No new lessons are to be learned from the Colorado shooting. It is well known now that the fear of death in males kicks in at 25 and this young fool is 24. It is well known that no-one under 30 should be given an assault weapon or a handgun, and no male of any age a gun of any kind outside of a shooting range or a combat operation. It is well known throughout the civilised world that Americans are a pack of wackos, and Bruce Willis movies are an incitement to massacre and there are far too many of them.
The most important fact of the present matter and murder however is that the young man was being thrown out of his course and thereby labelled by society a Loser and he took the usual recourse that people so labelled at a sensitive age too often take: an act of self-obliteration that can also be murderous if sleep does not come soon enough and weapons are handy.
I will put up an old essay of mine on the concept of the Loser. It is the principal driving-force of American life, and it’s a pity.
Name:
After Saddam’s death I asked disparate boys aged 10 - 16 what they thought of it. Universal response was anger: we should have tortured him.
We’ve spent this century corrupting kids.
Hanging was too good for that butcher, considering all those he tortured, or those he had tortured under his orders, and his disgusting murdering rapist sons.
So, you are saying that he should be our role model to imitate? His standards should be ours?
No, just that hanging was too good for him. Leaving him for the buzzards would befit him.
Uday and Qusay had almost an honourable death, with guns in their hands. They deserved less.
So that’s a yes then.
And what should happen to George Bush whose war killed half a million children and drove three million middle-class people and professionals, including all of Iraq’s dentists, into exile?
Saddam was hanged for the deaths of a hundred and fifty people.
How about Bush whose orders killed a million?
What shocking news. This could be a galvanising moment for gun control in the USA, but I doubt it.
Schoolboys carrying 303s to school used to be a commonplace and unremarkable sight.
School cadets on annual camp in 1979 got to train on M16s and use them on the Army rifle range. I haven’t used a gun before or since and have had no desire to do so. It was very exciting at the time.
Private school, Bananaman? My point precisely, tho’: it’s the hearts not the hardware that is the issue.
Altho the gun culture in American is simply repulsive and enabling.
Sydney High. Public, but thought it was special because they played some sports against some private schools on Saturdays.
A thought : Saddam was a monster; Gaddafi was a monster; Assad is a monster. But all of them are/were leaders of secular regimes battling to stay on top of religious fundamentalists. Arguably, they needed all the suppressive powers at their disposal to keep the religionists quiet, and up until their destruction/imminent destruction they more or less succeeded.
I am not sure what will follow, but it certainly won’t be democratic; authoritarian religious regimes do not have a happy record on human rights, civil liberties or the emancipation of women.
Have we been on the right side in these conflicts? I am not so sure.
Another thought: the murderous recklessness of the Islamists might have been mitigated by a more humane and respectful government. In any case, there would be less support for them if the government wasn’t killing their kids. People tend to lose perspective when you do that to them.
Agreed.
Yes masterful understatement that!
But lets harbour a hope. Or at least try one on for size. Sooner or later maybe it has to emerge that a culture capable of producing great civilizations in antiquity can form a reasonable modern equivalent of stable government. Despite the prevailing religion much as we carry on despite them here, should we, can we, dare we hope that the younger generation of surviving Ghandis, Dylans and Shakespeares, as Bob would herald them, can prevail to succeed on their own terms.
Or is what we’re really saying here expressing the unfair reservation that once Assad, who is a butcher, goes then if the people take control then by dent of being Muslim then no good can come of it?
Please don’t think I’m putting words in anyone’s mouth here. It’s just a thought that occurs to me about the nature of their chances being quite apart from the texture of our analysis of them.
I don’t quite know how this got linked into various dictators and tyrants we disapprove of quite so easily, but I guess the link might be that any mass murderer has but one life to give for the multiple lives he has taken.
I suspect that Americans are going to have to figure out a way of separating insane people from guns. Something we might say that they’ve a history of being pretty bad at.
Because Bob put up his essay on the loser, qv, and comments thereunder; and FI Kendall set us all off on this tangent. And isn’t it interesting?
What happened in Colorado, is evidence of the existence of the conspiracy of one. How will we rid ourselves of that? This guy is a winner, a member of a very elite club, a very exclusive club, there is no membership requirements apart from the deed, it is an exclusive but not restricted club apart from it being for men only.
This is one club I sincerely hope women never join.
As Groucho Marx put it,
“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member”
I haven’t read of a comparison anywhere of the Cinema guy and the the American soldier that went on the killing spree recently in southern Afghanistan, where’s the difference? The soldier is going to get the best of psychiatric care, the Colorado guy is going to get the death penalty. That’s going to look good in Kabul.
Perhaps the soldier in Iraq wanted to die. But the US military acknowledge that they are partly culpable : they trained him, they sent him to Iraq, they sent him back to Iraq again and again, they armed him and allowed him to stay armed.
The evidence must suggest to them that he has what used to be called ‘combat fatigue’ or ‘shell shock’ or any number of other tags.
The mad gunmen of Norway, and Colorado and any number of others are what we may call ‘self-starters’.
Death penalty? Hmmm. Along with the Port Arthur bastard, perhaps we ought to consider putting them down; they shoot horses, don’t they?
Discuss.
Did you read that article on Martin Bryant in the Good Weekend many years ago? He was dented in the head from the get go. He barely knows what’s going on. Such a strange little story, with the crazy, wealthy woman and the cats.
Yes, and it is a sad case. I’ll agree with allthumbs against the death penalty, but for a different reason : that we can sometimes make a mistake. Difficult to compensate a man or woman for 10 years+ in gaol, but impossible to compensate a hanged one.
It is a difficult issue.
I have thought on it for many years; one possibility is a euthanasia type execution for horrendous crimes where there is complete certainty. Certainty beyond ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.
Where no mistake is possible.
I wonder.
I’m against the death penalty full stop. I don’t think we should ever, ever, think that these perpetrators are different to ourselves, so removed from us as if from some other species.
“The individual is, in his future and in his past, a piece of fate, one law more, one necessity more for everything that is and everything that will be. To say to him ‘change yourself” means to demand that everything should change even in the past…” Freddy N
Changing the gun laws, for which I am in favour, may remove the means, but not the temptation. Removing the ability to divorce according to the Catholic church, enforces monogamy.
I’m with you on that one. It seems to appeal to revenge for the victims. That is wrong minded to begin with, but in America where the legal wrangling typically takes years, even if the perpetrator is completely indefensible, there’s a process of embittering the victims by having them involved which is an evil it itself.
If this had been a young woman who did this, I could have a stab at her motivations. Can the men here give any guesses at what motivates such a young man? Desire for glory..(as with Harris and Klebold)? Hatred of the community..(ditto)? Role for men too pressured now? And too denigrated..(Homer and Bart Simpson)? Combine the latter with the social changes over the last 25 years?…(he probably spent his boyhood in a world where the male role was quite different from what it is now).
Anyone? Anything?
Even if one says “mental illness”, there will still be a certain rationale and logic behind the act.
Whatever his motive or reason, be assured of this, he has inspired or consolidated the same in others that will eventuate in the same sort of crime, sooner, very soon or later. Secondly there is a young woman somewhere, where this is all fermenting, that will put the points on board, glass ceiling and all that.
How does one explain the irrational in rational terms?
Sure we can guess any number of ‘motives’, any number of ’causes’ and any number of ‘triggers’ but what it comes down to is just what is happening in the mind of a deranged person.
