1%er Association

My GRE's Top 1% appeared at the PaulKnatz blog. It offers another metaphor for the theory of social homeostasis I've been developing at Knatz.com/Society (and here at this Iona Arc blog. The term "1%" here refers to intelligence, to learning, to discernment, discipline, and imagination inreading: but I can't use the term without recalling another use I learned about when I taught at Colby in Maine. My nextdoor neighbor rode a BSA Victor: a one cylinder off-road bike with big knobby tires — a lot of torque in any gear, even at modest revs, which this garbage-pickup-truck Maine Tibadeau had customized with ape hanger handlebars: his bike was an oxymoron: it contradicted itself by the microsecond: road! off-road! road! off-road! road! off-road! Hells Angels ride on pavement, showing off for the pimply girls, and they put high handlebars on their chopped Harleys. Dirt riders have to be on top of the action, with strong handlebars below their shoulders: for control, in the dirt. Anyway, This Tibadeau once told me that his friends were "1%ers" I told him I didn't know what that meant. He said, "You know, they say that It's only 1% of bike riders who give motor-cycling a bad name: well, We're that !%!"

Now that's a very different sort of 1%, isn't it? But maybe there are similarities. In social homeostasis it's both ends of any spectrum that are rejected by the mean. Those of average intelligence, of average learning, of average morality won't listen to the Gandhi or the Jesus or the Tolstoy, but they also don't honor the village idiot or the purse snatcher. I gloy in my intelligence, in my ethics, in my honesty, the more so becuase they are rejected by others: well, these bikers gloried in being bad to the bone.