I’m only outside for a grand total of two minutes during the walk from the apartment to Lucille + Mabel, but in those two minutes, the sun beats on me like the sinner I am. And maybe I deserve it for being a sinner and walking around outside willy-nilly in a world where everyone complains about the heat but does so from the comfort of their personal, brute force, temperature-controlled perpetual 72-degree wombs. This isn’t sci-fi, but it would have been not very long ago – even during the lives of some of my kinfolk who are still alive. Survival is tough these days, and no one wants to hear it, but sometimes you have to brace yourself and walk from the comfort of your home to the cocoon of your air-conditioned car, and from there you can cruise in comfort with lane assist and danger mitigating safety features all the way to your air-conditioned job or to the climate-controlled store or restaurant.
Makes it hard to imagine that even 80 years ago very few people in Central Texas even had electricity. We come from a sturdier stock of sinners.
I lived off-grid here in Central Texas with my family for 17 years and this is our first year since 2006 (a brutal summer) with air-conditioning. It makes me feel weak and dependent and my flesh really loves it.
Inside the restaurant, the big supply truck has made a delivery. Stacks of fresh and frozen goods are being packed away. I grab some fresh mint for the bar from a box still cool from the truck (someone will want mojitos, I’m sure of it) before the cooks and the bakers can get all of it. Some stuff arrived in the shipment as expected and some didn’t, and there are always murmurs of “supply chain” problems and…
“Oh lawdy, you gotta consider that supply chain!”
“Oh yes you do, hmmm-hmmm. Lawd help us with that supply chain!”
“Is that supply chain acting up again? Yes? Did you turn it off and back on?”
At the bar on any given night, you have supply chain talk and supply chain experts sipping cocktails and talking about the supply chain. “Had our supply chain meeting with the supply chain people in from corporate and oh my goodness gracious that supply chain is looking bad. Really bad. But, (sigh) you know how the supply chain is these days.”
Somewhere in the multiverse, outside our own darkest timeline, vacationing executives repose in lounge chairs on a beach, clinking mojito glasses, and NOT talking about the supply chain.
Here in our own world, we’re beyond The Vantasner Danger Meridian.
The Vantasner Danger Meridian is a creative Hollywood fiction, but it’s also real once you really think about it. I’ll call it the VDM from here on out to save myself the typing. You see, the modern world is about just-in-time, just-enough-and-no-extra fat supply chain distribution… and I don’t want to type more words than sufficient and have you storing them in your brain for longer than necessary.
The VDM was created in the TV series PATRIOT (one of the best series every made. The writing is magnificent.) In the series, our main character is a CIA “NOC” (a non-official cover spook,) who must go to great lengths (and other countries) to keep Iran from getting nukes. The show is a dark comedy, and it is so brilliant that most people will never understand how good it really is even if they do watch it. Which they won’t. In season two of PATRIOT, the writers introduce us to the VDM.
The Vantasner Danger Meridian is a mathematical metric for establishing risk. The VDM is not real (except it is.) It was created by the show’s writers, and they even went as far as to create an elaborate back story about how the VDM came to be.
The VDM is the point or line (in any operation or plan) over which risks multiply exponentially. I’d show you a graph, but it would stress the supply chain in your mind.
Think of the VDM as a danger line. A DMZ if you will. When you are on the safe side of the line, regular and predictable risks apply. All of modern life is designed to keep you on the safe side of the VDM. Insurance and warranties and speed bumps and rounded corners and legal documents and disclaimers and Karens and velvet ropes and lane-assist… all of these things exist to keep you on the safe side of the VDM. Now… once you cross the VDM in any area of your life, risks don’t just skyrocket, they explode exponentially.
When explorers and pioneers and such would embark on some mission or adventure — some conquest — there always seemed to be a river, a Rubicon, over which they must cross. And once they did… they knew they were past the VDM. All bets were off. Dangers and risks were everywhere, and everything became unpredictable.
Now (stick with me, I’ll get to the point. I promise,) in a modern system of inter-dependency EFFICIENCY requires that you operate as close to the VDM as possible without crossing over. Every system, every “chain,” every product must be manufactured to operate just at the point where it will break if it is stressed. Stress involves excess. There must be no excess. If a thing is not nigh on breaking, it is over-produced and wasteful. You want a Walmart bag to carry just the right exact number of groceries. If it is a micron too thick – that is wasteful. You are destroying the planet with waste! If it is a micron too thin, it will burst and your carton of manufactured egg whites might get over-shook. Have you held a water bottle lately? It is designed to barely keep from crushing in your hand so long as the water is in it. The lid has just enough threads to get the product from some back-alley garden hose in the Ozarks to your house.
Efficiency demands no excess.
The other night, a friend and I watched FORD vs. FERRARI. It was my second time watching the film (It’s fantastic.) In the movie, the car designers must minimize weight, maximize speed, fine-tune handling, maximize RPMs, everything. There can be no extra. Not one ounce of excess weight. Everything must be designed to operate on the very knifes-edge of failure. You can’t win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with any excess. If the engine didn’t almost blow up, you failed and lost and Henry Ford II or Enzo Ferrari would fire you and you would no longer be able to afford genetically modified eggs whites in a carton.
I’ve gone on too long. I’ve said too much. I’ve over-burdened you with words and your supply chain of original thought and intellectual conceptualization has become over-stressed.
I’ve committed the greatest sin of all in our modern day. I’ve made you think.
As a species, we’re over the VDM. Risks are multiplying hourly. Minute-ly. Our efficiency has overrun our safety. The whole edifice is balanced on nothing. Debt. Promises. Fantasy. Civilization is a hologram, a gauzy veil of let’s-pretend. The superstructure is a creative Hollywood fiction. But we’re in Brownwood so…
Small towns can be an insurance policy against over-shooting the VDM. We’re blessed that we are not stuck in an urban zone with millions of cushioned, bubble-wrapped, entitled, air-conditioned zombies. Well… at least not millions. We only have thousands. But, we still work together and take care of one another. Community can be safety. Our love and empathy have not passed the VDM. Not quite yet. Maybe we can pull back from the brink.
Maybe.
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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear periodically on the website.