Ed Firmage Jr.So What’s Wrong with Superiority?
Responding to my previous post, On Two-Year Olds Walking to Church, one reader dismissed my conservation ethic as “a concept of superiority [that] serves only your ego.” In truth anyone who believes anything would have to admit to a certain amount of holier-than-thou-ness. It’s part of the payback for having to give up ten percent of your income or having to cut off part of your penis or having to give up sex in order to appease that unappeasable gaseous vertebrate that we in the West have been worshipping, in various guises, since the stone age. Holier-than-thou-ness is also the juice that makes blogs tasty (or a waste of time, depending on your point of view or the hour at which you enter this particular circle of Hell).
But it’s not the obvious holier-than-thou-ness that is our primary problem, or even perhaps, our biggest problem. It’s the worship of mediocrity that is implicit in my reader’s critique. If there’s one thing you don’t want to be in America, it’s superior. You can be low. You can be stupid. You can even be criminal, but you can’t be superior. We idolize mediocrity. With frightening regularity, we place it in the White House, our altar of mediocrity.
Now, not all mediocrity is bad. There was the aurea mediocritas, the golden mean, of Aristotle and the Epicureans, which embodies the idea of balance in life. But George Bush isn’t golden and he isn’t balanced, though he is mean. With George, we’ve outdone ourselves in the elevation of mediocrity. In fact, even conservatives are saying we aimed too low on this one, who by comparison makes Calvin Coolidge look interesting and Andrew Johnson incorruptible.
The interesting thing is that we don’t uniformly choose mediocrity. American men, for example, don’t look for plain brides. They don’t dream of a strictly average number of cylinders under the hood. What would be wrong, then, with electing not your average but the best American to the White House? Americans spend trillions to have the best weapons of mass destruction that money can buy. We say that we want and we usually get overwhelming superiority in forces in the field. Why, then, do we delight in putting our superior weapons and superior soldiers at the beck and call of the world’s most mediocre man? Why, in effect, do we put an ancient, handicapped, Asian female at the wheel of our Ferrari? (”behold, my soul delighteth in political incorrectness unto my people that they may learn,” 2 Nephi 25:4; cf. also 2 Nephi 31:3, “for my soul delighteth in political incorrectness; for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men”).
This is the paradox of America, the greatest nation in the world and the most mediocre. Our greatness, if you believe Max Weber was a genius, and I do, comes from our Puritan work ethic, that hypostasis of utility. Through our much-busy-ness we prove that we are worthy of our busy God, who in the known history of the universe has taken only one day off. And like Him, we have accomplished a lot. In a mere 150 years, for example, we have managed to exhaust an entire continent of its God-given resources. So much for the glory of Caesar and Genghis Khan, mere pretenders when it comes to empire building.
Our work ethic, however, is also the genesis of our mediocrity. Because everything is about work, and because work is about money, everything in the end, here in our Puritan paradise, is about money. Everything can be and should be reduced to money. Mountains, forests, rivers, prairies, people are all convertible to dollars. It’s therefore not the uniqueness of things that we value, the uniqueness, for example, of the Oquirrh mountains, but their monetary equivalent. We take a unique and irreplaceable living thing, like a mountain range, with all of its trees, streams, caves, glens, and wildlife, and turn it into a gigantic artificial hole in the ground such as Kennecott that resembles every other gigantic artificial hole in the ground, of which there are now many scattered through Appalachia and the West.
How does this translate into our worship of human mediocrity, you ask? Well, like a mountain, I am utterly unique. I am a unique confluence of ideas, history, and genes that is unlike any other such confluence on the planet. The same is true of each of you readers (most of you, anyway). We’re each a walking wonder, even the most average of us. C.S. Lewis said that if we could see the divinity inside people we’d get down and worship each other. Being a devout unbeliever I translate Lewis thusly: If we could see the creative potential inside each of us, we’d start treating each other like people. But creativity is not what the work ethic wants. It’s only interested in your equivalent value in cash. It wants only as much creativity as is needed for the most devilish of us to make money. The work ethic is history’s greatest Ponzi scheme. It promises everyone what we call the American dream, but gives 80% of the wealth to only 20% of the players. It gives the other 80% the promise of a chance to be on top in another life (try and sell that one on Wall Street). The Mormon version of the Ponzi scheme, which differs from the generic Protestant only in having a more generous post-mortem plan of compensation, aka plan of salvation, even promises the unlucky 80% a chance at the the top job. You too one day can be the all-seeing eye at the top of the pyramid (see the back of the dollar bill for illustration). In the meantime, however, you’re expected to pay your tithes (the yearly minimum buy-in to belong to this particular network marketing scheme), work hard to make your upline richer, and get others to join. The ultimate expression of American mediocrity is its insistence that the bottom line is reality. If you accept this, then your calling and election as a cog in the machinery of the work ethic is assured.
