House of Eratosthenes

Those who were in favor of un-defining marriage are now sanctimoniously inquiring if any noticeable damage has resulted from their victory last week. The answer to the question is in the affirmative, although they’ll never acknowledge it; the damage is gradual, cumulative, and it comes from many other efforts to un-define many other things. I refuse to call it a “conspiracy,” for now, because my consciousness is not too hospitable to the concept of conspiracies. I have learned too much about human deficiencies to accept those, most especially about deficiencies in discretion and deficiencies in coordination. But I will accept an “epidemic.” We have an epidemic lately of frenzied efforts driven toward detaching words and phrases from their accepted meanings. As a result of this, we have sexists calling non-sexists sexists, racists calling non-racists racists, and purveyors of huckster phony “science” calling others “gullible” for showing valid but unwelcome skepticism.

We have bullies calling non-bullies bullies.

There are boring people calling non-boring people boring.

Still can’t find an Internet-linkable source, other than the one I put together, for Dennis Prager’s wonderful statement of “I’d rather have clarity than agreement.” But I think that gets right to the heart of the matter. Defining things, posed as a question, would be a phony controversy because there really isn’t anyone who is outwardly opposed to defining things. The controversy comes up when other priorities emerge to displace, and Prager has accurately identified the other priority: Agreement. And so we have an epidemic, albeit not a conspiracy, to replace, albeit not eliminate, clarity. The definitions of things. So that everyone participating can be in agreement.

But here is the problem: An exchange is a “win” if, and only if, the asset that is received is of greater value than the thing that was given up in exchange. Isn’t that only obvious? You win in the exchange if you buy low and sell high. Nobody responds to Mr. Prager with a rebuttal of “I’d rather have agreement than clarity,” because I think it is intuitively obvious that this isn’t going to work. Agreement at the expense of clarity really doesn’t get us anywhere. You can’t get anything built with it, and you can’t do anything with it. Except feel smug, and stop arguing. Which means to stop thinking, ultimately, because if you can’t argue then you can’t think.

Because we have turned in the ability to argue & think, we find ourselves surrounded by a great many “phony tests” for things…tests that were supposed to find out, at the beginning, what they ultimately did find, and never did have any possibility of finding anything else — therefore, weren’t really tests.

The IRS investigated the IRS.

The Earth is in imminent danger of…something…due to human activity, which somehow translates to United States activity.

It goes so far as to state that boys are girls:

The Colorado Civil Rights Division has ruled an elementary school discriminated against a transgender 6-year-old child by barring [him] from using the girls’ bathroom.

KDVR reports the New York-based Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund announced the ruling Sunday, and said they would hold a news conference Monday to explain the decision in the case of Coy Mathis, who was born a boy but [is identified by his parents] as a girl.

Those who are looking for damage from the un-definition of marriage, might skim through Severian’s thoughts on the subject. Where we’re heading, is fascism: It’s all for the state, and the state is whatever those-in-charge say it is. Definitions are guardrails. With those guardrails removed, it becomes the place of our “leaders” to “drive” wherever they want. But it is their place to steer the car over the cliff and into the abyss, and everybody else’s place to absorb the impact.

Wherever a disagreement endures across time, and arouses the passions of those engaged throughout it all, it seems we invariably find the real disagreement is about this. The definitions. One side labors to identify and preserve definitions of things, and the other side endeavors to keep those definitions concealed, and remove them from perceived relevance.

One will also find, as one inspects other unrelated issues, that people who oppose definitions of things pretty much oppose them all the time, regardless of what is being discussed. Example: A remarkably high portion of those who seek to un-define “science” to the point we can call “climate change” a science, doubt the existence of God. They seek to “un-define” Him. Logically, we should expect climate-change concerns to be driven by a belief in, not a denial of, God. Meanwhile, whoever seeks to un-define science and un-define God, will also be laboring long and hard to un-define marriage, even though the gay marriage movement has absolutely nothing to do with secularism, or with the climate change political movement that seeks to call itself “science.”

