Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
All you Christian warriors out there best make ready for battle! Sean Hannity and the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue are now claiming that there is a war on Easter. “Oh no!” you say. “Who would do such a thing?” Why, Lady Gaga, comedian Ricky Gervais, and a few other dastardly demons—that’s who.
I even heard it through the grapevine that the CEO of Easter Bunnies, Inc., is hopping mad. I was told that he’s organized his bunny brigade and worked in co-operation with the president of Hatchling Chicks Corporation to devise a plan to go after anti-Easterites like Lady Gaga and Gervais.
Get your trebuchets ready! I’ll bring eggs. We’re planning to meet in Mister MacGregor’s garden tomorrow at the first light of dawn. We’ll shell the hard-boiled enemies of Easter ova and ova again until they surrender. They won’t know what hit them.
Are you ready to join me and my fellow warriors?
More about the War on Easter:
Stephen Colbert has an excellent summary of the story for us here: Easter Under Attack—Egg Edition
Fox News And Catholic League’s Bill Donohue Invent ‘War On Easter’ (Think Progress)
Easter Brings Out the Crazies (Catholic League)
Hannity – War on Easter (4.21.11) I couldn’t embed video. Here’s the link:
Then you clearly don’t understand my last comment.
I needed to refresh my memory, to be sure I understand your last comment.
A plant, in my dictionary, is an observer stationed in a particular location.
I am an observer and, for certain purposes of observation, am stationed in the particular location of Northeastern Wisconsin.
However, I a not only an observer, but am sometimes a participant-observer doing what my vocation asks me to do.
There are other definitions for “plant,” I noticed, none of which are appropriate regarding me.
I’ve long suspected you were a plant . . .
Scatology is an aspect of biology.
What competent biologist does not know a lot about dung, its value as fertilizer, and how to recognize it from a safe distance?
And you would know about dung after all.
I understand that dung beetles have different nutritional needs than autistic people do (nutritional needs are often species-dependent), so what is nutritious for some autistic people may not be proper nutrition for some other creatures.
BIL: Yes. 🙄
Word salad.
Filling, but devoid of nutrition.
RE: Otteray Scribe, April 24, 2011 at 3:12 pm
Brian: “It may be wise to recognize sarcasm if one is going to use it…”
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Brian, I recognize sarcasm and can use it effectively. You were the one that did not get it, not me. I understand that it is not your fault. Because of your problem, you tend to be what is called “concrete (or literal) minded.” Many clever comments here get past you because of that. I wish I could help you understand what you are missing, but it is beyond my power to do so.
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Alas, I did get your sarcasm, only the timing of your posting of your comment interfered with what I had intended to accomplish, which was to demonstrate how people who know a little often believe they know much more than they actually know.
And I did not miss anything; if you really believe that I was not being sarcastic in the detailed (and relevant?) things I posted, it is my guess that some aspects of the way I use sarcasm as a way of learning about non-autistic people, the better to survive in a society which they control, is something you have really missed time after time.
I made an early effort to be more direct, only to find that what I wrote was as though setting off flashbacks of unresolved socialization issues in people who have become very well socially-adjusted.
Once more, I will be very direct in what I write, in this one unduly long paragraph. Throughout most of my life, I have observed what I regard as human destructiveness. This has puzzled me, and I set about to make such useful sense as I can as to why humans are sometimes as though terribly destructive on purpose. I mentioned my research finding, not yet actually, demonstrably refuted, that no one can truthfully describe any mistake actually made and also truthfully describe any achievable process through which the mistake made could actually have been avoided. That, it appeared to me, set of a flurry of diatribe-epithets. So, I changed my method because setting off diatribe-epithets is not in accord with my life purpose. Since my being direct was rejected by many who comment here, I set out to learn what might work better. Because it is a common belief that autistic people are dreadfully literal, I set out to role-play a dreadfully-literal person as a possible way to learn better how to usefully connect to non-autistic people.
So, the sarcasm I have in use is terribly simple. I am working to learn whether or not I can usefully share what I have learned with people who, were they to pay attention to it, might find it profoundly useful, and I am working away at learning whether I can help you understand what you are missing. The best sign of progress in my work is the seeming recognition that someone may be missing something.
