House of Eratosthenes

Last month my blogger friend Buck Pennington, in response to my comments about “Scary Peace-People,” was kind enough to direct my attention to video footage of the debate between author, columnist and war-hawk Christopher Hitchens, and the Right Honorable MP George Galloway (transcript). It goes on and on, for nearly two hours, but this was not a problem for me in any way. I was fascinated. Not so much with the opinions that were being proferred by the two distinguished Brits, but with the way they were proferring them. It reminded me of something. Something…I was not sure what.

And two days later, it finally hit me. It was something I wrote about. Back in January, the famous Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly appeared on the set of famous late-night talk show host David Lettermen, and the two famous gentlemen proceeded to act like a news commentator and a late-night talk-show host, respectively (video).

Foursome In both debates, the two contestants spoke to two different cultures. O’Reilly and Letterman both won, depending on whom you ask. And exactly the same can be said about the “Grapple in the Apple” between Hitchens and Galloway.

How does the question of whom you ask, determine who won? Conventional wisdom says audience sympathy determines everything. It depends on which idea was previously embraced, at the beginning of the debate, by whoever was asked. Conventional wisdom is more-or-less correct. But oh, how much more there is to the story. Let’s examine it.

My point back in January, about Letterman, was this: To those of us who are looking for logical arguments in support of thinking a certain thing, Letterman’s “points” rang hollow and they were not designed to ring any other way. This is an observation, not a critique, and it pertains to the performance of Galloway as well. It pertains, furthermore, to Galloway’s previous “testimony” — read “performance” — in front of the United States Senate about documents purporting to prove his interest in the Oil For Food bribes.

Allow me to explain what I mean by “rang hollow.” I’m engaged in a process, a process in which I appreciate other people are not similarly engaged, to gauge the strength of support. I’m not looking for proof, just support, which is a different thing because absolute proof is possible with very few things in human affairs. But speaking for myself, what I try to do is start with what ostensibly is supposed to be supported, and work backwards to find out what’s supposed to support it.

Letterman and Galloway are the two gentlemen who do not want to talk to me, and by extension, their words are not for anyone who does what I do. This is significant. I’ve noted that there are many who don’t do what I do; but there are many others who do exactly what I do. Letterman says we should show more respect to Cindy Sheehan, and Galloway says the documents that incriminate him are supposed to be fakes. And we say, figuratively, “okay I have an open mind; why exactly am I supposed to think such a thing?”

And by the words of the Galloway/Letterman duo, and those who support them, we’re left sucking air.

Then, we are told over and over again, with no small amount of bullying undertone, that Galloway and Letterman “kicked ass” in their respective exchanges. Now, how does that work exactly? It turns out that Galloway and Letterman, engender good feelings among those who previously agreed with Galloway and Letterman; one is given little foundation for agreeing with what they have to say, unless one is inclined to agree with what they have to say in the first place. For their words to compel sympathy in an apathetic mind, or in a hostile mind, or any mind in which sympathy did not previously exist, is simply beyond the design of the comments they have made. It is out of their intended scope. This is not true of the substance of O’Reilly’s comments, or of Hitchens’ comments; those two, clearly, were directing the remarks toward opposition, endeavoring to demonstrate to such opposition why the opposition is a path to nonsense and oblivion, and the interests of those who labor under the opposition would be best served by some serious re-thinking.

This is not absolutely true across the board, of course. O’Reilly and Hitchens can be observed, in both dialogs, to throw a bone or two to their constituents, and make them feel good for agreeing with the O’Reilly/Hitchens viewpoint. My point is that the “hooray for our side” stuff represents an extreme and expendable appendage to the body of their arguing style, whereas with Letterman and Galloway, it is the skeleton and central nervous system. Letterman and Galloway, when you boil their comments down to their fundamentals, really have little else to say. Must, ought, should, and by the way, people who agree with us outnumber those who disagree; and if they don’t, they might as well, because look how loud they are. And there, the pitch ends.

