I'll Take Compost Over Hubris Any Day

Beth Kanter is blogging & twittering at this week's New Politics Institute (NDN) New Tools, New Audiences Forum.  She just twittered a quote from Joe Trippi, a long-time political consultant best known as campaign manager for presidential candidate and former Vermont governor Howard Dean:

all the genius in the world can't do anything if you're running a top down campaign

A great deal of our culture has been built built on on top down assumption - smart people are at the top, they know better,  anything (from sugar water to political ends) can be packaged as a campaign.

The Greeks had a word for the confidence in genius that often exists at the top - ὕβρις.  That word - translated as hubris nowadays - is a term meaning excessive pride, self-confidence or arrogance, often resulting in fatal retribution.  In Ancient Greece, "hubris" referred to actions taken in order to shame and humiliate the victim, thereby making oneself seem superior.

When I move around our culture nowadays, a lot of these top down structures are collapsing, often under the sheer weight of their own hubris, occasionally through a rival structure or even an opposing act of violence.  I am certain we live in a both/and world (rather than either/or), so I do not expect that I will ever see a totally bottom up mindset.

What I am seeing - and expect to see for the rest of my days on this earth - is a mixture of various collapsing & decaying organic structures, campaigns & substances.  This is what the French called composte , "a mixture of leaves, etc., for fertilizing land"  - what we call nowadays compost.

image from penelope's...

Compost can be ugly to look at, even worse to smell.  There are different ways to compost, starting with layers of 'brown' and 'green' biodegradable waste mixed with garden soil. 'Brown' waste refers to old straw, tough vegetable stems and hedge clippings. 'Green' waste refers to biodegradable waste that breaks down faster, such as fruit, coffee grounds, cut flowers, and grass clippings.

Whether brown or green, table scraps or cut flowers - those ensconced in hubris, looking down from their top views, are very likely to complain about the sight & smell of the compost that surrounds.

But here is the glorious thing - compost is an outstanding growing medium, the fancy science term for the stuff that other stuff rises and grows in.   And no matter what all the genius in the world says, what all the top down campaigns shout louder & LOUDER

There is no denying that there is an abundance of new life rising from this compost heap, what Walt WhitmanThis Compost:

The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree

describes in his poem

Comments

[Beth Kanter]

Wow, great post. Love the compost analogy

[John L]

Great post Bob.