Log In


Reset Password
Columnists View from the Center Bear Smart The Travel Troubleshooter Dear Abby Student Aide Of Sound Mind Others Say Powerful solutions You are What You Eat Out Standing in the Fields What's up in Durango Skies Watch Yore Topknot Local First RE-4 Education Update MECC Cares for kids

‪Durango profoundly at risk for highfalutin hooey

Here’s a question of utmost importance to Durango: Does “wholeness quiet infinite phenomena?” I believe that your readers have a need to know. Keep up the important work and send my regards to the sainted Mrs. Action Line. – Davitt Armstrong

If you don’t understand the question, you are not alone. In fact, there is nothing to understand.

The phrase was randomly generated by a website used in a scientific study. The results were published last November in the scholarly journal Judgment and Decision Making.

The paper’s title? “On the Reception and Detection of Psuedo-Profound (B.S.)”

Being a dutiful scribe for a family publication, Action Line is prohibited from using the word abbreviated by letters “B” and “S,” but there is little doubt as to what those letters mean.

Anyway, our good friend Davitt read some news coverage of this groundbreaking research and sees Durango as particularly susceptible to nonsensical claptrap, which the study describes as “seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous.”

Take, for instance, this description of our Arc of History sculpture.

“The cradle holds the entire history of our species, striated into epochs, our future dwindling towards extinction as all species must eventually expire.”

Maybe the description is indeed profound, if not prescient, as the artwork’s decline was needlessly hastened by cowardly nocturnal jerks with sledgehammers.

Which brings up an interesting question. If the Arc represents inevitable extinction, why repair it?

Psuedo-profound drivel isn’t limited to the art world. You’ll find government a fertile feedlot for rhetorical road apples, usually in something called a “vision statement.”

One local entity describes itself as “effective guardians.” Another is busy “diligently pursuing excellence.” A third one is “committed to innovation” despite being completely hamstrung by federal and state regulations.

But the finest pseudo-profound bovine byproduct comes from a timeless source, the New Age.

Ponder the following: “Through affirmations, our essences are baptized in balance. Only a visitor of the biosphere may manifest this rekindling of flow.”

Does this provide inspiration? It shouldn’t. It was made up by the aforementioned website that spewed out “wholeness quiets infinite phenomena.”

Check it out at http://tinyurl.com/new-age-bs just to be amused, if not outraged.

Here’s the sad thing. A quarter of the nearly 300 participants in the “pseudo-profound” study gave a 3 or higher rating (on a 5-point scale) to the randomly generated New Age buzzwords and also to fuzzy observations from alternative medicine guru Deepak Chopra.

If the same study were done in Durango, that figure would probably be around half, if not three quarters.

Even if you are not the holistic transcendent type, there’s the workaday workplace, where managers tend to make things crystal clear by eschewing obfuscation.

If you have ever endured a conference call lasting longer than gall bladder surgery, you will love this website, http://www.atrixnet.com/bs-generator.html.

Just type in some words and the site will translate them into a corpulent corporate corpus.

Action Line wondered how the Durango Tourism Office’s slogan would be transmogrified.

In went “a dozen vacations in one destination.” Out came “progressively actualize synergistic total linkage.”

How profound is that?

After all, the Durango stratosphere is electrified with ultra-sentient particles. The Animas River is nothing short of a flowering transmission of holistic peace. And along Camino del Rio, coherence is the driver of power.

Email questions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. You can request anonymity if ‘jargon’ means the peanut butter is missing.



Reader Comments