Don’t Tell Me Not To Not Vote
Posted: September 21, 2012 Filed under: Culture, Politics, Uncategorized | Tags: America, politics, voter turnout, voting 5 CommentsIt’s that time again. Once every four years we see millions, nay, billions of dollars wasted on pageantry, spectacle, and foolishness. It’s not just the direct participants who throw their money away either, as every big corporation in the world wants in on this gravy train, even though the truth is most of them will never make their money back. But what the heck, the people do love their bread and circuses.
Oh wait, they made the Olympics every two years, didn’t they?
Well that’s okay, the people still get their Leap Year frivolity in the form of our presidential elections. Once again I am hard pressed to find much if any difference in the offerings on the left and the right, and I am astounded by the fervor with which others are approaching the coming election. I could sooner see for getting worked up over a table tennis match (that is still an Olympic event, isn’t it?) But that’s not what bothers me the most. What bothers me is when people find out I have no intention of voting and then they say something offensive like “if you don’t vote you can’t complain about the way things turn out.” Yeah, I said that’s offensive. Not just idiotic, but actually offensive, and I’ll explain why.
Consider what the average voter turnout is in our country these days, or even over the last twenty years (about as long as I’ve been voting.) Does it still hover in the mid-thirty percentile range? So roughly one-third of eligible voters are actually ready, willing, and motivated enough to go to the polls and let their voices be heard. And is it the responsibility of our civic leaders to inspire us to want to vote? Is it the duty of our elected officials and candidates to office to give us reasons to invest the time and effort, as little as it might seem to some? Is it perhaps the obligation of those who hold the power in the land to find a way to cut through the malaise and disillusionment and reach to the best part of each of us?
No. It seems that the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our politicians but in ourselves. If we don’t pull the switch and vote for either A or B, we don’t get to complain there was no option C. And even if there was an option C, if we aren’t satisfied with that one, we don’t get to complain about that unless we pull the handle for one of the above. And that’s the problem with the whole system and those who give that simplistic response. There is no option for “none of the above” (a la Brewster’s Millions). In this “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” scenario, you’re either part of the problem or you’re part of the problem.
The message that these people, and our Most Beloved Leaders in both parties, aren’t getting is that there’s a lot of people who are dissatisfied with the entire system. I don’t mean to say they’re dissatisfied in the same way I am (that would be its own brand of hubris); rather they are, each and every one of them, dissatisfied in their own unique way. The only thing we all have in common is that we don’t like any of the options we’re being presented with well enough to vote for them, nor do we dislike them significantly less than the other options. Given a choice between a shit sandwich and shit soufflé, I’ll just go hungry, thanks.
But the system is rigged. There’s no way to step in the booth and say “a plague on both your houses.” The only options available both suck. The first is the one that is hinted at ever so obliquely by the people above, who don’t want to come out and say what they really mean because even they realize how terrible the truth sounds: “If you don’t vote you’re powerless. You don’t have a voice of any kind. Nobody in power takes you seriously. You may only get crumbs of what you want when you vote for the guys they offer, but if you don’t vote at all you get nothing.”
Option number two is to be out in the cold, ignored except as part of a statistic that is used by the nightly news and each party to bash each other over the head, when they’re not busy trying to shame all of America one generation at a time. “Why aren’t Americans voting? It’s a travesty! It’s a tragedy! It’s somebody’s fault who isn’t me!” “The young aren’t voting! The old aren’t voting! The [insert group that is more likely to vote for politician who is currently speaking] vote is being suppressed!”
Here’s a crazy idea. How about next time we decide to elect anyone for anything, we just have one election. One person, one vote. And we have it open for a week, twenty-four hours a day, so there’s plenty of time for voting. Only here’s the catch: there’s no pre-filled voting cards. No letters next to names. You step up and write down the name of the person you want to vote for. Get rid of the parties and see what happens.
I wonder.
Finding Strength through Adversity
Posted: September 17, 2012 Filed under: Culture, Humor | Tags: advice, comedy, culture, etiquette, humor, life, philosophy 2 Comments“Life’s not fair.” These are the words of wisdom my mother greeted me with every time I was a child and I had a complaint about some new injustice that had been visited upon me. (To be fair, I preferred this to her more often used “go play in traffic” or “take a long walk off a short pier”, but I digress.) I have since come to understand that in her own Long Island way she was trying to toughen me up and prepare me for a cruel and uncaring world. (I think. I’m still not sure about the traffic thing.)
