House of Eratosthenes

Maybe, just maybe, he was the first thinking man ever to stumble across the great divide. At least, we’re pretty sure he bothered to say something about it…

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

The two halves of humanity don’t belong together. “Deserve” has nothing to do with it. They’re like poles of a battery, when they make contact everything that follows is destruction, chaos, and good things that might’ve happened that can never happen.

The miscreant appears in front of a magistrate, because he got drunk in public when he should have been working to pay child support on his four whelps he has by three different sluts. What we have there is not a conflict between “follow the law,” represented by the magistrate, and “don’t follow it” represented by the lout — that’s the wrong way to think of it. That confrontation is actually the contact point between two sets of laws, established and maintained by two entirely different societies. In one society, you work to pay for what you consume and you make sure the former is equal to or greater than the latter, or at least, will be at some point in the future; in the other one, you just sort of, like, whatever man. That’s how it really is, that’s the accurate snapshot.

Similarly, has there ever been a thief who really thought of himself as a thief? Get the thief’s side of the story sometime. You’ll invariably find it isn’t “I wanted to steal something” or “I want to break the law”; far more often than not, you’ll discover some rationalization that makes the object of theft his. You may find the rationalization very silly, and maybe you’re right, but it will usually be there and the person toiling away under it will take it as seriously as you take your next heart attack.

The drive to think by way of reason, as opposed to emotion, is the only means by which we can consciously tell order apart from chaos. And a good-sized chunk of us, perhaps a lot more than half, would prefer to think by way of emotion because they’ve never had reason to think the other way. They live to eat and drink, and why should they think themselves “worthless” if they outnumber those other suckers who eat and drink only to live? In their world, that’s the real crime. In their world, it is the magistrate who has broken the “law,” by wasting the time of the other guy who could be spending the afternoon enjoying life, doing his whatever.

Another way to think of this: Instant gratification versus delayed gratification. However, that paradigm places undue weight on the concept of time. It’s not a time thing. It isn’t a pleasure or “gratification” thing, either. Am I really having a better time, slaving away all week long for my mortgage, putting off the partying until Friday night when I get to watch a live play followed by maybe thirty minutes of teevee with Mrs. Freeberg before we slink off to bed? Compared to the riff raff partying away at alcohol-fueled poolside events until the wee hours of the morning, the entire time?

We can get into which relationships are more fulfilling, but that misses the point: The riff raff are having their fun. And they’re living according to their own set of “laws.” The difference between the two sides is the same as the difference between humans and animals: The ability to recognize, and anticipate, states within objects. My mortgage is an object. It has a state of being either current, or not-current. This affects everything, it translates into every single disagreement that is on anybody’s radar, anywhere. For example, Architects want a President of the United States who will defend the nation, Medicators want a President who will entertain it.

Related: Twenty-one years since Steven Goddard shot his teevee set. Perhaps I read too much into it, it’s very possible, but I’m thinking that means there is no Mrs. Goddard. Chicks like their teevee.

Not that I can get on my “high horse” about it, either, since during my bachelorhood spells…let me see, there was 2004-2006, before that there was 1995-1997, and before that there was 1988-1989…I didn’t have teevee. Male bachelors have no reason to have teevee, there’s no upside for them, teevee is a chick thing. In fact, it’s evolved to become a chick thing. Why would a bachelor have teevee? I recall learning of the invasion of Panama on the teevee when I was a bachelor, that must have been before I figured out this lack-of-upside-for-males thing. Or, after I figured it out, but I was in my on-again-off-again thing with the first Mrs. Freeberg, I might have had a subscription because she wanted it. My subsequent bachelorhood-spells were teevee-free. Let’s face it, it costs like a sonofabitch no matter how you get it nowadays, but even if I paid for it the nothing my parents paid for it, I still wouldn’t want it.

I think the producers of some of the shows would be crushed if they saw how the current Mrs. Freeberg uses teevee. How could they not be? She does chores, and uses the programs as background noise. And if it’s a six-hour chore, the live teevee feed doesn’t even figure into it, she just puts on the Star Wars trilogy — you know, the good one not the new one.

