House of Eratosthenes

Had a terrible thought as I was listening to the morning news earlier this week, about these so-called Climate Change accords. It’s a thought I’ve had many times before. It’s about the future, but it’s becoming less and less a prophecy about what is to come, and more and more an observation of what already is.

My thought is that the alwarmists are going to lose the battle of public opinion, but win the war of public policy nevertheless. I find this much more frightening than the prospect that they could win at both, because there are quite a few things that would have to change in order for that to happen. But for them to be unmasked as the plunderers they really are, and get what they want anyway — well, we’re pretty much there already, right? All that has to happen is actual ratification of these international regulations, taxes, penalties, various wealth-redistribution schemes…which “everybody knows” are just a big crock. Just like, some fifteen years ago “everybody knew” they were on the up-and-up, and we only had ten years before the oceans would boil away or whatever.

My dread is that “everybody will know” this is just a big scam, and we’ll have to line up and pay anyway just like cows falling in line before the slaughterhouse. It won’t be worth anybody’s time or energy to question it anymore. Just like the income tax, and ObamaCare, and…

The attitude was adroitly summed up a few years ago by Mark Steyn, describing what has become in the United Kingdom a sort of catchphrase: “It’s ‘ealth ‘n safety gone mad, mate! ‘ealth ‘n safety gone mad!!”

‘It’s ’Elf ’n’ Safety, mate, innit?” You only have to spend, oh, 20 minutes in almost any corner of the British Isles to have that distinctive local formulation proffered as the explanation for almost any feature of life. The signs at the White Cliffs of Dover warning you not to lean over the cliff? It’s Health & Safety, mate. Primary schools that forbid their children to make daisy chains because they might pick up germs from the flowers? Health & Safety, mate. The decorative garden gnomes Sandwell Borough Council ordered the homeowner to remove from outside her front door on the grounds that she could trip over them when fleeing the house in event of its catching fire? Health & Safety. The fire extinguishers removed from a block of flats by Dorset risk assessors because they’re a fire risk? Health & Safety. Apparently the presence of a fire extinguisher could encourage you to attempt to extinguish the fire instead of fleeing for your life.

And this is my feeling of dread. That the struggle of swaying public opinion has not been lost — quite to the contrary, it has been won, rather decisively. People do not support the idea of unproductive people playing the “turnstyle game,” skimming off the top of the business of better people who actually do produce things. But, it doesn’t matter. In the generations to come, that’s how it’s going to be done — even though everyone with viable tissue upward from the brain stem, can see what’s wrong with it. Doesn’t matter.

Reminds me of that old joke about how many New Jersey teamsters does it take to change a light bulb. “Twenty-three, you got a problem with that??”

Proud of Grandpa I’m not sure how we got here. We could not have gotten here without some people acquiring influence over lots of things, people who are very much different from me. People who want to see their own granddaughters watch them as they wreck things. I can’t relate to that at all. In the e-mails, I was inspired to drop a bit of personal history…

I had a good thing going with the network security thing, but I had to go back into software development again. Earning potential wasn’t the reason. Certification issues are much closer to the truth, but there are certification issues required with software development as well, especially in the military, and I have noticed my brain does not work in the same way as the brains of people who build exams. That comes a bit closer to the truth. But the bulls-eye is, I’m unhappy being the guy who meets with the application developers and telling them, “book, chapter, verse, here are the new policies we are implementing, and what you have built, entirely permissible up until this day, is an intolerable infraction against what we shall be enforcing from this day forward. Tear it out and do it again.” That was my whole line of work, a destroyer. My background had been as one of the guys who built stuff, and here I was with my whole working life dedicated to wrecking things. So I went back into the business of figuring out how to make things work and making them work…maybe, from time to time, being faced down by an “Information Assurance” guy just like myself years ago and told No You Can’t Have Firefox. But that’s okay.

You can certainly admit “climate change is real,” and yet many more hurdles will remain standing in front of you before you get to the part about “we have to get these accords signed so the planet can be saved.” Nevertheless, even if I cleared all those and was into getting those new rules in place, because I earnestly believed Charlton Heston would be banging his fists on a beach centuries hence, damning me to hell if we didn’t get it done…I can’t relate to a guy who wants his granddaughter to sit on his lap, watching him do the dirty work. The work of a destroyer. Who wants their grandchildren to remember them as agents of destruction? Even if you can rationalize the destruction is necessary. That’s your living epitaph, seriously? You want that? You found a good reason to stop things, and then you stopped them?

