House of Eratosthenes

Inspired by this news story about steroids in baseball, I came up with a brand new word. Actually, I came up with two new words. I came up with these words because the steroids-in-baseball thing — you know, we have been hearing about this for a long, long, LONG time.

Making Progress? My son was asking what the deal was with steroids in baseball. And I told him the truth.

I said baseball was essentially a contest to see who could play the game the best, and steroids were like medicine that helped you play better, except there were rules against taking them. So the authorities in charge said, that’s a no-no. That means when someone takes steroids, they have an advantage over everybody else, but they have to make sure they don’t get caught. And so this makes baseball into a contest to see who can hide things the best and who can lie the most convincingly. We don’t like to admit that’s what baseball has become, and so we go through the motions of “getting rid of steroids” without really doing it.

Un∙solve (v.)
1. To toil away at a problem, without making any progress toward solving it.
2. To give the appearance of trying to solve a problem without really trying to solve it.
3. To present onesself as engaged in an effort to solve a problem, while engaged in activity irreconcilable with the supposed intent to solve the problem, or any serious supposition that the problem really is a problem.
4. To form alliances with people under phony pretenses by feigning readiness, willingness and/or ability to solve a problem that concerns them, or is expected to be of concern to them.
5. To present a phony problem as a problem more serious than it really might be, for political purposes.
6. To present a former problem as that has already been solved in relative terms, so that it can be regarded as not-yet-solved, for political purposes.

Un∙prob∙lem (n.)
1. A boogeyman.
2. A real or imagined problem that is presented in exaggerated proportion for political purposes.
3. Anything that highly visible officers or candidates discuss, in great exuberance and with great frequency, as a problem they are engaged in fighting, but with the passage of time and with minimal change in rhetoric, is revealed as a problem that is not actually being fought.

When one makes a study of all our various unproblems, one is exposed rather harshly to the realization that more & faster communication is not necessarily a good thing. Since mass communication has become rapid, efficient and cheap, we’ve been buried in unproblems. Problems we are told to think are very serious, and that this-guyy and that-guy are working very hard to solve — but the status of such worthy endeavors, never seems to change. Ever.

Prior to the information revolution, history presents us with very few examples of unproblems. Politicians that presented us with problems, and themselves as noble warrios engaged in battle against those problems, in the days of old had to actually solve them. Or, at least, achieve some incremental and demonstrable results in fighting the stated problem.

One notable exception to this is FDR and his phony efforts to battle the Great Depression. Roosevelt was the founder of America as a capitalist/socialist hybrid enclave, and the onset of dilatory and lackluster cognitive thinking is quick in a socialist enclave. So in that way, it could be said that Roosevelt doesn’t really count. Is there another example prior to, say, 1960? I really can’t think of one.

Nowadays, we’re so buried in unproblems that we’ve become accustomed to them. Politician says “I’m going to fight such-and-such a problem…” and two years later, deep down we all expect to hear the same rhetoric, about the same boogeyman, with the boogeyman exactly in the same position he’s in now. We don’t think it will be different — ever. Not anymore. Not in our heart-of-hearts.

A few of the unproblems we have in 2007…and these are just off the top of my head…

1. Shoring up Social Security
2. Global Warming
3. Drunk Driving
4. Steroids in Baseball
5. Money in Politics
6. California’s Budget
7. The Energy Crisis
8. Women and Minorities Being Oppressed — C.A.L.W.W.N.T.Y.
9. A.I.D.S. and Cancer
10. World Hunger

You can’t get elected to anything anymore without promising to do battle against all these dragons. Or most of them, anyway. And yet, we simply accept that year after year, not a single one of these battles will be lost, won, or even changed so much as one iota from exactly where they are now.

Solving any one of these unproblems, and more as-yet-unlisted here, has become just an empty ritual. No wonder it isn’t being done. It’s our fault, not the fault of the people we elect. We just don’t know what achievement looks like anymore.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

I Made a New Word XFriday, December 14th, 2007

I Made a New Word X
Friday, December 14th, 2007