November 2, 2003

• The Dualistic Fallacy as applied to outhouses and woodstoves

  
  

  The dualistic fallacy is one of the more seductive ways that we  like to kid ourselves, make us think that this old world in particular and the local universe in general is simple and easy to comprehend, thus saving the human biological machine from the necessity of stirring uneasily in its slumber, God forbid actually waking up. 

  
  

  Put simply, and probably way too simply, the Dualistic Fallacy is what happens when we try to think in terms of opposites: God vs Satan, nature vs nurture, jobs vs the environment, Godzilla vs Mothra.  Okay, maybe that last one wan’t such a good example.  But you have probably heard jokes or observations that start “There are two kinds of people. . . .”  For instance, there are two kinds of people in the world–those who see the glass as half-full, and those who see it as half-empty.  (Never mind that there are those of us who just see the  lip-marks on the rim.)  Robert Benchley addressed this issue when he observed that there are two kinds of people in the world–people who think there are two kinds of people in the world and people who don’t.

  
  

  I got to thinking about this early today as I was idly gazing at the fire in the woodstove and musing on the simplicity of it all.  City people have things like electric heaters (who knows where the juice that runs them comes from, or how) or complicated central heating thingies with fans and ducts and blowers and humidifiers and ionizers, some of which are steam-driven yadda yadda yadda.  Here, we have a neighbor who kills trees for us, and hauls over their dismembered corpses and dumps them in our yard.  We (and by “we”, I mean Kathy’s strapping 23-year-old teenager who lives here) chop them up some more, carry the wood into the house and burn it in this metal box with a pipe running up through the roof to take away the smoke.  It couldn’t be simpler. (Actually, it could–Kathy’s best friend used to live in a place where she burned her firewood in a wheelbarrow in the middle of the room, and the smoke went out through a hole in the roof.)

  
  

  Same thing goes for what I will politely call solid waste management.  City people shit in these porcelin affairs, waste 3 to 5 gallons of fresh water to get the shit down through little pipes that join up with bigger pipes and sewers and conduits and mains and on and on and on until the shit winds up in the ocean or in some multi-million dollar treatment plant.  What happens to the shit after that, and who or what ultimately consumes it, is something I’d rather not think about.

  
  

  Here it’s a LOT simpler.  We go outside and shit into a hole in the ground, and it tends to stay put.  That is, unless it is winter and the shit forms fecal stalagmites that someone (usually me) has to break off and heave out into the woods. Like I said–simple.

  
  

  This suits me just fine.  I have come to prefer simple to complicated.  In handguns, I’ll take a revolver to a semi-automatic any day. In cars, I’ll take one with a stick shift over an automatic.  In clothing, I’ll take buttons or snaps over zippers any day–and don’t even talk to me about velcro–who the hell wants to wear something that makes a noise like someone being scalped every time you take the damn thing off?

  
  

  And shaving?  Forget shaving.  First you have to go through the electric vs blade thing.  If electric, will it be rotary or back and forth? Plug-in or battery?  Do you use pre-shave or not? And if you go for blades, it is ten times worse.  Foam, soap, or gel?  Straight razor or safety razor?  Single or double-edge or trac two or turbo track or whatever the hell they call them now.  A good old fashion beard suits me–a real beard, not one of these new-fangled why-bother beards that are sculpted and shaped and styled and  that have to be trimmed every twenty minutes to stay looking properly trendy.  No thank you very much.  When I start eating too many mustache hairs, I take a wee pair of scissors to it, and when I start looking like Gabby Hayes, my sweety trims the whole works for me. All I have to do is shut up for a few minutes.  Simple.

  
  

  I used to think that simpler was better, that there was some sort of Rousseau-like virture in simplicity.  Now I’m not so sure.  Look at modern cars.  The average new car has more computer power in it than the spaceship that first landed on the moon.  (True fact, I’m not making this up.)  This has been a bane to shade-tree mechanics, but there may be something good about having a car that will never need a tune-up as long as you own it, or never lets you get lost.  Since domesticated primates as a group are remarkably stupid, maybe it is just as well that our tools are getting smarter and smarter.

  
  

  And look at the multi-species household of which I am a member.  The domesticated primates in this pack all have terribly complicated minds.  It would be way less interesting and not nearly as much fun if we were all, well, simple-minded.

  • 2:27 pm
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