Clean Pipes
In the last four weeks four of my friends changed four of their last names. Oh well, my plumber tells me, world's going down the drain – all you can do is pick where you get flushed.
Good morning.
Naturally this plumber horrified me. But something concerned me more. It was twofold, actually. Partly I got a bad feeling about his seeming inapacity to understanding gum, let alone my overflowing toilet. Mostly it was his coffin.
Got it made up in Nederland, he tells me, even carved his own epitaph. I didn't ask. I'm the kind of person who's pretty OK with being dead one day, but never quite in the mood to select a graveyard. The problem with the plumbing, he says, is a five year old clog. Can you fix it?
Of course. But one clog fixed, he sits back on his shoes, looks expectantly at me, is another waiting to happen. So, how can you fix that?
He thinks. Larger pipes, he concludes.
And what about larger clogs?
He pauses and shortly composes a heartfelt plea for larger awareness of fluid dynamics.
The study of dynamics is called Systems Theory: all things change, so what are you gonna do about it? Analyze the systems that cause change in all things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_Theory
The CIA helps overthrow a government in Ethiopia, but the same situation will rise up again, elsewhere, unless governments become more cooperative or America becomes more tolerant. How do you change the system to give rise to fewer problems? Houses catch fire so you build more fire stations, but Systems Theory dictates laws forcing more fire-retardant construction materials. Land is given to alleviate the suffering of a people following a great holocaust, but System Theory dictates international rights protecting others from being persecuted in the process. A hungry man will eat a school of fish, but Systems Theory dictates fishing school.
If the man I spoke to is any representation, plumbers find these theories largely unhelpful. Still, I like them. Systems Theory itself is evolving at a very fast rate I tell him - and faster still is the Systems Reality it is supposed to represent. Does this make sense?
None at all, he assures me, because you talk about change like it's always the same. You draw lines in the sand but people walk over them like a blonde over double yellows and it's probably stupid to follow them anyhow.
We get upset with the poor choice of political candidates in America so we vote for the opposition most of the time, but Systems Theory dictates Republicans getting water-tortured.
Eventually there are accelerations of accelerated rates of exponential change. Eventually there will be common threads of change that define the rate that the change changes at and we will have some order, some manner of prediction, right? Nope, he reasons, I see what you're saying... just too many pipes.
At first I disagree. But I take a walk this morning to a Starbucks and eventually the rate of acceleration we are evolving at will be accelerating so quickly and the Systems Meta-Meta-Theory will be so mind-bogglingly complicated the world will be a tie-die wash of combatitive religions, amoral populism, twenty-seven different Skittles flavors, men with other men's hearts beating inside of them, six dollar coffees, country music outselling rock and roll, Cheney, living souls digging their own graves, and four billion people who believe an invisible force is trapped inside our biological skins awaiting a release foretold by ancient Middle Eastern prophets.
Yep, remember him saying, best part is you still get to pick where you're flushed.