A deranged woman is liable to kill her nearest and dearest, possibly her own children, and/or herself. A deranged man as opposed to a woman may well externalise his personal demons and become a mass murderer; but most will commit suicide, and - a thought that just occurred to me - what if the well-meaning prevent the suicide and the intending suicide then goes on a rampage?
For all of the future possible Rembrandt’s and Che’s and Mandela’s killed in Syria, what if by chance the Colorado gunman killed a potential serial murderer, or a the future Governor of Colorado who eventually attaining the Presidency of the United States was the one that pushed all the red buttons he could find the Oval office? Perhaps he’s really a hero?
Seems a rather blunt instrument, allthumbs. Statistically speaking, perhaps the Hiroshima atomic bomb killed 12 murderers, 28 rapists, 42 gbh’ers and 155 wife beaters - but does that excuse the 100,000 innocents killed in the process?
I think not. C’est la guerre.
Sure, but as a mind exercise for the possible victims of the possible perpetrators it would be a scalpel like excision of evil. Just imagine if Stalin had copped a bullet during a bank robbery who would have been saved? Interesting to think on, C’est la vie.
A woman is likely to go to an extreme and snap in a pique of crazed rage and pure cold anger. I myself in recent times can identify a lot with Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. This man would have his senses dulled his whole life through. He wouldn’t have had a pulse. It’s just pure disconnection.
I sometimes think just the opposite, it is sensory overload, they get plugged into the deep dark unmitigated pure molten core of Nihilism, the Luna Park of anything goes. The many headed dog was just out in the laundry having some water, leaving the gate unattended and this guy just went in to have a look after politely asking if anyone was there and not getting a reply.
Isn’t the dulled life senses, the lack of pulse the middle class woman’s lament, wasn’t that a major driving force of the “emancipation” movement?
FIK, the point of the hero is to save, rescue, the Colorado guy apparently said he was the Joker, the death bringer, Peter may have something to say about this, and he will not be easy to discard out of hand.
Peter? Just tell him to fuck off - it saves time.
Sometimes he’s right for all the wrong reasons.
“The fox seemed puzzled. “On another planet?”
“Yes”
“Are the any hunters on that planet?”
“No”
“That’s interesting! And any chickens?”
“No”
“Nowhere is perfect” sighed the fox.
Hey Cat’s Arse Quixote!
Nice, real nice.
You, are a fucking idiot!
I’m keeping you in my sights.
And where’s your mate Hypocritical Huddo to give me a 500 word excuse as to why you haven’t engaged in “better speech”??
Hey Huddo? How much would you pay for Quixote’s response in this “marketplace of ideas”?
Fools and Hypocrites - both of you.
Middle class women have an excess of nerves. Sensory overload leads to dead nerves. Females get caught up in being socially conditioned in contradictory and irreconcilable ways, as well as resisting their own social conditioning and dealing with the effects of that. It all takes effort. Only boys can get away with playing video games all their lives. Women are jammed up against the spectre of duty. “Let me live, Marge, why won’t you let me live”, as Homer would say.
“It may be necessary for only one sense to be bombarded by stimuli to affect that sense as well as the other senses and the thinking process. The most common type occurs when more than one sense is stimulated. For example, a person might be watching television when someone comes in and asks a question; the watcher might fail to respond because he or she simply does not register it, or realizes the question has been asked but gets confused and doesn’t know whether to answer the question or concentrate on the television.” Wiki
I might have got the wrong and true end of sensory overload, but you know what I was aiming at, “words are a source of misunderstandings”. I’m sure the murderer was in a heightened state. There was some twisted and profane, but to him profound reason at work. He couldn’t get up to change channels. I’m talking in generalities here.
Women are jammed up against the spectre of duty, yes, and old fashioned males as well.
I gotta say, as a man I too feel I am being socially conditioned in contradictory and irreconcilable ways as well as resisting etc.
You have to excuse the lack of quotation marks I am struggling with a new computer that has more keys and all in the wrong places and this is the fourth time I have written this, the first one was a blinder.
No. Reason. That is the identifying marker here. It is an engorged amygdala.
Look at the different gaits of men and women walking down the street. The gait tells a story. This is a man’s world.
Ah but one could argue that the male gait makes a false assertion necessary only because he does not possess confidence of his place in the world whereas women are quietly confident of having their way.
“In one year, GUNS murdered 35 in Australia, 39 in England and Wales, 194 in Germany, 200 in Canada, and 9,484 in the United States.”
Well, without wanting to run the NRA line on this because I do firmly believe in gun control, I think we have to look at the stats and say that in one year men with guns killed so many people. Which is why I argued as I did from the point of view that I think men are basically insecure about their place in the world that they have to assert it with a weapon of some sort.
Speaking of gaits, The Westgate took 3 people a week for a decade. Including a 27 y.old woman with 18 month old baby, 2/1 men.
Your figures are for the Bridge?
Used to be a about one person every second day went off there.
Don’t know about road trama in addition.
What was your point in relation to gun control?
Americans are always more ambitious.
No, men are comfortable. That’s the difference.
I probably have a point but do I need to make it?
In 2008-09, there were 158 male fatalities, 17 female fatalities and 2 where the sex was not reported.
Stuff this rubbish.
Voice is communication, whether you cam decode it or not.
Kookaburras tell you that rain is coming within a week.
Reader1,
I still think that the problem with your statement is the inference that women should think of themselves as middle class. But the nerves thing resonates under conditions that I think exist for reasons other than class.
These distinctions are important in making analyses that accurately inform a social commentary that leads to change… perhaps?
Or
We could just take the guns away.
Allthumbs brought up the Victorian era middle class chicks and their valium. Those ladies are tucking into their Barbara Cartland, they’re trying to get their rocks off. They have a pulse.
R1 you have a way of paraphrasing me that makes me seem even a little thicker than I really am, just a smidgeon. The middle class, the educated class, the privileged class whatever you want to call them, tend to spearhead any movement, if you can get proles involved it gives a certain authenticity to the whole deal, like check table cloths and candles in chianti bottles in Italian restaurants. I wasn’t making light of it, I never mentioned Valium or Barbara Cartland. It would have been Opium and Arthur Schnitzler.
I’m mocking Hudson and his inference inferences, not you. We we talking about why chicks don’t gun tote to quite the same extent. I think that, while it has been shown that right wingers do actually have a different brain chemistry for example, certain activities and what have you serve to enlarge the reptilian part of the brain and enable it. Women are forced to concern themselves with petty neuroses. I have on more than one occasion been jealous of boofhead friends because they don’t feel in any way compelled to give a shit. That is a great gift. On the other hand, limits do serve a function.
Some bird species on some island near the Galapogas actually developed longer beaks in the space of just a few years when the rainfall dried up and the little pools of water in the crevices in the rock they drank from became harder to get to. Genetic mutation doesn’t work that fast so what’s going on there?
OK. I had an affair with Avis Everhard while Ernest was off at a meeting somewhere. I was overcoming class distinctions (hey hey!).
She’s talkin’ about Sarah (I’m a Mavrick, and can field dress a moose) Palin there gosh darn it!
Perhaps their beaks are naturally longer and sharper, and only softenedand shortened by the abundance of water?
Nuh.
Perhaps the rocks are using the water to modify the beaks to keep the rocks clean?
Kookaburra’s are very clumsy with their beaks, they whack them against everything. But the beaks hold up.
