Stuff That Doesn't Matter

Here's a "flip it" for Cody:

A Midwestern friend of mine passes on the following exchange, overheard in a local coffee shop today. His title was "Holy shit people are getting dumber"

20something Guy reading a trivia question:

What U.N member nation has a flag with distinct designs on each side?

20something Girl:

What is the U.N.?

The flip it position is that they're not getting dumber, just focused on the things that matter.

The UN as it exists today is a vestige of the cold war, looking for relevance in a world that no longer works the way the UN's designers thought it would or should. (Not that it ever really did. The reality of how the UN worked and the things it did was far, far away from the idealistic vision Eleanor Roosevelt started with.)

A things stand, it's pretty irrelevant today except as a historical oddity.

It's another example of how old things don't usually go away, they just stop mattering. The Catholic Church once ruled the world. It didn't go away, it just stopped mattering very much.

Likewise the French, Portugese, Dutch and other Colonial empires.

One can add to this list such future things that won't matter, such as all of today's paper currencies, the actions of the Fed and (someday, can't happen soon enough) the supply of crude oil.

History is full of institutions and actitvities that mattered a lot once (or at least seemed to), but which don't anymore. Sadly, many of these still consume time and effort that could be better directed towards actually accomplishing something, rather than just consuming a huge chunk of East Side Manhattan real estate and giving corrupt third-world officials exuses to flaunt NYC traffic and parking rules.

Did you realize that the US and Russia have been engaged in setting the framework for a new round of Strategic Arms Reduction Talks? Didn't those die sometime during the Reagan Administration? Nope, still there, they just don't matter very much except to a few people who are involved in such things and think the rest of us should care.

And most people ignore them, as they probably should.

Just like the UN.

-btc

Comments

[BelowTheCrowd]

Probably have to add "The Olympics" to the list of things that don't matter anymore either. Doesn't anybody think it's odd that individual athletes, competing mostly in individual sports, should do so only if they are able to be "approved" as members of national teams? How about just inviting all the world's best and letting them compete as themselves? That might be relevant.

Or maybe not. The whole thing has ceased to be anything meaningful, just an excuse to charge more for commercials.

-btc