House of Eratosthenes

God help me, it’s happening to me again. Exactly one year ago — which says something about the season, I think — I was bitching away about this bad habit we have of pretending to communicate when, if some supernatural force were to stop time and thus halt the communication, ambushing all who partook with some kind of “pop quiz” about what was said by others, no one would pass. In other words, all this gesturing and mumbling and yelling and “Can You Hear Me Now?” is nothing more than a whole bunch of empty posturing. People do things after a conversation’s over, exactly the way they were going to do ’em before.

Three-hundred sixty days onward, I see something very similar is getting under my skin.

I’m seeing when we do communicate and actually manage to get it done, the communication isn’t done to ensure things get done that were supposed to get done…it’s done to change direction in some way. “There’s been a change in plans.” That, or to notify someone (me, a lot, lately) that something won’t get done when it was supposed to be. All too often, I can’t shake the feeling that if it weren’t for these cell phones, e-mails, instant-messages and other miracles of the modern age, the thing that isn’t gonna get done now, would…just go ahead and get done.

Think of cowboys. Think of farmers. Plan A is to have those cows rounded up, and branded, or those acres plowed, by sundown. Nobody talks to each other throughout the fifteen to eighteen hours save for one word — “LUNCHTIME!” What happens by sundown? The acres are plowed. No one ever had reason to think they wouldn’t be.

But that isn’t the world in which we live, today, is it? We’re too busy communicating.

I find it of particularly great concern that this communication is being used to communicate what is about to happen, particularly with regard to things that were attempted before, and left undone. Someone wants credit for getting ’em done, at last. Why am I hearing about it before it’s done? It’s like sitting on the bed bare-ass naked with your wife, bragging about the heights of carnal bliss to which you’re about to send her. Don’t talk…do.

Just got an e-mail from a relative lamenting all the “media sound bites” about Barack Obama, how he’s chosen to read Audacity of Hope. Even though he leans right politically, he’s “mightily impressed.” Perhaps I should’ve restrained myself. But after two solid years of hearing how wonderful His Holiness is, and nobody saying anything substantive…this bit of fluff mightily impressed me, as tidbit more of exactly the same stuff we’ve already seen. This extra droplet following the flood, concerned me greatly, in view of the challenges we face now — obviously, if we just bought forty-eight months of constructive action and all we’re gonna get instead is a whole lot more talk, this will be greatly damaging to everybody.

That “Reply” button just reaches out and grabs ya sometimes, y’know?

Impressed how? You quit right before you got to the goods.

If this is an exercise in making available that which up until now has been scarce, it is not served well by the provision of yet another glittering generality. Anyone who insists there’s been a paucity of those must’ve been living in a cave. No, where President Chosen One is concerned, supply falls short of demand when one begins to inspect justifications for things. Reasons to think things. Typical exchange:

“He’s the real deal!”
“How?”
“He just is!”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I can’t explain. There’s just something about Him!”

Well, there’s something about Him, alright. When the time comes to subject Him to so much of a fraction of the kind of scrutiny that, just because of protocol and convention, comes my way in job interviews…the subject *always* changes. So far it hasn’t been pursued to the point where I can learn something about what He has done. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent by Him, and His Holy Acolytes, to tell me all about His Divine Qualifications. The mission description for that was to get ‘er done by November 4th. How could it possibly be that it’s two months later, and it falls to people like you and me to go out and buy a book to learn about what makes Him so grape? He’s supposed to be such a wonderful communicator — it is the ONLY talent He has been forced to show us He has — how come those being given the message, have to extract it out of Him, when all this loot was donated to Him, solely for the purpose of telling us what He wanted to tell us?

And this is my concern. I do not, repeat not, confine it to President-Elect Obama. It is a cultural malaise that seems to have captured us.

Ever try this? Work on a complex task in solitude, one that you can perform from beginning to end while hunched over a computer. (My background is programming, so this is easy for me, while most folks might have to scramble around for something like that…nevertheless, if I can find something like that, anyone can.) Now do this. Do it especially if someone is paying you.

Fire up a spreadsheet, and keep a log of what you’re doing, and when. Work in a timestamp. Make it exhaustive. Record every little thing. Minute by minute, second by second.

By the time you are done, you probably had to take a phone call or two. Maybe you even had to go consult someone about a fact here or there. Now…look at your log. When did you have to talk to humans? Can you pick it out? I’ll bet you can. Big gaps. Huge gaps. Yawning gaps. You think it’s a “five minute conversation,” and through this exercise you see there really is no such thing.

You probably understand, by now, how the farmer got those acres plowed. Once we’re jibber-jabbering to each other, we inhabit a whole different world…minutes and seconds no longer count. And, disturbingly, getting things done no longer counts. We tend to stop behaving as if someone, somewhere, is counting on us getting the job done. Everything’s got an excuse. Everything’s got a “Change In Plans.”

