Saturday, October 07, 2017
Thought of the Day: Paranoia the Reassurer
No one has greater faith that reality makes sense than a conspiracy theorist.
Thursday, October 05, 2017
What Is Behind This Senseless Violence?
The only message Stephen Paddock sent was "I am powerful, and your meaningless life is hanging by a thread at any moment, and you are helpless to protect yourself from me or anyone like me." Unless a manifesto pops up belatedly, we'll never know if he had any motivation beyond some kind of personal hate for the irritating happy little world of sheeple, and a desire to publicly execute a bunch of them to demonstrate the ugliness and meaninglessness of life and the futility of delusions of security and control.
Even that's a guess at best. All imputations of motive will be, unless more is learned. Meanwhile, what is behind people's need to make all these big, sinister implications that "there must be some deeper motive?"
They're scared little children, is what's behind it. They're serenely ignorant, and they refuse to believe in the capacity of human evil because it scares them. They believe any act, no matter how horrible, can be "explained" by "ideology."
No. Sorry. Ideology provides the excuse for antisocial violent acts, but the excuse is not the cause. People inclined to violence gravitate towards excuses. One is as good as the other - the one they find will be good enough.
But plenty of them aren't so weak as to need an excuse from some theory or mentor in order to act. To deny that is to misunderstand the problem, waste time and effort on symbolic gestures that neither explain nor improve the situation.
That explanation people want is just some excuse, any excuse, to pretend they understand and to feel better about what humanity is like.
Example: plenty enough people think life is meaningless. Or that people are horrible. Or that humanity is worthless - a bad thing on the face of the planet. That the world is a wrong, bad place and that society is a disgusting lie foisted on people to make them believe in things like the possibility of justice. None of that is insane. It's commonplace.
If you start from nihilism, all it takes is a bit of egotism and irritation with people's chirpiness to want to show them all just how meaningless life is. Which isn't insane, if life really is meaningless. It's just cruel and egotistical. A refusal to honor the illusions of others and leave them to them. A desire to show the world that your interpretation of the world is the correct one, and that they have been fools to believe their rosier views of the world, which protect them not one bit from the inescapable truth.
I suppose you can say that itself would be an ideology, but no. Nihilism is not an ideology. Nihilism is the rejection of ideology.
All you need to kill for no reason is to believe in nothing.
Even that's a guess at best. All imputations of motive will be, unless more is learned. Meanwhile, what is behind people's need to make all these big, sinister implications that "there must be some deeper motive?"
They're scared little children, is what's behind it. They're serenely ignorant, and they refuse to believe in the capacity of human evil because it scares them. They believe any act, no matter how horrible, can be "explained" by "ideology."
No. Sorry. Ideology provides the excuse for antisocial violent acts, but the excuse is not the cause. People inclined to violence gravitate towards excuses. One is as good as the other - the one they find will be good enough.
But plenty of them aren't so weak as to need an excuse from some theory or mentor in order to act. To deny that is to misunderstand the problem, waste time and effort on symbolic gestures that neither explain nor improve the situation.
That explanation people want is just some excuse, any excuse, to pretend they understand and to feel better about what humanity is like.
Example: plenty enough people think life is meaningless. Or that people are horrible. Or that humanity is worthless - a bad thing on the face of the planet. That the world is a wrong, bad place and that society is a disgusting lie foisted on people to make them believe in things like the possibility of justice. None of that is insane. It's commonplace.
If you start from nihilism, all it takes is a bit of egotism and irritation with people's chirpiness to want to show them all just how meaningless life is. Which isn't insane, if life really is meaningless. It's just cruel and egotistical. A refusal to honor the illusions of others and leave them to them. A desire to show the world that your interpretation of the world is the correct one, and that they have been fools to believe their rosier views of the world, which protect them not one bit from the inescapable truth.
I suppose you can say that itself would be an ideology, but no. Nihilism is not an ideology. Nihilism is the rejection of ideology.
All you need to kill for no reason is to believe in nothing.
Wednesday, October 04, 2017
Thoughts and prayers going out
Thoughts and prayers going out to all scumbags out there contemplating cowardly acts of violence against strangers and loved ones. May God make a change in your hearts so you shoot yourselves in the f***ing head without the needless step of first mowing down others.
Tuesday, October 03, 2017
The Tough Topics #46: The Oxford Comma
I use the Oxford comma wherever its omission could lead to an alternate reading, and omit it otherwise. You know where people run into trouble? Where their omission or inclusion of the Oxford comma is a point of principle, rather than a decision dependent entirely on content, context, and sense.
People who always omit it risk giving the reader two grammatically valid ways to read the statement. In contracts or in law, this can be fatal.
People who always include it run no risks in terms of the sense they wish to convey. But in using a comma where none is needed - where no alternate reading could arise from its omission - they risk seeming rule-bound, precious, given to stylistic affectations that serve no purpose. Adherent to a principle, without having any feel for its actual use or effect.
The Oxford comma, like every mark of punctuation, is a tool to direct meaning along the writer's desired path. Clarity demands its use where necessary. Elegance and simplicity would seduce us to omit it where its presence adds nothing. There are those who love and some who hate the Oxford comma, but the majority who simply omit it without thought do so out of an instinct for simplicity, and a dislike for needless flourish or ornament.
But we can't lose sight of the controversy! Gratuitous use of the Oxford comma (where its omission could not possibly introduce ambiguity) DOES add something! It signals to the world "I'm Team Oxford Comma!" With all that that implies, and most of what it implies is good. I'm not Team Oxford Comma, but most of those people are pretty funny and great, and it's sweet and wonderful that so tiny a mark could say so much. An Aldis-lamp flash to the like-minded resistance.
The Oxford comma will never die. It will keep barging in where it's not needed, pointing proudly to where it sometimes is. And its opponents will omit it scrupulously, sometimes to the detriment of their case in court, more often to the hilarity of readers who spot the wild ambiguity unleashed. The Oxford comma is the only thing that can leash that beast. Do we need it? Yes.
Do we need it all over the place? Probably not. But you ought to admit, it's a little bit cute.
People who always omit it risk giving the reader two grammatically valid ways to read the statement. In contracts or in law, this can be fatal.
People who always include it run no risks in terms of the sense they wish to convey. But in using a comma where none is needed - where no alternate reading could arise from its omission - they risk seeming rule-bound, precious, given to stylistic affectations that serve no purpose. Adherent to a principle, without having any feel for its actual use or effect.
The Oxford comma, like every mark of punctuation, is a tool to direct meaning along the writer's desired path. Clarity demands its use where necessary. Elegance and simplicity would seduce us to omit it where its presence adds nothing. There are those who love and some who hate the Oxford comma, but the majority who simply omit it without thought do so out of an instinct for simplicity, and a dislike for needless flourish or ornament.
But we can't lose sight of the controversy! Gratuitous use of the Oxford comma (where its omission could not possibly introduce ambiguity) DOES add something! It signals to the world "I'm Team Oxford Comma!" With all that that implies, and most of what it implies is good. I'm not Team Oxford Comma, but most of those people are pretty funny and great, and it's sweet and wonderful that so tiny a mark could say so much. An Aldis-lamp flash to the like-minded resistance.
The Oxford comma will never die. It will keep barging in where it's not needed, pointing proudly to where it sometimes is. And its opponents will omit it scrupulously, sometimes to the detriment of their case in court, more often to the hilarity of readers who spot the wild ambiguity unleashed. The Oxford comma is the only thing that can leash that beast. Do we need it? Yes.
Do we need it all over the place? Probably not. But you ought to admit, it's a little bit cute.
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