House of Eratosthenes

So I was given cause to think…between the imbroglio about the no-right-turn traffic light, and the gun-grabbers stirred up into high dudgeon by the Florida school shooting…about my favorite Robert Heinlein quote. The story about the bikini baristas suing the city of Everett, Washington, my old stomping grounds, over the new dress code got me thinking about it again.

In all three cases it seems we’re dealing with a mentality that has become influential. And, should never have become influential. A mindset that, by becoming influential, reflects poorly on all of us. The mindset seems to be one of: When in doubt, impose more rules and take more things away. This will eventually lead to perfection and it is not at all necessary to ruminate on how that’s supposed to work. It just will. Ban more things, take more things away, we will have Nirvana.

Heinlein said,

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

This could use some improvement, I’ve always thought.

But first, let me be fair about it. I am noticing the improvement it needs because I am noticing the quote in the first place, and I am noticing the quote in the first place because it is already quite good. Look how well it fits into the three significant recent events, listed above. All three. And if you take the time to go noticing some more things happening around you, you see it continues to fit. It’s one of those things you can’t stop noticing, once you become aware of it.

Bikini Barista The tiny meaningless correction is: Humanity is a species, not a race.

The bigger one is: We have not yet located the root cause. Why do some among us want people to be controlled? Obviously it’s because they see people as liabilities. The others, who “have no such desire,” see people as assets (or at least, as not-liabilities). It is the difference between the negative and the positive.

I have long noticed that there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who are trying to achieve work upon external things, measurably altering states in one or more definable ways, upon one or more definable objects; and those who are acting as stewards of their own emotional state. In very crude terms, you might think of this as the difference between those who want to work and those who want to play. The former seeks to accomplish something and the latter wants to feel good all the time. It’s a maturity thing, since acting as a steward of your own emotional state is exactly what newborn babies do. It is the default condition. Later on, we get concerned about getting work done — for a variety of different reasons. But if you want to be effective at that you have to let go of the “be happy all the time” thing. Some people don’t, ever.

They come to think of the whole point to life, the whole reason for our existence, as to be happy. Obviously, once we start thinking about our reason for being here, we’re getting into some heady stuff, some things that can directly and dramatically impact many other things. Value systems come from these. Priorities come from these. Self-tasking, the determination of necessary prerequisites, logistics, tactics come from these.

From this comes a split in how to deal with time. If your objective is to get work done, time is a resource and you never have as much of it as you might want to have. So you have to learn to prioritize. If your objective is to act as a steward of your own emotional state, you have to make sure you’re never bored. Time becomes a liability instead of an asset. As a consequence, you don’t prioritize, at least you don’t prioritize the same way as people who are trying to get a certain amount of work done in a limited amount of time.

And so from that — somehow — another split emerges about people. People become assets or liabilities and this seems to be connected to whether time is an asset or a liability. We find…and we should expect to find…the far greater bulk of sloppy ramshackle thinking, and of hypocrisy, is on the negative side, since people who embrace this idiom of other people being liabilities, always have these circles of friends who are exempt from the curse. People are trashing the planet, people shouldn’t have guns, people should be forced to ride bikes to work, people need to slow down, take turns, get a mother-may-I for every little thing…but MY PALS are all okay and can do whatever they want.

Another division emerges between those who see the moral imperative of coupling extraordinary authority with commensurate responsibilities, and those who eschew any such coupling, insisting that certain privileged classes and members should enjoy great power without ever having to answer for how it is used.

I think Homo Sapiens divides politically into those who are ready to live among others, in a society devoid of special privileges reserved for any individual or class, and those who are not ready to do this. The latter don’t see the need, and they don’t see the point. Their problem solving acumen, translated on a case by case basis into flow charts, each and every time would be manifested by a huge box in the middle labeled “AND THEN A FUCKING MIRACLE HAPPENS,” with “take things away and ban more things” on the left and “life gets all perfect and wonderful” on the right. One might go so far as to say…and one would be justified in basing it on empirical observation in saying this…that these nattering nabobs have allowed their understanding of cause-and-effect to atrophy. For their extreme cases, there IS no cause, there IS no effect, there are only things that happen and there are other things we want to have happen.

Men behave improperly, and that has something to do with not enough scolding, too many guns, too much meat, free right turns on red, and nice looking girls in bathing suits. Take all that stuff away and things get better…somehow.

They don’t think logically because they are not comfortable discussing things logically. They aren’t comfortable discussing things logically because their ideas don’t hold up to inhospitable inspection. Every now & then they’ll go through the motions, but when they do you’ll notice they’re overly hung up on “facts.” And their facts aren’t really facts, they’re just things they’ve decided should capture everyone’s attention, that might be true, but may not be. How these things all connect together…things happening as consequences of other things…they don’t really believe in it. Closest they get to it is “no one is going to shoot anybody else if there aren’t any guns.” But even there, it is their opposition that says “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” which wins, because it’s catchier, gels more evenly with observed history, and falls in line with the truth of how humans behave. And in this example, as in so many others, you see them making their common mistake: Let us presume people doing X is a thing of the past, for behold our new rule. We just banned X. No more people doing X. They can’t distinguish between a thing being forbidden, vs. a thing no longer happening.

The unpleasant truth is, these two sides do not find overlap, nor should we expect them to ever find overlap, because they aren’t building the same world. Those who have faith in people to ultimately do the right thing, acknowledge that this comes after mistakes because people are fundamentally flawed. Those who lack this faith, contrary to their rhetoric, are not trying to stop bad things from happening, but instead are trying to escape the consequences of occupying a common habitat with their inferiors. They want to be protected so they can feel happy all the time. When they prattle away with their sloganeering about “taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society,” they aren’t talking about themselves. Again, logic: If they want to pay more taxes, nothing’s stopping them.

We divide politically into people who see bad behavior as consequences of poor character or perverse incentives, either one of which can be fixed, or at least prevented…and, those who see it as an indicator that the rules are not yet perfect, require more tweaking, more grabbing of their fellow citizens by the scruff of the neck, so they can be dragged over to where they’re supposed to be. Those who believe in human intelligence, as in the ability to learn from prior mistakes, and those who do not.

Just for the record, I think legally the bikini baristas are wrong. I do agree that imposing a “dress code” at the city-ordinance level, is risible. But it’s not an idea to be taken any more seriously than that, that dress codes infringe on the First Amendment. That comes under the heading of “that law conflicts with my personal preferences therefore it must be oppressing me.” That having been said, however, if the plaintiffs end up owning City Hall, I’ll not be shedding many tears about it. Having lived in Everett for a stretch, and in the general vicinity for a bit longer than that, I know what I’m talking about when I note a regional epidemic of the flawed thinking I’ve described above. This flawed thinking of, things aren’t the way they want them to be yet, ban more things, a fucking miracle will happen and life will be wonderful. Yes, the Pacific Northwest suffers from this.

Extra bonus points with sprinkles for working in “nattering nabobs.”
- vanderleun | 02/24/2018 @ 13:30

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How We Divide PoliticallySaturday, February 24th, 2018

How We Divide Politically
Saturday, February 24th, 2018