The bird is perhaps the survival mechanism for the beak. We should be in the case of the Toucan for instance be saying did you see the bird on the end of that beak?The Kookaburras havea very beaky laugh. You have to open your mind and stop being so trenchantly fact driven and contrarian.
Yeah fair enough. I think they probably had a pulse back in the day when Austen and the Bronte Sisters floated their boat too.
I’m thinking more along the lines of, (wild generalisations here): little girls often want to grow up to be princesses. Companies cater to this with paint, clothes etc etc. so that she can attempt to feel like one at least. Plus, over the last 20 yrs she has learnt that she can also become head of google and earn $35 million.
Little boys often want to be heroes. They often divert that into sport. But, there’s not much opportunity to be a hero these days, and any heroic leadership role simply by being male has sort of drifted away.
Or is it that they feel part of “Generation Screwed”?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/07/15/are-millennials-the-screwed-generation.html
Is it relevant that all these men have been heavily armed but attack the helpless?
Every generation feels screwed by the one before them if not the one before that as well. That’s just part of being young and solipsistic. Growing older and having regrets of your own definitely cures it, but having the smarts and good fortune to realise that your elders meant well can help.
http://www.decisionsonevidence.com/2012/07/gun-ownership-in-u-s-compared-with-other-developed-countries/
“and it’s a pity. and repeat. and so it goes. and repeat. and repeat. and so it goes. and it’s a pity. and so it goes. and repeat. and so it goes. and repeat. and so it goes. and it’s a pity. and so it goes. and so it goes. and so it goes. and so it goes. and repeat. repeat. and so it goes. and repeat. and repeat. and repeat. and so it goes. and repeat. and so it goes and repeat. and repeat and repeat. and it’s a pity and so it goes and so it goes and so it goes.”
He is my age and I resist the urge to describe such people as monsters/animals etc. bc that just tries to absolve us of understanding the motives.
Bob says he didn’t fear death yet (?) but I’d offer that he doesn’t even know, really, that he’s alive yet. The first major knock in his life - failing university - the first real No said to him and he totally unravelled, determining to go out in a blaze of celebrity.
There’s a dark logic to it that is painful to explore.
What was really holding him back? For all he knew (and for all you ppl hold as gospel), there is nothing in the universe but him. All else is illusion and fantasy. All is a battle to assert you Will, your individuality and brand, especially while you’re the hot young stuff that the world worships, sacrifices and devours like a cult.
He found his way and morality never entered into it.
I repeat, we are living on the overdraft, the faintest whiff, of Christianity.
My generation has no foundation. We dont know why life is worth living, why man has an innate dignity and value. We have been left as prey to the world’s wolves, material and spiritual.
No generation has a foundation more or less solid than the next, culture is liquid.
No one knows why life is worth living, if or why man has an innate dignity and value, otherwise summarised as a morality, but this seems to have something to do with the foundation of religion and all spirituality.
We have been left as prey to the world’s wolves, material and spiritual, like every human, that has ever lived.
And also Octopi, single celled organisms, and everything in between.
What makes a mother leopard mourn the token cub taken by the python, regurgitated, but not moving?
The same beast will slay a mother baboon and upon finding its infant, finds confusion.
At some points I find the tone of discussion seemingly irrelevant, as in, addressing the manifestation of causation rather than causation. In that was psychoanalysis to me repels me (although I can see value in it, though the application of findings which will always be more useful and relevant in the field from which psychology emerged: War. Where as sociology arose as a direct response to social health, in response to the epidemic. Perhaps the importance others place on the psychological can be seen as evidence of society in a state of perpetual total war.
We lock up children behind barbed wire and call them criminals.
“In that was psychoanalysis to me repels me” ? = even though , … …) I can still see the value in the above discussion. Apologies for making people read typos.
I thought we were the wolves? If not, where is all that huffing and puffing coming from?
It’s too tragic an event for me to wag my finger at you directly, in an overly strident way (as is my want)
Your bankrupt philosophy, that has consciously binned the truth, has birthed all sorts of evil, of which this is one example. Others include nazi camps, soviet ghettoes…
I agree with Bob that a rampant free market is also largely responsible, of which the US is an extreme example. It both puffs up the individual as an undiscovered god and tramples him as nothing but a thing. It is a machine with a driver no one can see but virtually everyone obeys
I call him Satan, myself m8
Wag away Peter, your his rock, wag away with all your might m8.Do you happen to have a spare copy of the truth on you?
Yeah a few. Although you’re bound to find it on your knees, you can have my rsv or kjv.
I’ll draw a map to your nearest church in the front sleeve m8
You could always go to a Batman screening and throw rsv’s and kjv’s at the audience. That should do the trick, if they duck low enough they’ll be on their knees, two birds one stone. For the nearest cinema screening near your location check the entertainment
section of your daily paper.
Wow. Poor taste.
Here I was thinking you were half decent…
You were thinking him half decent at the same time as blaming him personally for Nazi Germany?
I am personally responsible for Nazi Germany, but I was on holiday during the Soviet Ghettos thing.I remember quite distinctly because it was Springtime in Prague,and I was on a stop over on my way to Northern Ireland.
Whichever you turn it allthumbs your comment was a poor one. Peter’s right about that. You made an uncharacteristic over-reach.
Peter,
Follow the link below
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-22/police-believe-shooting-suspect-plotted-attack-for-months/4146610
Have a look for the video of Paul Mullen about half way down.
When it comes to profiling mass killers, maybe you’d better stick to your day job.
No reason. No even necessarily heightened state. Enlarged amygdala. That is what is so difficult to get one’s head around. It’s why Howard was so fiendish. No one can believe to what a cold and meaningless extent there is literally nothing there. We have an internal life and so other people must be built the same way, right? Right?
Buber’s black hole.
Ah, if only he’d found God! Then he could have slaughtered everyone he came across with a clear conscience, since he has God on his side.
As for the rest of you, you’re all going to Hell; God told me so. *
(* views expressed are not necessarily those of the proprietor nor of any sane rational person, e&oe; complaints may be addressed directly to His Omnipotence ansd Omniscience, c/- The Holy Ghost)
I’m done with the topic.
How many people were killed in Syria on the same day, how many black men were shots on the streets of Philadelphia?
I’m not even sure the gun control laws John Howard introduced have had any effect at all.
Explain to me the duality of the kid king hit and killed and Greg Inglis on Dean Young right in the middle of the field in on the 50 metre line. One is lorded, one is crucified.
“Beware Satan’s long and pointing, barbed, giant, accusatory red phallus.” - Winston Churchill
DQ: I’ve met a few very unlikely “born agains” (ie, unlikely knowing their parents,) and, irrespective of what I have thought of them, they believe that they have found not God, but someone who loves them.
Your comment reads very apropros the Torah, but completely wrong re the new testament.
Perhaps; but when the ‘someone who loves them” deserts them, you get a Jonestown slaughter or a Waco suicide pact.
There are no more dangerous words than “God is on my side.”
For if reality sets in and the Chosen see the truth, their despair is bottomless, suicidal and it is potentially capable of taking the world with it.
Imagine if you will a dedicated religious leader sitting on a nuclear arsenal, as the rest of the world closes in, threatening to dethrone him. Brrrr.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOROvO2fxTc
I know it is a bridge, but self-immolation in my mind seems somehow connected.