In my life, psychological defenses are mental mechanisms which distort reality in the service of the ego, to use Freudian jargon. George Vaillant, “Adaptation to Life,” regarding the longitudinal Grant study which had been going for about 40 years when Vaillant wrote his book, is a decent introduction to psychological defenses for those who have not much studied them from a scientific viewpoint.
In contrast with mainstream traditions, I have come to regard psychological defenses as socially mandated forms of shared self-deception; and I find that deception plays a huge role in the violent and destructive traditions of much of humanity.
So, let me demonstrate something about being literal-minded and its alternative. I propose to show that I am far less literal minded than may be characteristic of typical members of the law profession. The focal topic is the definition of proximate cause and its explanatory material, as found in Black’s Ninth, on page 250, which I shall paraphrase:
The proximate cause is the cause deemed to result in liability under law, including an event immediately preceding the cause of liability, such that, absent the proximate event, the liability would not have arisen. As mentioned in the note from Prosser and Keeton on Torts, from a philosophical view, the causes of any event began at or before the dawn of history and the consequences will continue toward eternity. In the note from Prosser… is made the observation that going back before the dawn of history and forward toward eternity would result in infinite liability…
To me, that is a profoundly literal understanding of causality, one which is also, in terms of human brain function, literally absurd in my view. Why so?
Any given event for which liability may be assigned is a finite event. Taking into account the essentially infinite series of causes and effects, the effect of the traditional proximate cause is indistinguishable from zero in terms of the total finite liability which results from every finite event. The notion of proximate liability simplifies tort liability issues for attorneys, only it is profoundly dishonest and deceptive because the person assigned liability can, at best, actually only make an inconsequential contribution to the total causal and consequential chain of events which contain the cause of action.
The literal, traditional view of the law, seems to me to be, something bad happened, it is someone’s fault, and that someone needs to pay (especially pay the attorneys, as happened after our son and his wife were killed). The need to assign proximate cause liability comes from the need of attorneys to earn money as a form of correspondence bias or fundamental attribution error? Or, is it a form of self-serving bias? Or, is it a form of bias in assigning internal/dispositional responsibility for external/situational causation? Or, is belief in proximate cause a form of perceptual salience bias? Or is it a form of actor-observer bias when an attorney is an observer-after-the-fact?
The literal view may well be that people are to blame, and therefore are at fault, and are therefore liable. That view, however traditional it may be, is of a literal interpretation of causality which does not even welcome frequentist statistical approaches for the sharing of liability and remedy over the whole causal/consequential chain.
Avoiding that traditional, literal view allows for the possibility of accurately recognizing the observable aspects of the whole causal process, and it obliterates the income potential of tort liability actions, as it is impossible to accurately assign liability to any event in the causal chain. Gone will be “call (###)-BAD-DRUG” commercials from TV, gone will be malpractice insurance, and medical care costs may become affordable, once the field of medicine is no longer a major revenue source for the law profession.
In my own life, there have been serious blunders of medical diagnosis and medication prescription, and these were such as to accomplish formidable harm to me and my family. However, I cannot sue for damages because I know and understand that every decision, at the moment of decision, is the best actually-possible decision, and that each decision moment is a trivial aspect of any actual event. It is one thing to repair what can be repaired and another to nearly destroy the available quality of medical care through tort-liability second-guessing people’s actions, or through the threat of such actions.
I was twice a psychiatric inpatient at the University of Illinois Hospital, in Chicago, once a surgical inpatient, and was a surgical outpatient many times, while I lived in the Chicago area. Blunders were made in my care at that hospital, and the late Dr. Boris Astrachan, the psychiatrist member of my thesis committee figured out that one blunder described in my dissertation happened at that hospital. Of that blunder, he said it was “probably a clear example of malpractice.”
I thought it was clearly malpractice when it happened, but it never occurred to me to seek compensation under tort liability, because I knew that the folks who blundered could not actually have understood their blunder before they made it.
One of the outpatient surgical procedures I had more than 20 years ago at the U of Illinois Hospital seems to have gone awry. On searching the Internet, I find that the surgery done was not done the way it would have been done at a different hospital, and the difference is apparently now causing me some serious quality of life difficulty. I expect to have this difficulty surgically corrected within a week or so; the present-time standard method of doing that surgery would likely have prevented the difficulty now needing surgical remediation. Nonetheless, statute of limitations notwithstanding, I would never allow a tort liability action because of someone’s blunder. Why? Because, for me to find someone liable under torts, I would accomplish a worse blunder than that for which I might seek tort remedy.
