On The Eve of Armageddon. Again.
"Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals." - Robert Caro
"The paper's 54-page ethics guidelines - a Rube Goldberg-ian chastity belt that appears to have been hewn by a platoon of lawyers - and the Times' application of them neglects the most corrupting influences facing its writers and editors: the pressure to conform to the consensus view." - Jack Shafer on the failings of the New York Times ethics cops.
For the twelfth time in my life the news infotainment industry is howling at the moon and bawling about the end of the world unless certain people are denied power and certain other people are anointed. For the twelfth time in my life it's the Second Coming of Hitler (Again!) vs The Last Hope for Saving DemocracyTM. It's tiresome just how predictable this has become. The degree of exaggeration this time around, however, is particularly noxious. It reveals how ridiculously ignorant, cognitively ossified, and highly credentialed but poorly educated "journalists" have become even as they continue to declare themselves our betters. I no longer assume good intentions drive the actions of people with "journalism" degrees, rather grandiose narcissism.
And a sizable slice of the masses still accept this pretense.
It used to be easier to filter out the crap and dismiss the noise as "that's just politics." Once upon a time I could invite out-and-out D's and R's to my home at the same time and enjoy their company and an excellent evening. But not any more.
Journalistic incontinence is leaving a stain in almost every public place. I can't go to a concert, a restaurant, grocery shopping, or some days past my front door without having to sidestep the stench of some parrot's hypocritically self-important lecture, toxic cognitive dissonance, or contradictory proclamations of doom. Also highly credentialed, but poorly educated.
Ah, but new for this cycle, the Fourth Estate has been self-congratulatory and unabashedly and proudly revealing itself as a fifth column marching to anonymous orders that are antithetical to the Republic. Always with them it's about what's broken, who's to blame, and who we should be against. They present only binary dilemmas between extremes and the status quo is never acceptable. It's Hell or Nirvana, both of which demand the destruction of what works and neither of which is true. The solutions invariably require more money, more government, or more laws. Frequently, all three are posited as the answer. The process over the past four decades has left me politically homeless. Political atheism has been the only trusted sanctuary.
I'm beyond exhausted with the noise.
Thing of it is, I actually care about where we're headed. I harbor concern for the city and state in which I live as well as for the nation and, indeed, the human species. And yet, the gargantuan dimensions of self-absorbed ignorance masquerading as expertise presents as an insurmountable mass in motion, the momentum of which inevitably crushes any and all who feign to alter it's path.
So what to do?
There's no lack of pundits intent on floating snarky observations that conclude with some version of "somebody ought to do something about that." Well, geniuses, do what? Excellent that you've a fine skill for pulling apart what doesn't work or calling out with great fanfare edge cases certain to lead to failure. What's your constructive solution? What's the something somebody ought to do that builds rather than destroys?
It doesn't even have to be a good idea. Go ahead and float it so it can be considered and, more than likely, improved upon by somebody in a way that someone will actually be motivated to put to the test and "do something." Often, a genius idea just needs a place to start. Many of the great works from classical music, for example, borrowed melodies from folk tunes and anonymous street musicians.
All this bloviating on my own part gets me to where I may still have a play. I'm not a genius and my ideas often aren't particularly usable or practical.1 But I can keep putting them out there for someone else to improve.
The details about where I'm headed with this are too involved to include in this post or even on The Stoic Agilist. Too much baggage that needs to stay on this boat. Instead, I'm developing the idea on a separate substack : The Remnant's Way. I'll still be posting here on The Stoic Agilist, but the posts will focus more on what I have to say about the professional working world.
What I post on The Remnant's Way reflects what I struggle with most to put into words. It represents a journey, the beginning of which reaches back almost half a century and is necessarily incomplete. A blend of styles suggestive of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, Montaigne's Essays, and street graffiti; my plan is to update existing posts as I see fit and interlink ideas within the corpus of The Remnant's Way in a way that's reminiscent of the early promise of hyperlinked information. I suffer no fools along The Remnant's Way, but I'd like to know if you're going my way. I'd welcome the company.
Hope to see you on the other side of Armageddon. Again.
Footnotes
1 For example, my idea for using catapults to fling people around in dense urban ares as an alternative solution for mass transit hasn't gained much traction.
If you have any questions, need anything clarified, or have something else on your mind, please send a DM or email me directly.
Photo Credit: Gregory Engel, Author feeling refreshingly small next to giant redwoods.