Since then I have had good days and bad days, and then I have had “Oh dear GOD seriously WTF?!?” days. These latter have reminded me more than once of mom’s admonition when I was a child, and after I got done playing in traffic, I would then remember that she also had other important life lessons to share and try to find strength through the adversity. There are certain key things I have since found that, by keeping them in mind, have helped me to get through even the most trying of days.
Some days are just going to suck. Accept it now. This may not seem comforting, but the truth is it helps. Once you accept that there is nothing you can do about it, that the cards are all stacked against you and fighting against it is simply a waste of time and energy, it becomes a lot easier to just go with the flow. That’s not to say you should take individual events lying down; rather just that you need to accept that today is going to be “one of those days”, and not try to somehow make it a good one.
It’s not personal. Even when it feels like the entire universe has singled you out to be picked on today, chances are that’s not the case (and if it is, I strongly suggest you give Ashton Kutcher a good shot in the mouth when he jumps out to tell you “you’ve been Punk’d!” So has your career, Ashton.) Most of the people around you who are getting on your nerves are just trying to get through their own mediocre-to-awful day, and I promise that they are not trying to make your day worse, so taking it out on them will not help… no matter how good you think it might feel.
Taking it out on someone else will not make you feel better. Since you have the discriminating taste and class to read this, I am assuming you’re not a raging asshole, so I feel safe in making this prediction. In a heated moment you might think you’ll get some satisfaction in making someone else pay for adding to your already steaming pile of a day, but in all likelihood you’re just going to walk away feeling a little worse for having gone off for no good reason. You’re also going to leave them with a bad impression of you, which is likely to make tomorrow (or a future day) worse, if they don’t just decide to serve their revenge piping hot.
There’s nothing wrong with treating yourself. I don’t mean to endorse over-indulgence here (I prefer to endorse that all on its own), but when things are already in the toilet, why put yourself through the added misery of denial? Treats are just that, and sometimes you need one. Have some ice cream. Pour a glass of wine. Go see a movie. When the world refuses to cut you a break, cut yourself a slice of pie.
That’s what friends are for. Real friends aren’t the people you go drinking with when you are in a good mood. They are the people you call when you need to complain about your bad mood. Great friends are the ones who take you out drinking so you can complain about your bad mood and then pick up the check.
Every day ends. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how long it feels, the one redeeming virtue of every bad day is that it only last 24 hours. Even if the bad carries over into the next day, there’s always the chance that this new day will only be mediocre rather than a true crapfest. And even if things don’t improve, the new day is still only 24 hours long.
Wait for “the cherry”. You’ll know the cherry when it happens: that last, little thing that isn’t nearly so bad as the rest, more of a finisher, the topping that just says, “And now your shit sundae is complete.” Once you have experienced this transcendent moment, you can at least start to look forward to the inevitable dénouement to the dramarama your day has been thus far.
There’s always tomorrow. Yes, it’s cliché, but clichés exist for a reason. This one exists to remind us that so long as we live, there is a chance of some good balancing out the bad, and even if life isn’t fair, that doesn’t mean it can’t get better.
Anarchy X: The Ninth Amendment
Posted: September 12, 2012 Filed under: Anarchy X, Culture, Politics | Tags: America, Anarchy X, Bill of Rights, Constitution, culture, Federalists, freedom, Hobbes, leviathan, liberty, ninth amendment, philosophy, politics Leave a comment“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
At last we come to what I have to admit is my favorite amendment. If for no other reason, I love this amendment because it is the final answer to every question asked by most of the self-proclaimed “strict constitutionalists” I have met. In most cases these would be people who are looking for excuses to legislate their own petty meanness on the rest of the world, and when you call them on it, they have a standard fall back: their shield, their shelter, their raison d’étre almost universally seems to consist of “where do you find that right in the Constitution?”
Right here. Here it is. In the same way that the justice system lays the burden of proof on the prosecution, and for many of the same reasons, so too is the burden of proof that the government, that we the people have the right to take an action against other people. For my money this is the defining feature of the Bill of Rights, and in many ways the Constitution itself.
It is worth noting that the Ninth Amendment only exists in large part because of the debate about the Bill of Rights itself; by the very notion that there should be no need to specifically enumerate rights that would accrue to the people in a country where the powers of the government would be spelled out quite specifically, and the government would have no further or additional powers beyond those that had been granted to it by the very document that was being amended. It’s a nice thought. Any student of history, classical or modern, political or otherwise, should know it’s also a naïve one. So should anyone who has read Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.
