Consistency

By Andrew Sigal | Friday, February 25, 2011 Leave a Comment
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Says Ralph Waldo Emerson. With surprising frequency I hear this misquoted as "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," but that is just stupid. There are many, many, many things in life where consistency is terribly important (e.g. it helps if the guy that monitors the guages at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant shows up to work consistently.) But foolish consistency is the Siamese twin of dogma, and 2nd cousin to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

Early on in blogging I decided to always use one-word titles for my blog entries. It was an interesting constraint to put on myself. A couple of times I dabbled in two word titles, but always returned to that single word idea.

It was, as I noted, an entertaining constraint - but the entertainment was primarily for myself. It makes it hard for readers to know what they might be about to read, and if it will be something that would interest them. I have decided that always using single-word titles is a foolish consistency. So, though I may title the occasional future blog with a single word, this is the final posting that is intentionally monolexical. [Yeah, yeah, I'm slightly misusing the word "monolexical." Well, screw all y'all lexicographers ;-)  .]
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