Some people envy Hollywood, you know. Not me. It’s a purely Medicator-driven existence. From what I can see, you have to seriously start looking at plastic surgery if you ever want to work again after age 32, and regardless, the entire thing is utterly devoid of any sense of useful purpose, and should be. It must be an awful existence. I pity those poor wretches.

“Similarly, has there ever been a thief who really thought of himself as a thief? Get the thief’s side of the story sometime. You’ll invariably find it isn’t “I wanted to steal something” or “I want to break the law”; far more often than not, you’ll discover some rationalization that makes the object of theft his. You may find the rationalization very silly, and maybe you’re right, but it will usually be there and the person toiling away under it will take it as seriously as you take your next heart attack.”

As y’all have heard me say before, I am a part-time hockey ref (very low level, I assure you), and this divide stretches into that humble arena. There are different ways of explaining the divide, and I have a few that have served well; I hadn’t thought to look at it in terms of Medicators and Architechts, however. I mean, it’s hockey. Everyone’s gotta haul ass out there or your own teammates won’t want you on the rink – in that sense, a lot of the would-be Medicators are weeded out by the unforgiving nature of the competition. You either have more goals at the end of the game, or you don’t.

But I do think this does explain some of the psychology between the people I never have a problem with, and the people I ALWAYS have a problem with. With only one exception, all the guys who are always up in arms about the calls are the sneakiest, dirtiest such-and-sos out there. The guys playing hard who may pick up a call here and there generally just head to the box; if they were fouled and don’t get a call, they’ll ask but they won’t really get up in arms unless it’s a horrible miss.

Why are the complainers also the biggest rulebook jockeys? I’m beginning to think they’re Medicators. They don’t want to take the trouble to learn what will and won’t get them whistled. They can’t change the rulebook itself, but they can try to influence how it’s called, so that now the other team isn’t just involved in a skill contest, but in a “skill AND lobby the refs and see if we can swing just one future call in a big spot” contest. And if they’re not bending your ear over the most arcane paragraphs in the book, they’re busy seeing if they can get over on a few of their tricks by doing everything in that grey area, daring you to call it all so they can whinge more about how “it’s hockey and you gotta let us play” or else “call it both ways” and such.

This is about a sport… played by allegedly-grown-up men… on foot, with a ball… for fun. Then again, I’m sure a few of them aren’t fans of the sport so much as they’re fans of any leisure pursuit where they can whack people with a stick and face no legal consequences.
- nightfly | 03/16/2015 @ 12:52
And a good-sized chunk of us, perhaps a lot more than half, would prefer to think by way of emotion because they’ve never had reason to think the other way. They live to eat and drink, and why should they think themselves “worthless” if they outnumber those other suckers who eat and drink only to live? In their world, that’s the real crime. In their world, it is the magistrate who has broken the “law,” by wasting the time of the other guy who could be spending the afternoon enjoying life, doing his whatever.

Believe it or not, this entire point was once put into a perfect, 30 min parable in an episode of King of the Hill.

And I don’t think it’s just “prefer”, I think it’s more insidious than that. Let’s be honest, to feel without thinking is easier, it’s hard to think. Like Evan Sayet has pointed out: once you had to be smart and work, else you wouldn’t survive. Now you can be as dumb as you want, and still survive. Which means what we’re looking at isn’t two conflicts, but the ancient struggle in the human soul between sloth and diligence. If sloth didn’t have some appeal, it wouldn’t be called a temptation.
- Nate Winchester | 03/17/2015 @ 05:32
I can well believe that Mike Judge nailed this in King of the Hill. The man behind Office Space and Idiocracy has a sharp eye for this sort of thing.
- nightfly | 03/17/2015 @ 06:42

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Socrates Discovers Architects and MedicatorsSaturday, March 14th, 2015

Socrates Discovers Architects and Medicators
Saturday, March 14th, 2015