House of Eratosthenes

Next time you buy an airplane ticket check the fine print. What you probably won’t find: language to the effect of, ‘the purchase of this ticket fully and without restraint entitles the ticketholder to the recline function of his seat for the duration of the flight’. That doesn’t mean one can’t recline. (It also doesn’t say you can breathe while on the flight…) It does mean however that claims like “I paid for the right to recline!” are made-up. No, you paid for an airplane ticket. There are some things explicit (we’ll take you from point A to point B, at such-and-such time, we kinda-sorta promise) and many things implicit. It didn’t specify a ‘right’ to recline just like it didn’t specify a ‘right’ to occupy such-and-such volumetric cylinder of space extending from the tip of your seat up to the ceiling, and along the bisecting midpoints of the armrests on either side of you. Not all things are ‘rights’ and not all of those are spelled out. When it comes to reclining, the simple fact is that reclining reduces the space available to the person behind you, touches them, involves their personal space and body. Whether that is ok involves at minimum you and that person, it’s not something you can just assert is ‘my right!’ and ignore the effect on others. “But if the airplanes don’t want us reclining why do the seats have that function.” Well maybe they shouldn’t but that’s beside the point. Some seats still have old ashtrays from the days before smoking was banned. Again, beside the point, if you want to ‘recline’ maybe that’s ok but you still need to confront & justify the fact that you’re affecting the person behind you, and how, and have good solid reasons for being ok with that effect. Do you? By the way I use the word ‘recline’ advisedly here because it is barely anything resembling ‘reclining’ that we are even talking about and continues to strike me as utterly bizarre that anyone from any walk of life would ever value that physically-imperceptible 4-degree difference so much they will defend their ‘right’ to it to the death. If no one were able to ‘recline’ starting tomorrow what would be lost, utility-wise? Nothing measurable. The supposed gigantic comfort gain you get from such a tiny ‘recline’ is all in your head, if you thought about this rationally you’d acknowledge I’m right, and you should let yourself be convinced to stop wanting it. Meanwhile the bruises on the knees of the person behind you is not in his head, I promise. Oh, but bruising some other person is ‘your right’ because you ‘paid for’ that right, right? Yeah no.

This used to not be a problem. It used to be, liberals would want society to work one way, conservatives would want it to work a different way, the liberals would lie their asses off to the little kids watching it go back & forth and to the centrists who hadn’t yet made up their minds, and say things like “we and conservatives want exactly the same things, we just have different ways of going about it.” Which, if you buy that line, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Oklahoma…

After Bush v. Gore, there has been a sea-change. Not that it hadn’t happened before that, but since 2000 it has become particularly popular for the liberals to speculate about why conservatives disagree with them — badly. Very badly. There are few aspects of life on which we would be ill-advised to listen to any particular group’s ideas, compared to listening to liberals opine about what motivates conservatives. What liberal, anywhere, cares? In fact, what liberal would miss out on an opportunity to announce to everyone within earshot, that they don’t care? It is the intersection of a group with a topic, at which we find a tall edifice of ignorance, coupled with a uniquely effervescent elixir of apathy. They don’t know, they don’t care, they’re manifestly proud of not knowing or caring, yet they opine anyway…

And their favorite explanation for the “rights” thing is the distinction between implicit and explicit. Conservatives simply do not understand, you see. Ah yes, everyone who disagrees with the liberals must be missing something. How else to explain the conservatives’ most ramshackle, tattered, threadbare, lopsided, teetering, fragile and untenable position of: “Uh, it doesn’t say that.”

When your ideology blinds you to the plainer motives of those who infer that things say what they say when those things do say them, and that things don’t say what they don’t say when those things don’t say them, you are very far gone. It’s an Occam’s Razor thing: Maybe, just maybe, the opposition understands the distinction between implicit and explicit just fine. Maybe, when you play your game of “It doesn’t say it but let’s pretend that it does,” they’re simply taking the position of “Yeah, gotcha, and you go down that road without me.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/upshot/dont-want-me-to-recline-my-airline-seat-you-can-pay-me.html?smid=pl-share

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- OregonGuy | 08/28/2014 @ 09:11
Discovering that things don’t mean what they plainly say is how liberals demonstrate they’re smart.

If you’re good at it, you can win debate tournaments in high school.

If you’re really good at it, you’ll get As in those college classes taught by cat ladies with PhDs.

If you’re really, really good at it, you can become one of those PhD-wielding cat ladies yourself.

If you’re really, really, really good at it, you can be President.

If you suck at it, but think you’re good at it, you’ve got a bright future in journalism.
- Severian | 08/28/2014 @ 10:12
I’m just lost on how two people getting into a tiff on an airplane becomes “news” that we’re all suppose to give a shit about.

Like what JoeBlow in Nebraska says on Twitter or SusieRottenCrotch in Baltimore says on Facebook…blah, blah…

How the fuck did this shit happen? Better yet, can it all just stop please? I simply don’t care. We got lunatics chopping off heads in the ME, Putin is invading Ukraine, a freakin’ wicked disease spearing in Africa, not to mention the crap sandwich that is now America…

Wait I believe I just answered my own question…we’re focusing on the trivial so we don’t lose our freakin’ minds, right?
- tim | 08/28/2014 @ 12:11
Wouldn’t “all you bought is a seat” apply equally to the guy in back?

Stuff like this just makes me ask “Okay, explain like I’m five why I want to fly commercial ever again?”
- Rich Fader | 08/28/2014 @ 13:21
OregonGuy, thanks for doing the research this blog’s research-department can’t quite seem to find the time to do. I’m thinking of docking their salary by half.
- mkfreeberg | 08/31/2014 @ 09:30
[…] severian comments in the threads: […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/31/2014 @ 10:38

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Recline RantThursday, August 28th, 2014

Recline Rant
Thursday, August 28th, 2014