02-06-2021, 12:01 AM
@rowens - A useful reply; your ESP trips you up a little.
Yes, when I wrote this I was thinking about Black History Month (February in the US) - the title was different.
But in the course of editing and re-titling, it became (at least in my mind) more generalized. That is, for example, applying it to myself: would I rather give up my conviction that the disputed election was fraudulent and be thought more acceptable, or hold on to that (let us be frank) mindset of having been victimized?
So by that reading, still polemical but on a different plane. Nor is the answer foreordained or obvious: it can be a form of Machiavelli's "Is it better to be feared or loved?" to which Master Niccolo's answer was the former. Or taken another way, that magnificent catty putdown on hearing a "brave" but actually false/complaisant assertion of belief, "Pretty to think so."
In a way, too, talking trash is a way to make yourself ugly and, thereby, powerful. The question is motive: is it to drive others to do your bidding, or to drive them away because accepting their version of reality, even arguendo, is too terrifying?
Yes, when I wrote this I was thinking about Black History Month (February in the US) - the title was different.
But in the course of editing and re-titling, it became (at least in my mind) more generalized. That is, for example, applying it to myself: would I rather give up my conviction that the disputed election was fraudulent and be thought more acceptable, or hold on to that (let us be frank) mindset of having been victimized?
So by that reading, still polemical but on a different plane. Nor is the answer foreordained or obvious: it can be a form of Machiavelli's "Is it better to be feared or loved?" to which Master Niccolo's answer was the former. Or taken another way, that magnificent catty putdown on hearing a "brave" but actually false/complaisant assertion of belief, "Pretty to think so."
In a way, too, talking trash is a way to make yourself ugly and, thereby, powerful. The question is motive: is it to drive others to do your bidding, or to drive them away because accepting their version of reality, even arguendo, is too terrifying?
Non-practicing atheist