House of Eratosthenes

Nobody reads this blog…ever. And I gotta tell you, it’s times like this that we just bust with pride over that, because nobodies tend to be a lot smarter than somebodies overall. The same way that just about anybody is smarter than “everybody.” Everybody. Feh. That’s another thing…the festering crap that is crammed into “everybody”‘s head…how did we all make it as long and as far as we have. Well, that is a bunny trail.

Hard Hat Stephen J. came up with the name for which I was searching. What is the opposite of this “intellectualism” being promoted, defended and apologia’d by people such as David Brooks of the New York Times? What is the proper moniker for that style of thinking in which you indulge in such rustic and primitive fantasies as…up is up and down is down? Terrorism is perhaps more dangerous than climate change? You know, that neanderthal mindset that ensnares most of us as we go about our laughably simple lives just, uh, you know…building things that people will actually use? As opposed to writing drivel that will line birdcages and end up as targets of dark comedy in the blogosphere? Or coming up with plans that seem to do the opposite of what they’re supposed to do…ratcheting up the public debt to cure our financial ills, trying Kalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian courts to show the world how fair we are, feeding the terrorists three squares a day making sure they’re comfy while we wait for them to talk…et cetera.

The person who answered my question, was kind enough to provide a full explanation, not that it’s needed:

You do not go on a construction site without putting on your hard hat (and other safety gear). You cannot build a real building without going on the construction site. And a building designed by someone who doesn’t know anything about real materials or real forces is going to fall down. Plus, it evokes “hardheaded practicality” and formal precision in “logic”; it’s a hat, so it evokes the “thinking cap” image; it sticks to a two-syllable word at its longest, no polysyllabic euphony; and doesn’t have the faintest breath of “-ism” in it.

So in future, whenever anybody says, “But the intellectuals say X,” you can always say, “Yeah — but what does Hard-Hat Logic say?”

Yes, that works. Thinking the way people are forced to think when they live in a virtual past, and are forced to — protect themselves from real dangers, build real things and do real work. And so they don’t have to use the word “reality” or do anything else to tell outsiders that their ideas are “real”…the reality is proven when they stay alive long enough to come back to it the next day. That, and when the stuff they build actually does what it is supposed to do.

Update: Guys on the radio are re-running an episode because it’s a Saturday. They’re talking about proposals that offer indigent women a thousand dollars give-or-take to tie their tubes. Actually, not that quite so much, but about people who are opposed to such a thing for ethical reasons.

Not even them, per se; this is not so extreme or unreasonable of a revulsion, you could sustain it simply because of the implication of eugenics. They’re zooming in on the people who are opposed to such proposals on ethical grounds, who simultaneous with that, are not opposed to abortion. How does one explain such a twisty ethical profile, without concluding that the ethicist must just-plain-like abortions?

It brings to mind another dubious ethical sensitivity: Opposing requirements for voters to present ID. All too often, we let this one go without serious debate or inspection — “Oh, you can’t do that, it’s discriminatory.” Or “prohibitively expensive for people in certain circumstances.”

Another example: The USA cannot drill for oil within its own land holdings, because of — all together now — BLAH BLAH BLAH PRISTINE WILDERNESS BLAH BLAH BLAH WILDLIFE BLAH BLAH BLAH VERGE OF EXTINCTION BLAH BLAH BLAH. Yes! Because nothing outside of the United States is pristine. As long as that barrel is imported, you’re good.

Things like this, I think, cast a big glaring spotlight on The Big Reveal: The outspoken opponent of such direct action, or someone who is the focus of his sympathies, is drawing some kind of benefit from the continuation of the problem. The objection is that the proposed solution is a bit too “hard hat”; it shows just a little bit too much promising potential of actually working, to merit further consideration.

The person so dismissing the idea on such frivolous grounds, naturally, thinks of himself as an intellectual. Or at the very least, well-read, up-to-speed, knowledgeable about what “the experts” say. But he forgot to put on his hard hat.

