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["clanSkeen" <sgian AT planetc.com>]

> There is no reasoning with someone who lives in an excuse driven world.

The most frustrating work I've attempted to date was some years ago when I 
was doing custom programming with a partner (using Lattice C, it was that 
long ago).  When the program or subroutine would crash, I immediately 
started combing through the code to see where we'd made a mistake. 
Invariably Roger's conclusion was "There's a bug in the compiler."  and he 
went about to PROVE that his code was sound but it was only the compiler's 
fault.   In some four years of doing this work the score for errors ended up 
being:   Programmers:  43,234    Compiler:   0

I did 90% of the work, sometimes 110% of the work since I found Roger's 
errors while he was still setting up tests to prove that the compiler was 
buggy.  Nor did it do any good three years into the partnership to remind 
him that in three years of trying to prove the compiler was faulty, he was 
wrong 100% of the time.  "Yeah, maybe, but this time I'm sure!  I didn't 
make any mistakes, there's a bug in the compiler."

I've seen that paradigm at play anytime I encounter "successful" people or 
wastrel people.  At the drop of a hat, the successful begin an intense and 
meticulous examination of their decisions and actions.  If examples other 
than theirs appear, they examine them just as closely to see if there is 
anything to be gleaned from them.  Even direct criticisms are thrown into 
the fining furnace to burn away the dross and see if anything remains might 
be of service.  Then and only then does the successful person look around to 
see if there is some external thing affecting their success.

The wastrel is not so but looks everywhere but within themselves for the 
reason for their wastrel-ness.  It's always someone else's fault, external 
influences, circumstances.  In Pearl S Buck's "The Good Earth"  Wang Lung's
wastrel uncle comes, as it says, "slouching along a furrow" to ask his 
nephew for some money - which annoyed the crap out of the protagonist 
because he had
worked in the fields for his money while the uncle and his uncle's whole 
family lounged about:

"I ask you pardon, my uncle, for not stopping in my work.  These beans, 
must, if they are to bear, as you know, be cultivated twice and thrice. 
Yours,
doubtless, are finished.  I am very slow - a poor farmer - never finishing 
my work in time to rest."  His uncle understood perfectly Wang Lung's 
malice, but
he answered smoothly,  "I am a man of evil destiny.  This year out of every
twenty seed beans, one came up, and in such poor growth as that there is no 
use in putting the hoe down.  We shall have to buy beans this year if we are 
to eat them."

And that is why the excuse driven are spring-loaded and on a razor's edge to 
defend their illusion that it's all SEF.  Even the most common discourse 
threatens to shatter that illusion and evokes a reaction:

"A hand powered mill will grind enough masa for a large meal in about ten 
minutes."
"Oh, yeah, there you go again telling everyone what to do!"

And you are r-r-r-r.  You are r-r-r-r.    You are ......... right.  (There I 
said it, Lynda is right).  There's no reasoning with the excuse-monger. 
Reasoning eventually comes up against reality and experience.  To excuses 
there is no end.


James