House of Eratosthenes

Of, or pertaining to, a brand name that is well known in the public’s consciousness, and in that cloister of thought inextricably intertwined with an exuberant adulation. Because the brand name is connected with this extroardinarily enthused approval, it is also connected with a cultural expectation that you’re supposed to share in it.

This broadcast and reverberated understanding that the thing is super-duper-mega-awesome-wonderful, is based on emotion and not reason. It cannot be explained with words. If one among the enthused does deign to explain with words why the object in question is mega-awesome-wonderful, it is part of the definition that the rambling, confused, directionless missive that comes out, if it justifies anything at all, it only justifies that the object has met a standard. The observer is left waiting interminably for some rational explanation as to why the object should be elevated above its peers, for no such explanation exists in logic. Such an explanation cannot be seen or described, it is merely felt.

I was inspired to make this new word by a simple observation over at Sonic Charmer’s, which I then waded into to help over-complicate and “overthink” according to a subsequent critic. The kick-off had to do with Twilight, a movie series that is not for everybody, in fact once one inspects it logically one sees it is a provably bad offering, liked by many, most of them females, who cannot even begin to explain anything good about it since there isn’t anything.

I’ve been noticing this for years now. I recall watching Die Another Day, which is in the James Bond franchise and carries the distinction of being a last-entry-before-a-reboot…arguably, this specimen is no better than any other last-entry-before-a-reboot movie. In the commentary chapter of the disc, star Pierce Brosnan was describing in detail why it was such an honor and a privilege to be working with the great Madonna. He shouldn’t have; he really, really shouldn’t have. Vapid and glittering bullshit phrases cloaked in the dulcet tones from the Brosnan voice box kept tumbling into the microphone like little turds…”such an icon”…et cetera. I distinctly recall thinking: Why didn’t they just drop that? It ends up being an insult to Madonna, when you think of it. Here’s Pierce put on the spot to say something positive about the star Madonna, why she has the fame that she has, what she did…for a whole new generation…and he can’t think of anything.

In the overthinking department, I’m in for a penny, in for a pound. So let’s continue to overthink. Maybe this is entirely insignificant, but like I said over there, I got a feeling there might be something to it. Could be wrong.

I perceive a steady, linear, deterioration in this century:

1. Phantom Menace and The Matrix: Slobbering fans can explain why it’s so important to them to see it, and once they have seen it they can explain what is “good” about it. It seems to escape their notice that this good-ness has to do only with special effects, which by 1999, although they’re still state-of-the-art this falls short of suggesting anything particularly miraculous has taken place. Although that three-way sword fight at the end was pretty cool.
2. After the September 11 attacks there follows a long period where there isn’t much remarkable being observed, in our culture, and maybe that is the origin of the problem.
3. Windows XP is kind of stable, and as a consequence of this, receives all sorts of praise as if it was an amazing new achievement. I suppose it was. Wonderful, an operating system that doesn’t eat your work; setting the bar kind of low here…
4. The Harry Potter film series takes off. Again, I understand how, and the fans can explain how, it is a story for children that captures their imagination because it has something to do with wizardry and magic. But how sad that in this century that’s some kind of event that sends shockwaves, whereas in the last one it was a rather ordinary occurrence. Still just as miraculous in the meaning behind inspiring children to worlds of wonder. But not a once-in-a-lifetime event, by any means.
5. The XBox game console. Again, it’s a new wave of technology, which is a good thing…I wish the technology had been put to better use, and I wish the public reception had been toned down. Between this offering, and the Wii and the PS3 and the XBox 360 we had a whole generation of kids who defined their very existences around getting hold of the doodad, and it’s a little hard to blame them when I recall the drudgery of my own childhood. Once the energy had been all blended together, there was a whole deluge of excitement lurching forward, unstoppable, around a new technological offering that really doesn’t compare that well with, let’s say, a cure for Cancer or something along those lines…
6. Superman Returns. It was eagerly anticipated because there hadn’t been any Superman movies for nineteen years. Reactions are mixed.
7. Barack Obama. ‘Nuff said.
8. Hillary Clinton, come to think of it, has been representative of this problem for quite awhile. Name one spectacularly good thing about Hillary Clinton, just one. I got some grief over on Facebook for pointing out that her chief qualification for these high offices is that she isn’t a very good wife and her husband doesn’t seem happy with her. I get how that offends people, and that isn’t my goal, but I didn’t make the situation; her fans made it. They’re heralding her as uniquely qualified for Senator, Secretary of State, President, et al and there isn’t a single positive detail to be noticed about her or anything she’s managed to accomplish, anywhere. Her husband cheated on her, and that’s her qualification.
9. The Occupy movement. All these politicians “get the frustration” of the Occupy movement. I wish there were more politicians, at the local level, who got the frustration with the Occupy movement…what is its goal, really? The Occupy movement still can’t say. Once again, we’re inclined to behave as if we’ve seen some detail where we’ve actually not seen any.
10. Twilight. Here we approach a whole new level. Asked what’s extraordinarily great about Twilight, the Twilight fan spews out pure nonsense; they have absolutely nothing. Not even red herrings. If you don’t like it, don’t go! Uh okay, but that’s not the issue…I really wanted to understand…

All of these events have excited, and been eagerly awaited by, vast multitudes anxious to share their excitement with like-minded.

