What Is Wrong With This Comparison?
Friday, May 31, 2013
42 comments:
IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE FOLLOWING, YOU DON'T BELONG HERE, SO KINDLY GET OUT AND STAY OUT.
We welcome Conversation
But without Vituperation.
If your aim is Vilification ––
Other forms of Denigration ––
Unfounded Accusation --
Determined Obfuscation ––
Alienation with Self-Justification ––
We WILL use COMMENT ERADICATION.
IN ADDITION
Gratuitous Displays of Extraneous Knowledge Offered Not To Shed Light Or Enhance the Discussion, But For The Primary Purpose Of Giving An Impression Of Superiority are obnoxiously SELF-AGGRANDIZING, and therefore, Subject to Removal at the Discretion of the Censor-in-Residence.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Liberal Logic? There is NO Liberal Logic!
ReplyDeleteWe have see this on your past Blogs. .
Liberals think that Americans should "move on" past the misconduct of Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy, but should dig up as much old dirt as possible about every Republican candidate that would dare to run against their Dear liberal idols.
We have a President and his wife who think that we can borrow our way out of debt and spend its way out of a recession.
We have a party and a media who thinks that every scandal and or screw up is a right-wing conspiracy!
We have a President that treats the constitution as if it's yesterdays newspaper.
We have a party that feels it OK, to do something wrong because a former Republican President did the same thing.
So, there is NO Liberal Logic!
Profanities and the like as accepted behaviors came about because the Left insisted that we do not have the right to be offended.
ReplyDeleteTypical of the Left, when the same principle is turned in the Left's direction, the Left whines. Sheesh.
And we have a President that refuses to call the enemy what they are “ terrorists “ or better yet “Islamic terrorists” because he doesn’t want to offend them. He may as well deny we are even at war!
ReplyDeleteSometimes I wonder which side this President is really on. Are we or are we not in a "war on terror"?
Do we have to hear wait Bush or Regan did or didn’t do every time that Obama gets into hot water? Did we have to hear that “This Is What My Son Would Look like If I Had a Son” when a white man kills a Black man even BEFORE he has a trial?
No, these is not and Liberal logic at all.
. This is what those who see globalization as the chance for the entire earth as a unified space of communication, bringing together all humanity, fail to notice: since a Neighbor is (as Freud suspected long ago) primarily a Thing, a traumatic intruder, someone whose different way of life (or, rather, way of jouissance materialized in its social practices and rituals) disturb us, throw off the rails the balance of our way of life, when the Neighbor comes too close, this can also give rise to aggressive reaction aimed at getting rid of this disturbing intruder – or, as Peter Sloterdijk put it: “More communication means at first above all more conflict.” [1]
ReplyDeleteThis is why the attitude of “understanding-each-other” has to be supplemented by the attitude of “getting-out-of-each-other’s-way,” by maintaining an appropriate distance, by a new “code of discretion.” European civilization finds it easier to tolerate different ways of life precise on account of what its critics usually denounce as its weakness and failure, namely the “alienation” of social life.” Alienation means (also) that distance is included into the very social texture: even if I live side by side with others, the normal state is to ignore them. I am allowed not to get too close to others; I move in a social space where I interact with others obeying certain external “mechanical” rules, without sharing their “inner world” – and, perhaps, the lesson to be learned is that, sometimes, a dose of alienation is indispensable for the peaceful coexistence of ways of life. Sometimes, alienation is not a problem but a solution: globalization will turn explosive not if we remain isolated of each other, but, on the opposite, if we get too close to each other.
- Slavoj Zizek, "The Antinomies of Tolerant Reason"
It's much easier to turn off the TV than to talk to and turn away the Jehova's Witnesses' who just rang the doorbell. It's all a function of "distance." So long as the Muslim's stay in Arabia, they can kill their daughters. Just don't let them move in next door.
Up is down and down is up. Left is right and right is left.
ReplyDeleteThe good news is (last I knew)the earth is still rotating about it's axis and revolving around the sun.
