Herrington: The One-Eyed King

In this day and age, everyone wants to be an expert. What is it that we need any more experts for? I wonder when we will start outsourcing “expertise” to other countries. Manufacturing is just about gone. For sure, Sam Walton would be turning over in his grave. All those American products that he had worked so hard to gather, and now most of Wally World’s products are Chinese. What can we do that will turn this around?

America wants it cheap, and so in our race for the least quality products we have sold American know-how down the river, right? We were the ingenuity capital of the world, and now all we can do is bundle stuff up and hope others will buy our bunch of dead flowers. Derivatives are really just bets that what you are looking at will increase in value over time. But all bets have a risk, like with the housing market. The latest derivatives were not just potentially worth more they were for sure worth less. They were fraudulent contracts to begin with. The Chinese sold us toys that were painted with lead paint. We sold the world worthless paper for the purpose of taking their money. If my analysis of the situation is correct, that would make us crooks on the world wide stage. Hmmmmm.

Now on the other hand, we might say that we have the right to sell anything and if others buy it then that is on them to do their homework. I guess I might think of this in a very distant sort of way. But if someone sells my kid battery acid and tells him it is a new kind of energy drink, I doubt I am going to congratulate the guy on a good sale, especially if my kid dies.

Of course the problem with hyperbole and outrageous examples like these are that they are non-sense. Everyone knows all the standard counter-moves in argumentation by now. No one has to even be able to think very clearly. And the same moves we might make as anti-rhetorical we can then say about them when they are used on us, “That is the oldest trick in the book.” Between deflection and humiliation, there is hardly room for real discussion anymore, so bring on the experts!

I wonder what a discussion would look like where all parties were willing to suffer through actually listening to each other. The term “die-hard” means that they would just as soon die as give up their position. Why not allow that they think that way? What harm would come to the universe if someone did really assert that the moon is made of green cheese? Oh, my God, if you continue to believe that a worm hole will open up and swallow the entire planet!

And I don’t mean the left-handed tolerance where you return, “Well, it is not against the law to be a moron.” Like so many people, I flocked along with the crowd and went full on into Facebook, but it has turned into a battle ground in many groups. I’ve talked about this before, but I have now been joined by many friends. They too have pared back. I answer less e-mail and I give less time to phone calling ads or needs. In some ways I am using technology less, or maybe more effectively. It’s my phone, and I will answer it when I am ready. This is its own kind of tolerance and intolerance balance.

The person in front of me has a completely different value system than I have. Interesting, but not enough for me to throw my plans for the day into the ditch in order to force this knucklehead to agree with my plan for existence. I don’t think I am jaded; I have become realistic.

There are 7 billion people in the world. 7,000,000,000. There are only 31,536,000 seconds in a year. At one second per person, working night and day without ceasing, it will take me 221 years to talk to everyone on earth and even check with them, yes or no, if they agree with me on anything at all. How many full conversations will I be able to have? For the average person, how much impact will we really have anyway? Yelling and screaming, ranting and raving, not much. If any, at all. Ever.

Kids go through school and end up in the principal’s office and they end up telling the story of how they were sitting there with 13 professionals and parents and at that critical point in the 2 hour discussion they asked the kid, “Well, what do you want to do?” This kid has been wielding some awesome power in an awful way and now they are turning it all over to him to be responsible? You want the reins, go for it. Enjoy! You’re the expert on messing up your life, so knock yourself out!

So, we don’t listen, we wait each other out, we push ahead, we argue and wave fanatically. This is what we have come to call civilization. We scream about special interests while we push ahead our own agendas. We call out those who oppose us, and we ask for reason and justice when we are opposed. Many would say we take from the poor to give to the rich, and it is for sure that the poor live off the rich.

Who would we be without our opinions? What if we just shut up? If for a whole day instead of our attempting to assert ourselves at every opportunity we took that chance to let it go? This would be like a vacation. Imagine, no news or debates. You turn on TV, and it is a bird singing for the next 24 hours. All channels.

And then some idiot has to put whale songs on. Who does stuff like that? What a moron!

runningturtle87