Pacifism + Postmodernism = Maximum Confusion
And: The Tragedy Of The Worthless Assh*le
Ah, pacifism and postmodernism. In the long, sad history of stupid theories, these may be two of the stupidest. And if you put them together...well, you get something approaching a confusion singularity.
Cary Tennis unloads some PoMo BS on a poor guy who feels bad after beating up another guy in self-defense.
And I mean, this is some really dopey stuff.
Almost every paragraph has some ridiculous nonsense in it, but my favorite is probably "fighting is a rhetorical procedure." Um, Cary, if you think that fighting is a "rhetorical procedure," then you're doing it wrong. It's definitely not rhetorical, and it's not even really a procedure ('activity' or 'act' would be more accurate).
Ah, but then we also get "Consider what the shove actually says. What the shove says is, I love you and I want to feel the violence of my love for you by having some contact." So for sheer, flat-out ridiculousness, that's also pretty hard to beat.
It's really rather difficult to be 100% wrong about something, but Mr. Tennis gets pretty close in this column. After a few paragraphs, one begins to wonder whether this is all a complicated joke. I kept expecting him to write "There? Now did that nonsense make you feel better? Quit looking for reasons to beat yourself up over this and just move on." But, um, that never happened. The PoMo/LitCrit BS just kept on coming.
It's too bad Tennis didn't try to actually address the guy's question seriously, because I find it interesting, in part because I've had almost exactly the same experience--after being given no option but to fight, and and after winning conclusively, I've felt really depressed...almost guilty.
Everything Tennis says about this is wrong--he's wrong that people never have to fight, he's wrong that the victims of the aggression have inevitably invited it, or enjoy it, he's wrong that it's some kind of ridiculous PoMo "narrative"/"rhetorical" whatsis...but there is an interesting question there, and my guess is that somebody has something interesting to say about it.
Me, I suspect violence just makes people sad, and it's easy to mistake sadness for guilt under such circumstances. But that's just a sort of guess. In my case it probably also has to do with the fact that I recognize that some people are simply assh*les who deserve, in Kant's memorable phrase, a right good beating. I'm also prone to reflect on how sad it is that there are such people. Living your life as a stupid assh*le is a tragic waste of the human spirit, and I feel bad for such people. I don't think we have enough appreciation for the tragedy of the assh*le, the guy who's basically a useless piece of crap, living his life as a despicable being, making the world a worse place, loved only by other assh*les, despised by everyone worthwhile. I mean, the average assh*le isn't Hitler or anything...but he's still an assh*le.
I mean, don't get me wrong--they still frequently deserve to get their asses kicked.
But it is kinda sad.
And: The Tragedy Of The Worthless Assh*le
Ah, pacifism and postmodernism. In the long, sad history of stupid theories, these may be two of the stupidest. And if you put them together...well, you get something approaching a confusion singularity.
Cary Tennis unloads some PoMo BS on a poor guy who feels bad after beating up another guy in self-defense.
And I mean, this is some really dopey stuff.
Almost every paragraph has some ridiculous nonsense in it, but my favorite is probably "fighting is a rhetorical procedure." Um, Cary, if you think that fighting is a "rhetorical procedure," then you're doing it wrong. It's definitely not rhetorical, and it's not even really a procedure ('activity' or 'act' would be more accurate).
Ah, but then we also get "Consider what the shove actually says. What the shove says is, I love you and I want to feel the violence of my love for you by having some contact." So for sheer, flat-out ridiculousness, that's also pretty hard to beat.
It's really rather difficult to be 100% wrong about something, but Mr. Tennis gets pretty close in this column. After a few paragraphs, one begins to wonder whether this is all a complicated joke. I kept expecting him to write "There? Now did that nonsense make you feel better? Quit looking for reasons to beat yourself up over this and just move on." But, um, that never happened. The PoMo/LitCrit BS just kept on coming.
It's too bad Tennis didn't try to actually address the guy's question seriously, because I find it interesting, in part because I've had almost exactly the same experience--after being given no option but to fight, and and after winning conclusively, I've felt really depressed...almost guilty.
Everything Tennis says about this is wrong--he's wrong that people never have to fight, he's wrong that the victims of the aggression have inevitably invited it, or enjoy it, he's wrong that it's some kind of ridiculous PoMo "narrative"/"rhetorical" whatsis...but there is an interesting question there, and my guess is that somebody has something interesting to say about it.
Me, I suspect violence just makes people sad, and it's easy to mistake sadness for guilt under such circumstances. But that's just a sort of guess. In my case it probably also has to do with the fact that I recognize that some people are simply assh*les who deserve, in Kant's memorable phrase, a right good beating. I'm also prone to reflect on how sad it is that there are such people. Living your life as a stupid assh*le is a tragic waste of the human spirit, and I feel bad for such people. I don't think we have enough appreciation for the tragedy of the assh*le, the guy who's basically a useless piece of crap, living his life as a despicable being, making the world a worse place, loved only by other assh*les, despised by everyone worthwhile. I mean, the average assh*le isn't Hitler or anything...but he's still an assh*le.
I mean, don't get me wrong--they still frequently deserve to get their asses kicked.
But it is kinda sad.
posted by Winston Smith at
1:21 AM
2 Comments:
WS.
So, I'm reading, and I get it when Tennis says:
He shoved you and you put your hands up but you did not walk away.
Yup. The letter-writer could have been shoved and simply walked away. There are social concequences to just walking away (you get called a coward), but the option exists.
And then I get to:
Consider what the shove actually says. What the shove says is, I love you and I want to feel the violence of my love for you by having some contact...
and I think "What planet is this guy from?"
WS, when you hear the word "liberal", is this crap what you normally think of? And I'm thinking of Barny Frank's carefully thought-out, nuanced, political position papers?
If so, no wonder we talk across each other some times!
Best,
Jim Bales
Oh, no way. If I thought that was characteristic of liberalism, I'd never in a million years self-identify as one.
When I think of paradigmatic liberals, I think of e.g. Roosevelt and Truman leading us through dubya-dubya-two-the-big-one, or, yes, Barney Frank, or Obama.
Weenie-ness is, unfortunately, a theme in liberalism, but not characteristic of it, nor the dominant position. The real problem is that it's so often tolerated by other liberals. (Like e.g. relativism is tolerated, and in a way that, say, religious fundamentalism would not be.)
Anyway, I hadn't even thought of the Tennis piece as having anything to do with liberalism or conservatism.
Though now that you bring it up...I do think there are themes in liberalism that show up in Tennis and are dangerous and reprehensible. Like, for example, the view that physical injury and/or inflicting physical injury to defend yourself are worse than injuries to honor and/or dignity--that, in fact, honor and dignity are quaint or outdated notions.
One might argue that that's part of a world view according to which only the physical is real or important, and things like honor and dignity are unreal or unimportant. Whereas, according to me and the variety of liberalism I espouse, human dignity is *at least* as important as physical well-being, and very possibly more important.
Though you have to kind of reach for the political stuff here. Tennis's response is just flat-out dumb. He should take it all back.
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