Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
The Isla Vista shooting has sparked a firestorm of protest over this problem of young men driving around running over & shooting & stabbing people, to get even with all the good-looking women who wouldn’t put out. It’s became a rather sad spectacle, since the protesters (article-writers, really) are demanding some kind of change to address the problem, and murdering people is already illegal. So with any sort of legal reform redundant, the cultural protocol they’d like to put in place is that women shouldn’t have to sleep with men if they don’t want to. We’ve had that, too, for several centuries now, so what do they want? They don’t seem to know, but they’re extra upset about whatever it is.
Their real conflict is with the entitlement mentality. And that’s a problem since they themselves are operating according to it. A problem and a pity; imagine what new possibilities could be opened if they were to aim that nozzle of incandescent cultural rage toward this bulky and ancient buildup of immediate-gratification plaque. I’d be happy to join the protest. If only it could happen.
As Nightfly said:
It’s not just a failure to cope with a lack of purpose…it’s a failure to be given anything to cope with. The squishy marshmallow left has largely succeeded in crafting a world in which young people have grown to physical adulthood without ever having their will crossed in any small matter, much less a large one. Nobody is permitted to keep score, grade correctly, scold general misbehavior, or look askance at anything. Nobody is told “no.” Nobody hears that their opinions are bunk, and that their arguments are lacking, and that their attitude is piss-poor.
To quote that lovely pillar of the legal profession, Judge Judy: “The questions get harder.” As adults we can say “It hurts that you lost the big game, but it will be better soon” – but only if we ourselves learned from losing the big game once upon a time. We learn that the sun will rise again, there will be other big games, and we most importantly learn that real life doesn’t have a reset button to mash on until we get our predetermined result. The next game awaits – the last game is gone forever, and will always be a loss. That’s how to figure out how to handle results with actual consequences beyond one’s hurt feelings.
Our loonier squishes imagined that their own inability to cope and become successful were the fault of the failures of early life, thus proving that they learned little…and they decided to spare the next generation that learning opportunity, with the not unsurprising result that we have an alarming number of raging narcissists who can’t possibly imagine why anyone could ever disagree with them. They can’t hold jobs because the boss expects things like actual work done the boss’ way, not the worker’s. They can’t form relationships because others expect some give and take and actual respect, and they only want mirrors to reflect their own imagined greatness. They can’t deal with other people’s actual needs, much less reasonable requests that have nothing to do with them personally.
Well, a lot of them are rage-quitting life, and taking innocent people with them, and it’s not going to get better unless what adults remain start teaching hard lessons to young people.
The truly frightening thing about Elliot Rodger is that he left this world — we don’t know this as an absolute fact, but it seems a safe presumption — twisted, insane, in a far less stable or useful mental condition than what he had when he entered it. Also, that what knocked him off his nut came from within and not from the outside. And that this primal force from within was a nothing, and not a something. “Nobody is told ‘no.’ Nobody hears that their opinions are bunk, and that their arguments are lacking, and that their attitude is piss-poor.” He essentially missed something that everyone should be getting, and is not getting; so, how many more of us are there who happen to be like him?
Perhaps he is unique in the distance to which he carried things. I hope so. How common is the root problem? On the Internet, you see it everywhere. Especially if you start arguing with liberals: “This conversation isn’t over until it’s over the way I want it to be over.” People who just can’t get jiggy with the plain and simple fact, “I seem to have met up with someone who isn’t buying it.” They get told no, and their answer is to keep selling the same thing again and again, and they’ll do it forever, like a drill press stuck in the on position. Can’t cope with disagreement.
Sippican, by way of Bird Dog at Maggie’s Farm: “…some people’s desire to find the ignoble in everyone but themselves trumps everything.” You should read Sippican’s obit for Wallace Kaufman from top to bottom, for contrast if nothing else. What if we had to rely on an entitlement-mentality generation to fight World War II? I’m not the first to ask.
On the one side of the spectrum we have stories like that one; on the other, we have Elliot Rodger, and those who share some of his behaviors. In between the two extremes are various degrees, in the ability to adapt to the unexpected and the not-preferred. The ability to cope. Different ways of coping, some having to do with adjusting expectations, some having to do with changing or de-selecting whatever has failed to satisfy; some having to do with simply lashing out. Blaming the National Rifle Association, and “Let’s lower a beatdown on the male gender one more time,” would be examples of lashing out. Planning a murder rampage because women won’t sleep with you, would belong under the same category of coping by not-coping.
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