Walking into work today, I saw a hand-written, machine-copied notice stuck inside of the alligator newspaper bin in the north lawn of the reitz union. It said:
Dropping bombs for peace is like f**ing for virginity.
I was slightly provoked, slightly offended, and slightly amused. Of course, I’m also slightly sick and slightly tired. Today must be a slight day.
In rebut, I decided to offer the following potential response:
Dropping bombs for peace is like an innoculation; little bit of the virus to keep a lot of the virus away.
Dropping bombs for peace is like innoculating with non-attenuated virus; if you weren’t sick before, you sure as hell will be soon.
Left by Dave on September 30th, 2003
Dropping bombs for peace is like sending your kid over to a friend’s house to get chicken pox…it gets the kid sick in the short term, probably better in the long term, and can lead to shingles.
Left by Scott on September 30th, 2003
I question the notion that peace is inherently good.
Also… Are sickness, death and loss of virginity inherently bad?
Finally, the metaphor they chose doesn’t hold very well, because peace and virginity are two entirely different concepts. Peace can come and go, but virginity is and then is not. Relating peace to something as white then black as virginity is errant — to say the least.
Left by David on September 30th, 2003
Yes, David, peace is inherently good. In most situations, peace is a much better state than any other alternative (though there are just wars, in which non-peace would be an even greater good than peace, but it’s hard to go wrong with peace).
Left by John on October 1st, 2003
Dropping Bombs for ‘peace’ is also Maoist belief. He’s said to have said, “To build first one must destroy.” (Destroy the old to replace it with new.) Sigh.
Left by Cindy Haglund on October 1st, 2003
A daily-occuring sunrise is also a Maoist belief.
http://www.fema.gov/kids/brenner.htm
That link will take you to a much better finish to the analogy.
Left by David on October 2nd, 2003
“A daily-occuring sunrise is also a Maoist belief.”
Don’t be a jackass. And don’t try to compare controlled forest burns with Maoist destruction (i.e., the Cultural Revolution). It’s insulting to a lot of people who lived through the real results of the belief Cindy mentioned.
Left by John on October 2nd, 2003
Maybe I’m missing something, but I thought those were two unrelated statements. The maoist thing to cindy, and then on a seperate note, another possibility for a metaphor.
I think it (maoist) was meant as a light-hearted joke, but it doesn’t come off that way.
Quite possibly I misunderstood though.
Left by Jordan on October 2nd, 2003
Actually, it wasn’t a light-hearted joke nor was it meant to be insulting. I was just trying to point out that Cindy was using the old “Hitler/Mao/Stalin/Fill-in-your-own-EvilGuy believed in such and such” appeal to make a point. I think that appeal is emotionally potent, but otherwise rather weak. Clearly, it is quite emotionally potent — as you pointed out.
Saying Mao believed X can use our emotions to imply that X is as evil as Mao. I was offended by the emotional cheap-shot and the possible (most likely intended given the conversation) implications of it.
I definately didn’t mean to relate the URL to what I intended to be just a quick debunking. That would be deplorable and far beyond “jackass.” It would have helped to toss an extra line break or two in there, but the connection didn’t even occur to me. Now I am getting disturbing visuals so I’m going to go.
Left by David on October 2nd, 2003
Just to be clearer… The metaphor/analogy thing seems flawed to me. War is a point or line segment in time (a line) with peace surrounding it on both sides. Viriginity is one half of a line that, when it ends, never comes back. So, loss of innocence is the begining of a ray on the line segment which is someone’s life.
On a different note, since Mao is now a part of the discussion, I’d like to point out that Mao could have been stopped. From what I can remember, the Cultural Revolution was basically Mao using peasant supporters to slaughter large numbers of professors, bureaucrats, intellectuals, and other non-peasants… people who would generally be quite peace-favorable today. Afterwards, there was book banning and other forms of thought and culture control, no? Mao did all of this and there was no real battle and no real war. No “other side” coming to challenge him and his Red Guard supporters. This all happened when there was “peace,” because no Nation was at war with China.
The thing that really gets me about all of this though is that we have two sides to this arguement, and on both sides we have very well-intentioned people. It just gets ugly because one side occasionally tosses insults or condescending metaphors to the other side. It would be cool for us war-mongers (that was tongue in cheek) if the peace-people would take a step back, realize that we all want peace, and see that we just have a difference of opinion on how to achieve that common goal. Perhaps after an understanding like that by both sides we will have the groundwork for a friendlier discussion of these things.
Actually, I’m not so sure of my thoughts up there, because there are a small number of people who are unyielding in their insistance upon peace. These people feel that they hold a moral high-ground on the other people, and can sometimes take an elitist stance, which typically invites conflict. This I find interesting since conflict isn’t exactly peace.
Left by David on October 2nd, 2003
War is seldom, as you say it, “a point or line segment in time (a line) with peace surrounding it on both sides.” War never springs from a vacuum, and peace is not simply a state of being in which there is no armed conflict between nations. That would be like saying everything was A-OK in Nazi Germany right up until they invaded Poland, and which point everything was bad.
As for the Mao “emotional cheapshot,” I think it is only a cheapshot when it is unfounded. For instance, to use your remark, it would be a cheapshot were one to argue that continued belief in daily sunrises was evil because Mao thought it was true. However, this is not what we are arguing… the belief that Cindy pointed out (and a number of others, all relating to constant revolution and destruction), that Mao did hold, resulted directly in the deaths of millions of people. Millions.
As for the original metaphor, it’s not a bad one. You are just as likely to maintain peace through bombing as you are to maintain virginity through sex. Virginity and peace are not the things being compared, simply the likelihood of maintaining them.
Left by John on October 2nd, 2003
Well, until certain people remove the crackpipe from their mouths and decide that death is inherently and universally bad, we’re not going to make any headway arguing the human rights atrocities angle, John, unfortunately.
Left by Dave on October 2nd, 2003
a koan
One day Zen Master Bo Wol asked Zen Master Jun Kang, “A long time ago, Zen Master Ma Jo said to the assembly, ‘I have a circle. If you enter this circle, I will hit you. If you do not enter this circle, I will also hit you. What can you do?’ So I ask you, Jun Kang, if you had been there, how would you have answered?”
Jun Kang replied, “I don’t like nonsense. How do I not get hit by Ma Jo’s stick?”
Bo Wol answered, “Why are you holding Ma Jo’s stick?”
Left by David on October 2nd, 2003
There’s a link under Recommended to site that I’ve been reading lately called diveintomark.org. In the archives of this site is an article called ‘Write’ that was written just over two years ago. The beginning of this article discusses Logical Rudeness and supplies a link to the essay that appears to have given birth to this term.
I bring this up because I want to know.
When I challenge the notion of death as being inherently bad and the notion of war as being inherently evil am I being logically rude? Am I being socially rude?
I realized that I am potentially frustrating anyone who holds these beliefs, but isn’t this a place where beliefs and assumptions are questioned… even if it causes a bit of frustration?
I guess that purposefully frustrating someone can be rude, but is it rude if the purpose is to open up a new, potentially fascinating discussion or to uncover a questionable underlying assumption?
Is this all pointless for me because someone has decided that the underlying assumption is the opposite of questionable, and that any discussion stemming from the attempt would be far less than fascinating?
I don’t know about all that stuff, but what I do know is that I am sorry that I have once again done something unwarranted and undesirable. I’m not sorry because I was branded a crack pipe wielding jackass, but because I upset you guys yet again. Someday I’ll write better, think better, be less emotional, and maybe even have tact.
Left by David on October 8th, 2003