Call me cynical if you must, but it is my belief born out of study and experience that any human system built for managing people will do two things: grow and accrue more power unto itself. It is not (necessarily) some corrupt plot, it is simply the spontaneous order of human systems. Governments are designed to govern; that is their purpose. They can only do that so long as they are either stable or growing. No system can remain viable if it is stagnant. Therefore, for a government to remain viable it must continue to grow, and the only way for a government to grow is to become more powerful, and thereby more intrusive.
Having delineated specific areas and ways in which the government can’t grow in the first eight amendments, there are two possibilities left. The first is the Federalist assertion of a sort of “gentleman’s agreement” of government, that the rights of the people would be implicitly protected simply by virtue of having delineated the powers the government has. Which has worked so well up to now. The second possibility is finding new and interesting ways to interpret the powers granted by the Constitution, including simply ignoring any rights people might reasonably expect to enjoy, including those grounded in the common law tradition from which the Constitutional government evolved.
The modern upshot of this is widespread. As society has evolved, we have changed in our expectations of what it means to be a part of that society; we have even (thankfully) changed in our attitudes and beliefs about what it means to be human. We have recognized and defended rights along the way that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, but that are grounded in the same tradition as the other rights that are. One example is the right to privacy, which is often assailed by the aforementioned “where do you find that right in the Constitution?”
Let me be clear: I believe that all the rights that are defended and provided for by the Constitution, regardless of what philosophical approach you may take to it, derive from the following:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America.
That having been said, I see nothing that runs counter to a right to privacy. On the contrary, privacy in one’s person and effects seems to me to be eminently just, promotes tranquility, adds to the common welfare, and is one of the greatest blessings of liberty I can imagine. If you don’t believe me on that last point, throw wide the settings on your Facebook profile and wait five minutes.
Not everything people claim as a right truly is one; I get that. But to say that it must be spelled out to exist is absurd. The law is and always has been a lagging indicator of the culture at best, and a drag on the culture at worst. Far better to put the burden on those who would control us than on those of us who would be free.
Life Is A Game. What Achievements Have You Unlocked?
Posted: September 10, 2012 Filed under: Culture, Humor, Internet | Tags: achievements, comedy, culture, games, humor, internet, pop culture 1 CommentH/T to Barnaby Felton. He posted this on Facebook a while back and it got me thinking. If life were a game, what achievements would it have? Even better, what achievements SHOULD it have? And which ones would I have unlocked by now? Which ones would I be looking forward to?
Below is my list of achievements, first the ones I’ve already earned and then the ones I’m still working on (or never intend to get, but just love the idea of). They’re not always things I’m necessarily proud of, mind you, but sometimes survival is an achievement all its own. I encourage you to submit your own in the comments, but please do your best to follow form. Give it a title and a description, and where possible be creative.
Unlocked Achievements
Level 20 – Turn 20 years old
Level 30 – Turn 30 years old
Man’s Best Friend – Own (or be owned by) a dog
Cat’s Cradle – Own (or be owned by) a cat
Full of Pride – Own (or be owned by) more than one cat at once
Yakety Yak – Do chores for your parents
Let’s Do the Time Warp Again – See the Rocky Horror Picture Show in the theater at least twice
Up the Creek – Go camping
Drinks Are On Me – Turn the legal drinking age in your country or state
Fade to Black – Drink so much that you pass out
You Can’t Handle the Truth! – Get caught in a blatant lie
And the Oscar Goes To… – Make a scene in public
Wage Slave – get a job
Tithing to Uncle Sam – Pay income taxes
Hate the Playa – Badmouth an ex
Hate the Game – Swear off dating for at least six months
I Put a Ring On It – Get married
Hey Mo(hawk)! – Have a mohawk
In the Midnight Hour, She Cried Mo(hawk), Mo(hawk), Mo(hawk) – Have more than one color of
mohawk at some point in your life
Bob Dobbs – Be accused of being a slacker
Part of the System – Vote in a government election
I Demand a Recount! – Have your candidate lose in a government election
Y’ain’t From Round Here, Are Ya? – Move at least 500 miles for work or school
Under The Bridge – Deliberately troll someone online
Achievements I’m Still Working On
Level 40 – Turn 40 years old
Level 50 – Turn 50 years old
Level 60 – Turn 60 years old
Level 70 – Turn 70 years old
Level 80 – Turn 80 years old
Level 90 – Turn 90 years old
Level 100 – Turn 100 years old
Older Than the Hills – Turn 101 years old
