House of Eratosthenes

Thought exercise: You’re in a mediocre-to-awful Star Trek episode, or bad movie. The key plot point here is the one that has been central to the worst ST episodes, and movies, which is: Some wise, advanced, all-powerful alien race calls humanity to account for being yucky. Explain yourselves, you primitive warlike humans! How say you?

In 2014, seems to me our “crime” is not being excessively warlike — not here in America, anyway. If anything, we have been committing a crime by way of our explosive fuse being too long, rather than too short. But we sure are contentious. Right wing! Left wing! Conservative! Liberal! Republicans! democrats! Tea Party! Radical Progressive! I could not blame a super-advanced race for “beaming” us up to their landing pad, and calling us to account, or to contribute some helpful information so they could understand it better. I’d be a bit curious about it myself in their shoes, or whatever. How come it is, I imagine they’d want to know…you puny humans say such innocuous, non-threatening things to each other, like “Merry Christmas” — and just like that, it leads to a controversy?

Mulling over how I would explain all of this, I have come to realize something I’ve realized before about many other things: To explain what I know about it, in an adequate way, we would need to invent a new word of some kind. There is an important concept here, worthy of description with a single word, that has not been so named. This oversight could be causing our failure to inspect that which should be inspected; or, it could be a symptom of this failure. That, I think, is more likely. We are not devoting adequate thought to some concepts that should take center-stage in our thinking, and because we are not devoting adequate thought to these things, we are not naming that which should be named.

Because we do not name that which should be named, we are not discussing that which should be discussed.

So let us discuss.

Starting with the “twenty non-partisan things,” to which I sometimes refer as “twenty things that are non-partisan, or darn well ought to be.” Our concern here is with the first four of the twenty:

1. My values are [blank].
2. My vision is in harmony with my values, and it is [blank].
3. My objective is consistent with my vision, and it is that [blank].
4. My objective depends on [blank] being accomplished (or prevented from happening).

I submit that our “race” or species or planet or society is contentious, and needlessly so, because: These are not non-partisan things after all. They certainly are not universal, within our culture.

We need the new word, because what I seek to describe is not adequately defined as mere sloth:

Sloth can entail different vices. While sloth is sometimes defined as physical laziness, spiritual laziness is emphasized. Failing to develop spiritually is key to becoming guilty of sloth. In the Christian faith, sloth rejects grace and God.

Sloth has also been defined as a failure to do things that one should do. By this definition, evil exists when good men fail to act.

Edmund Burke wrote in Present Discontents “No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

Yeah. That’s…not quite it. What I have in mind is somewhat different. But not a rarity. You’ve probably encountered it yourself. Think back to the last time you traversed those four stepping stones: A value system leads to a vision, a vision leads to an objective, an objective leads to tasks. You probably discussed this in a group environment. If you discussed it in a group environment, someone probably disagreed. If someone disagreed, it was probably over something that was stupid. If they disagreed over something stupid, they were probably an example of Thing I Know #43:

When people ask me a question that begins with “Why did you…” they almost never want any information out of me.

Right. You see? It’s more like: There goes someone translating a value system into action — let us stop him!!

Eight Pack Abs These people may be, or may not be, physically lazy. In fact, since the definition of their class has to do with observing something about to be done, and then taking measures to stop it, statistically they’ll probably end up being un-lazy compared to the average. But there is some unconventional sort of laziness happening here. You see it in the question: “Why did you…?” concluded with a meta question-mark. I say “meta” because the conventional question-mark is the termination point of an interrogative statement, which is expected to be met with an answer or a rebuttal. The askers of the why-did-you inquiry, on the other hand, do not expect a rebuttal or an answer. What they expect is a cessation of the activity that inspired their meta-question.

And they’ll do it every time. Any time someone translates an unconventional vision into an unconventional series of actions, particularly unexpected actions, there they go. “Why are you doing this?” They do not seek information. They seek an injunction against action, even action directed in fulfillment of a goal that would find harmony with their sympathies. It is the idea that humble commoners can bring the desired state about, that arouses their ire. They can’t hack it.

They are the meta-lazy. Perhaps they work hard. Perhaps they have eight-pack abs. But they can’t quite grasp the idea of ordinary people doing significant things. To the meta-slothful, if it’s a significant accomplishment, then it must be something left for the famous people to get done. Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, perhaps both of them — they’ll pick it up from here. The rest of us shouldn’t aspire to anything greater than merely sitting on the sidelines, watching them.

And that is why, in Anno Domini Twenty Fourteen, we have conflict. For the most part anyway, it comes down to that. One side represents the people who are trying to take matters into their own hands, to get something done, and therefore require something to be defined, while the other side insists on avoiding definitions. In their world, it is the definitions that cause the conflict. The job of us “little people,” down here, after we’ve studiously avoided all those big-brain thoughts that are too heavy for us, is simply to agree with each other. Consensus equals truth.

Thought exercise: You’re in a mediocre-to-awful Star Trek episode, or bad movie

Hey, isn’t that the plot of Redshirts? Are you sure you want another go-round with Scalzi and his minions? 🙂
- Severian | 10/24/2014 @ 05:11

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Meta-SlothThursday, October 23rd, 2014

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Thursday, October 23rd, 2014