We can talk about suicide bombers as if they are the scum of the earth, and people that walk into cinemas with assault rifles and hand grenades; It would only be a dogmatist though that reduces a Tibetan monk, the 10th or 100th in a row that sets fire to themselves, wrapping themselves in barbed wire and swallowing petrol to prevent flame retardation to the same level, at least initially anyway; “there goes another enlarged amygdala”.
Buddhists are a somewhat different case; they only appear to be religious.
They studiously avoid any reference to a deity.
Their immolations are in part a political act, and non-buddhists have little chance of understanding it.
Let me know if anyone has an instance of a buddhist going mad with a machine gun.
Honestly Doug we don’t know anything about this guy yet. And your profiling skills to be honest probably aren’t that much closer to the mark that Peter’s.
I know people are trying almost too hard to find a segue to Anders Breivik, but there are as many cases that weren’t right wing extremists as well.
And anyway what does the opposite of that tell us. That dope smoking hippies never shot anyone?
Does anyone really think we should keep most of the populace below the age of 30 stoned as a precaution?
I’m sending up Peter, if you’d care to read the thread.
Advice to all readers :
Just tell Peter to fuck off, it will save your time and his.
Advice to Cat’s Arse:
Piss off!
Aren’t you banned? If you are, fuck off; if you aren’t, fuck off.
Shut up Cat’s Arse!
Go pucker out a wet one somewhere else.
A particularly pleasant stage of my life no longer exists: that between leaving school and attaining majority, at age 21.
It was a time of non-adulthood, non-responsibility for self, but of intellectual challenges and experimentation.
The age of majority was changed simply because of the Vietnam war: to justify conscripting boys who were still legally minors with no vote.
This change has had a profound effect on individuals and the society both. Sometimes harsh.
“Loser” - it’s not specifically an American thing Bob; the children and teens I see have a certain preciousness about them. Couple this tendency toward delicacy with a feeling of victimhood and Presto! we are in the realm of a psychological issue.
Most kids turn to drugs or drink, image problems or anxiety. And some pick up a gun.
My solution? Toughen our kids up with firm and solicitous care, and make every gun not registered to a policeman an illegality punishable by 25 years in goal. No parole.
The situation is too awful for words.
I’ll put my hand up for bad taste but not for overreach U1966. In the scheme of things Peter should not be disappointed in allthumbs when Satan is at work, he’s got his priorities totally fucked up.
Allthumbs – there you are!
A Response in Two Parts:
Part I
“ To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.”
Nietzsche
No, it is not a “competition”. Its never been about a “competition”. That you should think it was; that you think I trade in such rudiment, surprises me. It surprises me most profoundly.
No allthumbs, you cannot…
“ …Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!”
I seek, and shall continue to draw the veil on, everything that collapses human dignity and worth. Here is but one example of a thousand,
“ Doug Quixote July 22, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Peter? Just tell him to fuck off – it saves time”.
Do you see?
Of course you do,
“unerringly”!
Part II
“ Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.”
Whitehead
I saw Cezanne’s “Maison Maria” and wondered at the shaping, marking, and mapping of (visual) matter.
I saw Braque’s “Girl with a Cross” and wondered about the “graspability” of the damn thing; I sought some elusive phenomenological account…and I sought to reconcile it with Sartre’s “simultaneity of all realities”.
I left, walked up Lancaster and found a bar on Houston and 8th or 9th , I think.
And drank whiskey soda with two woman from BU.
I asked them their thoughts.
The thing is graspable alright. You can’t seem to get your hand off it.
Take either of these responses Reader 1. I’m not sure which you find more suitable.
1. Which bit are you having trouble with?
Maybe I can help.
2. I would actually like to put my hand on it.
But your mouth is in the way.
Fedallah, DQ is not the only one here who tells others to eff-off or piss-off…
It’s off-putting no matter who says it, whatever the gender of the abuser., maybe a bit worse coming from a female.
It’s a funny thing allthumbs - you and some of the others bag Peter for his literalness, and then have a go at it yourselves.
I understand your point. I just think it’s a poor one; an easy one for you to make. Too easy.
Peter has his faith, it guides his life, determining his conduct and his views.You have yours. His are no more deserving of ridicule than yours.
You shouldn’t be disappointed in Peter when the evil and madness in the minds of some - from those in institutionalised religion right on down to the dickheads that rob old ladies, are at work.
You got your priorities all fucked up.
See what I mean?
Like I said, it was an uncharacteristic over-reach. Leave the below the belt punches for those that don’t know any different.
Just finished reading your serve to Peter below. It’s a rough one alright.
It feels as though you are screaming out your angst against all the wrong that’s been done in its name.
To my mind you’re right to do that. We all should do it.
But its an easy game. You know that Peter could come at you with all the wrongs of “secularism” and then where would we be?
I believe if faith, of whatever description, can carry a man throughout this world with respect, sensitivity and tolerance, then it’s a good thing.
If Peter’s such a man then he shouldn’t be made to carry the sins of the men who administer The Church.
U1966,I ain’t on anyone’s team. I’m not trying to wake Peter up, I’m not trying to show him the errors of his ways, I’m not blaming him for anything. I’m just pointing out what a lousy salesman he is for his own side, he needs to work oh his spiel, instead of blaming the customer. He’s got the plan, he should close the deal, it sounds like a very easy sale to me, if, he has the plan. But it’s never available in the shops, you can’t get it anywhere, not from overseas, you can’t order it on line, you can’t buy it second hand. But when you ask they keep saying the stock is due in any day now. A lot of people left deposits, a lot of people bought shares in the company, Peter says its booming in Africa.
Peter should come with all the wrongs of secularism, you think I’m going to argue the case, blindly, uncritically, without a modicum of humbleness?
At the moment I am living my life according to the sayings on the bottom of each page of my desktop calendar. So far so good, today’s is “a stitch in time saves nine”, at this moment in time you have no idea how profound that is.
allthumbs, I’m not going to argue the man’s case - that’s his job, but what I took from those two posts of yours today to Peter I would say you were doing a whole lot more than criticising his “salesmanship”.
A whole lot more.
Now that doesn’t mean that I think you wouldn’t argue any case “blindly, uncritically, without a modicum of humbleness”, not by a long shot, it just means that I don’t think you are being entirely honest. What you delivered today was a post not seen before, by me at least, on these pages. It was red hot distilled frustration, angst and scorn.
That’s my opinion anyway. But this is between you and Peter, and I’ll stay out of it. My last 2 sentences of my previous post contain all that I’ve got to say on the subject at this stage.
There is no middle ground in this type of argument, there is no subtlety, there is no common purpose of exploration, the argument is too divergent it is a Berlin Wall of an argument.
This is another tedious exemplar of same.
It is strange though, that secularists should always be somewhat more understanding and forgiving of a sectarians belief, why?, their faith should not be a fragile thing. I much prefer the beatific smiling idiot, the totally convinced to the likes of Peter.
Peter even admits:
“My generation has no foundation. We dont know why life is worth living, why man has an innate dignity and value”
I’ve seen this before guys like Peter turn up to test their faith, although they have already made up their minds to abandon it.
Today was one of the most dispassionate sessions I have had at a keyboard, ever.
Gee I really pinched a nerve when I called you out for your very tasteless joke at the expense of innocent murder victims, hey m8?
I’m glad you can be so honest though and my feelings are not very hurt; you are starting to think theologically.
But I can’t save you brother, nor the church, by herself. Only your free cooperation with the grace of God will do it. The question is, will you take the time to listen? To question seriously why there is goodness, truth and beauty in the world?
