Civilization's Dirty Secret

[forsyth]

For all the glories and conveniences civilization brings people, there's one problem with it.

It's BORING. All of the little, necessary work to keep things running? Not exciting. It's papers and numbers and routine maintenance and zoning laws and public meetings and procedures and plenty of non-exciting minuate. It's all the little things that need to be done and done right and when they're all done, then you've got the giant pretty skyscraper. Now you just need people to clean it.

Excitement is what happens when things go wrong.

Comments

[kalifla.livejournal.com]

Excitement is also a frequent cause of death.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

Indeed. And not just heart attacks for old overweight men who get over-excited looking at young ladies, either, despite what cartoons would have you believe.

[kalifla.livejournal.com]

I was pointing out your specific denotation of excitement as outlined in this post.

Cat macro.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

I know. I just like wordplay and cartoon references.

Reply macro.

[kalifla.livejournal.com]

Failboat macro. Indication of abrupt change of communication style. Utter refusal to explain further accompanied by giggling.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

Manatee macro. Witty retort, followed by veiled insinuations. Arched eyebrow.

[jokermage.livejournal.com]

Like when the skyscraper collapses killing hundreds because no one cared about the little things?

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

"For the want of a nail, the kingdom was lost."

Though, with good design, it'd have to be the want of quite a few nails, and reality is a lot more fuzzy than the neat chains of causality that illustrates, since it depends not just on the nail, since it doesn't cover the times when the horse lost a shoe and the messenger got a ride from a passing farmer, and the reinforcements got there just in time for their Big Damn Heroes moment, or the time when the reinforcements were led by an idiot and got ambushed, or...