Nobody can explain what is particularly wonderful about any of it. It all reads like what Tam said: “[Obama]’s a handsome younger guy who delivers vapidly inspiring slogans smoothly, and he was seen as a reaction to the mean, stodgy old men that control everything.” So there is excitement there but it isn’t based on attraction to the object of interest, it’s all based on the recoil from the alternative. Overly-energized, overly-displayed, overly-popular enthusiasm is made that way, not because of anything positive about Obama, who is far from being the only “handsome younger guy” who can deliver a speech, but because of something negative about the “mean, stodgy old men that control everything.” It is criticism for one object, cloaked rather dishonestly as a compliment paid to its opposite, so the compliment ends up being bloated, grandiose, overly platitudinous, obsequious and silly. It simply isn’t being carried aloft with the positive energy it claims to have; at the core of the cloud, it’s based on negativity. Which in turn means the substance of the cloud has a lot to do with dishonesty.

That is not true of everything on the list.

Much of it is based on starvation, I notice. Just as a glass of water looks a lot different to a man who’s been dragging himself through the desert on his belly all day long…in fact, maybe Titanic is what really got this whole thing started. Women, some working, some housewives, some too young to be either one, starved for an item of entertainment directed toward them. (In some way that I do not understand, since, let’s face it, movies & teevee were directed much more toward females than males in the nineties.) So what’s super-awesome mega-wonderful about Titanic?

There was some stuff about it that was good. Maybe that’s how the phenomenon slipped under the radar and went unnoticed up until now. But the question remains difficult to answer…and fast forward to twenty-twelve, you see: It is now an everday occurrence. Something with a conspicuous trademark is being nudged out onto the stage in front of us, and we are made into a captive audience of whatever this thing is, with this bumptious bullying overtone that we’re supposed to find, and help to pronounce, the object in question as…all kinds of glittery, creatively-inspired superlatives. None of which are really sustained by anything in reality. It’s the frog in the gradually boiling pot, and the boil hasn’t really been that gradual. But the water is hot, that’s for sure. Lots of wonderful things that are wonderful in ways nobody will, or can, describe. Put on the spot to do so, they can only supply legitimacy for the idea that the thing meets par.

Everything wonderful the thing has done for us, we recall fondly, although such amazing feats necessarily lack some vital details because they exist in the future. Doesn’t President Obama hold a Nobel Peace Prize that is a good example of this?

I remember about twenty years ago, maybe more recent than that, a Krispy Kreme opened up in Sacramento. There’s another one. All this excitement; anyone who doesn’t get it, and asks why, is told something about really good doughnuts. He’s not supposed to have asked in the first place, but if he compounds his error by saying “so what’s the big deal about doughnuts” he gets back this…don’t know how to describe it…this crushing wave of rhetorical nonsense. No, you don’t understaaaaaaaand! These are really gooooooood doughnuts! Okay…I’ve got a pretty good idea of how much excitement I’m going to churn up over the best damn doughnut the world ever saw, and it falls very far short of what I’m seeing here…

My point is not that we have the capacity to fool ourselves this way. That much is obvious without anyone pointing it out. My point is the increased frequency. This is a rather spectacular thing we are doing to ourselves, rather surreal, and now it’s about as out-of-the-ordinary as a detergent commercial. Yes, that’s it; we are more-or-less at the same place with everything else, where we were at back in the 1970’s with soap commercials. Logic and common sense say it’s just goop that will clean your socks, if you’re lucky. The narrative, on the other hand, says this is the most wonderful thing invented since the wheel. We all know it’s crap but nobody calls it out. Nobody bats an eye over it anymore.

There is great harm and danger involved in this confusion between the mediocre and the excellent. Because when everything is supreme and deity-like and worthy of our deference and adoration and adulation and genuflection — then nothing is. We are losing our ability to recognize what is superb and remarkable. If this metastasizes into an inability to recognize what is merely good, to distinguish it from the bad, the injury that is inflicted on our sense of judgment is only obvious. This is not a good road for us. We should turn back.

I think this is one of the endpoints of “self-esteem” as it has been taught in the American educational system for the past three decades or so. If you’re unique and special in every way, then everything relates exclusively to your ego. If there’s no “better” or “worse” — if there’s nothing even trying to be an objective standard — then personal preferences are all that count. Thus any criticism of your preferences is an attack on you as a person. Faced with that, most individuals will react as they always do: “Obama’s just so obviously awesome that if you can’t see it, you’re either stupid or a racist.” Any attempt at a rationale will be strictly post hoc.

This is why “stupid” is liberals’ favorite adjective, I think. It’s the commonest insult on the playground, because kids of a certain age haven’t fully developed the ego/object distinction (or whatever the term is for not seeing the world as your exclusive possession, two year old-style). The only possible reason that kid over there thinks his GI Joe is cooler than yours is because he’s stupid. “Self-esteem” means that you’re never required to fully develop this distinction. So when liberals call Tom Sowell (or George Bush, or Sarah Palin, or whomever) stupid, they’re not making any kind of claim about their intelligence vis-a-vis his, they’re just doing what all little kids (nature’s most perfect narcissists) do — you don’t agree with me, so you’re dumb.
- Severian | 02/11/2012 @ 13:06
“What is the Occupy Movement’s goal?” You’re kidding, right?
It can be summed up as
GIVE US FREE STUFF.
- rhjunior | 02/11/2012 @ 14:11

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