Time

As I get older, I find myself thinking more about time - or the lack of it.

I look at the list of things that I have wanted - and expected - to fit into my life. I still spend time on many of them, but the realization comes that some of them will not fit - even under the best of circumstances.

So, it is time to look at the list with an eye to saying, "That will never happen. I should rid myself of everything doing with that project, and free up resources it consumes for other things that might still fit."

I am not writing about putting aside something "for now." I am writing about putting it away things I have long wanted with the recognition that they will never be brought out again.

There isn't enough time.

I have not been working on this blog because I have been spending time on one of those other projects - a project that had best be shelved and forgotten. The fact is, there us no way I can fit both into my allotted days. It is time to say that one of them goes away - and will never return.

Having made that decision, I will be returning my efforts to this blog.

The blog itself has not produced the results I would have liked. There are two reasons for that. One has to do with not really wanting it to succeed - I hate attention.

Another comes from the fact that boastful certainty seems to draw crowds, and I am too aware (and too appreciative of the fact) that boastful certainty is a vice - the vice of arrogance (if one believes the boast), or manipulative deception (if one boasts anyway while aware that the boasts are unfounded).

It seems to me that there is a strong correlation between stupidity and zealous certainty. Today, we see in the Tea Party faction absolute conviction in the rightness of their cause. We also see in the Tea Party faction the very model of mind-boggling ignorance of science and history. These people not only fail to get the facts right. They do not care to get the facts right - because they do not want to shake the fantasy they have invented with the possibility of unpleasant truths. They utter the most absurd fictions, and they cheer each other for it, because a fiction uttered with absolute conviction outweighs a dozen hesitant facts.

So the larger, smarter, and wiser portion of the population ends up getting stampeded by a herd of intellectually blind and self-confident cattle.

Cattle who would never permit themselves and ounce of hesitation or a second thought.

Cattle who would never think to themselves, "Perhaps I am not the perfect master of all knowledge and wisdom and that somebody who disagrees with me might - just might - have the right answer."

It is one of those unfortunate and unpleasant facts about the world - that people are disposed to treat the ignorant and arrogant as if they have the perfect knowledge and wisdom they claim to have. And that, at the same time, people are disposed to ignore those who are both aware of their fallibility and unwilling to see their mistakes bring harm to others.

Allowing, as we have recently seen, the ignorant and the arrogant rule the discussion.