May 18, 2005
Philosophy
Philosophy is a bit hard to define. This is done deliberately by Philosophers afraid that anybody who finds out what they actually do will try to have them fired. This is a rational fear and represents one of the few rational things Philosophers still engage in. Lying for self preservation is not pretty or moral but it makes a lot of sense.
Whenever you ask a philosopher what it is they do they talk about finding meaning in things and enhancing man's understanding of the world. When pressed for examples, they hedge. The really good ones tell you you're not smart enough to understand the examples they have. That's an excellent gimmick. Claim the work is too hard for anybody else to understand, even though the work is supposed to be making everybody understand virtually everything. Philosophers like paradox, I'm told.
After pressing the matter philosophers like to point out that philosophy was the basis of disciplines like physics, chemistry, history, theology, and linguistics. For the most part a philosopher had some exceedingly stupid idea about how the world worked and a machinist, farmer, or General who, from hard experience, knew better would crush that idea and write something more useful. Once something begins to require first hand experience, a skill, or might produce a tangible benefit the philosophers all drop out and some new profession like scientist or engineer is born. Philosophers dropped out of medicine after grave robbing was no longer required. The important thing to remember about all of the professions that fled from philosophy into practicality is that they all did it about 3,000 years ago. Philosophy hasn't produced a useful idea in several millennia.
When we get to the more recent philosophers the one real trend is a desire to starve humanity into eventual extinction. One philosopher, Hegel, developed a philosophical view of history that while worthless was also mostly harmless. Later on, Karl Marx used Hegel’s view of history to justify the idea that economic systems are evolving and what they will inevitably evolve into is a socialist paradise. This one idea, developed by one self-styled philosopher from the ideas of another, has caused more human suffering than World War II, which killed slightly fewer hundreds of millions than Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and the greatest force in any Communist country, hunger.
That being said, most philosophers aren't the sorts of inhuman monsters that sentence entire societies to a century and a half of backwardness, oppression and want. Only the famous ones. Most philosophers practice their evil art by trying to kill the environment. Philosophers wantonly destroy trees, in what can only be an effort to eliminate them from the planet. They do this by publishing books, papers and essays for no reason. Millions, if not billions, or pages are printed each year. Most of them serve a purpose in education, entertainment, or news. I don’t have a problem with that. Printing for a purpose generates wealth and enhances societies. Philosophers print and print but never help anybody. Except perhaps other philosophers which really just starts the brutal cycle of mediocrity over again.
Posted by DjDuk at 03:24 AM | Comments (131)
May 17, 2005
Grammatical nitpicking
Social Worker: Boy Denied Abuse by Michael Jackson...
This headline appeared on the Drudge Report today and it serves as an example of one of my pet peeves in grammar. That sentence actually means that a boy who was owed abuse by Michael Jackson had that abuse withheld. What, from a quick perusal of the article, is meant is "Boy Denied Abused by..." or "Boy Denies Abuse by..." The tense of all of the words has to match. That being said, there is going to be a payoff for the abused children in the Michael Jackson case. It might just be possible that a boy who was in a position to be abused and was not is now suing Jackson for the missed opportunity to sue him for something else. As far as I know this isn't yet legal, but I hear John Edwards may run for President again so keep your fingers crossed.
Posted by DjDuk at 02:44 AM | Comments (599)