Truth! - part 5
The following statements are true:
There is no "R" in Washington. If you pronounce it "Warshington" you are saying it wrong.
"Marlene" is the only name ending in "lene" that doesn't make you sound like trailer trash.
There is no third "i" in mischievous. The word is only three syllables long: mis - chi - vuss.
What a person assumes about others is very telling about what they're like. If a person assumes that everyone else is trying to manipulate them, it's a fair bet that said person is manipulative. If a person tends to assume the best about others, he or she is probably a decent human being. Following this line of thinking, homophobes are a truly dangerous lot. If someone assumes that homosexuals are predators and child molesters, what does that say about that person's relationship to their own desires? Why would someone assume that just because a person is attracted to a certain gender, that person would necessarily have no concept of or respect for consent? Because that is true for the assumer. He's a potential rapist. I realize that's a very broad statement to make but an unpleasant truth is truth nonetheless.
Speaking of homophobes and hypocrites, the scathingly ironic scandals that always seem to surround conservatives are cliche and poorly written. Or at least they would be if they were fiction. The guy that says all drug offenders should go to jail forever is doing 30 Oxycontin a day, a number that makes most drug users gasp. The guy who ran the committee to protect children from gay Internet predators, who practically coined the term "What about the children?", habitually sends dirty predatory emails to his underage male interns. The most outspoken anti-gay evangelist in the country is getting it on with a male prostitute who also sells him crystal meth. Even all the way back to Reagan. Mr. Law-and-Order had more of his staff brought up on criminal charges than any other president in history. If I were an English teacher grading this as a story, I would give it a D and write at the top "There is such a thing as over-use of irony.".
The term "Samaritan" has been grossly distorted by bible thumpers who have never read the bible. It's now commonly understood as "do-gooder" due to the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The point of the parable is that good works come not from high caste holier-than-thou types, but from humble people who care about other people. The Samaritans were unpopular, dirty, marginalized, uncultured, poor people. The reason the story had any meaning was that no one would have expected a nasty old Samaritan to show some decency and help someone, especially when the rich man and the priest wouldn't. It's a story about breaking down classist prejudices, not reinforcing them.
While we're at it, "The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing" has been misappropriated as well. It has now come to be an accusation of disorganization and poor communication. It was originally a metaphor for humility in charitable works. Paraphrased, Jesus said "When doing good works, don't brag about it. Be so humble about it, that you don't even acknowledge to yourself that you are doing it. Don't even let your left hand know when your right hand does good works.". It was originally a call to humility and has become an arrogant admonition of others. The ability to take a positive message and distort it into its opposite, seems to be one of the only instances in which religious folks demonstrate consistency.
There is no God. (wow, John, that's a bit abrupt) There is no reason to believe there is. There has never been a reason to believe there is. There may be something grand and infinite and transcendent at the root of all existence, but that is not a sentient being who has desires and plans and motivations. Those are human qualities and humans are a very very very very VERY small portion of all there is (we're even smaller than that, but for the sake of brevity I limited myself to five "very"s...well, six now). We are only one variation in an infinite number of combinations of an infinite number of variables. Come out of the closet, Atheists, Agnostics, and Nontheists! You're right! I know that you try to respect others' beliefs, but if one or ten or a hundred billion people say that 2 plus 2 equals 5, it's not disrespectful to point out that it's actually 4.
Well, that got pretty heavy, there didn't it? I should probably end with something a bit lighter...uhhhhhh...
"I don't believe in luck" is a nonsensical statement. Luck is synonymous with "circumstance" or "the way things work out". It's nice to believe in yourself and have the fortitude to pursue your goals, but to not believe in "the way things work out", to believe that there is no context in which you exist and that external forces have no effect on your actions is beyond absurd; it's delusional.
There is no "R" in Washington. If you pronounce it "Warshington" you are saying it wrong.
"Marlene" is the only name ending in "lene" that doesn't make you sound like trailer trash.
There is no third "i" in mischievous. The word is only three syllables long: mis - chi - vuss.
What a person assumes about others is very telling about what they're like. If a person assumes that everyone else is trying to manipulate them, it's a fair bet that said person is manipulative. If a person tends to assume the best about others, he or she is probably a decent human being. Following this line of thinking, homophobes are a truly dangerous lot. If someone assumes that homosexuals are predators and child molesters, what does that say about that person's relationship to their own desires? Why would someone assume that just because a person is attracted to a certain gender, that person would necessarily have no concept of or respect for consent? Because that is true for the assumer. He's a potential rapist. I realize that's a very broad statement to make but an unpleasant truth is truth nonetheless.
Speaking of homophobes and hypocrites, the scathingly ironic scandals that always seem to surround conservatives are cliche and poorly written. Or at least they would be if they were fiction. The guy that says all drug offenders should go to jail forever is doing 30 Oxycontin a day, a number that makes most drug users gasp. The guy who ran the committee to protect children from gay Internet predators, who practically coined the term "What about the children?", habitually sends dirty predatory emails to his underage male interns. The most outspoken anti-gay evangelist in the country is getting it on with a male prostitute who also sells him crystal meth. Even all the way back to Reagan. Mr. Law-and-Order had more of his staff brought up on criminal charges than any other president in history. If I were an English teacher grading this as a story, I would give it a D and write at the top "There is such a thing as over-use of irony.".
The term "Samaritan" has been grossly distorted by bible thumpers who have never read the bible. It's now commonly understood as "do-gooder" due to the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The point of the parable is that good works come not from high caste holier-than-thou types, but from humble people who care about other people. The Samaritans were unpopular, dirty, marginalized, uncultured, poor people. The reason the story had any meaning was that no one would have expected a nasty old Samaritan to show some decency and help someone, especially when the rich man and the priest wouldn't. It's a story about breaking down classist prejudices, not reinforcing them.
While we're at it, "The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing" has been misappropriated as well. It has now come to be an accusation of disorganization and poor communication. It was originally a metaphor for humility in charitable works. Paraphrased, Jesus said "When doing good works, don't brag about it. Be so humble about it, that you don't even acknowledge to yourself that you are doing it. Don't even let your left hand know when your right hand does good works.". It was originally a call to humility and has become an arrogant admonition of others. The ability to take a positive message and distort it into its opposite, seems to be one of the only instances in which religious folks demonstrate consistency.
There is no God. (wow, John, that's a bit abrupt) There is no reason to believe there is. There has never been a reason to believe there is. There may be something grand and infinite and transcendent at the root of all existence, but that is not a sentient being who has desires and plans and motivations. Those are human qualities and humans are a very very very very VERY small portion of all there is (we're even smaller than that, but for the sake of brevity I limited myself to five "very"s...well, six now). We are only one variation in an infinite number of combinations of an infinite number of variables. Come out of the closet, Atheists, Agnostics, and Nontheists! You're right! I know that you try to respect others' beliefs, but if one or ten or a hundred billion people say that 2 plus 2 equals 5, it's not disrespectful to point out that it's actually 4.
Well, that got pretty heavy, there didn't it? I should probably end with something a bit lighter...uhhhhhh...
"I don't believe in luck" is a nonsensical statement. Luck is synonymous with "circumstance" or "the way things work out". It's nice to believe in yourself and have the fortitude to pursue your goals, but to not believe in "the way things work out", to believe that there is no context in which you exist and that external forces have no effect on your actions is beyond absurd; it's delusional.
posted by John McKenna at 9:20 AM
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