Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
A Sea-Nymph
(1879 )

"…this world remains wise enough to usually deny us such privileges."

One EndDays feature involves taking information out of context. Facts can natively seem confusing enough, but taken out of context, they cruelly turn false, rendering their champions foolish, though rarely in their own eyes. I suspect we all engage in this business, largely innocently, though others, especially those we characterize as opponents, might try, without success, to clue us in. We suspicion more deeply then, and might even wonder when an old reliable turned toward some newly-imagined dark side. We rail on about emerging divisions while staunchly defending whichever side we somehow find ourselves on.

A seeming raft of issues has been subsumed with Flacts, facts innocently or more malevolently taken out of context. While many such commissions seem inadvertent, some relatively bad actors specialize in obscuring context. They tend to speak in unquestionable absolutes, equating opposition with ignorance and worse. Some of the fuss amounts to an absence of sophistication. Those who cannot imagine themselves reaching a reviled conclusion without a little lubrication seem to have no problem imagining corruption when none has occurred. Gone, it seems, are the days when loyal oppositions could argue finer points without villifying each other’s position. Now, they’re either for us or against us, and those against us do not deserve much respect, or get it.

Further, it seems to me that those who even inadvertently deal in Flacts take considerable pride in their resulting ignorance. They imagine processes that couldn’t possibly exist, and they often propose draconian resolutions for otherwise relatively pedestrian complications. Had they been in charge, powered flight could never have been achieved, for they would have insisted upon someone first definitively solving the gravity problem. Powered flight only became possible once the age-old insistence on definitely resolving the gravity problem was abandoned in favor of perhaps a much less definitive and even inelegant resolution. Notice how many other problems were also not resolved before powered flight took off. Those gasoline engines sputtered toxic smoke. Some unfortunate pilots and passengers would ultimately die in crashes. Success ultimately relied upon a series of serious compromises, each of which preserved potentially unacceptable risks. Our eventual acceptance of those unreasonable risks allowed progress, after a fashion. They also preserved complications.

In some real and certain sense, we might just be practicing. Few difficulties have ever been definitively resolved, and fewer still resolved beforehand. We tend to need to dabble in over our heads and create difficulties worse than anybody originally imagined before our true genius kicks in, or, often, not. When it doesn’t kick in, some turn cynical while others, seemingly uncharacteristically, turn even more optimistic. No better self-portrait of the human condition exists. What doesn’t happen, or happens much less often, involves waiting until all the critical questions have been definitively resolved. That so rarely occurs as to barely warrant a mention, yet this seems to be the first defense of those who arrive at the latest gunfight bearing Flacts; destined to lose again, but lose with noblesse oblige, having been right in principle if not in practice. They might come to feel oppressed, but only for the best of all possible reasons. Their oppression might prove to be their chief blessing in this life. Losing opinions tend to be their own reward.

Now that The Muse has become a Port Commissioner, she sometimes gets sideways with constituents. She invites those with questions into conversations where she usually manages to demonstrate that she has at least finished her homework. She can confidently assert whatever she asserts and feels comfortable enough in her skin to admit to her own, sometimes embarrassing, ignorance. She’s never tempted to fiddle with her facts, though she’s often subjected to ad hominem attacks from a not always that loyal of an opposition. She, like each of us, finds herself exposed to others’ ReceivedWisdom, and that wisdom only occasionally proves itself to be terribly wise. Such disagreements might carry no resolution, especially when and if Flacts subsume the validity of actual facts taken within a given context. We each hope for the future we imagine, though this world remains wise enough to usually deny us such privileges.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz