Haltom's Ninth Law: Age quod agis.

Figure out what you are doing; do that; avoid hypocrisy by doing what you said you were doing or would do.



An IMDb entry for "Tombstone" memorializes a minute of dialog that had me guffawing when first I saw it:


###Wyatt Earp: [to Ringo] He's drunk.

###Doc Holliday: In vino veritas. ["In wine is truth" ... ]

###Johnny Ringo: Age quod agis. ["Do what you do" ... ]

Imagine my joy. In a leadup to the O K Corral, Johnny Ringo and Doc Holliday chirp schoolboy Latin at one another. During their exchanges, much longer than I have included, Ringo uses a Jesuit motto, Age quod agis, "Do what you are doing." Does popular cinema get better than Jesuitic Latin?


Alas! "Age quod agis" is more exhortative than predictive. Most humans fail to come clean with themselves or others about what they are doing, let alone to conform to what they say they are doing or said that they would do.

The Jesuits who beset me meant by Age quod agis that one should focus on one's ends and pursue them one by one. Such an admonition against multi-tasking was reasonable and so has long been ignored. This presents no problems, for exhortations acquire both urgency and apparent cogency the less likely they are to be followed.

I, Professor Sisyphus, repeat Age quod agis continually in my writing course for Politics and Government majors to get them to focus monomaniacally on a thesis that they have set themselves. Every paragraph must serve that thesis directly or indirectly. If not, the author is not doing what she or he said she or he was doing. I ask students to spare readers digressions, asides, pseudo-philosophical posturing, and other professorial predilections. "This is your term paper, not my lecture!"

When I am not hectoring students with Age quod agis, I often am pestering colleagues to admit what they are doing even if I should prefer that they stop doing what they have been doing or start doing what they should be doing.

I have discerned little or no impact from my haranguing. Members of multiple Faculty Advancement Committees and the Professional Standards Cult [2003-2004] have stoutly refused to acknowledge or to account for their decisions, inflating varied and often creative Confidentiality Cons to excuse their reticence. I have induced no members of the Wigger Patwol -- those colleagues so busy proclaiming their own rigor that they have little time in which to do anything rigorously except to proclaim rigor -- to see that they are promoting only themselves and not learning.

Still, like a Lee's nail, I press on. I do what I am doing.

What am I doing? I am signaling my small band of readers and listeners that candid speech and transparent processes befit academics and that mendacity and subtrefuges betray academia.

My philippics do not move colleagues who have mastered "arguing in the alternative," the protean art of "doing" what one was not doing a moment before. Professor Oohooh ["On the One Hand; On the Other Hand"] parries Age quod agis with Virtus in medio stat -- "Virtue stands in the middle," which I admit that more than one Jesuit also said to me. Via elaborate dramaturgy, Professor Oohooh regales all within ear- or eyeshot with the rigors of agony through which he/she must persevere to reach decisions defensible, if at all, by excruciations that precede decisions. What decisions lack in merit, Professor Oohooh more than makes up in the glory of her/his self-crucifixion. Professor Oohooh's daily performances lead up Golgatha to a moment of decision during some matinee. If decision-makers are evenly divided, Professor Oohooh courts favor with each and all before casting a deciding vote after torment exquisite for him/her and endless for everyone else. If decision-makers reach a decision quickly, Professor Oohooh cautions that a no-brainer decision actually has numerous nuances that -- Lord be thanked -- Professor Oohooh has espied just in time to avoid a rush to judgment. A decision becomes hasty, of course, if taken before Professor Oohooh has run through the best material that she/he has prepared. As the voiceover at the start of Casablanca might have ended but did not: "And the people come to the meeting and wait ... and wait ... and wait ... and wait."

Please notice, however, that Professor Oohooh fulfills Haltom's Ninth Law. Professor Oohooh does what he/she is doing. She/He is chewing the scenery and voguing. He/She is simulating balanced, dispassionate decision-making. Indeed, sometimes Professor Oohooh is so buried in decision-taking that she/he is perfectly willing to avoid decision forever to prolong the throes of passionate simulation. Professor Oohooh does what he/she is doing, albeit that what she/he is doing is avoiding doing.

Coming Soon -- Haltom's Tenth Law: As good as it is to be trusted, it is even better not to have to be trusted.