Sturgeons Law: “Ninety percent of everything is crap.”
I probably came across Sturgeon’s Law during my sarcastic 20’s. It still appeals to me, but in a different way.
Theodore Sturgeon was a sci-fi writer in the 60’s who got tired of people saying sci-fi was terrible. He agreed that a lot of sci-fi is bad, but then, since ninety percent of everything is crap, he said that examples of bad sci-fi prove nothing. Good point! This was well before clickbait and other devious schemes to steal my eyeballs: its probably higher now.
In a bizarre way, I have found this “law” comforting and useful, but probably not how Sturgeon intended. If his law is true, than I can be OK with Christian movies generally being really bad. I expect most blog posts to be not worth reading. I can be surprised when something is worthwhile and when I find something worthwhile, I tend to pursue related (same author, same source, whatever) things. Helps me do better than 10% non-crap. Also helps in my own attempts – I’m comfortable, for example, making wooden planters that totally fail. And it informs my expectations about attending church or home group.
Sturgeon’s law even fits with how I read God relating with humanity in the bible. It always seems to be the story of the faithful remnant with 90% messing up (though it often feels like more than 90%).
When Sturgeon coined the law, there was no internet. Google’s mission statement to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful wasn’t even dreamed up and now its largely accomplished. We have access to pretty much any information at the tap of a few keys … certainly a sci-fi concept when Sturgeon was writing. For anyone who has spent time on the inter-web, his law is surprisingly prescient. Its just that there is SO MUCH STUFF that 90% is now just so much more total crap. For example, 183 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute!! I have an image of an overloaded ship sinking. Thing is, there’s a lot of that 10% too … so we live in an amazing time with so much great stuff out there.
I have an idea. Lets help each other to break the tyranny of Sturgeon’s law. What if we could get it to say 30% crap with 70% good stuff? That would be amazing! Here’s how we do it: take the best stuff that has really impacted your life in a good way (no cat videos please), and share it with people you care about. We could curate the good stuff for each other. That would be amazing – we’d be better people living better lives with way less crap. Marie Kondo would be totally proud of us.
Seems to me that curating is part of what it is to be a local community – a church, a homegroup, friends, neighbours. Especially now. Its pretty hard to generate new insights or material better than something already available out there. But sharing the great stuff you found with me at just the right time — that’s a community I want to be part of! I want to be part of a community that pulls me to the richer parts of life and builds me up.
Which, incidentally, is part of my purpose in this blog: share and point to some great stuff to build up people. I just know your life is so much better with Sturgeon’s law :-).
Love for you to share what will build up.
The Thursday After 