Here we have a few words of Epictetus, one of the Stoic philosophers, whose thoughts are characterized by the idea that our lives should not be cushy, but rather the opposite, guided by self-sacrifice in order to live by the principles of virtue.
This is particularly relevant to life in the U.S. today. Are we willing to sit around and silently succumb to Trumpism, or will we persist and resist?
The lawn sign here reminds me of the American political rhetoric over the past decade, where people have been saying, “The Democratic platform needs to be more than ‘Were not insane Republicans.'” I remember thinking: I’m not too sure about that.
It’s not uncommon for U.S. voters to be forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, but at no time in our history has this been more in our faces.
In an earlier post called Americans’ Grammar Is Deteriorating, But Let’s Keep Things in Perspective, I made the point that many of Americans’ grammatical errors have become normalized as our respect for our traditional English language has deteriorated, just like so many other aspects of our culture.
Some of these errors are more egregious than others, of course. Still unacceptable are sentences like “Roads is made of concrete,” and “Jim and I is friends.” Both violate the rule that the subject and the verb in a sentence must agree.
Yet, in the last ten years, we’ve accepted something akin to this, which we now hear constantly. e.g.: “There’s several ways to proceed from here.” “There’s” is a contraction for “there is,” and the verb ‘is” is singular, so the correct form here would be “There are several ways ,,,”
FWIW, when I was in fifth grade in 1965, it was made quite clear to my classmates and me that no one making mistakes of this order would be promoted to sixth grade, regardless of how many times he had repeated fifth grade. We all wondered if we were sitting among one of more of our hapless fellows who would occupy these seats many years later with grayish beards, collecting monthly Social Security checks, still trying to write simple sentences.
Of course, no one in today’s school system has anything like this to fear. We happily graduate kids from high school who couldn’t tell you where Wisconsin is.
Things have changed.
I’m wondering if people’s growing lack of consideration for others is a regional trend here in the Unites States, or it’s one of global extent.
I find it hard to believe, for instance, that the Japanese are suffering from this malady; it seems incomprehensible, given their ultra-refined culture of courtesy and decorum.
The guy who wrote the meme here is referring to something called the subjunctive mood, used mainly to state a contrary-to-fact conditional. He’s not in LA, therefore we say, “If I were in LA,” not “If I was in LA.” Similarly, I would say, “If I were president,” rather than “If I was president,” because I’m not president.
Having said this, the proper use of the subjective mood has almost completely disappeared from English; news commentators butcher this far more frequently than they get it right. I’m not happy about this, but getting frustrated with the degradation of our language seems silly, when the United States is turning into an authoritarian state, and our planet is on fire.
Nicely put, Sir David.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but human civilization, driven by its voracious greed, is in grave danger.
For a while it appeared that humankind might find a way to harness its vast command of science and use it to prevent environmental collapse. Now, it’s anyone’s guess as to what life will be like 50 years hence.
A reader “Tim” sent me the meme here.
Thanks, Tim, but let me ask you this: Of all U.S. voters who are registered with a certain party, a clear majority, 54%, 44.1 million, are Democrats. How many of these people could honestly be said to be “pro-assassination?” 11? 85? Obviously, I don’t know, but no decent person is in favor of political violence.
What a remarkably asinine claim to make.
The idea suggested at left is most closely associated with 18th Century French writer Voltaire.
It’s of particular relevance today, as our right-wing government is aggressively muzzling anti-Trump comedians like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel.
Since the origins of humankind, we have known what late 20th Century American philosopher Terrence McKenna said at left to be true. With great consistency, we somehow select the worst people to lead us.
What many have realized, perhaps starting with Plato and Aristotle, is that good leaders do not want power; conversely, it’s our species’ cruelest and stupidest, one could say the “Donald Trumps of Earth,” whose lust for power drive them to the top.
I like this, though there is nothing “imaginary” about the vast wealth controlled by the fossil fuel industry. The top echelon of Big Oil has more money than the GDP of some of Earth’s countries.
As Mr. Spock says here, the whole practice is “illogical,” not to mention despicable.
Having said that, there is very little pushback. People who care about the wellbeing of Earth’s ecosystem and its people are derided as “woke anti-capitalists.”
