House of Eratosthenes

Awhile ago The Anchoress laid down a challenge that someone should define: What’s wrong with the world? She imposed a one-hundred-word ceiling on the resulting essay, which I first honored, and then flouted. In the more loquacious version of my essay I identified a whole bunch of problems and then tied them all into a singular “root” cause. The root cause was: Us. We change the way we think to get the next piece of comfort, and in so doing make ourselves useful. Once we have that next piece of comfort, we take it for granted. We dispose of all the things we acquired, and all the things to get it, in order to chase after whatever comes next.

This is helpful when that next piece of comfort demands an accumulation of skills.

Much more often, it demands an atrophy of skills. It demands we become weaker than what we were before. So when we fail to appreciate what we have, what we end up doing is evolution via atrophy.

This leads to being over doing. Placing a greater value on what we are, than on what we do. This means we forget that love — is an action. Evil — is an action. Wealth and poverty — are actions. We forget all these; we start to visualize each other according to our states. We group each other that way. We start fighting fights that aren’t worth fighting; even worse, we avoid other fights, that actually mean everything.

Andy at Dipso Chronicles noticed the same thing, through something Mike Rowe said. You know who Mike Rowe is: He’s the “dirty jobs” guy. He has a television show that’s all about doing stuff. It doesn’t talk too much about what people are, it talks about what people do. It’s one of my favorite shows.

Renaissance man. And no, ladies, that doesn’t mean he knows how to make a butternut squash risotto while you are at the Jiffy Lube with his dirty Subaru, it means he knows how to do a lot a of shit that you women really want your men to be able to do, and then walk into a room full of REI-clad Berkely intellectuals and tear them a new one, to boot. That’s why I listen to him when he says things like “where we once encouraged each other to ‘make yourself useful,’ we now say ‘make yourself happy.'”

No kidding. How many things do you suppose that little ideological shift has screwed up? I came up with 5, but that’s because I am at work and only had about 18 seconds to think about this. Marriage, family, education, employment, and professional sports.

I think that’s what Andy is exploring here — doing, versus being. Hell, you saw it in that stupid debate a few minutes ago. Brokaw kept asking Obama and McCain what they would do. The candidates then spun the question around, and went into these litanies about what decent people they are.

This is a dead-end road. If you have what you have because of what a wonderful fellow you are, instead of the things you have done, this is something that is constantly up for review. You do not want to have a bunch of cars and a nice house jammed full of pretty things because you are a nice guy. Someone, somewhere, in a position of authority can get up one morning and decide — hey, that guy isn’t a nice guy anymore. He’s something of a jerk. Bam, you lose all your stuff.

McCain and Obama already live in that world. That’s why they underwhelmed so many tonight.

No, you want to be defined by what you do. It seems to suck green nickels some days when you can’t get everything done you want to get done — but that way, once you get things done, it’s locked in.

You know, now that I give this another think-or-three, that’s another one for Andy’s list. The subprime thing. That’s exactly how we got there. All these nice, wonderful, poor people who’ve been treated so bad, they deserve houses. How unfair it is to judge ’em by what they’ve done! Fast forward a few years, and we’ve got this massive financial crisis. It is a sinkhole crammed full of worthless paper. The paper is worthless because of a handful of years wasted evaluating people according to what they were, rather than what they did.

Or, to use Andy’s terminology, we demanded that people become happy instead of becoming useful. I’m pretty sure he’s exploring the same thing we explored a few months back. We haven’t changed our position in the last few months that this is what’s screwing up the world. So, by implication, we agree with him and Mike Rowe.

Update: We have attracted the attention of The Anchoress, probably through a trackback. She says our post is interesting. That’s what all the good-lookin’ girls said about us back in high school, they wrote in our annual “you made the year so…interesting.” Anyway, welcome, Anchoress readers. An additional reason why this might be worthy of mention, is Anchoress has seen fit to re-issue her question. She’s ready, willing and able to set the “blogosphere” on fire with this stuff, she’s done it before.

Anchoress, in turn, has attracted the attention of the other blogger super-diva Cassy Fiano. We know we’re of like mind with blogger friend Cas, because once she free-lanced on what’s wrong with the world, her thoughts were nearly identical to ours:

Once, it was understood that you could do anything… if you were willing to work for it. Americans now expect everything handed to them on a silver platter. Not eating out and buying used cars was called “sacrifice” last night. Americans have no concept of hardship, of sacrifice, of responsibility. And when we abandon the will to work, we lose the American spirit. Its in the eagerness to cut-and-run in Iraq, the panic over times being economically a little harder… sucking it up and working for the long run is unheard of. And that attitude is hurting us.

Anyway, this is a happy accident, in our mind. Can you think of a better time to ponder, seriously, what exactly is wrong with the world? Obama and McCain hit the campaign trail and rip into each other; the speech of each, is that the other (and others like him) is/are running around like a loose cannon and that is what is wrong with the world. You’d think the first time they were stuck in a room together, it would end with bloody entrails dangling from the light fixtures. Bloody entrails of one, or the other, perhaps both.

