# Tariffs, Shower Heads, and the Void of Meaning By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2025-04-11 There are moments in public life that transcend mere policy debate and plunge directly into the theater of the absurd, leaving rational comprehension at an impasse. On April 9, 2025 the Trump presidency offered a masterclass in this, presenting a juxtaposition so stark it bordered on the nonsensical. On one stage, the weighty decision to pause tariff escalations – a complex maneuver impacting global economies and intricate geopolitical balances. On the other, almost comically, there is a simultaneous focus on deregulating shower head flow rates, a fix seemingly aimed at enhancing a minor personal comfort. Confronting this bizarre duality, this irresolvable clash of scales – from global strategy to bathroom plumbing – induces a state of genuine _aporia_. The expected logic of prioritized attention dissolves, leaving a profound perplexity, a void where coherent meaning struggles to take root. This sense of cognitive breakdown isn't just an anomaly of a particular administration; it echoes the broader, often baffling, absurdity of the human condition itself. We constantly attempt to impose order, hierarchy, and rational meaning onto an existence that perpetually throws up these irresolvable contradictions. We are creatures aware of existential stakes – planetary health, economic futures, mortality – yet inescapably invested in the minutiae of our immediate sensory world, where the pressure of a shower _can_ feel subjectively significant. Perhaps the ultimate absurdity, the enduring aporia, lies here: in our persistent search for a stable hierarchy of meaning in a reality that encompasses both the catastrophic and the trivial, often side by side. Acknowledging this impasse might be closer to truth than any neat resolution, forcing us to navigate the world less by fixed certainties and more by embracing the inescapable, often laughable, absurdity of it all. #### Related Items [[Meaning]] [[Existential]] [[Aporia]] [[Priorities]] [[Value]] [[Strategy]] [[Operations]]