I seem to recall Ayn Rand explored this at length, when Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden and crew climbed into a locomotive and took the first ride ever on a track made of gleaming green Rearden Metal. There followed three pages of prose, which amounted to roughly two thousand words. Unfortunately, the prose was “brilliant” in the sense that a typical Obama speech is brilliant: Quick, recite me a line of it from memory, or find someone who can. If you can do either of those, you’re better than me…so I can’t comment kindly on Rand’s talents as an industrial-age American poet.

I do remember the overall spirit of what she was trying to say, though. It’s exactly what Stephen J. is talking about. Such a locomotive ride is certain death, if any one person inside built something with too much fidelity to theory and not enough to practice. It was a chain of trust — one weak link would’ve compromised the entire thing. Inside that locomotive, the supposedly-evil capitalists managed to construct precisely the community that the “intellectuals” say they want to build, and it’s so hard because the evil capitalists keep getting in the way.

Our intellectuals live in a perfect upside-down, anti-matter universe. We’ve got a lot of people walking around who think they’re pretty smart, not because they’ve managed to master our ultra-sophisticated society, but because they’re dependent on it. They have been imbibing so exuberantly from the intoxicating elixir of theory, that they new eschew the wisdom acquired through practice. Just a few generations ago, when acquiring a bucket of water or evacuating one’s bowels were challenging and odious feats of manual labor, people like them would have had to be locked up for their own safety.

Update: The latest Crowder vid has a lot to do with this subject overall:

Hat tip for that one to Washington Rebel.

“Yes! Because nothing outside of the United States is pristine. As long as that barrel is imported, you’re good.”

Unless, of course, it’s whatever day of the week that’s “no dependence on foreign oil” day. Jesus, these people must be dizzy.
- Andy | 01/09/2010 @ 12:17
“Ayn Rand explored this at length, when Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden and crew climbed into a locomotive and took the first ride ever on a track made of gleaming green Rearden Metal. …Such a locomotive ride is certain death, if any one person inside built something with too much fidelity to theory and not enough to practice. It was a chain of trust — one weak link would’ve compromised the entire thing.”

Bill Whittle over at pajamasmedia.com/ejectejecteject had an essay on the same principle. He’d found this wonderful graphic that showed all the continental air flights in the United States over a 24-hour period; it was this marvelous animated tapestry of dots of light flickering from city to city in this vast cloud moving from east to west with the sunlight. The point, of course, was the unbelieveable complexity of the air traffic web, combined with the flabbergasting level of interpersonal trust needed to make it function.

I’m flattered you liked the phrase, man! Thanks. Being a writer and sometime actor I can be prone to the idealistically theoretical myself, but I’ve switched careers into computer programming right now, and am learning the hard way the wisdom of the “Test, Test, Test, then Test Again” approach. And I’ve helped build enough theatre sets to have an appreciation for the skill of knowing how to put crap together so it won’t fall down. (A thought of especial concern when you know you’re gonna be standing on this thing, eight feet above a very hard stage, in front of several hundred people.)

That said, there is one weakness to hard hat logic, which I do find you have to go back to the theoreticians/idealists for, and it’s simply this: Hard hat logic will tell you, “If you want to accomplish X, it will cost Y at absolute minimum.” It cannot tell you a thing about whether X is worth Y to you, or (same idea, different phrase) if it’s better to do without X than to pay Y to obtain it.

Or to put it another way: Cost benefit analyses are only useful if everyone involved agrees on the value of the costs and benefits being analyzed; but value is subjective, and has to be an input into the analysis rather than expecting it as an output from it.
- Stephen J. | 01/09/2010 @ 21:19
Don’t think I can quote,but I remember-the men mostly retired from Taggart Transcontinental lining the track,protecting the achivement from the luddites of the day-made me cry the first time I read it.Despite her faults sometimes Rand really was brilliant at her game—BTW .Love the fat chick cartoon.
- kermitt | 01/10/2010 @ 13:06

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“Hard Hat Logic”Saturday, January 9th, 2010

“Hard Hat Logic”
Saturday, January 9th, 2010