being irrelevant, and is all irrelevant already insofar as we need to decide how to vote next year. None of it matters.

Which means any & all bellyaching about President Bush — is political sloganeering for the benefit of paid political strategists. Nothing more, nothing less.

But there is something else going on. This woman was much older than I was. I doubt she was 260 years old — which is about the age you’d have to be to say “this is the worst President ever” and know what you’re talking about. But six-times-a-day union-mandated smoking breaks aside, I’m sure she was old enough to understand we’ve had at least one President that was worse.

Memo to FrankJ: I have two of your tee shirt designs already. If we can work something out with John Cox who did the drawing, I’ll just throw in the design to the right. I will gladly renounce any material claim I might otherwise have. Call it yours, do whatever you want. But speaking for myself, I would love to have a tee shirt that looks like this. I doubt like hell I’m the only one.

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First…And BetterSaturday, August 18th, 2007

First…And Better
Saturday, August 18th, 2007