Or will you be content to play the impartial jester? Life’s a merry-go-round! Let’s all be cynical outsiders and laugh ourselves to death!
I’m trying to paint you a picture brother, more textured than the ‘I’m ok and you’re ok’ bs that you all settle on, but I believe I’ve generally been civil and courteous to you personally. Just savage towards your ideas is all.
I am confident that all things work to the good and that life is worth living. I can’t say the same for you m8.
“In the absence of good comedy there is always the appeal of bad seriousness.”
My words of the day are laconic & polemic.
@allthumbs whack this on your ipod. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/poetica/2012-06-09/4033612
@peter I honestly find nothing in your words that reflect an understanding of the ideas that you are savage on.
I wish you would use more biblical reference to at least promote discussion. I find it hard to engage with what you are saying, to take any value from your words. I do understand however, the sentiment and appreciate your input.
Also, excuse my ignorance but what is pax?
Thanks WS, I will load it tonight.
I haven’t listened to it yet but just the titles alone… I don’t think I could sit through “The Cows on Killing Day” anymore than I could watch Snowtown all the way through. I am interested to hear “Nursing Home” and “The Typist” though. They sound good.
Cows on Killing Day is I think, better than Eliot.
Murray seems to hurry through the reading of them, a little embarrassed still. Much enjoyed thanks WS.
You’re a corpse man. For all your intelligence, you have only a limited capacity for joy in this life because you’re not really convinced that you are alive or that it’s worth living…
(Just thought I’d throw a bit more on the bonfire)
I am dead, Horatio.
Still reeling in my tunnel, like Shelob after copping a surprising defeat from a delicious and defenceless little Hobbit…
You have very artfully made me see that the very criticisms I sought to cop you lot with are really deeply held, subconscious criticisms of myself.
It is true that I am pessimistic, defeatist, cowardly and, perhaps, one of the walking dead. A zombie among the living.
I hold no great hope for my earthly life, I express no great joy, I give very little love.
For all the truth that I sense behind my faith, I admit that it gives me no great consolation.
I can’t get married, can’t be a priest or a brother. I’m doomed to walk among you as a lonely, bitter husk.
I even admit that sometimes I have even prayed for death - anything to be free of the misery I am swamped in.
Oh God.
Peter, are you WS?
I dont know or care who that is.
I’m in a tail-spin. A glass cage of emotion.
I didn’t sleep last night. I’ve had panic attacks all day at uni.
I am dead Horatio
Hold strong Peter. Do not burden yourself with the weight of words.
Hold strong.
Tell me, what is it you study.
Tell me.
Lol really?
I can assure you that I am me, an no one else.
Consider me well offended Helvi.
I read law and enjoy Mr Mic v much!
Ive already chucked it in and tried the Priesthood. That was a dead end. Now I’m back and still h8ing it.
I want to escape to the NT and do something useful among the Aboriginals. But I’m useless with just an arts degree
Ah, yes. Paid up Liberal stooge. Is that you Chris Berg?
I think Hudson’s right. I think it is Shaun Micallef.
No, Shaun Mitcallef is very funny.
Dear Peter, are you Helvi?
If we are dreaming dreams of responsibility, power and influence we must first be responsible, powerful and influential over our selves, this is my realisation.
Dear Mr Micallef, is not life stranger than fiction?
God is in the grammer, Satan has no umbrella
A*Grammar
GrammAr.
Untitled, respect, sensitivity and tolerance….
I do not see much of any of it on this blog.
You’ve got that right Helvi.
But you are a contributor and a part of that, Helvi: YOUR ANONYMITY - “oh, some people know me from somewhere else, so I don’t have to bother to identify myself here. But, other people do”. Dishonest
GRAMMATICAL OR ENDEMIC Rudeness: in that, eg, you always address me by my surname, is just rude.Suggesting that posters are concealing or altering their identities, is just rude.
Perhaps these are ok by Finnish standards. My daughter was fortunate enough to go to university in Uppsala, and therefore had to visit Finland quite often. I won’t quote her here re Finland: that might appear to be rude.
Nothing rude about stating a fact, be it in Sweden, Australia, Finland or even in Norway, truth and beauty in everything, we should all aim for those…
What is a fact, Helvi, and what is an opinion or an observation at some moment of time?
Truth: an arrogance to suggest that one can tap into it or know it. What do you know of truth? What do I?
Beauty: in the eye of the beholder, now as then.
What I find so disappointing in you Peter, is your defeatist attitude. Not only are you a life denying force, not only do you lack respect for individuals but you deem their lives worthless, in fact lifeless that you cannot acknowledge the struggles, victories, failures, endurance, joys, the facing up to life day in and day out and the incredible human capability to rebound from the depths of despair and fall from the heights and still hit the ground running, that you insist on not recognizing them as human, until they are filled with your kingdom of God, and until then and only then we are ciphers. Life ends where you begin, you are the death bringer. You deem every life as meaningless, empty and void until it has been filled with Jesus, your insistence on a once size fit all solution for mankind is not because you want people to be like Jesus, or to be like God, but to be like Peter. What a misery sodden, cowardly individual you must be, unable to exist without a God as some sort of prosthetic limb to live among your fellow human beings, tied as your are to the machine with a driver that no one can see but fewer and fewer people obey.
You pronounce your own defeat by pointing to the success of Christianity in Africa, as it skulks away from its once mighty historical European foundation powerless, profaned by its own adherents, looking for a new market to sell to, always sure to change the audience as opposed to changing the message, the failed message.
Even as you itemize the crimes of this generation or that generation or for all generations, (historical chronology seems to pay no part in your view), as you see fit to allocate the sins of historical circumstance to the” left” or any other group you wish to tar with your retrograde brush, you pronounce the impotence and defeat of your Christian God. You provide evidence at every turn of history, of the absolute failure of Christianity to overcome, and as we survive on the last stinking remnant whiff of the Christian carcass in Western society you again pronounce your own defeat. No more than allthumbs threatens the demise in the authority and the rejection of your God, what a damp squib your mighty Creator is, what an opponent is this mighty facet of your faith. What a terrible cheerleader you make, but then again what a miserable team you have chosen to cheer, one win in two thousand years. Satan is just phoning it in, he doesn’t even get up on his cloven hoofs or get his pointy tailed arse off the couch to knock you guys off, what a wimp your God is.
Pump the brakes.
I entered this thread with a fundamental sympathy for the mass murderer. My targets are not individuals, but the corrupt beliefs they adhere to. I admit that I sound dour and gloomy and strident, but my intent is only to wake you up to the truth in terms that you would understand.
By no means do I admit the failure of Christianity. I believe we’re still the world’s largest, oldest, most powerful religious institution who has effected countless good throughout the centuries - like the abolition of slavery and women’s rights to name a few.
My sincere belief is that we are the world’s only hope. It has turned away from us in the past, with various kings and societies falling into error, but saints have always emerged and saved the day, according to God’s plan.
Yes things are bleak, but we stand on at a fork in re road where civilizatikkn can choose the clear doom or the road to salvation.
It has before. It can again.
And so can you!
The invalid arguments that you display are not a credit to the institution that is the subject of your ardour.
Read some bloody Chomsky man.
“ To forget one’s stupidity is the commonest form of purpose.”
- Winston Churchill
Wake up to yourself man, vicarious salvation doesn’t exist! Even the merest morsel of respect is a do it yourself kind of event.