Sorry, I just can’t relate.

And yet, somewhere along the line, this has become the New Normal. Unproductive people, make the rules — are expected to make up the rules — about how more productive people are, and are not, supposed to do their producing.

Part of what has gone away, I think, is the paralyzing fear of a bare cupboard. There are some of us who do like to be productive; when you get right down to it, who doesn’t? But there is also a feeling in place, absent in generations past, that if we fail in this objective then it’s not like anybody in our household is really going to starve. That seems like a good thing. On the whole, maybe it is.

But it has the effect of devaluing productivity, to a matter of taste.

Oh sure, yes I’d like to produce something, if I can have that…the way I’d like to put chocolate milk on my Cheerios if I can have that. And that’s it, that’s the change in mindset. We know this is a scam and we don’t want our so-called “leaders” to be pulling this scam on us…but, if they get away with it, and they probably will, it isn’t anybody’s fault. It’s just things the way they are. Line up, get ready to get fleeced, or don’t produce anything, and we’ll just adapt to that. ‘ealth ‘n safety gone mad, mate. We know it’s wrong. We’re going to accept it anyway.

What Color of Database We did not get here in the blink of an eye. It’s been a series of tiny, unnoticeable changes, one after another, taking place across decades. We’re about to let the unproducers run everything, in part, because throughout these decades it has become something of a pain in the ass to produce anything. To produce something, you have to define things, and throughout this period of gradual degradation it has become harder and harder to define anything. The undefiners have become more popular than the definers, because the undefiners are more fun to watch. It’s fun to watch a wrecking ball. And that right there is the true source of the problem. We’re seeing a conflict between instant and delayed gratification.

Because the unproducers and the undefiners are running everything, and we’ve allowed them to take over like this, many among us have experienced a new misery at work — and, I suppose, we all deserve it. We have begun to labor under the tutelage of a new breed of undirectors.

Me, from the e-mails, again:

Among all the people who are trying to get something done, there are two kinds: Those who obsess on process, and those who obsess on outcome. “Bureaucracy” is a dirty word, you know, nobody ever says “I want to build the perfect bureaucracy.” Why is bureaucracy a dirty word? Because wherever there is one, there is a sink-or-float formulation in place with regard to these process vs. outcome people. The ones who are obsessed entirely with process, to the point they neglect outcome, end up on top.

…Processes have advantages. They provide immunity in case of a bad outcome, at least, to those who follow them. Process is a contingency plan, much like a parachute in an airplane. Plane takes the trajectory of a lawn dart, goes crashy crashy, and to everybody who’s bothered to follow the process — strap on the parachute — it’s all good. “I did what I was supposed to do.” You see politicians say this all the time. People don’t take the time and trouble to explore this aspect of it…but this is why they don’t like bureaucracies. Would you get on an airplane under the command of a pilot, who was overly obsessed with his parachute?

That, too, has become a New Normal: The power-figure who has all the authority, but won’t accept the responsibility that comes with it because the bad results came about after he followed, unquestioningly, all of the rules. Put in simpler terms, we have come to see it as a qualification for leadership, that our leaders won’t demonstrate any kind of critical thinking. We have begun to say — Yes! I would fly on that airplane. Even if the pilot has exactly one more parachute available for his use, than I have available for mine.

For that to happen, we must have lost the vision, somewhere, of arriving at our intended destination in one piece.

But the undefiners have done more damage than simply to saddle us with a new management layer of undirectors. They’ve also rotted the layers further down, closer to the bottom where the work actually gets done. How could it have gone any differently? People are shunned if they try to produce anything at all, shunned if they try to be anything different from what is absolutely mediocre, placed under the directorship of undirectors who are promoted to be undirectors because of their own demonstrated mediocrity…occasionally, you find yourself relegated in the status of persona non grata if you produce anything at all.