Leader of the Pack – Own (or be owned by) more than one dog at once
I Got Music, I Got Rhythm – Learn to play a musical instrument
Rob the Cradle – Date someone at least ten years younger than you are
Rob the Grave – Date someone at least ten years older than you are
Romero – Be personally responsible for a worldwide zombie apocalypse
Resource Hog – Have a child
Breeding an Army – Have more than two children
Jailbait – Spend the night in jail (including the drunk tank)
Macgyver – Improvise a mechanical devise to get yourself out of a jam, preferably one involving
terrorists
Gilligan – Join the Navy or Coast Guard
The Skipper – Have command of a boat (civilian or armed forces)
The Millionaire and His Wife – Marry into money
The Movie Star – Get a lead role in a motion picture
The Professor and Marry Ann – Create an item out of common objects that completely defies the laws
of science using only the help of your lab assistant, a simple farm girl from Kansas
Script Kiddie – Hack a computer system
Haxx0r – Hack a computer system using your own code
Neo – Hack a government computer system using your own code
White Hat, Black Hat, They All Look Good On Me – Work computer security before or after hacking a
computer system
I’m With the (Rubber) Band – Go bungee jumping
Lunatic – Jump out of a perfectly serviceable airplane in mid-flight (parachute optional)
Patriarchal Misogynistic Tendencies
Posted: September 7, 2012 Filed under: Culture, Politics | Tags: America, culture, feminism, men, misandry, misogyny, patriarchy, philosophy, politics, relationships, women 11 CommentsRecently I’ve been reading a lot more internet chatter about feminism, which I can only take to mean it’s on the rise again. This wounds me greatly, as I had hoped we lived in a Post sort of world. You know, post-racial, post-gender, post-political, Post brand cereals, whatever. But I guess that ship has sailed, and we’re right back to having the same arguments that we’ve been hashing over (and failing to reconcile) for decades.
So what does this mean for me personally? To be honest it means I’ve had to confront my own patriarchal misogynistic tendencies. Yes, I admit that I have them. Of course I have them. C’mon, I was born in the mid-seventies and educated in public schools. I’m lucky I can even spell “patriarchal misogynistic tendencies” let alone admit having them. And I do. But just like paranoid schizophrenics can still have enemies, misogynists can still be right from time to time.
Here’s my favorite example: I’ve had a crazy ex-girlfriend or two. Now don’t get me wrong on this; I actually have several exes, and for most of them I hope I hold the place of “pleasant memory”, and I more likely hold the place of “bullet, dodged.” Most of those ladies I don’t even think of anymore, and while I may have in my callous youth said some unkind things about them I at least have enough class to regret it. But the fact is I do have one or two truly crazy ex-girlfriends. I even have objective witnesses of both genders to back me up. But here’s the problem: everything I’ve seen in the feminist orthodoxy says that’s wrong. That somehow I’m as much to blame as they are, if not more so, simply because I was a willing participant in the relationship. Boy, that’s not blaming the victim much, now is it? Only I can’t be a victim, because of my gender. That’s one.
My next favorite is things like quotas, preferences, and government set-asides. There are plenty of these designed to help women get ahead in school, in business, and in civil service. Setting aside the question of their efficacy, I wonder about their essential morality. Is this just? Is it right to single out one gender and favor them over another? And if so, for how long? Sure you may feel you are correcting some sort of societal imbalance, but when there’s no limit set the assumption is that injustice is either endemic to society or the individuals that comprise it (which are basically one and the same). With women graduating from college at higher rates than men and getting more advanced degrees than men these days, have we reached the day we no longer need these set asides? If not, will we soon? Will we ever? That’s two.
And hey, for the third issue, let’s go for a hat trick of issues that all tie together: divorce, custody, and child support. Despite the great gains that have been made by women in the workplace and men in the home, the default assumption that is near impossible to overcome in any divorce proceeding is that a man should support a woman “in the style she has become accustomed to”, and if there are kids they will almost always go to mom unless dad has absolute iron-clad proof she is a drug-addled child molester. In that case the kids will probably wind up with her parents. Fathers without custody will be tasked with child support (don’t get me wrong, I’m all for that) and hunted down like the dogs they are if they miss a single payment (a bit draconian, but hard to argue with), and in the rare event a mom doesn’t have custody she has to… well, how often are they ordered to pay child support? And when was the last time you heard the phrase “dead-beat mom”? And please don’t feed me some line about women being “nurturers”. Remember, we don’t assign gender roles in this classroom. So that’s three.
