Explanations and excuses and action figures

Today's Brewster Rockitt touches on a fallacy I work very hard to not try to explain, because it is certainly among the most circuitous and fruitless.

Let me explain:

It's a two-parter, with Macro- and Micro- aspects, but they are really one, because we only argue about history and politics to avoid talking about our own personal issues.

It comes down to dividing the world into Those Who Succeed and Those Who Fail, and then assuming that the people who do well manage to do so because of a combination of privilege and purposeful, competitive actions, while those unfortunates who do poorly do so for the most part through lack of privilege and because of the purposeful, competitive actions of that other, more evil, group.

It's an insoluable world view, because, on the Macro scale, it's impossible to deny that there is such a thing as White Privilege or Male Privilege.

Well, it's possible to deny it, of course. People do every day. But they're being stupid, and it shouldn't count.

But the Micro part is related to Hanlon's razor: "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity."

In this case, it's not stupidity but nature and instinct, but still not malicious.

A crab's attempt to get out of the bucket may not be helpful or sensitive, but it's still only an attempt to get out of the bucket.

Even the President of the United States must some time stand naked (I think Bob Dylan said that) and nobody feels omnipotent or ever vaguely in control of his private life (I said that) and, moreover, no man is a hero to his inner valet (Nobody said that).

So when the "you all do thises" and "you all are like thats" begin to fly, most people in the "White Men" category, I think, respond as negatively as members of every other collectivised, objectified, generalized group does.

Which is to say that, while white men as a group are clearly, doubly privileged, it's hard to feel privileged when your individual life is in the toilet.

However, the joke -- and there's a good joke in this strip -- is that male toys are "action figures" and Barbie is a "doll," which is to say that the male fantasy is judged by what he does, while the female fantasy is more appearance-based.

As I said Monday, the "princess" fantasy seems inescapable, which is why it's cool that they are redesigning Barbie so that at least it would be possible for her to stand erect and walk if she were real.

Meanwhile, "Eddie the Eagle" opened in theaters last weekend, and I'm interested to see how it will be viewed by an audience most of whom are too young to remember what happened when a regular schlub managed by sheer dint of willpower to put himself into the position where his actions just might outstrip his inborn abilities.

I'm assuming they didn't Rudy up the ending too much.

 

Still ...

When the goals society expects you to adopt are wrapped up not in how you look but in what you've accomplished, today's Pros & Cons is a pretty good snapshot of the vain regrets with which we explain failure.

(And let me acknowledge that obviously he's quite an old man, because it's been a while since you've even needed your own pencil to get into some college or other. You sign the gummint aid form, they'll let you keep their pencil.)

I said the other day that, if you like where you're at, you ought not to despise the road that brought you there, but the trick is to like where you're at.

People who don't like the way things turned out seem always to blame the road, not the navigator. 

Life, people say, is like a river, but when I say it, I mean that, if you start up in the foothills on a small stream and follow it down to the mouth of the river, it's easy to describe how the various tributaries came into play as things widened out and opened up and led you to the end.

It's a lot harder to stand at the mouth of the river and figure out how to reach that particular point where you started.

Let me illustrate that with a story: My best buddy Bill and I were snatched off the street by the forest ranger one day -- yes, they have that legal power -- to go fight a brush fire. He drove us up to the command scene, which is to say, the closest place to the fire that vehicles could reach, and we were outfitted with Indian pumps and sent out into the woods.

We got to the fire line and quickly squirted out our five gallons of water, then realized how totally futile it had been. We needed a rake and shovel if we were going to accomplish anything, so we started back down towards the trucks.

Part way down, we had to cross a small stream, and it occurred to us that, if we filled our tanks there instead of from the pumper, it would save us each from horsing about 50 pounds all the way back.

The stream was wide enough that we could put the pumps on a rock in the middle and not worry about the straps burning, so we refilled them, left them there and fetched a rake and shovel from the trucks.

At which point we discovered that the entire wooded hillside was honeycombed with small streams.

The fire eventually was extinguished, but, for the past 48 years, I have nurtured the hope that someone found those tanks and brought them back, because we never did, which means we had very, very little to do with the fire going out, either.

We had spent the bulk of our shift walking up and down streams vainly searching for our lost Indian pumps.

Is there a lost Indian pump in your life, that you can't quite find?

I know there is in mine.

 

 

 

Comments

[Paul Berge]

My brother Esau and I have always loved that sermon.

[Brian Fies]

Good one today.

I always filter success stories (including my own, to the extent I've succeeded at anything) through the lens of survivor bias. Ask a winner how they did it and they'll say "A, B and C," and leave the impression that if you just do A, B and C you'll win too! But nobody ever interviews the people who did A, B and C (and maybe D, E and F) and lost. Too few successful people give pure dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time their due, because that's scary.

"Pros & Cons" reminds me of a recent episode of "The Middle" (hey, I like it!) in which the Sue character, a sweet naive girl who just started college, was asked if she were in a sorority. She scoffed, "Pfft, no, I decided it wasn't my thing when none of them picked me." There's something to be said for life taking a decision out of your hands for you.

[parnell nelson]

Two quick comments - 1. It's great to know that I'm not the only person who remembers Beyond the Fringe (still have their albums on cassette) and B. As far as ..."because it's been a while since you've even needed your own pencil to get into some college or other.", if some of the people that I work with are any measure, you don't even need to be able to spell your own name to graduate...