If you attend any college-prep school for boys, you understand that along with a classic education, there are the manly arts of football, basketball, and rifle clubs. That said, there is also the less manly arts of music, poetry and debating. Most everyone wants to be on the football team; those who can't often end up on the debating team. However, lately there's the popularly-reported twist to the tale. Long after the flashy runners have turned fleshy, the debaters (aka, nerds) often have the last laugh in adult life.
But wait, there's more to this story....!
Often the revenge-of-the-nerds turns out to be the glorification-of-the-glib. Just look around and notice how yesterday's articulate nerds often become today's power players. Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh are only two examples. Admit it -- glib is in style. In business, politics, academia, journalism, athletics, and in the mass media. If you've got the proverbial gift-of-gab, chances are you're a top salesperson ...a winning campaigner...a popular journalist...a highly interviewed player...and you usually show up on top rated programs from Saturday Night Live to the network news to hosting the latest game show to being featured on the newest reality show to being the MC at the next reunion.
Damn, but we just love the people who can charm and weave words together. Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler, Reagan; Orson Welles, Walter Cronkite, Maya Angelou; Oprah, Jay, David. Call it talent, call it personality, call it charisma, call it hustle. Whatever it is, it sells! Then, after it's all over, you sometimes wonder: What just happened??
Words can be tools or weapons, magic or delusion, beauty or monstrosity. They can be used like bricks on the Yellow Brick Road to emeralds, or steps down to the gates of hell. The funny thing about us is that as kids we were often convinced that beauty and brawn was what counted. Later in life, we still enjoy beauty and brawn...but now tend to follow wishes and words.
A closing plea. If the Trojans learned to beware-of-Greeks-bearing-gifts, when will we learn to beware of any gifts that sound too good to be true?
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I was at best "Middling" prior to college Jack and this Geezer fears he is more jaded of late ..... for not only do things oft sound "To Good To Be True" .... They even sometimes sound "To Bad To Be True" .... the sign that all things considered we are gradually slipping into a form of pedantic pessimism best reserved for academics and those prima donnas inclined to see themselves as "Builders All of The Lofty Premise" ...
ReplyDeleteSadly 'confirmation' & 'Commitment' to almost any 'new' enterprise or proposition is a place I dread to go for Trust is a very hard won prize in a world of daily shams perpetrated in all manner of forms ...
Geezer, being "jaded" seems to be the lesson of aging. On the other hand, understanding the "jading" can in itself be a lesson worth learning. Because it probably helps us be alert to the shams and the prima donnas...
ReplyDeleteThe lessons were supposed to get easier Jack .... they lied to me in my youth ...
ReplyDeleteAin't that the bloody truth!!!!!!!!!!!
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