Last but not least is a real touchy one and the one I expect to catch the most hell over, but I feel the need to say it since nobody else will. First a clarification: I am not taking a stance on abortion here. That’s another post entirely. I do have an opinion, a strong one, but I don’t want to cloud the issue with that argument. Let’s simply take as given that Roe v Wade is the law of the land. So women have the right to decide, once they are pregnant, whether or not they will have a child. What right do men have in this arrangement? If he disagrees with her choice, either way, he is powerless. Completely at her mercy. He can beg, plead, persuade as best he might (and please don’t suggest threatening because I will gladly see a man in jail for that), but he has no recourse before the law. If you believe that is fair, turn the situation around. Put a woman in ANY situation in which she is bound for almost twenty years by a single decision that a man makes on her behalf, even if he is bound by that same decision, and tell me that it’s still fair. Here’s an alternative: let him surrender his parental rights if he doesn’t want the child. It’s not everything, but it’s more than nothing.
Life’s not fair. I get that. But why is it that women get to cry “life’s not fair” and call it a movement? Why do men have to stand by on the sidelines and simply accept the slow chipping away at our dignity and all the good we have in order to make the world an acceptable place? There is injustice in the world, this I understand; that is a fact that is not limited by gender, ethnicity, or politics, and we should all stand against it. But robbing from Peter to give to Paulina does not create a better world; injustice is not the answer to injustice; misandry is not the cure for misogyny.
Related posts:
The Dating Rorschach Test
Posted: September 3, 2012 Filed under: Culture, Dating, Humor | Tags: comedy, culture, dating, humor, men, relationships, women 7 CommentsI’m sure everyone has their own guidelines for what makes a good relationship. Between two friends of mine I have heard the entire spectrum, from a simple “am I as happy with this person three months in as I was the day we first met?” to a test that runs to several pages (I am not making this up). For myself, I long ago developed my own simple guidelines that have worked exceptionally well, and that I am at last ready to share with the world. They are as follows:
- Can I wake up next to this person without flinching?
- Can I put up with their shit?
- Can they put up with my shit?
Now, before I catch any grief over these questions, allow me to point out that this is the Dating Rorschach Test™. What you get out of it is what you put into it. Let’s take it one question at a time and you’ll see what I mean.
Can I wake up next to this person without flinching?
I’ll admit it, when I first came up with this question, I was about 15, and it was my entire standard for dating. And yes, it was all about looks. But then, as I got into my early twenties, it took on new depth and dimensions, like carefully leaning over and checking her ID, hoping not to wake her while I make sure I won’t get arrested- well, anyway, the point is I grew as a person. By the time I met the woman who would become my wife this question took on some real meaning. Will I still have self-respect when I wake up? Can I seriously see myself discussing matters of import with her? Does she fulfill my intellectual and emotional needs as well as being beautiful? (Hey, I never said I stopped being shallow). So what do you need in order to be able to wake up next to someone without flinching?
Can I put up with their shit?
I added this one in when I was about nineteen or so, after a string of short, tumultuous, and painful relationships that seemed to have one common thread: wacko girlfriends. I was absolutely convinced that every single girl I had dated to that point was batshit crazy. Quite the coincidence, and if I had any concept of basic probability I would have seen the flaw in my logic, but it took another few years for me to sort that one out (see below for that). The one good thing that came out of it was that I was able to recognize that, if I was going to sustain any kind of relationship, I was either going to have to find the perfect woman who had no flaws whatsoever and then convince her that she wanted to date me, or I would have to learn to live with another human being’s imperfections. All evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, even I didn’t have the kind of hubris necessary for option A, so I went with B. I know this doesn’t sound like much of a leap, but seriously, I’ve seen a lot of “adults” who still need to pick up on this one, so cut my younger self a little slack. The key, I realized, was to find someone whose craziness was compatible with mine, or that I at least didn’t find too noxious.
