SPENGLERMATIC

—A MEMORANDUM FROM THE MAINTENANCE DEPARTMENT OF THE ANTEROOM OF ETERNITY—

There comes a point in life when a man begins to suspect that every instruction manual is too long.

I am not referring merely to philosophical treatises, government regulations, retirement plans, smartphone agreements, or modern coffee makers. I mean instruction manuals generally.

The older I get, the more I find myself drawn toward explanations that fit on a single page. Or, failing that, explanations that fit on a single dial. This tendency has not always been appreciated by my colleagues at the Council.

For several years now, various correspondents have undertaken investigations into history, civilization, culture, decline, progress, democracy, technology, metaphysics, mythology, memory, identity, and the meaning of America.

The results have occupied a considerable number of pages.

Recently, however, someone observed that many of these investigations seemed to arrive at roughly the same place. At which point someone else suggested that perhaps the entire matter could be represented by a washing machine.

I regret to report that this suggestion was taken seriously.

The accompanying advertisements are the result. Whether they clarify anything remains uncertain. Whether they simplify anything remains even more uncertain. Indeed, after producing several pages of explanatory text concerning a machine intended to simplify a theory designed to simplify history, we may have inadvertently constructed something more visually complicated than the thing we set out to explain.

Such developments are not unknown at the Council.

A condensed version of these advertisements also appeared in the pages of Perennial Sophomoric, where several readers reportedly requested pricing information and financing options.