You don’t sound dour and gloomy and strident, you sound cowardly and dead to life, as you wait for something else. You can’t find that by yourself and so you need the entire human race to take the trip with you because you lack courage, its all too hard for you to face up to by yourself. Things are always bleak, things are always bright and shiny, mostly at the same time, things have always been like that, one fork in the road, do you imagine it is just one fork in the road, what a coward you are.
Everytime you attack, you highlight the success of the opposing side, and the limp-dicked impotence of your God, and now you wait for Saints to emerge, not God, but Saints, how will you ever identify them Peter, how will you ever know, how will you decide, at the fork of the road?
You woke me up Peter, I’d forgotten what a life crushing, human eating, death dealing force you represented.
The enemy is the prince of the earth, the lord of the flesh.
We always appear to be losing. We are always the underdogs. Our victories are not even comprehended by outsiders.
But your very cutting words, though appearing sincere and carrying some truth (I’m no saint brother), are unfair. All I ultimately point to is a loving creator whose son redeemed out of love. Acceptance of that is simply a matter of truth that corresponds with the very depths of man.
True freedom is not the power to say yes to anything - but the discipline and obedience to adhere to
God’s will - to surrender to the demands of love in any given situation.
Pax, bro, pax m8
It’s interesting this thread, like the cross-section of a mind that’s been infected with an incompetently-engineered virus. Possibly by accident.
I don’t mean any one mind in particular.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2cMG33mWVY
No, it is very deliberate trolling.
Bob’s views don’t suit the rightists at all, and my views annoy the hell out of the self-righteous religious nutters.
That is what it is all about.
Ellis, close it down and require identification, at least to your own satisfaction. I will willingly give it.
Willful ignorance Doug, and I will tell you why. You know where my blog is.
Upon reflection, “forget about it”.
I don’t hold grudges but boy can I scowl.
All the best to everyone, keep an open mind won’t you, I do hope you will tune in on Friday night to see me in the depth of my own hilarity, drooling.
DougQ:Some of Bob’s views - eg. being pro a monarchy, and others - suit rightists very well indeed.
Rightists are here, thankfully as balance, because he has a flexible intellect, (in a way). Do you?
I do wonder why you think that you “annoy the hell out of the self-righteous religious nutters”.
I really hadn’t noticed anyone at all who was in any way interested in your opinion. Truth, Doug: you yourself come across as a self- righteous religeous nutter.” That’s okay: simply of no interest to anyone else.
Zillions of blogs out there: many as circumscribed, censored, narrow and limited as you urge Bob to make his.
Interesting.
Have you heard the one about the tree snapping in the wind because it wouldn’t bend, it might have been a branch, and flexibility I would argue is an adaptive trait.
Why not bend a bit? We’re all rooted anyway.
Flexibility, like adaptabilty, is supposed to be an adjunct of intelligence.
Just saying.
I can see that it would be helpful in maintaining the species.
Wow! Me a self-righteous religious nutter! Which posts have you been reading? Peter, was it, or JG Cole, or Unethical 1066 or Patlick Dunghill or Cheshire Cat, or Unhinged no. 23 or any number of my trenchant critics?
All of them (or is there only one?) are pro-religious types who want me silenced - and why? because they realise that they have no arguments which do not end in “God told me so, so there!”
Not a single one.
And they HATE me for it.
Quixote, you and I have never discussed religion. NEVER.
I don’t know about the others - it wouldn’t be difficult to guess - but I despise you because you are ignorant and because you are a liar.
No other reason.
So is Bananamoron and you’ve never made a peep against him. Your prolonged hatred of a stranger and anyone else who vaguely stands up for him is bizarre whatever the reason. I would tell you once again to let it go, that there is no new information to be derived, but you simply cannot, can you? It’s that dent in the head, isn’t it?
Bananaman?!?!
Banana writes his mind; there’s a genuine passion there, a sense of what the man’s about, irrespective of our political divide. He’s never called me a troll either.
Quixote writes crap and screams for Bob’s help whenever he gets his blouse torn.
BIG difference.
Forget Doug. Move on with your life.
Untitled,1966 is not Cole.
I repeat: is NOT Cole.
Doug:I don’t know what threads you are speaking of. I obviously have not read them, or have not come across posts from “Patlick Dunghill” or “Cheshire Cat”.
From suggesting that they disagree with you to your statement that “they want me silenced” is a chasm very wide indeed.
You have a certainty and conviction about your beliefs.
So do they. That conviction is the similarity that others see between you and them.
I don’t have that conviction. I don’t have the answer to the questions that the wise men of the centuries have pondered over. If you tell me that you do, you must understand that I will continue to hold some doubts.
I doubt everything. The certainties that seem eternal - that the Sun will keep burning is about the greatest - do not rely upon faith but upon scientific fact.
Faith is a sidetrack in the path of eternity, and one we would best do without.
I willingly admit that some seem to need faith; rather like some seem to need some sort of addiction. The addictive personality needs something to latch onto. For some it is a drug, for others it is faith. That is a little unclear even to me, but this subject has fascinated mankind for millenia and no-one has the answers.
Doug: I happen to disagree.
You seem to constantly express an absolute faith in atheism. I do not see this as necessarily a consequence of some addictive traits in your own makeup, altho that is what you are arguing for. Perhaps I’m wrong.
But, I do know that a very fundamental difference between persons is between those who can tolerate ambiguity. and those who can’t; and those who can tolerate uncertainty, and those who can’t. The latter, of course, become the strident supporters.
F.I. - this post of yours is one of the best I have ever seen; it’s a wonderfully polite uncovering of either the lies or the contradictions that sit at the heart of most of Quixote’s posts.
I want to be the first to congratulate you on your good sense, your sound logic, and your moderate expression.
Well done F.I. Kendall!!
Logic? She admits she is not familiar with the story but claims to know all about it somehow by attaching a generalisable moral lens. How is that supposed to work? There is only the story itself and one story isn’t automatically the same as another story. That never happens. She is either a saboteur herself, (how could she have missed you?) or she is an saboteur enabler with no idea of the forces in which she is dabbling.
If you were able to think through an issue you would be treated with more respect. As it is though, you deserve none.
Logic: Quixote says he “doubts everything”.
Then goes on to triumph the his atheism.
That, my sweet Uni dropout, is a contradiction.
And no amount of obsessive Nietzsche quotes can change that.
F.I. Kendall points that out.
Think more.
Talk less.
Not at all. If Jesus Christ appears in the heavens with a regiment of angels and trumpets blaring I will be the first to shout “Hallelujah!”
- but I don’t think I will need to.
I believe one must have faith in the justice system in order for it to function.
That is playing with the semantic meaning of “faith”, which you well know.
No, it isn’t. I have 1000 words that back me up but none of you deserve them.
Put up a million if you want. Faith that the Sun will rise tomorrow is a far far thing from faith in a deity; faith in the impartiality of the law is a far thing from faith in the tooth fairy.
Two million words.
To william Soil: I liked your video - try this one. I think it could be the theme tune to this blog.
That or Banstead by Atomic Rooster
. No, I really have a 1000 words that argue the validity of this blog and I mean that in all seriousness.
I’m supposed to be having a nap though.
PS. Karl Bitar - Karl Bitar, every time I look around, he’s in my face
“Sweet Gina’s in the front, Big Clive is in the back, Cruisin round the harbour in the hot, hot sun” …nevermind.
Who’d have thunk somebody actually remembered The Residents
“Why Doug is Wrong or Why Ellis Should Keep the Blog Open.”
