Economists and certain other sociologists make a mistake similar to some behaviorists. Where Skinner said, “All we can study scientifically is that which is empirically observable,” others took him to mean, “All that exists is that which can be empirically observed.” Likewise, economists and sociologists are all but forced to look at cash flow because it is the easiest to quantify of our value exchanges. But some stop there, acting and writing as if that is all there is. Sad.

Thank God for the occasional poet to remind us better.

I guess I just have a harder and harder time understanding how hiding things about oneself to create a persona is anything other than deception and ultimately the kind of thing that make one soul-sick and bereft…

Meanwhile, d’you recall a ways back, maybe 2005, a flap over some ISPs having to hand server logs over to “the Man” and in the wake that flap said ISPs deciding they didn’t really need to keep such logs in the first place? Not-logging was wise in the sense of protecting customer privacy, and there’s a practical/pragmatic corollary in what your sociologist speaker was saying, as with the Mae West quote.

Still, one’s personal life runs by different criteria. To thine own self and all that rot. I keep oblios as skanky as it is on the principle that skeletons in the closet rot and mildew and stink up the whole house, but on the porch they bleach white in the sun and look like some kind of avant-garde wind chime. And if I’m gonna lose a gig or affiliation or whatever over what’s in my head I’d rather know sooner than later.

But that’s not the proper attitude for capital-S “Success”, now is it? Like I was ever in line to be a Trump or Gates or Bush. Feh.