7 dic 2010

Set Me Straight If You Dare

Not everybody gets my weird perspective. I will sometimes offer a metaphor and people will argue with it as though it were a literal-minded assertion, or I will compress my thought into an aphorism that is obviously *false* if read for what it seems to be saying. So people will argue with that too. Sometimes my irony flies over people's heads. Really, I am probably to blame if I fail to make myself understood.

I don't mind being set right if I stray or affirm something that isn't quite accurate.

Agreement is over-rated, as I've said before. Getting upset because someone does not agree with you seems kind of silly. Do I need my every most-trivial belief to be confirmed in others? It's nice once in a while to have someone agree with me, that's a kind of comforting feeling, but also somewhat dangerous. I could be wrong in factual terms (it's happened before), or just a little bit misguided (that's happened too). I've been accused of being dogmatic, because I like expressing strong versions of my claims. My feeling is that if you disagree, you have to come up with Bemsha-worthy counter-argument.

5 comentarios:

Vance Maverick dijo...

So, to take a trivial example just down the screen, you write as though a particular, somewhat narrow definition of "arrogant" follows logically from the definition of "arrogate". I'm pretty sure you know that's not true, but you don't make that clear. In this case, how would you like your readers to react? Assume you're compressing? Risk looking dumb by "correcting" you?

Jonathan dijo...

That's a great example, Vance. I think I make clear in the post that I am aware that the normal definition of arrogance is a kind of obnoxious pride or boastfulness, while using the verb "arrogate" and some etymological sleight of hand to pin down a connotation that isn't there to the same degree in some other words that are almost synonyms. Someone not familiar with my style might indeed look dumb in correcting me. Of course definitions don't follow from etymologies, and I know that. I hope my readers know that I know that, because this blog is not read by a massive number of people, but by a few devoted followers. What I'm talking about here is how I define my relationship to my readers, whether I should change that by being less cryptic. I won't, of course, but you get the idea...

Zed dijo...

What made you decide to start titling your posts?

Jonathan dijo...

A suggestion from a reader of the blog.

John dijo...

Speaking as a Monk fan, "Bemsha-worthy" is a mighty bold claim!

But I gotta know: Prestige or Riverside?