Perhaps humankind will one day get it all figured out. BUT, given the historical record it ain't all that promising...
ReplyDeleteI see crosses worn all the time on teevee and everywhere I travel, especially here in Boston, a heavily Catholic city. Franciscan monks here at St. Leonards wear the huge crosses over their robes and no one sees anything upsetting over it at all. I've never heard anyone make a complaint against this.
The poster does not quote anyone making a complaint about anyone wearing crosses.
If certain public schools have made an issue over this, then that's something the parents need to address with the school committees in their cities and towns. I've read of some public schools in heavily Christian areas of the country that lecture their students on abstinence only because that is in keeping with their religious beliefs and some schools in heavily Christian sections of the country fight to make Intelligent Design and Creationism part of the science curriculum, when both are clearly religious ideas and not science.
Where's the grievance poster on that?
This appears to be looking for an outrage that doesn't exist so that certain religious sects can feel sorry for something that isn't happening.
That poster doesn't explain what the children are watching that labels it "profanfity." The FCC has rules about what is acceptable to be said on the people's airwaves. Cable teevee is different. But isn't it the parents' responsibility to know what their children are watching?
Come on, Shaw, you see crucifixes in the North End? Get down the street.
ReplyDeleteAnother fake fringe right issue.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAnd where is the "logic " of some people who worship Michelle Obama as a beauty Queen when we all know that she is as UGLY as sin.
ReplyDeleteFunny! I watched part of a Clint Eastwood film last night on TCM, because I was tired, it was too early to go to bed, and there wasn't anything else on at the moment. I heard charming phrases like "That fucking bitch," and "What a cunt!" "You dirty bastard," "That's all right, you can't help being a kike," etc.
ReplyDeleteThese things don't "offend" me. I'm long past the point where I can BE "offended," and I don't believe in it anyway, BUT I turned the box off, because I was BORED to TEARS.
That's what cultural degeneration produces ever increasing amounts of BOREDOM --- and FRUSTRATION.
What we as a people have lost sight of is the beauty, allure and intense fascination that can come when artists work within SPECIFIC LIMITATIONS.
Two people mentioned Beethoven's Great Fugue, and seemed to recognize it's transcendant power. That's good, but do they realize that such a thing is the product of long established, highly disciplined, orderly procedures that follow very specific rules and regulations?
That the GLORY of any such a work -- and, thank God, there are MANY -- comes not from BREAKING rules and escaping SELF-DISCIPLINE, but from UNIQUE INSIGHTS that come to creative geniuses that enable them to TRANSFORM what-in-lesser-hands-might-only-be a tedious academic exercise into a magnificent WORK of ART?
Once we abandon ALL rules, we do not get FREEDOM. Instead we place ourselves in a state of CHAOS, and then the TYRANNY of institutionalized PETTINESS.
Chesterton put it better:
"When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws."
~ G.K. Chesterton - in the London Daily News, 7/29/1905
And Beauty struggles desperately to stay afloat in a mighty ocean of sewage.
Can't think of any Eastwood film with those lines, FT.
ReplyDeleteWhich did you watch?
Any thoughts on the development of Eastwood's attitude toward vigilantism or were you just watching for the bad words?
"That fucking bitch," and "What a cunt!" "You dirty bastard," "That's all right, you can't help being a kike," etc."
ReplyDeleteThose words are not allowed on the people's airwaves. You have to sign up for and purchase cable access to see films that contain those phrases. And you have to deliberately go to the movie theater to see films that contain those phrases (some of those phrases, BTW, have been hurled at me on certain conservative blogs).
In other words, Mr. Free Thinke, the offending phrases that you believe are the coarsening of humankind are to be heard only when free men and women CHOOSE to see films or other entertainment that include them.
Several years ago I visited the ruins of Pompeii. One of the tours included visiting certain houses that were still in tact even after the calamity that befell that city. In certain of those houses, a special room was set aside so that the host, after entertaining his guests with casks of wine and varieties of food, could show off his pornography. In these certain rooms, paintings adorned the walls of men--naked men and mostly priapic. This was considered great entertainment for the adults. In fact I remember one that showed a male weighing his penis on a scale against a pile of coins. There was some message supposedly to be gotten from that fresco.
So you see, Mr. FT, this has always been with us. Have you ever looked closely at the beautiful Greek vases? Boston' MFA has a wonderful collection. The Greeks were very much interested in all forms of male love.
Have you read Lady Chatterley's Lover? Ulysses? The Tropic of Cancer? Some of our greatest literature includes what you've written above.
Would you have us strike those words from our language? From our literature? Films?
Being fully human, I think, includes the beauty and the bestial.
We have to acknowledge both are part of our primate nature.
pShaw???
ReplyDeleteAs you aptly said recently, FT, what Peter says about Paul says more about Peter than it does about Paul (paraphrasing here). In the same vein I find gratuitous profanity saying more about the speaker than it does about the intended subject. On the other hand sometimes a swear word or profanity may just be the most succinct and direct way of describing an action or a subject. In cases such as that I say: 'Bombs away'!
ReplyDeleteNow, wearing a cross mayor may not be just an overt way stating one's pretense at walking on the right side of God. More often than not, it's hypocritical, since it seems most religion today has much in common by pretending that one's religion is "better" than someone else's, that others outside of it are heretics, infidels or unbelievers. The more extreme would ignorantly and blindly revert back readily to a remote Dark Age to impose their thinking on others through the tried and true methods of the past including subjecting recalcitrant less zealous followers to such pleasantries as inquisitions and barring no indignity to be inflicted, no rod to be spared including the rack and ultimately death imposed. The world has experienced this before, I guess, we were mistaken to believe that we have advanced mush from the primordial and primitive.
ReplyDeleteThe net really is a gigantic Mirror that reflects the surface aspects of Human Nature.
ReplyDeleteWe may like to think we are exposing and thus harming those we fear, dislike, disapprove of, despise and hold in bitterest contempt, but in Truth we reveal only the worst part of ourselves.
The net is also a vast, limitless Echo Chamber. The disturbing sounds we hear of sneering, scathing denunciation, mocking laughter, and snarls of derision are our own voices.
WIth every note of negativity we utter, we negate part of our individual selves.
This process is COMMON, ORDINARY, USUAL, quintessentially VULGAR.
That's why an honest expression of Affection, an honest attempt at Understanding, an earnest application of good Conscience, and any true gesture of noble Sacrifice or Forgiveness is often capable of moving many to tears -- of Joy and Contrition that come with the exercise of Compassion.
It is in losing ourselves in the needs and concerns of others -- with no thought of gaining any reward for ourselves -- that we may find our TRUE selfhood, and thus gain Fulfillment.
Great works of Art -- and by that I mean Literature, Poetry, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Architecture, Interior Design and Horticulture when used to nurture plant life on windowsills, in conservatories, and to create and maintain beautiful parks and gardens -- help to put us in touch with the finest things Earthly Existence can produce and thus the wellsprings of Compassion, Understanding and Love everyone of us has, but takes great pains to hide most of the time for fear of being mocked, misunderstood and possibly damaged.
Fear and Hate are the evil twins that hold us back from finding true Joy in Life.
Ms Shaw, I don't believe that Lady Chatterley's Lover, which of course I read the MOMENT it came out like everyone else in my high school class, is a great piece of literature. The thrill of seeing lines such as
ReplyDelete"I don't care if tha' shits or if tha' pisses," wears off very quickly and soon becomes tedious.
As a novel I find Lady Chatterley ... mediocre at best. The works of Henry Miller hardly qualify as "Great Literature" either in my never humble estimation. Neither did Mr. Clelland's notorious Fanny Hill, or the anonymously written My Secret Life. After those particular genies flew out of the 1960's version of Pandora's Box things quickly degenerated to the abysmal levels we are forced to live with today.
Unlimited doses of vulgarity and pornography don't satisfy any of our deepest needs. They merely clutter up the landscape with ugly reminders of how wasteful, inane and corrupt human nature can be when encouraged to sink as low as it can.
I strongly disagree with you in your apparent belief that the seamiest sides of life, the ugliest, most brutal and corrupt aspects of human nature, and the vilest forms of human behavior deserve to be CELEBRATED.
Would you have us return to The Coliseum? -- to the Mass Impalement practices of Vlad? -- to the Crusades? -- to the Inquisition? -- to the Star Chamber? -- to Cromwell's Persecutions? -- to the Salem Witch Trials? -- to the Reign of Terror in France? -- to The Trail of Tears? -- to Wounded Knee? - to Negro Slavery in the Old South? -- to the Civil War? -- to Andersonville? -- to the hanging of Mary Surratt? -- to the Russian Revolution? - to Hitler's March into the Sudetanland and Poland? -- to Auschwitz and Treblinka? -- to the BRUTE ANIMAL EXISTENCE from which we've been striving to ESCAPE for countless MILLENNIA?
ACKNOWLEDGING our humanity's weaknesses and many abject failures is one thing; CELEBRATING the WORST in OURSELVES as though it DESERVED to take its place alongside our FINEST, RAREST, MOST SUBLIME ACHIEVEMENTS is quite another.
Cruelty, Depravity, Debauchery and Perversity hardly need AMPLIFICATION.
If you really THOUGHT about the vastly undesirable IMPLICATIONS of your position, I'm sure you would quickly realign your thoughts.
Every WORTHY PIECE of HUMAN ENDEAVOR is the result of a DETERMINED PULL AGAINST INERTIA.
"Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up."
~ Thoreau (1817-1862)
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
~ John Tyndall (1820-1893)
Who is complaining about the wearing of religious symbols?
ReplyDeleteI've said this before, but this seems an appropriate time to say it again.
ReplyDeleteI have found literary works such as Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss, Wuthering Heights, The Forsyte Saga, The Portrait of a Lady and The House of Mirth -- and many of the great songs of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Strauss and Hugo Wolf along with much of Wagnerian Opera and parts of the symphonies of Mahler -- to stimulate far more erotic yearnings, powerful passion and hunger for affection than any of the cheap, obvious, clumsily "direct" efforts of "modern" works which avail themselves of the "freedom" to be as explicitly vulgar as the scribblings often found on the walls in public toilets.
The excesses of Progressive Statism have succeeded only in jockeying Modern Man into what-promises-to-be a prolonged period of NEO-BARBARISM.
Jerry, are you not aware that ANY overt expression of belief in Jesus Christ is strictly FORBIDDEN in most public schools today, and considered ANATHEMA by the Liberal Establishment that controls Entertainment, Pop Music, and the dissemination of News and Information?
ReplyDeleteChristianity gets NOTHING BUT bad publicity these days and has for DECADES.
I guess such a belief (ANY overt expression of belief in Jesus Christ) is a conservative value, particularly if the ACLU is a for it.
ReplyDeleteFT,
ReplyDeleteliterary works such as Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss, Wuthering Heights, The Forsyte Saga, The Portrait of a Lady and The House of Mirth
Sadly, many of these works as well as others along the same lines are being removed or already have been removed from curricula today. Much of what has replaced these classics ranks among the most depressing writing of all time.
Well, HURRAH for the ACLU, Jerry. I'm glad to know those things.
ReplyDeleteAOW, at least YOU are in a position to continue assigning the Great Books and staging class discussion, individual papers written by students and read in class, etc.
ReplyDeleteMany are getting wise ti the AGENDA-DRIVEN CURRICULA that is turning whole generations into brainwashed automata programmed to do the bidding of these Oligarchs who have steadily and stealthily USURPED Power away from the People to whom it LEGITIMATELY belongs.
COMPLAINT is NOT the way to fight this.
Using POSITIVE EXAMPLES of the WONDER and GLORY that is being systematically STAMPED OUT by these Tyrannists IS a viable, highly valuable form of RESISTANCE and REBELLION against TYRANNY.
FT,
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm in such a position -- for a few more years if my health holds out.
But our numbers are very few, and it's an uphill battle to enlist more who are interested in such curricula.
Story from this school term....One parent had been requesting the public school teachers to allow her daughter, a superior reader, to read classic works of literature for the required book reports. This mother specifically requested that her daughter read Jane Eyre; the teacher gleefully "informed" the woman, "We don't read books like that anymore."
This year, that student did, of course, read Jane Eyre for her second book report of the term.
Another young lady read Pride and Prejudice, which you mentioned above, after reading Of Mice and Men. She specifically stated that she preferred the former because it was lighter in tone. Can't say that I blame her!
Well FT, I looked at your blog over breakfast and just thought to myself that I needed to put in a few hours at the office to remind me that things are good.
ReplyDeleteDaddy had a pretty damn good day at the office. Pretty much everyone was way upbeat. This gay couple asked me to take a photo. Pretty good shot.
Got a good one of an old woman trying to keep cool in her doorway in the North End.
There was a guy sitting alone at a table outside a gelato shop on Hanover and he had a look that was just somewhere else. The shot was there but I didn't take it. Vibe seemed hostile.
"Winogrand would have taken the shot. That's why he has a one man show."
Missed another. It would have made a great cover for my upcoming book, "Cellphones gone wild". Bimbo was on the phone jaywalking and almost got hit. I was paying attention to another zone of opportunity and missed it, darn.
But it was a good day. Was taking one shot and a guy got into a conversation with me about the North End and why it's special. I told him I liked the Catholic presence that's still there like Shaw says about St. Gregory's.
Got some good sgots of folks cooling of in the fountains on the Greenway.
Downtown Crossing was alive, the Haymarket.
You know something, FT. I wasn't even listening for the bad words. Don't know why you do either.
We both know it's all freaking good.
"Blow Up Your TV, throw away your
paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own."
---John Prine
--Ducky
ReplyDeleteThat the GLORY of any such a work -- and, thank God, there are MANY -- comes not from BREAKING rules and escaping SELF-DISCIPLINE
-----
No wonder you don't like Godard.
Duck,
ReplyDeleteI just took a look at what you posted from your photo shoot today. Some good stuff there!
The one called "Shadow figure" is really quite something. How many like that man are unseen? Have we become inured to such men and written them off?
All the idiotic partisan sniping about the wonders to be endowed by one political party or the other and, wouldn't you know it, the scheduled opening of the Utah Data Center has been bumped up from September to a more urgent present.
ReplyDeleteHere's how Wiki sees the center:
"The Utah Data Center, also known as the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center,[1] is a data storage facility for the United States Intelligence Community that is designed to be a primary storage resource capable of storing data on the scale of yottabytes (1 yottabyte = 1 trillion terabytes, or 1 quadrillion gigabytes).
The data center is alleged to be able to capture "all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Internet searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital 'pocket litter'."
Looks like the end of the line is fast approaching for the one and only country founded on the principle of individual rights and constitutionally limited government. The world should be weeping. It's not. People have been dumbed-down to such a low level, finger pointing at other citizens that the great experiment in individualism has been terminated. Unfortunately almost all of the serious damage to the original ideal has been spawned internally ... but that's another story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
The prophecies of E.M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and Margaret Atwood are being fulfilled, Waylon.
ReplyDeleteThere is no hope for someone as old as I -- long trapped in The Pattern, dependent on The System, and weakening daily with ravages of advancing age. My time is drawing to a close more rapidly than I like to think -- I can feel it.
However, anyone under the age of fifty-five should consider dropping out, becoming a latter-day Gypsy -- rootless, constantly in the move, living from hand to mouth doing odd jobs or outright begging, but blessedly OUTSIDE The SYTSEM.
The legend of Robin Hood and his Merry Men appealed greatly when I was a boy. After all that has befallen us in the past sixty-odd years, the idea of living freely in the forest with a few well-chosen friends preying occasionally only on the wicked appeals now more than ever before.
The illegal aliens we currently shriek and roar about have been doing this since before the USA was born. It is the Democrats' piously seductive attempts to bring them into The System, that have corrupted them. Before they were incredibly useful -- and content enough with their lot. Very soon they -- like the Negroes and Puerto Ricans before them -- will be transformed by the ever burgeoning interventionist initiatives of the Democratic Party into nothing but a burden on an ever-dwindling population of employed, white, property-owning, taxpaying citizens.
We may never again achieve the degree of material comfort, security, medical advantages and high culture we once knew before Marx-inspired Progressivism took over, but a return to the ways of the NOMADIC TRIBES from which all of us originated MAY provide an ANTIDOTE to the slow-acting POISON by which we've been afflicted.
The Golden Age of Pericles didn't last very long, and it was followed by approximately FIVE-HUNDRED YEARS of DARKNESS dominated by unspeakable brutality, hardship, privation, deadly superstition and plague.
CYCLES! CYCLES! CYCLES!
It has been ever thus.
FT, all I can say is just hang in there brother. You've traveled a distance, seen a lot and lived more than many so you have contributed much to the world around you and probably gotten a few earned benefits as well. That is part of the game: Make life seem hopeless and feel helpless and just surrender to submersion in the evil.
ReplyDeleteI think those who can see the problem can work to expose the evil intent with the last ounce of strength available to us. I just don't see the problem and solution as being strictly political, Liberal or Conservative, Republican or Democrat. As far as I can tell both seem to be playing for the same team, both ends against the middle, so to speak.
Ducky, St. Leonard's, not St. Gregory's. I often go to Mass there to listen to it celebrated in Italian.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a believer, but I do like to hear the liturgy spoken in the language of my parents and all my ancestors.
Sorry I missed seeing you in the North End today.
Well, like I say, Shaw. God loves the atheists best.
ReplyDelete....cuz He's the only one who does.
ReplyDeleteHow Barack Obama and Rock Hudson Are Alike (Hint: a complicit press worked a clear agenda to protect their secrets for years). They’re also both gay as rainbows.
ReplyDeleteThis, of course, makes Michelle Obama the most high-profile and powerful beard in history
Michelle Obama is a beard, too, but she needed to ride Barack Obama’s coattails to power (partly to get away from Jesse Jackson, on whom her family depended for many years). This arrangement is no different than Rock Hudson’s with his beard of a wife Phyllis Gates…and no different from Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, Katie Holmes, Kelly Preston, Jada Pinkett Smith, Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez, Juliann Hough, Vanessa Hudgens, and all the women who beard it up for gay guys who want to be movie stars or other incarnations of celebrity. Being the pretend wife to an upwardly mobile gay guy is both fun and profitable…and there’s no reason these woman can’t have studs of their own on the side while their husbands-on-paper-and-in-the-press-only spend time “with the guys” playing basketball, golfing, or whatever else they do when they disappear off the record for long stretches of time (that staffers in the White House in particular claim are “irrelevant” and “not something the public needs to know about”).
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteOMG, another Democrat who's entire worldview is centered upon race... what a surprise... NOT!
ReplyDeleteO look on the mindless with kindness
ReplyDeleteThey have nothing to offer or give
But a welcome to dine less in blindness
And a lifestyle that won't let us live.
Another paean to the practice of sodomy...
ReplyDeleteI don't think so, Thersites. I have always disliked Michael Douglas. He is one of myriad icons of irremediable vulgarity who took over the entertainment industry long ago. But, I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone -- not even Hillary Clinton. It's just hard to believe that any doctor worthy of the name would have missed "a walnut-sized growth" at the base of anyone's TONGUE.
ReplyDeletePeople of this despicable ilk will say ANYTHING to gain publicity.
I'm glad you don't think so, despite the fact that the HPV virus is known to be the cause of cervical cancer in women.
ReplyDeleteNote from the link above...
ReplyDelete6,700 oropharyngeal cancers in men.*