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8 oz. of Inconsistency

When I was seventeen, I filled a one-month vacancy at a historically-themed boardwalk called Alaskaland.* All the shops were housed in reclaimed pioneer cabins, and I was required to wear a very Presbyterian-looking calico frock to maintain historical authenticity. My job was to man the counter in a historically-inauthentic soft-serve ice cream establishment called Frosty Paws. Frosty Paws' owner was a stickler for consistency. Our flavor selection ranged a whopping six flavors, and never more than four at once. The owner required that I weigh my sweet creations after dispensing them in order to assure a standard 8 or 16-oz. serving. Before the month was out, my cone-holding wrist could count to 8 oz. as well as any dealer of addictive substances. Furthermore, I had mastered the symmtrical twirl of the cone to create a regular spiral, an art which later, in the college cafeteria, lent me that charming, robotic air that every freshman covets.
How would I have reacted if Ralph Waldo Emerson had invaded Alaskaland* to inform me:
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do."?
I like to think that I would have bartered, fur-trader-style, an illegally-sized swirl cone for a signed copy of Self Reliance, which could easily fetch a month's ice-cream wages on the rare book market. What vendor of standardized food units doesn't dream of having his "great soul" rescued from the food factory by a transcendentalist poet?
Nonconformist scoopers, flippers, and fry-cooks of the world might be dismayed to discover that Emerson rhymed his poetry. While Emerson touted originality and claimed that "imitation is suicide," he also served a form. Maybe he wouldn't want an unweighed 8.4 oz. cone, but rather, a cone that weighed exactly 12 oz. . . . in the shape of a snail. Maybe with ice cream, as elsewhere, rules should be mastered even as they are broken. And yeah, maybe some rules are just for breaking.
I tend to agree with Emerson that we should try on new rules like grocery store sunglasses (though Emerson would require that we build the sunglasses ourselves). I'm pretty sure Frosty Paws would have profited from exploring more colors and sizes. However, there are some cases in which it helps to be able to think like a yardstick, in discrete units. Those cases involve attempts to compare two or more things fairly.
The Skeptic's Guide defines inconsistency thusly:
"Applying criteria or rules to one belief, claim, argument, or position but not to others."
The cited example points out that prescription drugs are heavily regulated, but not herbal remedies and supplements, a controversy that needs exploration, but not here.


Author Michael Shermer discusses the psychological reasons for inconsistent and compartmentalized thinking in his book, The Mind of the Market. He offers the following example:

"You walk into a store to buy an iPod for $100 and somebody says six blocks down the street it's on sale, half off, for $50. Would you make the trip? Almost everybody says sure, of course I would to save $50. If you walk into the store to buy a flat screen TV for $1,000 and somebody says: that TV is on sale $50 off for $950 six blocks down, would you make the walk? Almost everybody says they wouldn't bother."


Shermer discusses how most people construct new contexts for behavior by "re-anchoring" their expectations. In this case, the anchor is a new scale of price range, which temporarily, and perhaps inappropriately, redefines the dollar--and the six-block walk. It can seem to make sense at the time; you measure ice cream in ounces, and a cow in pounds, but 1/20th of a cow's weight is still a lot of ice cream.


New contexts have a way of warping standards. This is why ice cream eaten with your finger has no calories, walking outside of a gym isn't exercise, and that one hair in our restaurant food is unsanitary (while kissing our dog makes perfect sense). My standard vanishes in the sway of an unconventional moment. And maybe that sway isn't always bad if it presents a new, better standard, or causes me to rethink a rule. But I would add: if I'm going to switch from inches to centimeters to the length of my plucked eyelash, I would want to do so self-consciously.


The fallacy of inconsistency requires a consistency to flout. I wanted to illustrate a scenario in which consistency would be expected. Reflections in mirrors and ponds should perfectly invert the actual, unless the gazer is Mary Poppins. or some other character* in late 19th early 20th -century children's fiction. I considered making the reflection differ strikingly from the top, i.e. show a frog instead of a snail, but I liked the deceptively symmetrical effect here. I also required that the top half of the reflection obey the rule of 100% opacity, while the reflection is less constant, more diaphanous. This reminded me of all the rules that Photoshop allows me to break.
I considered drawing snail-shaped ice cream cone, but as it turns out, ice cream makes a poor live model. It is highly reasonable, and perfectly obeys the rules of temperature in my apartment. Said rules state that ice cream must be eaten before it melts.




* Now known, less majestically, as Pioneer Park
* First, I would have needed to shake myself out of the historical boardwalk context, which would lead me to assume from Emerson's historical dress and archaisms that he was a performer from Alaskaland's Golden Heart Revue.
* Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy

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