Bear with me, folks, for we approach the denouement. When we reduce the irreducible to money, not much of anything is left, and none of the essence. The uniqueness is gone. The creativity is gone. The life is gone. “He is not here for He is risen.” What’s left is gray, inanimate mediocrity, the world reduced to its cash equivalent, people reduced to human resources. What’s left is less than inanimate, for what’s left was formerly living. This is not the kind of world I want to inhabit. My environmental ethic is about much more than saving resources. Ultimately, it’s a refusal to speak of the world in terms of resources. It’s a refusal to accept that the only way of looking at the world is through the lens of capitalism. It’s a statement of a relationship to life based on care and connection rather than profit and loss.
“To a man full of his own aims,” said Schopenhauer, “the world appears as a beautiful landscape on a plan of battle.” The Protestant ethic is all about people being full of their own aims, busily making money for the glory of God. In theory, it was about people demonstrating through their success that they enjoyed God’s favor. In reality, it is about turning other people into resources, and maximizing the profit that can be extracted from their mindless labor. In practice also, it’s the game plan for environmental catastrophe.
The environmental ethic I subscribe to refuses to accept the centrality of our aims. It refuses to accept that the treadmill we’ve been on since the Protestant revolution is in all respects either necessary or desirable. (In my personal version of the ethic, neither is the God for whom Protestants lo these many centuries have been working). This ethic naturally incites the missionaries of mediocrity to fury, for it is in fact a better way, a superior way. It is, as the critics, thinking they are saying something bad about it, say, a religion. It’s a religion in at least two important ways. First, it outlines a way in which to live one’s life. The way is called sustainability, which in fundamental respects is the antithesis of profit and loss. Second, it is the basis of spirituality, which is the expression of the human need for transcendence. What is it that we who adhere to this ethic seek to transcend? It is not the world, for this the only home we shall ever know. If we can’t make heaven here, we won’t make it anywhere. It is not the body, for without the body there is no soul. Soul is living, thinking, feeling matter, not ectoplasm. What we want to transcend is not sin but mediocrity, the gospel of the eternal status quo, in which life and creativity alike are simply tools for making money.
In the Mormon temple endowment (one of the many revelations of Joseph Smith that set him apart as America’s most original maker of religion, though you wouldn’t know it by looking at his present descendants), the devil tempts Adam not with sex or homo-sex, our present moral hangups, but with the enticing notion that, “You can have anything in this world for money.” Evil’s ultimate offer to mankind is the trick of turning life into money. The first generation of Joseph Smith’s disciples accordingly set out to remake society on the basis of something other than money. They failed nobly, crushed by the stampede of American capitalism that was lured west by the smell of gold. In not a few ways, the environmental ethic that I adhere to is an attempt to resurrect that notion of a society based on something other than money. I do my share of poking fun at the mythology that accompanied the early Mormon social experiment, but my admiration for the objective and its early practitioners is deeper than my cynicism. The early Mormons set out to overthrow mediocrity. Would that their descendants had the same fire in the belly. So I ask the naysayers, especially the LDS ones, “Is this your idea of heaven, then, a city full of bad air, asthmatic retirees, and boys with autism, and if it isn’t, then WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT? If environmentalism is hooey, what’s your alternative?
July 19th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Profligate consumption, but I’m admittedly misguided, being a dirty hippy and all.
July 19th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Believing that you are, when you are perhaps not.
That was pretty windy Ed. Enough to power a 2MW windmill.
Make the ultimate sacrifice, end your blast of CO2 forever, exit stage right…
We will make a memorial to the superior aspect of your action. Could there be any higher form of environmental commitment?
Anyone here that posts besides Ken and myself own a solar panel? Seen a fuel cell, let alone own one? Still waiting to hear about it. Anyone?
Walking to church like collecting cans is a panacea. Ante up for real, serving your ego to claim superiority is a nice game. Keeping it to yourself would make it all the more powerful.
July 19th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
W3, I have two hot water panels (each 30 inches X 10 feet) and two voltaics with sixteen 1.5 volt batteries (each the size of three shoeboxes stacked together). Initially spec’d for an off-shore oil rig. It’s all in a bit of a state of disrepair but close to being up and running again. Been away, that’s my excuse.
