Petty feelings of envy, vexation, wounded vanity, of that small, provincial misanthropy engendered in petty officials by vodka and a sedentary life, swarmed in his heart like mice.
Anton Chekhov - The Husband (1886)
We navigate through life by avoiding surprises, which are in effect, anomalies in the otherwise even flow of daily life. There are numerous examples such as a flat tyre on the car, bad weather, Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on the door and so on.
An obvious but major failing of modern life is how this natural avoidance has become far too petty for far too many people. We are hitting the problem good and hard here in the UK, where petty conflicts, absurd political expectations, irrational health advice, irrational health expectations and irrational expectation generally have degraded our ability to accept trade-offs.
We are losing sight of a fact of life that not every petty detail of daily life can be congenial, not every expectation met. The rational avoidance of anomalies, the one which evolved within us as human beings, it comes with trade-offs imposed by the real world.
If we demand petty and unrealistic avoidance policies from government, then we end up electing liars as our Parliamentary representatives. We end up fostering a culture where lying is a basic tactic of the ambitious, even on a grand scale where billions are squandered and only the liars make a profit.
An obvious but major failing of modern life is how this natural avoidance has become far too petty for far too many people. We are hitting the problem good and hard here in the UK, where petty conflicts, absurd political expectations, irrational health advice, irrational health expectations and irrational expectation generally have degraded our ability to accept trade-offs.
We are losing sight of a fact of life that not every petty detail of daily life can be congenial, not every expectation met. The rational avoidance of anomalies, the one which evolved within us as human beings, it comes with trade-offs imposed by the real world.
If we demand petty and unrealistic avoidance policies from government, then we end up electing liars as our Parliamentary representatives. We end up fostering a culture where lying is a basic tactic of the ambitious, even on a grand scale where billions are squandered and only the liars make a profit.
The liars we elect and foster throughout our culture will purport to sell us a life without trade-offs, one where only other people have to accept the trade-offs. It doesn't work like that - not forever.
7 comments:
There may be 3 new Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Health (rainbow colours), Safety (black and yellow stripes) and Bureaucracy (black ink on paper white).
They are not as fear inducing as the original horsemen, perhaps because they are riding donkeys but we gave them the mounts to ride. Small, provincial misanthropy engendered in petty officials indeed.
Yes, there does now seem to be something sensible and old-fashioned about trade-offs, some element of pragmatism that we have lost. The political process and political language has been debased, such that the elite make increasingly absurd promises to outbid the other guys, and nobody takes responsibility when it inevitably fails. The most troubling aspect of it is that we allowed this to happen.
Two Tier Kier ...
"He looked like a sheep with a secret sorrow."
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)
Anyway, on the positive side, Geoffrey Boycott is on the mend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9YcsMogSaY
DJ - ha ha, very good. The Four Donkeys of the Apocalypse would make a good cartoon. Lots of candidates too.
Sam - yes that's the most troubling aspect, we did allow it to happen. It goes back a long way too, but even in recent decades it could have been turned around, at least in principle.
Nobby - "He looked like a sheep with a secret sorrow."
Ha ha, that's good. Fits the man perfectly.
Thurston - he's looking really good isn't he? Unusually cheerful too.
And where did this increasing expectation of congeniality come from? Why the softening of society by increased modern prosperity of course.
Tammly - I agree - also the security of the welfare state.
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