Galloway did offer some meat — a little bit. One of his salient citations, is that Hitchens was once more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than he is today, and was once opposed to American opposition to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. This is fact-based, but not strongly so when you consider that Galloway had absolutely no other facts to offer. “My opponent tonight is a flip-flopper” was the extent of his logical argument. Hitchens’ deflection of this accusation, while perhaps driven more by emotion than by logic, was nevertheless brilliant. He simply admitted the inconsistency outright, and chalked it up to learning experiences. Hitchens thought one thing, learned something, and then thought a different thing. Happens to the best of us. But, interestingly, not to Galloway.

It’s fair to say, I think, that other than that one anomaly, all Galloway remarks were designed to galvanize the feeling amongst Galloway sympathizers, and all Hitchens remarks were designed to persuade those who were not Hitchens’ sympathizers. Galloway, consistently, spoke to allies, and Hitchens was pretty steadfast in outreach to foes.

What of the O’Reilly/Letterman debate? I already opined on this five months ago: Letterman conceded. This is absolute fact, endorsed by none other than Letterman himself, but is a matter of perspective. A large chunk of us simply don’t deal in fact. Unbelievably, they “feel” that Letterman “won” the exchange, even as he admitted he was too ignorant to debate “point by point” — because of the snarky snippet that came sailing out of Letterman’s mouth immediately afterward.

I have been instructed to believe, for four years now, that we are having some kind of a national “debate” about terrorism, security, privacy issues, Israel vs. Palestine, etc. Debate, my ass. A debate is a forum in which ideas are exchanged, and that hasn’t been happening for the last four years here. This is a shouting match between two distinctly separate cultures, speaking two distinctly separate languages.

Now, here’s where things start to get really interesting: It would make perfect sense to me if the side that was winning elections, sought to galvanize its base, and the side that was losing them, aspired to win converts. That would be perfectly logical. But what we see happening, is the direct opposite. Years go by, we have an election, public figures who support the war win the elections, and those who oppose wonder how so many of us “can be so dumb.” Then another election comes up and we go back, Jack, and do it again.

This is not meant to imply the elections are all landslides. Most of them are close. Extremely close. I have to believe just a little bit of persuasive, fact-based logic from the anti-war folks, given just a little bit of visibility, and presented with some old-fashioned respect to the pro-war voters, would turn everything around. Well, the anti-war folks can’t do this. If they could, obviously they would. But there is something about “peace” movements, ironically, that sends logic, respect and congeniality on an extended vacation. These are supposed to be things more effectively alienated by war than by peace.

Once again, behold: We have yet another mystery explained, soundly so, by my “Yin and Yang” theory — a mystery that can be explained by nothing else.

“Yin and Yang” holds that there is a fundamental bifurcation in human affairs, cleanly dividing half of us from the other half, by our own consent albeit without our conscious knowledge. Half of us behave as if we live in a world of cause-and-effect; we are always consumed with some kind of project, staking out a territory of things within our control and then getting a “system” to work throughout that territory in a specific way, to achieve objectives we have declared for ourselves. When we are not engaged in such a project, we think and perceive as though we still are. We see the world this way. These people are called “Yin,” and the way we go about interacting with the world around us is confusing and mysterious to many others. Those others don’t see as much of the world as it is, compared to the way they want it to be. Those people are the “Yang,” able to sustain an enviable mind-melding with the emotional state of others around them, ingenious and efficient at communicating their hopes, desires and complaints to others, able to energize a consensus. But not so keen on understanding how systems work, defining areas of influence or manipulating things within that area to achieve previously defined objectives. That just ain’t their bag, baby. Building better mousetraps is for the Yin, who as children, played with Erector Sets and Lincoln Logs. The Yang are better at cheering and booing, since as children, they participated in sing-a-longs while the “Leggoes” and blocks gathered dust in the closet.