And so now we find ourselves living in the age of the unworker. It’s one of those transitions that has been sneaking up on us; we wouldn’t notice it if we had the chance to live the last 80 years over and over again, a hundred times in a row. But if you could have been put on ice that many years ago, and revived in an instant in the here and now, the change would have all the subtlety of a whack in the balls. You see, our grandparents did not live in an era wherein one counted actual “calories,” but they lived their lives around the expenditure nevertheless. Grandpa clocked in to his shift, and then he spent miserable hours that were measured in minutes. But it wasn’t about misery, it was about honesty. He got paid for that time, as a matter of honor from his employer. And he worked for all that time, as a matter of honor from him.

Now, we’re supposed to go without so our kids can go to college. Learning what, exactly? Ah…here, the undefiners have flexed their muscle. We don’t know the answer, all too often. Some kind of degree, that will make them more employable? Employable in what? Doing what? Producing things? Or adding to the already-thickening ranks of unproducers?

Remember, our Secretary of State — representing all of us, in some capacity — wants to be remembered by his granddaughter as a guy who stopped more productive people from producing things. That’s not just him. That reflects in some way on us all. And it reflects on us all, because of this change that has taken place; back when your grandfather measured the worth of his paycheck in the minutes of his misery, Secretary Kerry would have had to do this preening as a private citizen, and would be effectively told by his country “all fine and good, you go down that road alone. And as an aside, you are one weird, screwed-up grandfather.” Today, his unproducer vision is dominant. There is some vision of his granddaughter, hopefully as a long-lived, radiant, wise woman, getting the message out to her own grandchildren what “we” did in the here & now. What we stopped. And those great-great-grandchildren are supposed to be grateful we didn’t trash the planet.

Just like we’re grateful that a few decades back, the Hollywood hippies scared industry away from building more nuclear power plants…oh yes, during the rolling blackouts we all feel so grateful. No, reason and common sense say the tykes from many generations from now, will still be struggling with anemic economic “recoveries” and therefore aren’t likely to show such gratitude. But that’s reason and common sense. The province of definers…not undefiners.

Obama Shootings Because we’re living in the age of the unproducer and the undefiner, the ununifier has become dominant as well. President Obama is merely the most resplendent out of many examples that could be offered. Each one surrounded by a cloudy narrative that he is in fact inspiring us all to live together in peace and harmony…but then, uh oh, reality beckons.

He condemns these “routine” events and calls for more gun control each time another one happens. After the recent Planned Parenthood shooting, he said, “we can’t let this become the new normal…enough is enough.”

But when did it become the new normal? While the 2nd Amendment continues to be attacked each and every time another mass shooting occurs, just realize something: these events were never this “routine” until Obama became president.

It isn’t just Obama, though. He’s not on the ballot this year, and yet there is something remarkably different: The two candidates with the highest disapproval ratings, happen to be the two most likely to face off against each other in the general election. It has not always been this way. What changed?

Well if you actually listen to an Obama speech, or a Hillary speech, or a Donald Trump speech, the answer is crystal-clear. This is the age of the ununifier. The so-called “leader” who purports to be an exemplar of excellence, but takes the shelter appealing only to the mediocre, the shelter of process over outcome, the parachute on the doomed plane. The guy who’s going to defend himself, after it’s all turned to crap, with craven cries of “yes but I followed all of the rules.” Yes, Trump would object to this, insist that he thinks for himself…John McCain supposedly did likewise. But see that’s the problem. These “mavericks” make up their own minds — how? They walk into a room and lock the door behind them, kind of mull things over really, really good? It seems they don’t take advice from anybody. Where do they get their information? To whom do they listen? What do they read? None of them are ready to say. Three possibilities emerge:

1. They don’t want us to know who has influence on them;
2. They’re making it all up as they go along;
3. They acknowledge someone else might have influenced them, but are afraid to inspect this open question themselves.

Either way, their decisions are beyond question, certainly beyond appeal. What really concerns me more than anything else is, all three of them seem to be open to the idea that in a free and honest exchange of ideas, they may find out the decisions they made cannot withstand an assault of scrutiny, as well as an opposite decision could; and, this terrifies them. At least, that’s how it looks to me. I’m sure there is a narrative that’s supposed to be peddled that isn’t being helped by that thought, but that’s how it looks.

The ununifier is a Prima donna. And we are living in his age. More’s the pity; we really do need, like never before, some open and honest discussion of the ramifications of important decisions. And we’re not getting it.

