Building the Arte

A few months ago I needed a pentagon so I used ruler-and-compass construction to make one. But then I kept walking past the cardboard where I'd drawn it going "wow, this is a really cool design, it looks like an arcane sigil, I should really make something based on it." Two weeks of obsession later, here we are!

Your best case scenario after that is you talk to someone who actually knows what the fuck they're talking about and you get embarrassed because you can't answer basic questions about your own ideology because you never learned anything past "the ruling class/capitalists/politicians are making things bad and if we got rid of them the bad things would all go away!"

Your worst case scenario is obviously the woo-to-fascist pipeline and you end up believing Jews are poisoning American food supplies with GMOs in order to turn us all into beta cucks, so like . . . maybe just stop blaming "them" before you fall down that route.

"They created the 40-hour workweek to --" QUERY: What was the average working-class person's weekly workload before the 40-hour workweek was standardized?

"They created credit scores to --" QUERY: How did banks determine who was and wasn't worthy of a loan before credit scores?

"They promote bad media to --" QUERY: What was the average working-class person's entertainment before this era of "bad" media?

"They invented schools to crush children's creativity and --" QUERY: What was the average working-class child's daily life like before universal public schooling?

To be clear. Before someone accuses me of pissing on the poor.

I AM NOT SAYING "Stop opposing current social practices because Things Used To Be Worse, stop complaining about a 40 hour workweek because great-grandpa worked 90 hours a week uphill both ways in the snow --"

We should advocate a shorter workweek, actually! We should advocate abolishing credit scores, actually! We should advocate non-authoritarian schooling, actually!

In this reposted interview from his second term as a Senator, Graham was asked why he was such an ardent supporter of a muscular and aggressive approach to American foreign policy. He said something like this:

When my parents died, I had to be an adult for myself and my sister. And so I kept looking for the They. I kept figuring that They had to be around here somewhere. They met in some room, the experts, the ones who had some real expertise and knowledge in this field or that area of government or these other issues. Except that, everywhere I went, no matter what room I walked into, it was Just Some Guys. There was no They making decisions with serious expertise. It was Just Some Guys, of mostly average knowledge and mostly average intelligence, doing the best they could with the information they had — and mostly not doing things even as well as they could be done. In at least some cases, The Guys in question were bumbling idiots, too. In the military, then as a county and city attorney, then in the state legislature and the US House and US Senate, I kept looking for the They, the folks that really knew what was going on, and I never ever found them. It was always Just Some Guys, making all the decisions.

And I thought, Well. I could be one of the Just Some Guys that make all the decisions, too.

If you live in a nominal democracy, may I suggest that you adopt Lindsay Graham's attitude? There is no mysterious They, just A Bunch of Guys who are likely no better equipped to understand the issues and make decisions than you are.

I made a Room Building tutorial! Lemme know if it helps! 🧡