You learn by doing. Those who have trouble figuring out which half they’re in, are hobbled by nothing but inexperience. Through the simple process of coping with life, in whatever form one defines that life to be, one entrenches himself more and more deeply in whatever half he has picked out for himself.

Some among the “Yin,” myself included, are blinded from communicating with the “Yang,” or even from understanding them, to the point of serious personal dysfunction. We just don’t get it. People like Letterman or Galloway deliver a “smackdown,” and the crowd goes wild, and we’re left sitting there thinking “what just happened here?” We ask the question that I asked in the “Scary Peace-People” commentary — what is the appeal of this guy? — and the answers we get back have to do with delivery, an elegant “Scottish burr” to the voice, gestures, etc. And we think, but wait a minute; that doesn’t convince me of a damn thing. How does it convince anybody else? What am I missing?

Strewn with Gaping Defects I keep hearing about how my President has “terrible speaking skills.” Compared to his predecessor, I agree with this completely. The next thing I’m told, is that his policies are awful, and that there is some relationship between his awful policies and his terrible speaking skills — as if the latter somehow substantiates the former. Well, I think you can have wonderful speaking skills and some terrible policies, and vice-versa. But there is a heady school of thought that disagrees. No no, they say, the two go hand-in-hand. How’s that, I’m wondering? Logically there is no correlation between the two.

And indeed, logically there isn’t. Trouble is, logic is an option. A good half of us choose not to opt into it. Delivery is everything, substance is nothing. Of that half, I can ask “give me a thesis seeking to demonstrate why my President’s policies are terrible, and leave his atrocious speaking skills out of it.” And in reply, I’ll get back nothing except a bobbing Adams-apple, as I’ve deprived them of the one tool they could use in this enterprise. To them, delivery decides everything. To those of us who choose logic, of course, delivery decides very little, with the substance of what’s being delivered being far more important than how it’s delivered.

The split I have just described, against our best wishes, is socially all-important. Half of us, can’t productively live with the other half; when we try to do so, each and every point-of-contact across the chasm, produces all the aggravation and acrimony that an invasion would cause. The split, furthermore, to the best I can gather, is unprecedented in human history. In all the ages of humankind, as our species progresses, it progresses together. But not now. I don’t know for sure how we got here, but I got a good idea. It is an evolutionary process. It is tens of thousands of years in the making.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I believe in evolution. I’m one among many people who believe in God, and can’t see how that is mutually exclusive from believing in evolution. Evolution simply makes good sense. And to understand how it influences people, first you have to consider the forces that evolution place on humankind. To understand that, take a look at the jobs everyone must do. Let’s inspect this throughout the mural of recorded history.

Thousands of years ago, everyone had have some skills at siezing land by force, and preventing the siezure of land already held by other forces. This was a requisite skill for survival, both of each person, and of civilizations. At some point, at about the third millenium before Christ, civilizations began to establish and refine military forces so that this task would be delegated to specialists. By the time the Roman empire came along, some kind of specialist would be involved in invading land and defending against said invasions, while “everybody else” still had to worry about farming. This situation kept up throughout the Renaissance, and was cut short by the Industrial Revolution. At that point, agriculture was delegated to specialists, and “everybody else” still had to travel from one point to another, manage a home, transact business, and take care of assorted odds and ends. Building armor and horseshoes, baking bread, churning butter…all these things had to be done by “everyone” at one time, and throughout the centuries they have been delegated to “specialists.”

As time goes by, more and more essentials are delegated to “specialists.” This is significant, because evolution-related forces act on our species only with things that everyone has to do. But as time goes along, and technology has the effect of delegating these chores to specialists, the assortment of day-to-day work that the commoners must do to survive…steadily shrinks.

