House of Eratosthenes

The rights and privileges a sentient organism retains under some interpretation of Natural Law, to take up space and consume resources toward fulfillment of that organism’s own needs, desires or goals.

The act of doing this, without any express or implied apology. Pride in one’s own existence. Confidence that this existence is a net gain, or at least a break-even, for others and therefore nobody else has the authority or obligation to interfere. Schwagnificaence is not necessarily hard-nosed libertarianism; it may involve a requirement that others defer or genuflect.

“Interpretation of Natural Law” is key; the interpretation is culturally driven. In some cultures, certain classes of people have this automatically. Protocols can confer schwagnificaence on certain people if there is an expectation that others should pay heed, or give way. A lady possesses schwagnificaence when a gentleman is expected to surrender his bus seat to her or to open doors for her. When he actually does it, this is confirmed. Schwagnificaence can be, therefore, a differential in a culturally understood but unwritten ranking system.

Why am I inventing this new word? It’s needed. This is what the arguing is all about — people want schwagnificaence, or they want others to have it, or they want to deny it to others, and they’re trying to cudgel and coerce strangers into confirming it. Great magnitudes of energy, therefore, are diverted into the effort to mold and shape an evolving cultural protocol.

– Feminism is a demand that one class increases in schwagnificaence, and it must decrease for another class
– Affirmative action is a legislated requirement to this effect; one class is to gain at the expense of another
– Hating George W. Bush because he smirks and swaggers, once announced, becomes an effort to deplete schwagnificaence
– Protesting foreign aid to Israel is not a protest about dollars, but about schwagnificaence
– Global warming is all about schwagnificaence — it is an effort to make people apologize for continuing to exist
– Can’t turn our thermostats to 72 degrees and expect Europe to say that’s alright
– Can’t drill for oil
– Congressional hearings on Muslim men being recruited to Jihad; when we argue about this, we’re arguing about schwagnificaence
– Everybody who dares to question the policies of Our First Holy President must be a racist; since He possesses, in the minds of some, infinite schwagnificaence
– The Wisconsin riots are all about schwagnificaence
– “Won’t Sarah Palin go away already her 15 minutes are SO up” implores that Palin should lose whatever schwagnificaence she has.

Schwagnificaence can not be measured in absolute terms; it can only be compared, and even then the differential is subjective. It is a matter of opinion. Schwagnificaence is firmer when the opinions come together and form a numerically solid consensus, that some designated individual possesses a vast abundance of schwagnificaence, or suffers from a crippling deficit of schwagnificaence. However, a firm measurement of schwagnificaence is by no means a high reading, or vice-versa. Schwagnificaence, therefore, is measured on two dimensions; it can be firm or soft (a perceived majority agrees on the reading), high or low (the individual has much or the individual has very little).

Schwagnificaence is absolutely not self esteem. If a man possesses extraordinarily high levels of self esteem, he is almost certainly a sociopath. Such an person cannot live peacefully among others, and if he does so, society is weakened. However, a man who is confident and secure in evaluating his own worthiness, irrespective of the derogatory comments of antagonists, strangers and other outsiders, is the strong flexible stuff from which a robust, functional society is made. He does not scramble for a higher or firmer footing on some social ladder, therefore he does not betray friendships to please or appease newer acquaintances he thinks might be in a position to help him.

You might say self esteem is the license a man feels he has to live at the expense of others, and schwagnificaence is his drive and determination to stop others from living at his expense.

But the point is — an individual’s measurement of his own schwagnificaence, is conflated, by design, with the reading made by those who spend time around him. If an individual is subschwagnificaent, meaning his own reading is far beneath the reading made of him by his peers, with the passage of time his reading will ascend to match theirs; if he is supraschwagnificaent, meaning he fancies himself to be more worthy than they do, then ultimately his reading will usually diminish to match theirs. Only individuals who accord themselves great, vast reserves of schwagnificaence will show themselves capable of maintaining this, across time, throughout a sustained onslaught of protests from peers that the reading should be dropped.

My recommendation for a new, civil tone in our discourse? Let’s narrow the arguing about schwagnificaence down to just a very few things. And of those arguments about schwagnificaence that must remain, let’s admit that’s what they’re about. If we can do that much, I maintain the “civil tone” thing will pretty much work itself out. If we can’t, then it won’t.

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Saturday, March 19th, 2011