What does this mean for you? Whatever you need it to mean. Does leaving dirty socks on the floor drive you crazy? How about owning too many shoes? How do you feel about Friday night being “hangin’ with my boys night”? Or saying “whatever” and walking away being considered a perfectly acceptable way to end a conversation? Think about it, because what seems cute now might getting annoying a year from now, and what’s annoying now will drive you batshit crazy a year from now. And after almost a decade dating and married with my wife, I can say this is one of the most important points to consider. The other one is…
Can they put up with my shit?
So it wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I figured this one out. As one Demotivational poster points out, “The only consistent feature in all of your dissatisfying relationships is you.” I finally realized that it’s not enough for me to be happy with the person I’m with; it might be within the realm of possibility that it’s just barely a chance there could be some fraction of a notional option of a thought I could be somewhat close to less than perfect (I’m able to acknowledge my flaws). Put another way, I’m an acquired taste. I may even have the occasional annoying habit, like leaving dirty socks on the floor, according to my wife. Although I still swear that was the dog. That we didn’t get until we had been married for a year. He has a time machine, like Mr. Peabody. He’s been using it to get me in trouble for years.
The point is tolerance in a relationship is a two-way street. We always think of relationships as being about love and respect and sex and sunshine and rainbows and all that jazz, but the reality day to day is that more often than not relationships are about listening to somebody tell the same story you’ve already heard a hundred times and I really don’t care about your level twenty barbarian honey but you go ahead and tell me anyway if it’ll make you happy and- sorry, got a little carried away there. What was I saying? Oh yeah. The point is relationships are about living with another person, in close proximity, every day, hopefully for the rest of your life. That’s a recipe for friction more often than happiness, which is why you need to find someone who can tolerate your bad habits, whether it’s leaving dirty socks lying around, telling the same stupid stories over and over, or blaming it all on the dog.
The Dating Rorschach Test™
So there you have it. Maybe you agree, maybe you don’t. Maybe you have your own standards for finding a mate. But at least I can say mine worked for me. And in the end, that’s all I ever wanted out of it.
This Is Just My Opinion
Posted: August 27, 2012 Filed under: Culture | Tags: belief, culture, language, opinion, philosophy 3 CommentsThis is going to seem like an extremely petty post to some, perhaps most people, but I really need to get this out there. If I hear one more person conflate “opinion” with “belief” I am going to scream. I have very little rational basis for this; after all, if one relies on the Oxford English Dictionary definition of the two words (and I often do), they are almost functionally identical. OED, you have failed me for the last time. AGAIN!
But in many cases language is more about the connotation of words rather than their literal definition. When we speak of opinions the connotation is that there is a connection, however tangential, to the real, provable world of facts. That’s not to say all opinions are supported by facts; “in my opinion, vanilla ice cream is the best ice cream” is a valid opinion. It is not supported by facts, unless you consider the existence of vanilla ice cream to be factual support. But it at least has a direct connection to the world of provable facts (i.e. I can prove that vanilla ice cream exists.) Even professional opinions need to have some connection, no matter how tangential and tenuous (and hear I’m thinking of lawyers) to the world of real, provable facts.
Belief is a different matter. You can believe in anything you want, regardless of its relationship to the world of provable fact. “I believe in Santa Claus” is a valid statement of belief. “I don’t believe in love” is another. Neither has any connection to the world of provable fact (unless you put stock in either the official NORAD Santa tracker or the love tester at your local bar.)
Somewhat like the humble atom, the difference is small yet significant. When you claim it is your opinion that God exists, that is very different from saying you believe God exists. Your belief in the existence or non-existence of God is your own business, same as your belief in any entity that can’t be proven or disproven. But once you move it into the realm of opinion, you are asserting that it has at least a tangential relationship to the realm of provable fact, which it by definition does not. The same holds true for many other things that people state their “opinion” about.
This may seem like I’m “just arguing semantics”, and if you think I am, you’re right. And there’s another phrase I take umbrage with. Let’s see if the Oxford English Dictionary can redeem itself: “the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning.” Ah, now that’s the OED I’ve come to depend on to back up my righteous claims to moral superiority. But in all seriousness, saying “you’re just arguing semantics” is like saying “you’re just arguing economics” or “you’re just arguing law.” Words have meaning. Using them incorrectly results in hash brown goes flipped nuclear sauce. When we already have enough trouble communicating even when we use the same word (“Do you like me, or do you, you know, LIKE like me?”), we’ve got to start using the right word at the right time. It won’t save the world, but it will change a small part of it. At least, I believe it will.