July 19th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
To Who is Watching the Watchers, the masked man whose real name no one knows.
This was about an issue (what I call the environmental ethic) and reactions, such as yours, to it. It was not about Ed Firmage or what he’s doing, or, in your opinion, not doing. You, Watcher, in particular have thrown cold water on the environmental ethic. So, leaving aside the ad hominem arguments, maybe you could address the issue. If you have a better alternative to the environmental ethic, I’d like to hear it.
This blog is certainly an oddity in being written by liberals for the entertainment of neocons. Degenerate hippies I can live with, especially those who may speak with tongue in cheek. Righteous cynics are another matter.
July 19th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Oh well, the world isn’t made to your order Ed. You have every right to complain.
Awesome, Cav, at least someone here is doing more than walking and actually has some environmental aspects in place.
My reaction to your ethos is one that has been evolved over a long time hearing people talk about their “ethos” and not really doing anything personally about it.
Like I mentioned, I have had a car that gets over 45 mpg for many years, have bicycles, use them, a motorcycle, 85 mpg, solar panel and system, and have reduced my daily water usage to under 10 gallons a day.
You come from a desert state that uses more water per capita than any other, some 330 gallons per day, per person. Coal burning electricity, very little smog controls on vehicles, do you wish me to go on? You do own a car, yes?
I guess it is just a little tiring to hear the constant carping when in fact not many here actually are willing to make meaningful sacrifices in their own lives, and instead blame the situation on fat,evil, stupid, etc etc, Mormons or republicans.
It is pretty pathetic by now. Every time I have offered up the realities of the alternatives, there is is never any engagement, sort of like your response. What is a great suggestion would be to actually make some meaningful changes(can collecting and walking to church are panaceas in my view).
I guess the best thing to do is turn your question directly back on to yourself, and ask substantively,
“what in the hell are you doing about it Ed”?
I wouldn’t question your activities or shine the light upon you, but then again, you are saying, or if I mistaken correct me, that you possess some form of “superiority” for your high minded created ethos, without showing me really that you are doing anything substantive at all.
July 19th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
To Who is Watching the Watchers, one further after-dinner afterthought (I think better when not distracted by chipotle salsa diverting the large percentage of my brain devoted to food):
Sniping does not an essay make. Perhaps blogging is mostly about sniping rather than real writing. I wouldn’t know because I”m an indifferent blogger. But I’m not an indifferent writer, and I agree with Ed Abbey that that writing is best that has high purpose. What I’d like to see from the sniping section, therefore, is an attempt at a coherent statement of high purpose, if high purpose is something you’re not genetically inimical too or incapable of producing with pen or keyboard.
To describe my own writing I wouldn’t use the word windy. Depending on my mood, I might say gusty, stormy, tempestuous, volatile, variable, unpredictable, mercurial, and (hopefully) hopelessly ill-behaved . But I’ll take it as a compliment that you think me capable of powering a 2 MW windmill. The question now before us is what sort of windmill you can power, or is a pinwheel more the size of what we’re looking at?
July 20th, 2008 at 12:12 am
glenn the Watcher just likes to argue and seems to have a lot of time to do that. He aught to set up something like a confessional in a church and have people come there to argue with somebody they don’t know on the other side of a partition. The door to the confessional could say “All Ye’ Who Enter Here, Give Up Hope of Winning an Argument.” That will be his great contribution to society.
Or…
As Ed says, find a something with a higher purpose and reward. I will forever be jealous of Ed Abbey and his being alone in Arches before the roads were put in.
July 20th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Somewhere along the way it came to me that snark would save the world. There’s more of course and your essays are a reflection of that. Thank you.
While what we’ve come to know as developement has had comforting effects, it has not been without negative side effects. Nor is developement static.The future holds the entire raft of human and other experience, some of which will be tackled by the human ability to bend our recources in technological ways - always onward and upward. Others, will knock some of us right out. We can only try, and be thankful, and curse.
W3, no less than anyone here, has his position, experience and hopes in directing the conversation. My hope is that in all the discussion, any one reader gets the feeling that there’s room to move, and that with that movement he or she can modify some of the effects of misdirected energy, begin to allow for a more appropriate solution to the problems that we face. The difficult part, and the part that W3 keeps pointing out, is that somewhere along the way it is possible that a problem or complex of problems may very well become INSURMOUNTABLE. He’d have us all face that potential as opposed to denying it.
Thanks.
July 20th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Walk up the Courthouse Wash someday Larry, you will get the idea.