I’ll just do this one more time. I am me. No one else. I have only ever posted on this forum with one screen name, from one I.P. Lighten up he says.
It is an experience to exist in a realm of sorts, be it a supermarket, a date, a party, a school, an online forum with its own set of rules that govern identity; and to be looked over, as if one is not there at all.
I genuinely hope that Peter is okay and I thank him for his heartfelt contribution. I would much rather be sending Mr. Bob Ellis private emails than having to engage with you sodden lot anyway, but that is the whole point. So we can all learn and grow.
Furthermore, If I have been rude to anyone (grammatically or otherwise) , I will always apologize for such utterances as they will always be honest mistakes.
“GEORGE NEGUS: What about the fact that your counterparts on the other side of the ideological fence would describe you as a classic example of the middle-class elites. The word ‘elite’ has become a very, very derogatory term when used by them to describe people like yourself.
BOB ELLIS: I plead guilty, I think. I mean, uh…
GEORGE NEGUS: What I find interesting about the fact that you’re such an independent thinker – that you could turn to political writing, whereas you said you have to demolish your own voice to give somebody else one.
BOB ELLIS: I think there’s a kind of writer who is a citizen writer, and Dickens was one. He was involved in campaigns against bad private schools, bad jails and things. That’s the kind of man I like to think I’m striving to be. And there’s a great saying from Walter Lippmann, who said, “This is why young men dream dreams and old men plant trees they will never sit under.”
Without Bob Ellis, none of us would be here thinking these thoughts, reading these words or flooded with any indignant sense to expose one fraud or affect one change here or there or wherever.
We can get back to talking about mass murderers if you would like, somehow though I feel the length of the discussion above is more than just trollage,(deeply related to the topic, perhaps) and perhaps Peter will correct me, but I think he has gained a fair whack of insight, at least I hope that he has.
There isn’t a lot of progress one can make with their thoughts trapped in their heads hey?
Maybe it is just because I feel like I can turn a righty left and they all don’t need to go up against the wall that I take Peter as sincere.
Even Patrick Dignam taught me something. So there you go.
Bob Brown preaches that the Greens are more Christian than Christians. Often, take bananaman for example, you can smell the IPA or something, cabbage I don’t know. Still, its a human at the end of a keyboard.
(I grew up on Enid Blyton, still didn’t know what pax meant though.)
I’m reading Goodbye Babylon, there is a passage that tells of the voices in Bob’s head that are not of his own creation as in, the voices planted there by others. It would be up to Bob to decide if this is something he has to or wants to endure. So by all means implore away, but have you considered why Bob would consider this blog as a noble experiment? What he might be attempting to achieve?
If I could hazard a guess…I would probably be paraphrasing words that Ellis has already spoken, regarding trees and sitting under them. T’is a noble tree you grow Mr. Ellis, in my opinion and it may be brown nosing but I don’t care because I can see and perhaps others can not see this nobility, or perhaps scoff at it.
I came here via an anarchist’s blog, who I found via a protest I attended against fascists or, the ADL which is a twisted little offshoot of the EDL (their leader was actually locked up in immigration detention after the rally, Martin Brennan) which I found out about via social media, and in a somewhat passionate delusional state I attended the rally, participated and linked arms with socialists, dressed in a suit and tie and helped “push the fascists out of the square”, Fed Square, twas a fun couple of hours. I listened to an Irish socialist speaker, I discovered a Leadbelly song (which most of the under 25 crowd let fall on deaf ears). My first protest was against John Howard’s privatisation of education, which I happened upon, on my way home from school one day, joined in and walked around the mall I worked in until a security guard asked me to piss off politely. The same mall that if I walked through in a beanie, the same security guard would follow me, hah, perhaps it is just my gait.
But here I am. A troll. Deranged graffiti-st, Insane. Needing a nap, ignoring the map. Shaun Micallef.
Simon Sheik made an argument last night in regards to the education debate, that a little extra investment unlocks more of the potential results that previously defied to emerge. Perhaps this is the argument to be made here, as in you have come so far, and Doug is snapping like an old bough, but life goes on, the sun does rises and the world does not end and the seeds, however barren the soil may be, they will continue to sprout.
We’re not strictly anonymous here. We’re what’s lately been called psuedonymous. What I think that means is that when we assume the freedom to engage in conversations with greater impunity we have to take the good with the bad.
The good is the ability to more freely discuss matters of consequence to a greater degree than we’d ordinarily feel comfortable sharing with a group of our peers.
The bad in a way is that people still own their comments so that the additional latitude to be excessively frank gets hard to take when the exchange becomes abusive. I’ve seen people whom I recognise as being otherwise quite intelligent and capable of writing in a way that is either reasonable and even worthy of admiration turn around and take a dislike to others in a way that descends into the most childish abuse.
But I’m optimistic that it will work itself out and that the good outweighs the bad.
And if it doesn’t I simply invite a more creative form of put down than “F-k off!” all the time.
I’m re-watching Ellis’s interview with Abbott(Battlelines) and finding it really quite relevant, also re-assessing my position on said friendship.
Verity.
“I simply invite a more creative form of put down than “F–k off!” all the time.”
Hey Quixote!
Here’s a message to you from your mate!
Heed it!
Fuck off, psycho.
You want to play this game with me Reader?
Let’s play.
I’m happy that your dog is dead.
May I amend that to “Fuck off you psycho cunt”?
Ta.
Of course you can!
You should apologise U1966, regardless of anything else, anything else at all, you should apologise.
I understand your purpose here allthumbs.
But I shall not!
The nature of abuse, once you push that bastard off the cliff, is such that all things become possible - someone’s “fuck off” equals another’s another’s “dent in the head” equals another’s “psycho”. You can’t tell someone to feel it less because you would.
That’s not only ridiculous, it’s also a profoundly erroneous interpretative prescription.
You feel that my “dead dog” was going too far; that it crossed the line somehow demarcated by “Fuck off, psycho.”and the other pieces of abuse slung my way?
Not to me allthumbs.
Why?
Because I’ve seen guns put to cheeks for less, I’ve seen men bloodied senseless for less, I’ve seen friends never speak again for less, I’ve seen horrible things committed for less.
It’s my upbringing, my experience, my interpretation, my values, and my sense of honour.
You don’t go around saying shit like that to people FIRST because you just DON”T KNOW how they will take it.
To say it at all is both foolish and dangerous. To expect it to be heard through an interpretative vacuum is just plain stupid. To expect no consequences will result is the height of imbecility.
And there is as much chance of that changing as there is for Reader to apologise.
Incommensurability, I think the word is.
Don’t forget the beginnings here: look at my responses to F.I. Kendall this morning; they were opinions on specific issues raised. And now look at what I received in return.
Now you tell me about lines drawn in the sand??
Tell me if F.I. Kendall put one word out of place! Tell me if I wasn’t right to offer opinion on her thoughts??
Tell me allthumbs.
You’re in now – stay for the show, don’t just peep through the curtains. What does your calendar say this morning: “Take a stand”?
I know you’ve seen what I’m talking about; your eyes are open, it’s a shame your mouth stays closed.
Staying quiet only encourages and perpetuates it.
F.I. Kendall tried to do something positive, constructive, last night.
And look where it got her.
And now me, staring at the arse end of “fuck off psycho”, “dent in the head”, “c..nt”.
Does it look like I’m going to shy away from that????
Pah! You can turn it anyway you want allthumbs – but it won’t change the shape let alone the direction of this rolling boulder.