I find this more frightening, in the year ahead, than any “homosexual agenda” or “left wing platform” or…almost as frightening as the appeasing of tyrants. This whole mindset of talk-over-do. Sound bite comes out that Barack Obama is still wonderful, and this is an adequate substitute for His Holiness doing something constructive, especially with regard to that mile long list of things He said He was going to fix. Suddenly, that can be left undone because the object of the exercise was to prove how wonderful He is, and…hey. We already know.

This is something I really don’t think we can afford right now. Seriously. But that’s our mindset. We sit on the edge of the bed, and tell the wife how good it’s gonna be when she finally gets it.

“He’s the real deal!”
“How?”
“He just is!”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I can’t explain. There’s just something about Him!”

That’s the essence of being a Lightworker, ya know. You’re just missing the point, Morgan! 😉
- Buck | 01/02/2009 @ 16:34
It’s upbringing. Y’know? Being the less-favorite son I was given these directives that had a subtle undertone implying my presence was not wonderful.

“Next time I see you, I want to see you got those leaves raked up.”

“Don’t come home, without that jacket you forgot yesterday.”

So it wasn’t too big a paradigm shift for me, when my first boss said,

“You give me a delivery date, I’m going to grab a red pen and put a circle around that date on my calendar.”

Now we’re drowning in all these people who are calling us on our cell phones with something to say. Something to say…about how they can’t deliver. Plans have changed.

Of course they can’t come through on anything. They’re just…too…wonderful…to be around. Always have been.
- mkfreeberg | 01/02/2009 @ 17:19
Every year it seems like another layer of process and communicating ABOUT work is added. Nothing is ever eliminated. A large chunk of my time is reporting on what I am doing–as long as I am perceived to be doing something, everything is great. It’s image. Actual accomplishment? Not so important.

The other aspect is process. The process, everyone feeling part of it and included, all the voices have to be heard. As if we are all back in kindergarten.
- Jaye | 01/02/2009 @ 20:44
Think of cowboys. Think of farmers. Plan A is to have those cows rounded up, and branded, or those acres plowed, by sundown. Nobody talks to each other throughout the fifteen to eighteen hours save for one word — “LUNCHTIME!”

Morgan, evidently you’ve never actually spent a day ranching (especially branding cattle) if you think the ranch hands don’t communicate. It’s a huge team effort – separating the right animals from the rest of the herd, driving them into the corral, chasing them from the corral to the squeeze chute, and actually applying that hot piece of metal. The squeeze chute alone requires three men to operate, and you can bet your cow pies that they’re talking constantly to coordinate the effort.

Castration…let’s not go there, save to indicate that five men are required.

How do I know this, you say? Because my family runs cattle, and every spring I help them do this messy work.
- cylarz | 01/02/2009 @ 23:17
I like the last sentence. That’s as good as an analogy I’ve seen for the foreseeable future.
- chunt31854 | 01/03/2009 @ 12:24
Morgan, evidently you’ve never actually spent a day ranching (especially branding cattle) if you think the ranch hands don’t communicate. It’s a huge team effort…

Okay, point taken. I’m much more experienced with managing flora than fauna. But this communication of which you speak, is functional and not decorative — it has to be done in order to complete the mission. Clearly, that’s not the ornamental jibber-jabber to which I was referring.
- mkfreeberg | 01/04/2009 @ 00:54
And besides, cowboys and farmers are more likely to say “dinner” for the mid day repast. (and “supper” for later in the day)
Gee Haw!
- CaptDMO | 01/04/2009 @ 16:54
Yeah well, the point stands. Got something to say to me, after you just got done telling me you were gonna do something…get it done first. I don’t wanna hear how hard it is, or how well you’re about to do it, what an amazing achievement it’s gonna be, and I certainly don’t wanna hear that it’s going to be done late, or not up to spec, but I should keep on thinking you’re wonderful anyway.

Especially if your name is “Barack.”
- mkfreeberg | 01/04/2009 @ 18:02
All Obama has to do is take minor and insignificant steps toward the center for the media to herald his centrism. Many people have forgotten the efforts Bill Clinton took to compromise with Republicans: welfare reform, cutting the capital gains tax, banning federal funding of human embryonic experimentation, DOMA, etc. If Clinton had not committed perjury and obstruction of justice, W would never have won the election. Of course Obama will make some gestures towards the center, and those gestures will be highlighted by the media. Obama will likely not make the mistakes that Clinton did, and I can remember many people advocating Clinton for Secretary General of the UN. Obama is untouchable.

Do I sound cynical? I am.
- JohnJ | 01/04/2009 @ 19:31
I hear you, Man. It’s been my mantra, too!
EJ said it for me and all of us “doers”

“The less I say the more my work gets done.”

Elton John (1947 – )
English music artist
- MavenInMia | 01/09/2009 @ 15:58
Old Jewish saying: “Say a little and do a lot”
Originally meant for promises, but also works in its literal sense.
- MavenInMia | 01/09/2009 @ 16:01

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Let’s Not CommunicateFriday, January 2nd, 2009

Let’s Not Communicate
Friday, January 2nd, 2009