Dust trails

I think I'm stumbling toward identifying a paradox which might explain why a lot of journalism is crass. As someone who takes a bit of pride in an orderly household that is clean but not pristine I've often wondered about dirt or its slightly more palatable cousin, dust. Most people only notice dust; they don't register absence of dust. This means you rarely get endorsement or compliments for cleanliness, you simply don't get criticism for slovenliness. Similiarly, When something runs well, you don't notice. You notice things when they go wrong. This means that we don't register when things run smoothly what the process is. So some things could be running well and some things badly but we are not affected by them. We don't scrutinise the OK. Maybe we should be celebrating the ordinary. So many things appear to work well, maybe that is just luck. For example, how many people have any idea of the number of miles that a long distance train does in a year and how that compares to other forms of terrestial transport. Trains do of the order of a quarter of a millon miles a year. Let's celebrate that