Keep it in the tail

I'm rereading Stephen J. Gould's seminal article: "The Median isn't the Message"

It's good advice to cancer patients, and it's good advice for human beings. You can't fix it all, you can't carry everyone. But you can steer in the right direction. And, at any particular moment, it's not the horrible baggage that counts the most, but whether we "keep ourselves in the tail" of the statistical landscape. Not the great lump of the middle ground, but the high road that ultimately carries the world.


Here's a more current illustration. It's a short video, quickly downloaded.
http://www.moveonpac.org/edwards.html

Who benefits from manufactured fear? The big business of arms sales and political control. Who loses? As far as I can see, we all do.

I prefer to check in on the side of the positive. Anything else is a big downward spiral.

PS
I see that Stephen J. Gould's "labor of love" lifework book is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674006135/watchmakerpress"> The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. I'm heading to the library.