June 29th: You Never Wanted an Elephant Inside a Boa Constrictor


The Little Prince Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste

Since I am still restoring older posts, I have decided to use old ones when the day fits. So this was originally published on theanatomyofmelancholy.com on June 29, 2018. I will stick with the same message as overall it still applies. It is uncanny (or perhaps completely predictable) that my head is in the exact same place as it was 1, 096 days ago.

French writer Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste was born June 29, 1900. He wrote The Little Prince.

Today is the third day in a row that I have started a post, put considerable time into researching, only to throw in the towel when I realize it is the end of the day and I still only have lists and scaps. Is everything feeling rushed and left half-done for you these days as well?

I was about to give up and hit close on this browser window, when I saw one the names of another person I had read about for today — Claude-Frédéric Bastiat, an economist born June 29, 1801. He wrote an essay called Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas (That Which We See and That Which We Do Not See) in 1850, which is known as the parable of the broken window. He argues that it does not make economic sense for societies to spend money to repair the destruction. He works it out that spending money to repair, for example, a broken window, does not result in a gain to society, even if the glazier gets paid to replace a window. Basically, it is a libertarian appeal to consider opportunity costs.

Fine, fine — I don’t particularly agree with his assessment, but I see how he got there. Anyway, it got me thinking about sunk cost fallacies (the tendency to throw good money into a bad investment rather than walk away, because it is enormously difficult for people to abandon what they have put time and/or money into ). It did give me the resolve hit to select+ delete a whole page of work and just make a post about the writer of one of my very favorite books.

Aren’t we all just a sunk cost fallacy, getting worse for the wear year after year, but we persevere? If only to stick it a thorn in the side of all of those smug little misanthropes who walk around muttering about population control, and Darwin Awards, and the crisis of the radical alt-left. In The Little Prince, as the prince cries and misses his rose, far away on his home asteroid B- 612, the fox says “It is the time you have lost for your rose that makes your rose so important.” We are all each our own sulking little rose and the one who mourns for it.

As for insight and advice about what this means for the days ahead, I wrote it all down for you and put it in the box with the little sheep. You’re welcome.