And instead you get the ultimate snooze-fest. In fact, they spent so much time agreeing with each other, the diligent observer is hard-pressed to name too many points of what’s-wrong and how-to-fix-it upon which they truly disagree. These are the guys who, together, are supposed to be representing the rest of us. If that be the case, and I think it is, then we have the ultimate dichotomy: We’ve got lots and lots of passion that something is terribly wrong with the world, and we haven’t got the slightest clue what exactly it is…nor can we claim to have spent too much of our energies earnestly trying to figure it out.

Ms. Fiano then goes on to list some of the things that are right with the world, pointing to an older post of Dr. Helen’s for her inspiration.

I used to call it “Superman Syndrome”. I noticed one of my kids basically subscribing to the notion that Superman is strong because he is Superman. Which is pretty much the way it is. But Superman is a fictional character. He was also a huge Michael Jordan fan, and he transferred that mindset to Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan was a great basketball player because he was Michael Jordan.

I’ll bet it had a whole lot more to do with practice, discipline, conditioning, and a dedication to those things.

The boy also thought that he should just naturally be able to do things because of who he was, not because of what he did.

Now who you are does matter — what kind of mettle & disposition toward self-discipline and good deeds you have. But those are not hereditary. They’re cultural. And a culture that does not “do” doesn’t survive long enough to pass that culture to very many generations.

Thankfully, he’s learned a lot since he was 12. He made it through college without being indoctrinated into the liberal mindset, he’s a U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, he’s starting his own business and has a lovely wife and son. All because of doing. Not “who-ing”.

People like him give me some hope for our culture.
- philmon | 10/08/2008 @ 08:19
Two thoughts here: one, to add to what philmon rightly noted, sometimes we judge based solely on the hereditary thing – Michael Jordan was blessed with genetic helpers, but we forget to point out that it was his drive and practice regimen that vaulted him to superstar status. Similarly, Superman is a tough role model, because he’s fictional and no one feels that they can compete when they can’t fly. What you do with what you’re given, is what we as a society used to measure.

Second, in a capitalistic society, we shortcut the system of judging each other by looking solely at how much money one can create. While it is something to strive for, the folks chasing monetary glory should realize that no money can buy back what you may be jeopardizing. I don’t expect CEO’s to care about some grandmother’s IRA – to be perfectly honest, that’s not their job. But, if the chase for money results in you becoming a laughing stock, then where will you go to spend it? How will your children grow up? This is why a society wants people to have children: it’s the only way for some to thing about someone other than themselves. I heard once that having a child is the closest we will ever come to immortality.

Ignore morality at your peril.
- wch | 10/08/2008 @ 09:46
And not only do we demand that people become happy instead of useful, we point at at someone else and say “hey, you, get over there and make that person happy. Now! Give him a bunch of things and expect nothing from him in return.” We delegate the distribution of obligatory happiness, as though we have that kind of power.

Perfect call on adding the sub-prime mortgage situation to the list.
- Andy | 10/08/2008 @ 12:12
What’s wrong with the world? There’s simply WAY too damned much introspection. Get over it, get out there and DO. Or BE. I don’t care which… just stop it with the whining.

–Buck, who is in a somewhat pissy mood today.
- Buck | 10/08/2008 @ 14:21
Waitaminnit…you’re complaining about people complaining?
- mkfreeberg | 10/08/2008 @ 14:27
I am (I am) I am Su-per-man
And I can do an-ny thing!

🙂

– Phil, who is in a decidedly non-pissy mood right now. And I don’t even know why. But I guess I don’t really care, either.

Good luck with that, Buck. I’m thinkin’ a glass of scotch and a nice cigar would be my perscription. And some of that clean New Mexico air.
- philmon | 10/08/2008 @ 16:23
Buck, where’s that leave the men who are introspective because they are manning the watchtowers? Seriously, I think action and introspection have their place, much like gears in a transmission. Having the judgment, knowing and acting when it is time to shift; that’s what we are looking for in our Presidents, and our leaders.
- Robert Mitchell Jr. | 10/08/2008 @ 21:46
Robert sez: Buck, where’s that leave the men who are introspective because they are manning the watchtowers?

In a place where introspection belongs… a private place. When one is manning a watchtower one’s attention must be focused outward, not inward (and having stood guard a bit in my time, I know from whence I speak, in a most literal fashion). My point is there’s way too much public whining going on about things that are wrong, versus what’s right.

Introspection isn’t a BAD thing, in its place. Public discussion about how we can make things better is also a great good thing. My take on the current situation is our erstwhile leaders and pundits have taken what should be largely private, blown it up to gargantuan proportions, and thrown it into the public square… resulting in much whining and little action. All this talk about hopeychange… on BOTH goddamned sides… is embracing victimology. In other words, a pander to folks who think “Hey, all this shit ain’t MY fault… it’s Boosh/Cheney, or Wall Street, or Big Oil, or (name-your-bugaboo).” I frickin’ HATE that.
- Buck | 10/09/2008 @ 15:12

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Making Yourself UsefulWednesday, October 8th, 2008

Making Yourself Useful
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008