Those who seek to un-define things, are engaged in almost an almost militarily offensive operation — they seek a definition until they find a definition, and when they find a definition they try their best to destroy it. Once that’s done, they seek-and-destroy some more.

Since the definitions are targets to the un-definers, each definition has a certain value as a target. These values are not all equal, and so there is a certain hierarchy to the definition-targets that have to be eliminated. An opportunity to un-define one definition, will be sacrificed for a time so that another opportunity to un-define another definition of greater target-value, can be effectively exploited. No different from bombing one enemy ammunition dump instead of another.

Marriage being an institution, it is an extraordinarily high-value target. You will generally find the definitions that are institutions, have the highest value as targets to the un-definers who are seeking and destroying the targets. Another institution is science. We have lately seen the label “science” affixed to a lot of things that are not science, and this is provable: Science is supposed to be testable. Exercised competently and effectively, it should result in predictability. That name is being used to describe things that do not fit this bargain-basement, minimalist, qualification. “Education” is not education, as you and I know it and understand it (hat tip to Captain Capitalism). “Access to health care” is a phrase we can no longer take seriously. We can’t trust “congressional oversight” because we can see for ourselves how often it’s making…oversights. Now we have “marriage.”

One reason we can no longer take science seriously just because it calls itself “science” — why it so often fails this minimal test of testability — is that it has leaped off the Prager value system, seeking to sacrifice clarity for agreement. Clarity over agreement is an inherently positive process, an inherently inclusive process. Information emerges, you figure out what to do with it whether it’s welcome or not. It has to mean something. This doesn’t lead to good feeling all the time, but it leads to some kind of learning. Agreement over clarity, on the other hand, is an exclusionary, and inherently negative, process. It’s always “whittling,” turning the block into a horse by removing whatever doesn’t look like a horse. Someone is constantly being handed their hat, and told not to let the doorknob hit them on the way out.

Why are the un-definers going after institutions first, as they select their definition-targets? One possible explanation for this is that their real mission is not to destroy all of the definitions, but the society we have built that rests upon them.

They are inherently destructive. They must be. Building things and preserving things, I’ve noted many times before, requires a certain mental discipline that isn’t needed for destruction. Un-defining is, by its very nature, un-enlightening. So destruction is all these people can do. And once they’ve started, they can’t stop.

As with so many things, Orwell nailed it. The scary part of Newspeak wasn’t the obvious contradiction in slogans like “Peace is War, Slavery is Freedom.” Rather, the point was to render unapproved thought impossible. If you can’t even name something, you can’t discuss it.

(This is why all leftist rhetoric boils down to the same three or four tired tropes, incidentally. So many thoughts are Not Permitted to Goodpeople that they have to strain and grope to fit everything they want to discuss into these tiny pre-approved boxes).

You can see it in the granddaddy of them all: “rights.” I’m pretty sure Orwell was listening to discussions of the proposed UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights when he came up with Newspeak. Check this puppy out:

Article 22: Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 25: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Article 27: Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

All noble sentiments, obviously, but…. rights? I don’t even understand some of those clauses, much less how they could possibly be enforced. We’d better throw the directors of museums in jail; they’re violating the fundamental human rights of the blind (“Everyone has the right …to enjoy the arts”). How can one possibly have “security….n circumstances beyond his control”? That sounds like the very definition of insecurity to me. Et cetera.

But here’s the kicker:

In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

And there you have it. Your rights are what the state says they are. We, as a society, have voted that the “general welfare” of some is worth more than others… and if you disagree, we’ll jail you for not “meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare.”

You don’t even have to interpret this particularly broadly to make everything under the sun into a “right”…. which means that nothing is, because the only way to even attempt to enforce such “rights” is through the overwhelming power of the state. Which is, of course, the sole arbiter of conflicts between these arbitrarily assigned “rights.” We might send one group to the salt mines so that another can live like kings sitting on their fat asses, but hey, you’ve got 100% literacy and free access to health care. And we’ve put some dorm poster prints of famous paintings down there, so you can enjoy your free access to the arts.
- Severian | 07/02/2013 @ 08:31
Sorry, I don’t believe my right to carry a gun is suspect or subject to restriction because some idiot steals a gun and murders people with it. The abuse of a ‘liberty’ is not reason to curtail a liberty.