Worse still, our political so-called “leaders” are getting a rise out of this increased polarization. It has infected them with a perverse incentive, to get the rest of us fighting about anything…about nothing, if the situation calls for it. And so now we have the disgraceful bathroom debate. Should men be allowed to occupy womens’ restrooms because of the way they “identify”? Back when your grandfather punched the clock and began his dreary minutes of productive labor, it wouldn’t even have been a question.

One liberal Facebook-friend responded to this graphic…

…with this…speaking on behalf of many, no doubt…

Is he going to take some little boy who identifies as a girl and drag him behind his pickup truck?

Is he scared of his own sexuality and wants to prove what a man he is?

++blink++ What the fuckety fuckety fuck…

Look, I know this is nothing new. I’m up on this dark fantasy Hollywood has had, that any males who stand for manhood, thereby thwarting their agenda, must be latent homosexuals. I guess it all comes from that sick, sick movie. But this crosses a line: The same brush is to be used to tar any man, anywhere, who sees fit to extend any kind of extra effort to protect a woman?

Oh yes, I do get it, it’s all about narratives with these people. And that narrative they want is the one of an ultra-limber, ultra-strong, sinewy bitch-in-a-catsuit, who weighs 115 pounds soaking wet, kicking three hundred pound men backward so hard that their unconscious bodies shatter brick walls as they sail through the air.

Ass Kicking Woman in a Catsuit Well the problem with that is…and it makes me feel a bit awkward having to type this, truth be told, it seems like I shouldn’t have to say it. There are an awful lot of females in this world, they’re more than half the human population. And they’re not all sinewy bitches in catsuits who can kick heavy guys through brick walls. Some of them are little old ladies who need oxygen tanks and inhalators. And yeah, maybe a big strong protector. What’s wrong with that, exactly?

I thought liberals were supposed to be in favor of defending the weakest among us?

I guess not. I guess we have entered the era of the unprotector. What happened here? This thing we call “liberalism,” far from being friendly in any way to the vision of expanded liberty, has become drunk on the power of the expanding state. And an expanding state cannot find the energy for further expansion, in any environment, save for one saturated in feelings of misery and despair. People feel miserable and desperate when they feel like they aren’t protected.

So it’s: DON’T protect that woman, or me and my friends will insinuate you’re some kind of latent homosexual. Leave her unprotected, so she’ll feel miserable and desperate, and she will grasp for the “protection” provided by my friends who are running for office, as democrats, as a thirsty man would lunge for a canteen of water. That’s how it’s supposed to work. So don’t get in the way.

Rather like two bums getting into an argument over who gets to work the street corner. Except the other guy wasn’t a bum wanting to work a street corner, he was a concerned man spending a few extra minutes to defend a helpless woman against danger.

Ah…but there are still more connecting tendrils. We have entered the age of the unman. And, the unwoman.

Now, what’s written above is quite a lot of words, even before you consider there are hyperlinks to go with it all, leading to more pages with more words. How to bottom-line it all?

I would compare it to drinking water after eating Jalapeño peppers. We’re doing things that seem at first blush like they should fix the problem, and in an instant…but the “solution” we’re trying just makes the problem worse. Nothing gets better until we do a better job of defining things, and the solutions we’ve been trying all have to do with removing definitions, rather than re-invigorating old ones or imposing new ones. So the problem languishes, or even gets worse. So we try a bit more of what we have already just seen doesn’t work.

At this point, we’re like a man who has ingested so much water that his health is starting to see a new danger that wasn’t yet present when he was just eating the peppers, and is still asking for yet more glasses. The distinction between men and women, we’re ready to rend asunder — that can only mean, all other definitions are on the table as well. Producers vs. non-producers, workers vs. non-workers, people who abide by the law vs. those who flout it, men, women, excellent, mediocre…people who need help and protection, people who do not…weakening and erasing these differentiations, has not done anything to help us. And yet, the critical thinking has yet to make a comeback.

We’re on auto-pilot, and have no business at all flying that way. It doesn’t fit our situation. The aircraft nose is pointed downward, the “pilot” has a parachute and we don’t. Oh yeah, and he’s not in the cockpit either, he’s in the back of the craft, by the emergency exit…

Now might be a good time to wake up from the nap.