No more time than you Larry, we all get our 24 hours a day. Meanwhile, it is good for you to finally acknowledge the exercise for what it is. What is pretty sad is that most arguments that cannot be met just end up here with ad hominem against the people that you disagree with. At length to win the day, you have to do more than that. Rock throwers always have an audience, and if you can’t defend yourself from them effectively, you aren’t doing your job. Just trying to make you better. Like lifting the weight you have never lifted before, or running farther and faster. Won’t happen without a challenge. Does that make you mad? Good.
Higher purposes are entirely subjective, something you share in common with the LDS you criticize. From my point of view, I really don’t know where they end, and you begin.
July 20th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Ed my comments are moderated, I have given solutions to the feel good approach, so if I don’t reply it is due to the fact that my replies are moderated.
July 20th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Unrestrained concepts of superiority have ended up like this.
July 20th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Ed Jr,
I love what you wrote while addressing The Watcher:
I’d like to use it on the “About page.”
I should remind you “Who Watching…” is Glenn Hoefer. He’s been many, many things going back to the first days of this blog. He is prolific becuz he rarely works.
And he is very angry at me specifically, which explains his obvious choice to haunt this blog as apposed to some other.
His comments are being moderated since last week. He occasionally goes overboard and becomes downright unpleasant and needs to be retrained for his own personal good and legal protection. His parents are quite amazing cool people, so I do it for them.
He’ll launch an new attack on me for this, and I will let all the comments through as long as they offend no one but me.
July 20th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
My attacks on you are always based on logic glenn. If I were half as smart as Al Gore, I could make Tom Brokaw look like the corporate shill he is, as Gore did this morning.
I really thought he would have enough pride in himself to not bring up the size of Gores house or his use of jet planes, but I was wrong. If Gore lived in a shack and paddled across the sea to attend important meetings, he would never hear the end of it. Of course Brokaw, unlike Cronkite, would never call a spade a spade and attack ANY corporation or their wars. He’s no better then Hannity.
July 20th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
It is something to be standing alone against the many here. Otherwise the glad-handing would commence unabated. 4 on 1 is a dubious honor, considering the competition. That I might agree with points here, and see the weakness of how those points are defended never ceases to amaze me.
Our side is getting its ass kicked. All day. No glad handing will change that reality.
Quite active on a few blogs, you all are not aware of.
July 20th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
How do you explain Larry that bush actually lives a “better” life by the standards on environmentalism in fact? If you don’t believe it, the truth of the 2 mens homes is absolutely true…as defined by snopes.com
I posted it, but through moderation I’m not sure it came on site. On the “open” blog. Where we are to pursue truth, and harmonize…oh yeah, my mistake, it is in print right there…it is still…”pending review”. Whose? S’pose that’d be Cliff.
How is it you give this enormous hypocrite(al) a pass Larry? I have no pride, that is the hubris you display, among others. What I do have is facts, so address them, and be sure to puff out your chest as you declare them. Maybe you could beat your chest as well while declaring.
July 21st, 2008 at 5:28 pm
glenn the watcher:
If you would stick to one name instead of assuming different identities, (including mine), to throw off the conversation here, maybe your comments would be show up immediately. That’s all I’ve ever asked for from you. You’re an intelligent guy. You don’t need to use tricks to make fools of us. Just make fools of us!
From some of your comments, you seem to be walking the walk when it comes to doing your part to help the environment, so shouldn’t you be excited that Al Gore has brought forth a challenge that must, not should, be met. How can we tell India and China not to destroy the earth if we don’t do something NOW! Are you counting on Bush to initiate an effort to save the world because he paid someone to make his house energy efficient?
July 21st, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Sorry Larry, you don’t get that. There is a reason for plausible denial.
You are just a tad slow Larry, if you are not aware of the real reason. I have only told you twice now, so try to understand.
Meanwhile, how can you get excited about al, he is about exciting as a lumbering farm animal. No one is as big a hypocrite as al, he can’t lead any but fools. I would just as soon promote the changes myself. al isn’t trustworthy, he isn’t much of a fighter, look at the way he folded his tent 8 years ago. There are better people than al, that actually walk the walk.
We are not going to be telling China and India anything. They don’t have to listen, as they are of course sovereign, it is arrogance to think we have any business doing so, but typically American. Clean up your own house first, get a system, live in a tent, I don’t know, something, the time for parading with a sign is about done, wouldn’t you say?
I fear your ability to adopt new information Larry may be as resistant as desert calicoes is to water.