Now here’s my theory. In 2006 A.D., we’re at a loggerheads, because the body of chores that “everyone” must do, has been whittled down to — nothing. You don’t need to do a damn thing to stay alive. Of course homes still need to be built, and food must be acquired, but we have specialists to do that stuff. All of it. All that the common man has to do, is pay for it, and to do that all he need to is sit in a cubicle for forty hours a week hitting “MySpace,” moving the mouse around when he hears footsteps behind him so he looks busy. Even cashing the paycheck and buying groceries, can easily be automated, offloaded to a specialist, or both. And to take that final step toward personal obsolescence, in 2006, you don’t even have to be particularly well-off. A lower-middle-class livelihood will do just fine.

To stay alive, you don’t have to do anything. So what’s the next evolutionary step?

We have two choices, and this is why we have “Yin” and “Yang.” The lack of necessity has split us cleanly in two. You may take the “Yin” approach, and choose to exercise skills you no longer need, for the simple purpose of keeping them from rotting away. This is no different from the cubicle jockey who has no call, none whatsoever, to lift heavy objects but still has a set of dumbells and a bench in his garage. You may live down the street from a good, clean grocery store with USDA-inspected lean meat for a $1.99 a pound, and still choose to hunt throughout the season — just because.

Or, you may make the most of our modern Life of Liesure, and resolve to enjoy the good life. Do nothing, except whatever your job demands you do, and socialize endlessly; in so doing, celebrate the sacrifices made by our ancestors, and commune with one another, in ways they never could.

You have to pick one or the other. And you can’t pick both. To make one choice, is to reap the rewards of that choice, and in reaping the rewards of that choice you will be subtly estranged from the other. You live life for the sense of satisfaction of a job well done, or you live it for the sense of fulfillment you get from communing with your neighbors. Nobody, no one I’ve ever met, really does both. Some think they’re doing both. They aren’t.

I remember reading an article about how fewer people were going to school to get into engineering fields. There was a forum underneath the article, and a member of the fairer sex came on, obviously peeved about something. She opined that there was no point to becoming an engineer, or going into any discipline related to engineering. Essentially, her point was that everything worth inventing or discovering, had already been invented/discovered. She had some advice for the fellas: “Drop out of school, learn to rap, and do your crunches.”

Half of us don’t listen to this because we can’t listen to this. How do you turn off your brain, after a lifetime spent using it? In the pursuit of happiness, you can’t do it; if you were happy, but your brain was no longer working and therefore not to be trusted, you wouldn’t even know you were happy.

The peeved rap-crunch maiden is a mystery to me. What is so objectionable about someone choosing to educate himself, instead of learning how to rap? There is something about the “Yang,” I have noticed, that is awfully controlling. The Yin must declare a territory before they set to work on a project, but to the Yang, all things within line-of-site are part of the project, for the project is social.

I learned this when my son started going to school. It turns out that he is even more Yin than I am, and I’m so entrenched within this side of things that my ability to communicate with the other side has been uniquely disrupted. Being the next evolutionary step, of course, he’s even worse. When he was in Kindergarten, his teachers were convinced he was profoundly disabled. Now that he’s finished the second grade, the comments have toned down to the occasional observation that he could use some individual instruction, and oh by the way he’s really smart. But his Kindergarten career was way messed-up.

That’s when I found out about the prevailing viewpoint in the public education system, that education has less-and-less to do with learning as time goes on. Nowadays, “how to socialize with others” is the most important thing. It’s probably not too off the mark to say that nowadays, a child who socializes with his peers but can’t do the work, is a success, and a child who does the work and can’t socialize with his peers, is a failure. A generation ago when I was in school, the reverse was true. I think that was better.

But who is to say I’m right? We live in a time wherein the commoners, in order to survive, need to do nothing. Every vital chore, every activity needed for human survival, including earning that survival, has been off-loaded to professionals. Maybe the educators are right. Maybe the next “evolutionary step” is a bunch of people who can’t actually do anything, and therefore can’t actually think about anything; but they communicate amongst themselves really, really well.

This strikes me as the wrong way to go, but I have nothing I can stand on in arguing that, at all. Nothing except one thing.