If marriage is good, then MORE marriage is better…but only if it is the ‘right kind of marriage’. Yep, bad marriages are good reasons to curtail marriage from everyone…huh?

The UN Human Rights Statement is an exercise in government control, nothing more, nothing less.

There are times when all the effort at ‘retaining the definition of marriage’ reminds me of the French’s efforts at language purity…..as if the ONLY definition of marriage is between a man and a woman…which is also a good definition of intercourse, kissing, dates, and dancing..and nothing to do with honor, trust, compassion, caring, support, encouragement and friendship….
- tracycoyle | 07/02/2013 @ 14:00
I’m a dude who’s been married twice.

Marriage has nothing to do with being “granted rights.” Nothing. The assertion itself is just ludicrous. And I would go further than that, and insist: All men, or at least the vast, vast majority of men, who’ve ever been married, know this to be true. Married men, and divorced men, who back same-sex marriage because of “equal rights” considerations, are insincere people who I can’t take seriously. Kinda reminds me of the scene at the beginning of Dogma where Matt Damon convinces the Nun to be an atheist, and Ben Affleck comes up to him and says “I don’t get it, you KNOW there is a God, you know it for a fact, you’ve TALKED to Her,” and Matt Damon starts laughing.

Marriage is a commitment. A commitment, by nature, is the expurgation of options that used to be available, not the employment of new options that were previously impossible. It is the opposite of a “right.” So, yes, I stand by my statement and long-standing belief that this is a disagreement about definitions. My concern about everybody else’s marriage is not about the marriages themselves degrading as a result of gay marriage; my relationship to my wife doesn’t change in any way, just because some straight guy who lives across the street cheats on his wife, or beats her. Marriages are not related that way. But individuals and communities have a right to define things the way they want to define them.

Just like the Marijuana thing, this looks to me like an abridgment of freedom disguised as an expansion. We’re left arguing about the same thing: In both cases I’m saying, this community can allow it, that community over there can prohibit it, and the people can move to whichever community suits their fancy, good enough? And I get told NO. We have to outlaw the outlawing of things, or else it’s the same as not allowing it anywhere. I’m perplexed that so many unrelated issues seem to keep landing in that one spot, like moths being attracted to a flame, or bugs being drawn into a zapper. It seems we’re being fooled into surrendering our freedoms, by believing this is necessary for the freedoms to exist in the first place.
- mkfreeberg | 07/03/2013 @ 06:39
The problem is that the left has un-defined their own most important word: “community.”

Politicians at the state and national level talk about “rights” because that’s palatable to voters. Locally, though, I’ve never met a leftist who didn’t start going off about “empowering communities” or some such within five minutes. It’s their master-word.

Problem is, “community” doesn’t really mean “all of us, together, deciding to do this or that.” They say this is the definition, but sixty years of un-definition has revealed what it really means: “me, telling all of you, together, to do this and that.”

The left doesn’t want Community B outlawing marijuana — even if Community B is Cleanville, a voluntary association of ex-addicts who came together for the express purpose of keeping drugs out of their town. It’s not because the left loves pot, or even hates what Cleanville represents (I’m betting Cleanville is, in every other respect, Leftopia). It’s because someone other than them has done the outlawing.

So it’s a double shell game: “rights” is a proxy for “community,” and “community” really means “me, and everyone who believes exactly as I do.” The end goal is the classic description of North Korea: Everything that isn’t compulsory is forbidden.
- Severian | 07/03/2013 @ 08:43
[…] their medicating, embarking on all these moral crusades toward chaos; they drive us toward chaos by removing details and definitions from things. I fear that lately this is quickening toward some kind of climax, for haven’t you noticed? […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/21/2013 @ 13:20
[…] their medicating, embarking on all these moral crusades toward chaos; they drive us toward chaos by removing details and definitions from things. I fear that lately this is quickening toward some kind of climax, for haven’t you noticed? […]
- Memo For File CLXXXII | Rotten Chestnuts | 07/23/2013 @ 12:27

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