Rigor

This country lacks rigor like the desert lacks water. There’s not an ounce of rigor in the whole seventy-six provinces. Not that it’s a bad thing.

Rigor is usually just a pain in the ass, it is almost never actually required for anything important. Mostly it’s a way for type-A personalities to compete with one another.

But look, you may say, at all the lives that have been improved by rigor, by rigorous application of intellect to intractable problems. The curing of polio, tuberculosis, etc, ad nauseum, gone from the pallet of human misery, but to what end? After the giant population increase it only turns out that there are more miserable, desperately sick people than ever . . . they just don’t have polio or tuberculosis.

Rigor is overrated.