Famous Literature as Haiku
Posted: August 24, 2012 Filed under: Culture, Humor | Tags: comedy, culture, haiku, humor, literature, poetry, pop culture, popular culture 2 CommentsThe Illiad, by Homer
Damn, Helen is fine.
Whoops, started a big ass war.
Look, a giant horse.
The Odyssey, by Homer
Finished fighting war.
Got held up on the ride home.
House guests are a bitch.
The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri
Virgil leads the way,
Beatrice sent to guide me.
Can’t wait for next two.
Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlow
Summon a devil
I learn magic, lose my soul
Didn’t think that through
Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
Dad killed by uncle
A show to unveil the truth
Caught in the mousetrap
The Cthulhu Mythos, by H.P. Lovecraft
Inherit old books.
Nightmares full of tentacles.
Hastur Hastur Hast-
Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller
Meet Willy Loman.
He’s liked, but he’s not well liked.
This will not end well.
Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett
Nothing must be done.
Wait is interminable.
End of line: no show.
Finnegan’s Wake, by James Joyce
Book rich with meaning.
Complex, deep, yet still has puns.
Bitter old author.
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
Too many moochers.
Let the country fall apart.
Get a job, hippie.
Politeness for Impoliteness’ Sake
Posted: August 17, 2012 Filed under: Culture, Humor | Tags: culture, etiquette, humor, politeness, society 1 CommentAmong some of my family and friends I have a slight reputation as a know-it-all. Among the rest I have a huge reputation as an arrogant ass who thinks he has the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. (It’s 42. I read Douglas Adams.) I’d like to think this is an unfair characterization born out of jealousy of my awesome awesomeness. I’d also like to think I have a face like Matthew McConaughey, a body like Brad Pitt, and the intellectual acumen of Stephen Hawking. So I’ll let you be the judge of which of us is right.
The point, however, is that regardless of my reputation in this regard, my family and friends are generally too polite to make an issue of it, even when I start to go off an one of my infrequent rants. I am of course using the colloquial definition of “infrequent”, that being “the length of time that casts the speaker in the best light, usually a modest one.” I particularly appreciate this as I have reached a much more mellow middle age (no, I am not using a colloquial definition of mellow, I really used to be worse) and have come to appreciate the value of politeness.
In my brash youth, I didn’t really see the value of politeness for its own sake. It always seemed to me to be more a matter of hypocrisy; after all, when you are being nice to someone you would rather spit in their eye, how is that NOT hypocritical? It was only after I had spent some serious time in the corporate world (and if you don’t think that’s a culture all its own, you’ve never lived in it) that I started to understand the value of politeness. I found there that politeness was a tool, nothing more and nothing less, and like any tool the value of it consists entirely in what you make with it.
Politeness doesn’t exist, as I thought it did when I was younger, for its own sake. Nor does it merely separate us from the animals, as I have heard some people assert. Rather, I have found that politeness is the oil that keeps society as frictionless as possible. It is the “civil” in “civil society.” Consider: polite conversation doesn’t allow for religion or politics as topics. I look around these days and realize that’s not a coincidence. Not to put too fine a point on it, politeness is what makes it possible for us to coexist with the people we would rather not have to coexist with. Whether it’s in the workplace or the marketplace, at school or at church, there’s always someone you just can’t stand, chances are they return the favor, and politeness is the only thing standing between the two of you and a date with destiny.
That’s not to say we always have to be polite. Sometimes it’s time to get impolite. After all, I would hardly refer to a good protest march as “polite.” Your typical rock concert hardly measures up to the realm of “polite”. And God knows any conversation with my close friends will never be within seven dirty words of being “polite.” But those are the stand out moments, the exceptions, not the rules, and should be cherished more for it, not less. But when we start turning every day into a protest, when every night is a concert, and every conversation would make George Carlin blush (bless his smutty departed self), we lose something priceless. It’s not just a matter of losing the “specialness” or those moments. We’re losing our dignity as a society.
Our current culture of brashness that seems to reward the braggart, the loudmouth, the shock jock and the bully-pulpit preacher both, the people who drag their politics and opinions out at every turn instead of confining them to opinion columns and blogs where they belong; it needs to stop. We need to – not step up, but step back. Not speak up, but quiet down. Take our fingers off the hyperbolic trigger and for once, don’t let our voices be heard. Just let it go. Stop feeding the trolls.
Even me.
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My Not So Humble Opinion 