The Discontent of Nations

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Discontent of Nations

An Essay on Well-Roundedness, the Obfuscation of the Whole, and the Great Disillusionment

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By Thomas Contonio

17 Feb 2025

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“Oh, look at you, all dressed up in your school uniform! You’re such a handsome boy.” I put my great-grandmother’s coffee on the overbed table and, though in a rush, conceded to a hug.

“Thanks, Mémère. I had them add extra milk today—it looked a little dark yesterday.” I started for the door. “I have to run today; Mom and the kids are waiting in the car, and we’re already late. But you’re all set for the day: the kitchen said breakfast is coming; I see you’ve got your New York Times—and now, your coffee!” 

“And I have you. Thank you, sweetheart.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll see you tomor—”

“Oh, that reminds me! Come here for a second.” She leaned to the table beside her medical bed and took yesterday's crossword from the drawer. “I thought you might know this one—now, where is it?” At 102 years of age, the sweet old lady required a high-magnification lens to fulfill her daily obligation to the New York Times, and her worn-out hands fumbled with the instrument as she scanned the grid. “Here it is: ‘An inexperienced gamer, in slang.’ I was at a loss for this one, but I knew you’d have an idea. I’m just not on top of all the new technology and games people play anymore, so I have trouble on clues like these,” she chuckled; it made me chuckle. 

“Inexperienced gamer…huh. I’m not sure. Oh, maybe the word ‘noob’ fits?” My great-grandmother laughed, evidently at how funny the word ‘noob’ sounded, this being the first time she’d heard it.

“Noob? Is that spelled N-O-O-B?” I nodded to her question, which she only managed to choke out between giggles as she squinted through the magnifying glass.

“Does it work?”

“Oh, I’m sure it does,” she said, penning it in. “you’re so well-rounded, I trust you! If you say a noob is an inexperienced gamer, then that’s what a noob is—and now I know. My father always used to say, well-rounded people teach you something new every day.” She put away the paper and smiled up at me. I, her reflection, returned the smile. “And not very many young people are well-rounded anymore, you know—you’re becoming rarer by the day!” I rolled my eyes with a smirk.

“Uh-huh, and wait till they find out I can sing and dance, too!” My Mémère pretended not to be amused.

“Don’t be fresh,” she tittered. “Now go on; don’t keep your poor mother waiting.”

Puer exit. Proavia dormit.¹

Fear never but you shall be consistent in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of when seen at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all.²

The Empty School of Athens, by Suebsang Sangwachirapiban, via Flickr.

‘Well-rounded’ as a complimentary predicate is rarely encountered today. Shall we not rather say that, in selecting a laudatory characteristic of another, we do not first think of their well-roundedness? Do we not, in praising others, often focus first on the external attributes—the wealth, the individual honour, the pleasures they bring, or even the gross physical beauty? So it seems, we tend to emphasise these specialised traits rather than appreciating the whole, well-rounded ethos.

Oedipus Tyrannus famously confuses the particular with the universal. From the Ancient Greek Οἰδίπους, meaning ‘swollen foot,’ his name reflects the literal disconnect between where the hero stands and what he perceives. His tragedy unfolds as he makes decisions with the consideration of his universal values in vacuo, apparently unable to apply them to the particularities of present circumstance. Oedipus, his foot swollen, could not see what lay at his feet. If the ‘swollen foot’ marks blindness to the particular, let us, in parallel, christen its opposite affliction—confounding the universal with the particular—Οἰδίχείρ, the Ancient Greek for ‘swollen hand.’

Even if you presently reject my juxtaposition (or my Google Translation), let us not deny our inductive faculties the observation that, in generation, the cultural emphasis given the whole person has diminished. Look around—the most popular university degree is computer science; the last item in your Amazon shopping cart was probably cosmetic; and we overwhelmingly complement others’ corporeal form, presentation, and possession as ends in themselves, which are exactly what they have become.

Our obsession with perfecting the part at the expense of the whole has emerged as a manifestation of the Enlightenment ideal of radical rationalism in service of individual freedom and utility. In placing heightened value on reason, efficiency, and the resulting opulence, we have fractured knowledge, narrowing our pursuits to what is useful while forsaking what is whole. The well-rounded man, once a seeker of truth, beauty, and the good, stands like Ozymandias³ of a bygone nation—his greatness eroded, his wisdom reduced to dust, his works lost beneath the sands.

An objector may protest that the Enlightenment was but a movement of thought—a mere idea, certainly not an action-governing law of nature. And was it not also an idea disseminated only among the elite and well-educated of the seventeenth century? If it remained inaccessible to the majority, how, then, could Enlightenment values have been the cause of our universal fixation on the particular?

The objector makes a reasonable point, but his story is incomplete. His opposition was not to my conclusion but to a missing causal connection between the emergence of Enlightenment values and our cultural obscuration of the universal with the particular thereafter. Though inductively plain that both manifest the same ideal and coincide in time, stopping at this lower truth is unsatisfactory—and unnecessary. Our objector’s answer surrounds him—hidden in plain sight by its very nature. It is the affliction I named ‘swollen hand,’ but history calls it another.

Adamus Smith intrat.⁴

Continued.

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¹ Puer exit. Proavia dormit. “The boy leaves. The great-grandmother sleeps.”

² Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The Essay on

Self-Reliance.” Internet Archive, East Aurora, N.Y. : The

Roycrofters, 28 Sept. 2006, tinyurl.com/yujjyjjf. 24-25.

³ Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Ozymandias.” The Examiner,

11 Jan. 1818.

⁴ Adamus Smith intrat. “Adam Smith Enters.”