The Little World

Notice the difference between yesterday’s title and today’s? That’s because today contains the answer to the problem.

Let me start out by telling you that as a child I was terrified of skeletons. I’d seen a Walt Disney cartoon of them leaping toward the viewer and couldn’t face the idea for 15 years after that. I would envisage them outside darkened windows and had to close the curtains – or would imagine them behind curtains and had to hide.

Then I qualified for training in dentistry. I started on anatomy courses and had to study skulls minutely. I bought one from a medical supply house and kept it on my desk to memorize every foramen, every plane, and every muscular attachment. I studied long into the night for to years with that skull…and I have never been at all concerned with any skeletons of man or beast ever since. I could view horror films with them and not bat an eyelid.

There. There’s the answer to the fears I listed yesterday. Skulls. No, no no. just kiddin’. Keep yours inside your skin – no need to show me. But consider:

a. If you fear the contempt of the mob, you give them far more credence and power than they would otherwise have. You can see oiks on the beach and ignore them…you can see them in a park or a shopping centre and give them no thought whatsoever. You need not let their brainlessness penetrate into the Little World at all.

Simply adjust your own mind to tune them out at the model exhibition or in the club rooms in the same way that you do in public venues. They’ll then have no traction with you upon any surface.

b. Someone will always want something of you – your money and time most likely. Give them only as much of it as you decide is right, and reserve the rest for yourself. You possess your own wallet and pocket watch. You decide how to apportion time and money, and be firm with your decisions. Eventually, the takers will have to be satisfied with your giving.

c. You can only combat officialism by their own means – which means you may have to become familiar with their regulations. A nuisance, but in the case of government, the bureaucrats are also bound by the same fetters they would forge for you. If the law says something can be done, you can insist it be done.

You can also sidestep the entire army of petty officials by keeping your Little World to yourself on private property. When they want to regulate you, choose a finger – or two – to display to them.

d. Judgement is delivered by a judge – officially or otherwise. The real ones do so upon basis of statute law – the false ones upon the basis of their own egos. Unless there is written and published law – and law that has had the agreement of the governed – the official judges do not just wing it with biased opinion.

So with the contest judge or the curator or the fellow modeller, if there is no law displayable, there is no opinion that cannot be questioned. If the judge doesn’t like something let them show you the written authorisation that justifies their displeasure. If they cannot show it, denounce them publicly as biased and false.

If a curator does the same thing, go higher in the command structure with the same demand and the same potential sanction.

If your fellow modellers judge, they must be able to back that judgement up with a demonstration of equal or better practice. Can they not do it, they may bear the jeer that they tried to fasten upon you.

However, beware of the most dangerous thing – approval and praise. If you receive it, think carefully from whom it comes and in whose good books you seem to be. Making a very nice model of a Sukhoi 29 is all very well, but a complimentary letter and a packet of sweeties from Vladimir Putin would be a terrible fate for any modeller.