Enthusiasm

 

Getting the van towed back to Zach's place today.  Gotta see what abuse the old horse had to suffer under the negligent love that the younger gave it.  I think that I will keep it around here to use for supply runs.  It is already sunk cost and the insurance cost is almost laughable.  The key to this is to keep mileage low.  I think that I will try for less than 500 miles a month.  Might even keep half that number in mind as an ideal, but I am as capable as anyone of not meeting ideals.   

Gotta finish up today and then spend some time this weekend getting prepped for a short workweek and eleven days in a row not on the hill.  I also have to make a decision as to whether or not I want to consider moving back to Vantucky for an easier job and close-to-family.  For the mid-term this is looking attractive, but I am not certain that it really makes sense if I consider that, due to the aging process, my short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals have been somehow been consolidated into an amorphous blob.

Screed

I just finished JMG's recent post about the "Fall of the Chosen Ones".  Much food for thought there.  Starts out as a kind of self-aggrandizing soliloquy on literary criticism and a somewhat shameless plug for his books (BTW, they are quite entertaining and fun, I have all of them loaded on my Kindle).  FYI:  I don't begrudge him a bit of this, a man has to eat

But, I am kind of torn as to whether I like the post or not.  As such, I find it as good a piece as JMG has put out, but now I am kinda wondering about the idea that the common man is the source of renewal. 

Look, I am as Prole as a person can be.  I may be overeducated, I may even be physically imposing and even somewhat charming.  In many ways, I am the very image of what the elite would like to be, and having lived in this shell for the past 65 years, I know that I am not to be trusted to make the right decision in a crunch.  So I know enough to reject the idea that the elite can lead us out of the mess we are in.

But my Prole background tell me that the Hoi Polloi that is the common man is equally unprepared and incapable of acting in anything resembling a rational manner.  In a sense, the neoliberal idea that the individual acts only in a manner that he feels best benefits him is in the way of my agreeing with JMG on this.  I know my people, and altruism isn't one of their major traits. 

I am thinking that this is a discussion to be continued, I am going to ponder it for a bit.