The Insanity of Literacy

“Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad”
-- George Barnard Shaw

The uninformed person is often derided in our public debate. His statements are dismissed as fundamentally flawed because of some lack of mention of a tidbit seen by his detractor. His failure to keep afloat in the maelstrom of news, facts, and rumors seemingly proves his ineligibility to hold worthy opinions.

Nearly everybody falls into this category of incomplete knowledge. The more one reads, the more likely the next item read will cancel out something previously learned. We quickly fall into the habit of selective reading (and listening) of those things that support rather than clash with our worldview. It is comfortable, even when our particular outlook is gloom and doom.

Should we pity the Renaissance Man who would quest to be all-knowing rather than attempt to emulate him? Would not such a man be overcome in his inability to comprehend amidst the myriad of equally emphatically stated observations which diametrically oppose each other? Or perhaps even more so by those which share common ground before veering off in different directions.

Let’s, instead, see the genius of the simple-minded. Admiration is due for the streamlining of the decision process that seeks to borrow and repeat the opinions heard elsewhere as a ready substitute for the ponderous assembly and evaluation of raw (and often incomplete) facts. Not only does it conserve energies for our more entertaining and/or profitable activities, but it also lowers our sense of personal responsibility for the opinions we espouse in public as we redirect criticism towards those remote borrowed sources.

Triskaidekaphobia

Triskaidekaphobia

The power to procrastinate has always been mine;
It is an ability, someday, I may refine.
But my worst fault is preparation far in advance
For answers waiting for somebody to ask to dance.

I wish not to be caught by surprise, at least not twice,
So I rework solutions, though the first did suffice.
I am ready, quicker, when you ask the same again,
Until rapid responses cause you instead to complain.

“How,” you ask, “can I keep up busy, working all day
If you will anticipate the questions ere I say?
You grumble of your idleness, making you so bored,
When it’s your own bag of tricks full stuffed with answers stored.”

If I could just learn to wait, puzzles would take a week.
And you could bustle elsewhere while your answers I seek.
I could lower your expectations, filling my days
With inefficient bumbling instead of my old ways.

Macbeth on Mars

Macbeth on Mars
The infamous Macbeth has gathered renown
In cities and countries the world around.
His temptation, ambition, and destruction model
The lust and loss of a coveted citadel.

Despite his short struts upon the stages
Ending at the curtain throughout the ages,
Macbeth evokes from us an iconic remembrance
To climb to a level of global significance.

But who on Mars knows his name
And links their thoughts to his ill fame?
And outward, far amongst distant stars,
His meaning shrinks to nil just like ours.

By simple math, the proportion reduces
Of unchanged dividend as expanding divisor looses.
But is there truth in the numerator's steady state
As the opportunity of the denominator does dilate?

Does a man move to signify less
As his consideration does more address?
Is significance a relative ratio to the world
Or an absolute impact of an embodied role?

How does a man affect his world?
In solitary action outwardly hurled?
A thought, a ball, sent forth on sound,
Off the nearest obstacle to rebound.

And when that echoing ball comes back,
Does the man judge the extent of his impact?
And when from the cosmos, it never returns,
Does he despair of the void he discerns?

But people that volume with others to play,
To catch that ball, recast, and relay.
Though never again his bouncing ball to see,
His impact grows by the power of synergy.

The insignificant are those who clutch tight
What with others to share they might.
Nobody to propagate their selves in time nor space,
Alone in their walls to diminish without trace.

Doodling in the Dark

Doodling in the Dark

Sometimes our minds go adrift
With no pilot at the wheel.
Away they go, oh so swift,
Carried by our aimless zeal.

Gears still click 'tho time's not kept;
Those trusty tools know their trade.
Their output which none accept
Is nevertheless yet made.

They scoff at rest, defy sleep,
As they endlessly must churn.
O'er rolling mindscape they sweep
Seeking data and pattern.

With no challenge provided,
They build a task of their own.
Into dark holes, unguided,
They explore the land unknown.

So far away they can roam
While they're left so unattended.
But with a thought, they'll rush home
To do what we intended.