I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary. The incomprehensible can be scary but the arbitrary tends to be merely exhausting. Unless the stakes are high, such as in paperwork around taxes or passports and visas. Then the exhaustion becomes tinged with anxiety. Either way the steady increase in arbitrariness creates, in the name of progress, a growing ocean of mind-numbing details you just have to know. Or figure out the hard way by re...
