Tiny is as tiny does, or a level of the Inferno that Dante overlooked.

"The first and best victory is to conquer self; to be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile."
-- Plato

More than two thousand years later, what is the condition of the New Albanian municipal agora?

We visited one street corner yesterday, meaning to find out.

Excuse me – can you point out New Albany’s grassy knoll?

In search of amusement on a dreary December Sunday afternoon, NA Confidential donned its prophylactic body suit, borrowed from the Fire Department’s meth lab unit, and ventured into the dank and reeking confines of the notorious spitwad blogyard, there to stoke the promiscuous opprobrium of the masked and drool-stained inhabitants within.

Later, mission accomplished, we withdrew to enjoy a shower and a smoke.

As many readers have asked: Why?

Why wade ankle-deep through antisocial bile dispensed by semi-literate, hooded character assassins morbidly deploying the purely errant rationale that their own deep-seated anger and eternal unhappiness constitute desired ways of living that the remainder of the local populace must somehow be bludgeoned into accepting as preconditions of life here?

Why bother?

Because it’s great fun, of course, but far more importantly, it owes to the obligation to present an opposing viewpoint – even while dodging the inevitable mud flung by those who profess to venerate "the rules" and yet can’t quite bring themselves to learn what those rules are, and what they imply for thinking, responsible people.

That ol’ “no can do” spirit.

New Albanians are an enduringly curious lot.

For long decades, many of them have been conditioned by previous addled generations to accept as a bizarre corollary to the social contract the utterly mistaken proposition that their city is incapable of achievement of the sort that can be plainly glimpsed in so many other locales of similar size and circumstance.

Worst yet, having grasped as gospel something that is palpably false, they proceed to derive a deeply ingrained civic inferiority complex from this father-to-son inability to envision excellence – hence their eternal mistrust of “outsiders,” who arrive in New Albany happily unencumbered by the ruinous psychological baggage of defeatism and self-loathing, and consequently run the constant risk of engendering cognitive dissonance amongst the sullen, spiteful natives by seeking accomplishment and often, against all odds, maintaining it.

And, needless to say, seldom if ever being accepted by the nay-saying local apostles of failure and denigration.

Meanwhile, a cult of numbers.

Numerology, as defined by http://www.dictionary.com/, is “the study of the occult meanings of numbers and their supposed influence on human life.”

Occult meanderings, superstition, hearsay, conspiracy, dysfunction and unrequited obsessions – these are the choking weeds that grow in the barren vacuum where education has failed to take root.

For the record, NA Confidential does not subscribe to the notion perpetuated by the sewage numerologists among us that raw columns of numbers add up to any semblance of ultimate truth beyond the limited applications for which they have been intended.

This does not mean that we dismiss the utility of balancing the household checkbook, of audits and accountants, or of the necessity of following prescribed financial procedures, but merely that these useful aspects of human affairs are forever and always proportional to the myriad intangibles in life – those human qualities like courage, will, resolve, confidence and leadership, that directly equate to achievement in this world, here and now.

Shameful politics of the low common denominator.

According to the writer A. Lou Vickery,

Nothing average ever stood as a monument to progress. When progress is looking for a partner it doesn't turn to those who believe they are only average. It turns instead to those who are forever searching and striving to become the best they possibly can. If we seek the average level we cannot hope to achieve a high level of success. Our only hope is to avoid being a failure.

Of all the attitudinal impediments to the realization of potential, whether personal or in a group setting, the acceptance and subsequent glorification of the average certainly must be worst, especially when accompanied by a perception of inferiority that manifests itself in contempt for the prerequisites of success.

NA Confidential believes that these damaging dispositions are prime examples of learned behavior, and that they can be overcome, if not easily and quickly, both by individuals and my municipal entities. We believe they must be overcome if we are to improve the future prospects of the city of New Albany.

But they are unlikely to be overcome by a slavish devotion to numerology that seeks nirvana in the decade-old sewer audit, or though anonymous attacks on those who are known, capable and willing to recognize what is possible when talent is rewarded, not blamed, and blamed for no better reason than the inability of the troglodyte barnacle wobbling his or her finger to fathom what it means to fulfill potential.

Dysfunction is a virulent condition in which seemingly irreconcilable problems comprise a “devil you know” universe of chaos and drift, and potential solutions represent unacceptable attacks on the “natural” order of things.

NA Confidential begs to differ in the strongest possible terms, by agreeing with the late John Lennon that there are no problems – only solutions.

But, in the end, the victims of dysfunction must want to get better.

Will ours?

Or must we all stoop to that level of sheer futility?