That said, to me, the traditional belief in tort liability in terms of proximate cause as defined and described in Black’s Ninth is of an utterly literal, inextricably fundamentalist, authoritarian dogma, one which I reject because I am so far from being literal that I am skeptical of everything and more skeptical of skepticism than just about anything else.
You may believe that I am literal and rigid because I do not accept some aspects of the traditions of human society. Alas, I did initially accept most of what I now reject because I kept finding internal contradictions within many social norms folkways, and supposed mandates.
Significant paradigm changes sometimes happen. It is, I surmise, unheard of for a dramatic paradigm change to be welcomed by those the old paradigm seemingly benefits the most. Nevertheless, paradigm changes sometimes happen, no matter who resists them.
I have been describing what I find may be of a new social paradigm, and I expect those who religiously believe in the old paradigm to fight for their socioeconomic status with every available resource. Nevertheless, paradigm changes sometimes happen.
So, my work is junk science when someone does the following:
A. Demonstrate the actual making of an unintended mistake.
B. Demonstrate the actual avoiding of the mistake of step A.
C. The demonstration of an avoidable mistake will have been done.
The steps A, B, and C ought to be easy in a society in which people are punished for making avoidable mistakes.
Continue to punish people for making mistakes in the absence of demonstrating that A, B, and C are actually achievable, and methinks whoever does, that or believes in doing that, is literal beyond my power of words to describe.
Is not literalism of the form, “Say so is so”?
Repeatedly on this blawg, attorneys and others have told me that my work is wrong, yet no one has demonstrated that it is wrong. All that I have yet observed is my work being defined as wrong by definition bereft of demonstration. To me, that is the maximum limit of literalism.
I routinely and vigorously question my work, its findings, and its possible value. I do so because, except as a form of communication role-play which I use for want of anything that works better, I am about as far from a literalist as I guess is possible.
Why do I not “get it” after being told to “get it” time after time?
I do not “get it” because I am not a literalist and I never believe anything because I am told to believe it.
I do not “get it” because I never believe anything because someone else believes it.
My beliefs are in constant flux as life events add to the set of life experiences from which I derive my beliefs. I watch and listen to events, and not to words as such.
Tell me something a thousand times an hour, for a lifetime, and if my conscience questions it, I will never come to believe it.
As for my conscience, order me to hurt someone or else you will hurt me, and you will hurt me and I will not hurt the someone else, until after my body has taken its final breath.
And yet, my conscience is the most profoundly gentle “thing” I have ever known.
My conscience advises me to avoid anything and everything deceptive.
The notion of tort liability, with respect to proximate cause, as defined in Black’s Ninth, I find tragically deceptive at best.
I would have to be a very literal person before I could possibly believe in torts.
The remedy for torts is, I find, within those bible verses that, in the KJV, use the word “suffer,” as already cited.
So, who is the literalist and who has demonstrated at least quadruple-entendre sarcasm?
I have noticed that many folks tend to get stuck when presented with more than a double-entendre.
Just wondering.
BIL, yup!
Brian: “It may be wise to recognize sarcasm if one is going to use it…”
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Brian, I recognize sarcasm and can use it effectively. You were the one that did not get it, not me. I understand that it is not your fault. Because of your problem, you tend to be what is called “concrete (or literal) minded.” Many clever comments here get past you because of that. I wish I could help you understand what you are missing, but it is beyond my power to do so.
OS,
I think you were right in your e-mail.
The one about salad and words.
Otteray Scribe 1, April 24, 2011 at 1:57 pm
Brian, that was sarcasm. I am well aware of what the Bible says, but altered the words so they would fit the world view of the troll. I was using bitter humor as a means of pointing out how ridiculous and selfish is their attitude.
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It may be wise to recognize sarcasm if one is going to use it; I often use “straight-man to straight-man” sarcastic humor to unriddle social enigmas, for want of anything else that even begins to work at all.
Why? Because I have known, and worked with, people who were taught to suffer when they were little children. Child neglect and/or abuse is a name for such suffering. My wife and I adopted, in 1979, a boy who had met with severe neglect/abuse, and who had greatly suffered as a little child before entering foster care on his way to becoming adopted.