Fiddler on the Roof.
“…’cus if you’re rich, they think you really KNOW!”
Bathrooms:
“What, are they going to beat the kid looking under the stall with a BAT?”
No, a swift kick to the head will probably be enough negative reinforcement to
PTSD ’em into avoid that kind of behavior in the future, besides, who takes a bat with them to drop a steamer?
“Leadership”: What is the architectural equivalent of defenestration, to elevator shafts?
Hey, is Yucca Mountain in Nevada open yet?
Is the infrastructure ready for an entire time zone to plug in electric cars, all at once, yet? Can we expect NON-rolling brown out rationing?
Will a diesel generator recharge my autonomous car AND run the security lights ?
How much is Iranian “heavy” water, per 500ml plastic bottle?
They’ll be stetting up manufacturing of affordable and accessable solarvoltaic panels , and wind mills with that profit?
Has rain-X marketed those special solar panel “winter” wiper blades yet?
Does spinning ones tires when stuck in snow, affect the range/heat/communications/lights/locks in electric cars?
Can I get a carbon offsets, for packaging/transportation/garbage generation, if I have agriculture that actually produces food, that I actually eat?
Can I get an “energy efficiency rebate” if I replace my old solar powered clothes dryer with a NEW, high efficiency, rope (and eco-friendly “wood” clothes pins)?
Just opening a cultured, intellectual, dialogue.
- CaptDMO | 04/24/2016 @ 02:04
[…] House Of Eratosthenes covers the unproducers […]
- Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup » Pirate's Cove | 04/24/2016 @ 06:19
Is he going to take some little boy who identifies as a girl and drag him behind his pickup truck?

Blow it out your ass, Your Holiness.

This may well be the virus which caused the degeneration from “producer” to “nonproducer:” the certainty that “I think _____ is a bad idea” entails “I HATE _____.” Where the pulsating reticulated fuck did that come from? I don’t think you should push the big red button…. which must mean I hate big red buttons. It’s probably a bad idea to crank that knob up to 11…. which means, I guess, that I want to put knobs in death camps and send their ashes up smokestacks. Dude, you’ll regret eating that entire tub of ice cream…. which means, sigh, that I want to drag each and every single scoop of Cherry Garcia behind my pickup truck.

Jesus commanded us to hate the sin, but love the sinner. That’s not a standard most of us (myself certainly included) can meet, but Our Betters, the Liberals, have perverted it to mean almost exactly the opposite — if you don’t love the sin, you hate the sinner. I know, I know, it just feeeelzzzzz….. sooooooo….. GOOD to get up there on the pulpit and proclaim your own righteousness while condemning the utter depravity of everyone else. But here’s the thing, Elmer Gantry: I have zero emotional involvement in the fate of big red buttons, knobs that go to eleven, the calorie count of ice cream, or the paraphilias. It makes no difference to me at all if you want to dress up in pretty pretty blouses and call yourself Ms. Phyllis Levine, showgirl extraordinaire. But I do care, very deeply, about the dys-civic consequences of forcing us, with fines and jail time, to pretend that you ARE Phyllis Levine. It’s not true, and it will never be true, any more than 2+2 = 5 will ever be true…. not even if you burn all the math textbooks, and throw everyone who says otherwise into work camps.

Saying so doesn’t mean I “hate math.” It means I acknowledge reality. Try it sometime!
- Severian | 04/24/2016 @ 09:00
[…] at Morgan’s, I opined that “H8” may be the root of most, if not all, of modern society’s ills. […]
- “H8” and the Importance of Tautologies | Rotten Chestnuts | 04/25/2016 @ 06:48
[…] The Phony Apathy NeckToToeBlackCatsuit Unreasoners Competence Rules for Throwing Temper Tantrums Unproducers Liberals Review “God Is Not Dead 2” “It’s a Fight About Freedom of […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 06/10/2016 @ 12:48
[…] make the public think of the bullies as the victims and the victims as the real-bullies. These are undefiners, intent on muddying the waters so that the public will respond with confusion, fatigue, an attitude […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/06/2016 @ 10:26
[…] are, and have been, as I’ve pointed out — undefiners. And, unproducers. Their appeal has been to the young, and they know it. If there’s little new learning over […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 12/06/2016 @ 07:54

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UnproducersSaturday, April 23rd, 2016

Unproducers
Saturday, April 23rd, 2016