I notice you and Fedallah and fond of quotes. Here’s one for you:
- “Why do ya keep asking me all these questions? You don’t believe anything I tell you”.
- “There’s truth in lies too, if you can get enough of them.”
Of course you are happy my dog is dead. You are a psycho. A normal person cares about the dog regardless of the owner.
Take your elementary contradictions elsewhere Reader.
A normal person doesn’t say “fuck off psycho” to another.
I have been called a number of things since I have participated in this blog, apart from all of the lesser epithets, I have also been called “a corpse”.
I do not speak from above, my little foray of late is evidence of that, I do not shy away from what I said, I do not rescind a word.
The remark about R1′s dog, is pushing into the reality behind the two dimensional skin of this blog, it fractures the space, it goes to what we know is raw and vulnerable and deeply personal beyond our understanding. You have always, always been polite to me, I have tried to return the hospitality.I still think it is a breach beyond, that you have perpetrated and worthy of an apology.
And for all concerned, I have a completely different relationship to the word “cunt” and I find its maligning here on this blog and its use as a pejorative quite bizarre.
I have no desire for an apology from such a person, that would revolt me still yet further. In such an arena as in this case, with correct identification there is no engagement. It is an impenetrable barrier and the only way. I just wish I had heard of Buber’s theorom earlier. When you correctly identify, it frees up from secondary, refracted suspicion everyone else, leaving the rest of us free to be imperfect in relative comfort and ease once more.
“Eliminate the irritation” - Justin Buber
Things do come out of it, sure. But things also come out of a hole in the head.
I didn’t intend to be presumptious R1, you can look after yourself. Even if the apology is not to you,it is an apology for an univited intrusion beyond the blog and into reality.
It’s more like trespassing.
You’ve understood little of my post.
- I will decide what constitutes a “fracture of space” for myself - just as YOU have done here for Reader.
I demand that EQUAL right and privilege.
To suggest that her insult to me was less than mine to her is an error of interpretation, an error of assumption, and an error of “value”.
This is to allthumbs.
“And since you know you cannot see yourself,
so well as by reflection, I, your glass,
will modestly discover to yourself,
that of yourself which you yet know not of.”
I liked your sentences on value and judgement below Untitled.
Because you’re the same fucking person.
F.O.P.
Oh shut up you fool!
Cole was in this office not 2 hours ago roaring with laughter at your scattergun paranoia!!
“Mission Accomplished”he cheered!
He’s laughing at you Reader!
Laughing!!
Is it possible for that strained mind of yours; groping, oblique, illogical, and confused by too little schooling, to register that?
Is it?
I have never said “F-k off”
So I’m free to say Fuck off, psycho.
Most interesting. Of course, what a troll wants to do is to derail the conversation.
Some are flamers, seeking a response; some are concern trolls, more subtle but still seeking to derail the discussion and get their own agenda discussed.
There are other types, but the intent is nearly always the same.
My point to Ellis is that by being open to all comers, subject to post hoc erasure if he feels insulted enough - and it seems some trolls have gone out of their way to get banned - this blog is subject to constant derailment.
Is it entertaining? Some come here for serious discussion of the issues of the day; some are happy to annoy the first lot, fair enough if they do it in good humour or have a serious point to make.
A grand, perhaps a noble experiment, but one which is suffering severe infestation.
Time to de-louse it, Bob Ellis.
There you go F.I. Kendall!
Quixote’s well worn response.
You tried though, and for that I say thanks.
I’ll take some outside defence any time, I’m not being uppity about that. I promise I’m trying to skirt around a point. Doug’s a bit fast and loose with his categorisations but there is a certain point in the brain chemistry where a person is simply unable to care. They are still there twiddling their thumbs, though, looking for something to do. It is only 1% of the population in its extreme form but even just as metaphor, I think this is the inherent flaw of the left - the senseless needs to be incorporated as a factor in order for it to be made sense of. We are all more or less involved to greater or lesser degrees but 99% of us are adaptive and constantly changing. The psycho checklist is a good moral compass in terms of what not to do in life in general because sometimes it can be hard to tell. Blame needs to be allocated to the correct place in order to weed out the source and establish innocence. Because we are all partly guilty, this is a way as a society of communally establishing each other’s innocence just on the basis of intent, but the real life problem needs to be sheeted home. There is, however, no emotive conclusion to be derived from engagement if there is nothing there in the first place. Only the fact that there exists something from which there is nothing to be derived. This is just something that is.
It was tactically wrong in the end for the left to engage emotionally with Howard, even if in anger, because there is no possibility of change with someone like that. Dispassionate identification is the ultimate form of defence. Scientific observation and methode. The little grey cells.
Howard knew that, he knew with his flat-tyre voice, the steel rimmed glasses, the deaf-aid- to- loud- a- cackle, even the poor bowling performance, he would lure the left into his web. Everyone should have caught on to it, in my mind, when he had his meltdown during the address he made for some reason or another to the Aboriginals, ATSIC was it? when they turned their backs on him. The ALP should have ignored him completely, as if he did not exist.
Sometimes a man would come to see my husband when he was late for lunch…I wld give him coffee at the kitchen table and we would chat and wait. The dog, always jittery and suspicious, would relax and calm if the caller was a woman, but remain fearful and edgy if it was a man: growling if he shuffled his feet, eg. In my unknowing, (ie, ignorance), I hadn’t realised that gender is easily discernible to anything with a better sense of smell than we have.
The question left, tho, was why did the dog know that men are dangerous?
That seems to me to be an unhappy state of affairs for men.
F.I.K, was it a female dog?
I’m confused now…I heard the story of R1′s dog,the one that died…
Now, did F.I. Kendall’s dog die as well, are we talking about the same dog?
Can’t you just be silently confused Helvi? It does become boring.
Dear Sam was dog and male, allthumbs.
Why you might think that this was R1′s dog when I spoke of my dog, is a mystery to me, Helvi. I have no idea who R1 is, or of her dog’s identity.
Were you confused when I spoke of my husband? Did you think that perhaps I was talking about R1′s husband? Or, your husband?
“Dear Sam was dog and male..”
Nice distinction FIKendall.
Sam sounded unpretentious, I like that in dogs.
F.I. Kendall, who’s says I have a husband…I have spoken about my dog Milo here, so people here might be aware that I have a Jack Russell. He is male and likes men and women and children of any gender.
You told me that you had a husband, Helvi.
I am pleased that you can identify your dog, and don’t appear to have it confused with my dog, or R1′s dog.
Kendall are you Helvi?
Dang. Outed. In my other life, I often refer to myself as William Soil.
The Colorado shooting … unfathomable? Something that stands out is that all the ordinary-working-class-Americanness of the victims.
I can honestly say that this is one of those conversations that makes it seem as though Mr Ellis’ blog consists of only about 7 people.
I know of at least 6 or 7 that read it almost daily but never comment.
Why do people feel the need to use this space as a chat room for personal issues or to air their own “contributions” to the world?
I honestly feel the blog suffers as a whole.
can one dishonestly feel?
By the way, with all that’s going on in here; Has anyone cracked a fat lately?
Gerard,
I need a good glass of red.
And am about to have it.
Gerard,
I need a good glass of red.
And am about to have it.
(double post-sorry)
Gerard, the glass ceiling for serial mass murder was broken a while’ago now I found out, I came across this young woman via Camille Paglia, :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_B%C3%A1thory