As I have observed, being taught to suffer when a little child may be a significant factor in later-life mental illness.
Oh,oh!
OS, I had no idea that you would comment about my comment to HiR, or I would not have made a comment regarding your comment about little children and suffering.
Perhaps a more modern translation, sometimes called “The Chicago Bible,” which is properly known as “The Bible: An American Translation,” University of Chicago Press, 1935. In this translation, one for which I do not have an analytical concordance, I find no mention of little children coupled with suffer as I observe in the KJV.
Matthew 29:14, “But Jesus said, ‘Let the children alone, and to not try to keep them from coming to me, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as they.’ ”
Mark 10:14, “When Jesus saw it, he was indignant, and said to them, ‘Let the children come to me; do not try to stop them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as they.’ ”
Luke 18:16, “But Jesus called them up to him and said, ‘Let the children come to me and to not try to stop them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as they.’ ”
Misunderstandings may sometimes happen.
Whoever has never made a any sort of mistake, no matter how insignificant, surely is the one to criticize the mistakes of others.
As for me, I have made far too many mistakes to criticize anyone for making mistakes; I merely share what I have learned about making mistakes because I have made plenty of them, including using words that make sense to me and, I guess, to no one else…
Brian, that was sarcasm. I am well aware of what the Bible says, but altered the words so they would fit the world view of the troll. I was using bitter humor as a means of pointing out how ridiculous and selfish is their attitude.
RE: Otteray Scribe, April 23, 2011 at 7:02 pm
HiR, I am sure your favorite part of the Bible is where Jesus took from the poor and gave to the rich.
Unless it is the part where He told the little children to suffer.
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OS,
Thanks for letting me know that I cannot read even simple words and understand them. Now I know why my life has seemed sometimes difficult.
Using my handy Young’s Analytical Concordance, I find three mentions of little children and suffer in words attributed to Jesus, specifically in Matthew 19:14, Mark 10,14, and Luke 18:16, and nowhere else.
Well, I miss things, so I checked my 12 volume Interpreter’s Bible and my 4 volume Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (both published by Abingdon). It appears to me that you may be more familiar with the KJV than more modern translations, so I will cite it.
Mt. 19:14, “But Jesus said, ‘Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ ”
Mk 10:14, “But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God.’ ”
Lk 18:16, “But Jesus called them unto him and said, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God.’ ”
Perhaps you can tell me which Bible passage(s) I missed, the ones in which it is reported that Jesus told the little children to suffer. Alas, I surely totally missed it.
In Matthew 19:14, Mark 10:14, and Luke 18:16, the modern English meaning of “suffer” turns out to be “permit” or “allow” in every reference of scholarly competence I have been able to find so far.
However, I really would welcome learning where it is written that Jesus “told the little children to suffer.” You must be vastly more familiar with the written record of the teachings of Jesus than I am, and you surely are much more experienced at Biblical homiletical exegesis than I can ever hope to be.
It is helpful to me to learn how truly ignorant I am of Biblical texts.
I will be grateful for being given the Bible verse reference(s) in which Jesus told little children to suffer; which reference(s) I have, in obviously abject ignorance, foolishly overlooked.
After all, I do have doubts.
Brian,we have had our disagreements, but you are spot on with your observation above. I kept trying to get HiR to respond to my questions about what the Bible had to say about it being easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into Heaven. Also no response to Jesus’ admonition to pay your taxes to the government (Caesar) but it was your soul you were supposed to give to the Lord. Also never even got a nod about the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Do you smell hypocrite?
He is Risen 1, April 23, 2011 at 6:58 pm
Otteray Scribe
Your problem as well as 99% of the people is that SS is not supposed to be the only source of income. Unfortunately, it is and the rest of us who invested like we were supposed to always get the shaft because of those who didn’t.
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HiR:
Did you invest in Mammon, and therefore have plenty of money?
Can you fathom how your remark which includes, “we were supposed to get the shaft” presupposes that “He Is Not Risen”?
Ever hear about the notion of stewardship and the parable of the sower and the seed? Ever bother to understand those notions and their relationship in a decently practicable way?
HIR
Didn’t you say you taught Science a couple of weeks ago?
Bonnie,
No, I teach American History and am quite familiar with our past depressions. If we don’t follow the solutions of the past with radical changes in our social policy then this country as you know it will be gone forever.