From this point forward, it seems self-evident to me that we’re going to have to find ways to be happy together. And these “Yang” who are running around, laughing at the right jokes, getting the “feeling” that 60% of what O’Reilly says is crap just because David Letterman says this is the case, or that George Galloway speaks truth just because of his Scottish burr…all for the purpose of feeling good…they don’t seem to be happy. Quite to the contrary, they strike me as being angry. They’re angry so much of the time, over so little, that I end up wondering how they can function.

Attention Whores I think conflict is inseparably attached to the way they see the world, although they can’t realize it, even as obsessed as they are with making everyone around them happy. Ironically, the Yin, being far less concerned about making people happy, avoid conflict because their paramount concern is simply to get things done. Look at it this way: A woman’s car battery has died, and a man who is Yin will lend her his cell phone so she can get the help she needs, and thus, get the hell out of his way so he can get his stuff done. He evaluates it the way a businessman would evaluate it: The sooner she gets a tow, the sooner I have my parking spot. A man who is Yang will do the same thing, but for the purpose of being seen lending her his cell phone. Or for getting a date. If her objectives are met, but he doesn’t get the credit he wants, the venture is a failure; whereas the man who is Yin, simply cares about the objectives. Hers must be met, because until then, his own objectives are stalled.

If there is a third-party involved who will also lend the lady a cell phone, the objectives of Yin are met more quickly, while those of the Yang are frustrated. And this is where conflict comes in. Wait a minute, she can’t borrow his cell phone, she’s supposed to borrow mine!

“Supposed to.” See, for the Yin, those two words never apply to the world-at-large. The world is what the world is. “Supposed to” is something that applies only within the perimeter of a given project, and there’s no need to express those words to anyone else unless you’re tutoring them in how to do the same thing. Look at Hitchens one more time. He doesn’t say people are “supposed to” do things a certain way, he simply cautions them against behaving a certain way because the C-SPAN cameras are rolling, and they may end up embarrassed. Consequences for actions, and that’s where the “supposing” ends. His note of caution duly disseminated, the ruffians are free to do what they will. This is not true of Galloway’s remarks. And Letterman, for sure, is not “cautioning” us about how to treat Cindy Sheehan. He’s extolling, exclaiming, imploring, commanding, instructing, and most of all, intoning. “Honest to Christ!” In the world of the Yang, there is no cause or effect, no logic, no thought. Everything is subject to either approval or disapproval. No reason need be given.

Nor will one be forthcoming. Why did Galloway win? Why did Letterman win? The only response that comes back, is how someone felt when he said such-and-such a thing. And oh, the deafening applause. That Scottish burr. Something about goosebummps, maybe. That’s all you get, there ain’t no more.

O’Reilly and Hitchens both made the point, in their respective contributions, about bad things happening when tyrants are appeased and when evil goes unpunished. This makes sense, to us Yin and to the Yin alone — and it seems, to me, to deserve a proper response. Speaking for myself, I’ve long ago given up waiting for one. The four solid years of what is supposed to have been a “debate,” and never ever was one, has netted nothing except for instructions that I should be looking at something else. Well, in my dysfunctional Yin-head, that leaves the issue unaddressed. And the results of our elections make it clear that there are millions of people similarly dissatisfied. Sucking air.

Wow, Morgan, what a tour de force. This is something that bears reading again; once simply won’t do.

I must dig into your back pages for more on your Yin-Yang theory. You’ve obviously put a lot of thought into this, and I find we’re pretty much in agreement.

I have a son about the same age as yours (my boy is nine), and your comments on your son’s schooling hit home. I have had similar experiences, albeit at arm’s length, as my son lives with my ex-, a self-proclaimed “academic liberal” who’s much more Yang than Yin. But that’s MY problem, and it’s a biggie. I find it nearly impossible to discuss my son’s upbringing with the ex-, and it all ties into your premise about how Yang people think. In short: everything I know is wrong; there’s no debate/discussion at all. {sigh}
- Buck Pennington | 06/13/2006 @ 00:31
Very good.

