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writing for godot

Tithonus of the Mind

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Written by John Turner   
Wednesday, 15 December 2010 05:02


The world is awash in tired clichés. Yet no matter how weary they become they seem to lack the ability to die.

I‘m having difficulty grasping their appeal or understanding what keeps them going and going and going.

I was reminded of their persistence this morning reading Tom Friedman’s column titled, “We’ve Only Got America A.” Mr. Friedman, by the way, may actually have been transformed into a physical manifestation of the cliché. He was reminding us that the world must have a national guarantor of stability or else terrible things will happen. Great Britain supplied this critical need until the Second World War. Then the United States took over and has supplied it ever since. But now there are questions whether the United States can and will continue in the vital role.

Exactly what is the vital role? What stability has the United States offered to the world for the past two generations? What would happen if this offering were to dissipate?

Friedman doesn’t answer because in the world of cliché there is no need to answer. That’s because nobody asks. When a cliché of this sort is uttered, the wise men shake their heads solemnly and agree that something must be done. And after they assert that something must be done a sufficient number of times, they often decide to have a war. Young men are gussied up in fancy suits, with all sorts of straps to hang their gear on, and are sent off somewhere to kill thousands of people. Posters proclaim that they are all, every one of them -- except, of course, for a few bad apples -- heroes, and stability has been protected. The wise men feel amply justified. The dead people don’t feel anything. That’s because they are dead.

All of this, naturally, costs a great deal of money, and when something costs a great deal of money then there’s a great deal of money to be made off it.

I sit here, look out my window at a quiet snowy scene, and wonder what would happen on Liberty Street if America was not guaranteeing worldwide stability. I even go so far as to wonder whether there is worldwide stability and why, if there is, I can’t find it in my searches. Then I turn back to my computer and read, and read, and read. And nobody tells me anything about it.

Might that be because there is nothing to tell? Is there is just the cliché, and its servants like Mr. Friedman?

What do you suppose is going on in Friedman's mind when he preaches to us about the requirement for a great nation standing at the gate and not letting chaos in? Does he have any specific thing in mind that would manifest this chaos? Or is there just a cloud out there, somewhere, he thinks he feels?

If someone told me that in some part of the world a great many people were starving and wracked by disease, and that both the starvation and the sickness could be dramatically diminished by supplying the afflicted people with a moderate amount of food and drugs, then I might be suspicious about the facts. But I could find out about that. I could look elsewhere to discover if there were adequate testimony to the truth of what was being asserted. Then I could decide how much effort I should give to mitigating the situation.

On the other hand, if someone tells me that a great danger is looming because the nation that formerly protected worldwide stability might stop protecting it, how am I to find out anything? I have no idea what he’s talking about.

That’s the nature of cliched discourse. When you dig into it you can’t find anything there. Still it rolls forward, basically unimpeded, and seems to underlie most of the world’s political conversation.

I guess we could conclude it’s simply mental laziness and that humans, by nature, enjoy being mentally lazy. They don’t want to think any harder than they have to. That may be true. But why does mental laziness have to exhibit itself through the cliché? Why can’t people just think about what they’re going to have for dinner tonight, and leave it at that? I suppose that’s what many people do. Yet a considerable percentage seem to feel they ought to be thinking about serious things, and the cliché is the easiest way to address the feeling without actually thinking about anything. That leaves us with the question why they feel the need to think seriously. But that’s a query for another day.
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