I do note that you — and maybe you meant to do this for literary contrast, portrayed “yin” as completely utilitarian in a purely selfish manner.

I consider myself yin, yet I would help someone get a tow (or perhaps jumpstart them) not just to get them out of my way, but to help another fellow human being — as an end in and of itself. I don’t need to be seen helping the human being, it is only important to me that the human being in question is helped. If someone else gets there and does it before I do, great. If not, and I am in a position to help someone who needs it, then I feel a duty (within reason) to lend a hand, if not solve their problem entirely. Somewhere in that range.

Yin folk aren’t necessarily robotic. They are, though, as you very well layed out — pragmatic and more prone to getting things done rather than talking about getting things done.
- Phil | 07/25/2006 @ 13:44
The altruism factor certainly does make things sticky. While it’s a Yin trait in many cases, the Yang seem to be equally energetic about helping those in need simply to ease suffering.

It’s a very helpful litmus test to see what happens to the enthusiasm when nobody’s watching anymore. But it’s an even better litmus test to see what happens when the person who needs a tow, starts to need more and more tows on a semi-regular basis, because of his own negligence and/or lack of foresight.

In that scenario, some of my personal baggage precludes me from thinking clearly on the matter beyond a certain point.
- mkfreeberg | 07/25/2006 @ 13:50
[…] On June 9, I had watched the “Grapple in the Apple” between Christopher Hitchens and George Galloway, MP, and noted in Yin and Yang V how similar this was to the match-up between Bill O’Reilly and David Letterman five months previous. Both exchanges were “debates” according to the rules of cosmetics, and cosmetics alone. In neither one of these couplings did the combatants address common arbiters, instead, what they did was take turns delivering monologues to chosen population segments. Galloway and Letterman made their pitches to The Yang, who like to feel good, and Hitchens and O’Reilly (with minor exceptions) played to The Yin, who like to think things through logically. The political situation in 21st-century America, in which The Yang barely lose out in one election after another, dictates that logically the two sides should be making arguments quite different from the arguments they are making. I noted that my theory explains this — nothing else does — and examined how the evolutionary forces have driven us to this point, where the two sides are in greater conflict with each other than they have been before. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 12/03/2006 @ 14:33
[…] I’m sure our liberals would argue that if Ayn Rand were alive today, she’d have just as much criticism for the Bush administration as anyone else. I’m sure they’re right about that. And yet, I have to ask: Can’t our leftists find a way to speak out against his policies, that would appeal better to her sensibilities? Since this century began, as they have desperately grasped at the votes needed just to present the President with a more hostile Congress, they have made a point of recruiting from the Yang and from nobody else. Their initiatives, at least the ones that don’t deal with attacking the individual, all involve Trudging Toward Zero; endeavoring toward an ideal rather than into a frontier. Captain Kirk’s famous introduction — “to boldly go where no man has gone before” — has absolutely no place for them. They work inward, eliminating injury and discomfort, scolding and chastising anyone who would direct resources to anything else including the inspection of what might be the origin of such injury or discomfort. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/02/2007 @ 08:50
[…] Items of Interest FAQ Glossary Things I Know Things I Doubt Things I Don’t Get Movies You Ought Not Spoil Rules For Living With Me When I Start Running This Place Bathosploration What Is A Liberal? Yin and Yang If We Really Cared […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/21/2007 @ 18:57
[…] It is a cultural prerogative. Men are treated like dogs. And whether they’ve realized it or not, women, and men as well, have been quite accommodating. I remember reading an article about how fewer people were going to school to get into engineering fi… […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/03/2008 @ 10:27
[…] — whate’er you wanna callzem, Yin and Yang, or Architects and Medicators — as I’ve pointed out before. It creates a bigger divide on such fundamental questions as: What is a good speech, anyway? What […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/15/2010 @ 12:20

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Yin and Yang VFriday, June 9th, 2006

Yin and Yang V
Friday, June 9th, 2006