Another Mass Shooting, This Time It's a Newspaper in Annapolis

[ebacon]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

EB, you may be overthinking things a bit.

There are very few REAL arguments. Individual vs. community, which in more abstract words is selfishness vs altruism. 'Let's try this new thing' vs. 'let's honor the old ways.' A few others. These arguments will never be settled, and indeed, should not be. The answer to all the propositions is 'sometimes.'

Many people are easily persuaded to fear. Uses have been found for that. These represent the 'less real' arguments I implied existed, above.

donquixote99,

I do not know where you live. I live in southeastern Michigan -- smack in the middle of the rust belt. The politicians in my area seem to talk about road repair during every election. I am tired of hearing it since 1980, which is when I landed here.

I agree with you that there are very few real arguments. In my area the road issue is a prime example. In the context of individual vs. community as an abstraction of selfishness vs altruism, roads provide us with an outlet for us to escape the confines of our communities and intermingle with the individuals of other nearby communities. The intermingling can be through social constructs such as corporate work and private play. But in the middle of that, the roads need to be enjoyable, they need to be beautiful, for us to actually maintain them. The evidence for me that we have ugly roads lies in our willingness to abandon structures that abut them and search for happiness in greener pastures. In Michigan we use the phrase "going up North" to express our need to get away from our ugly roads.

That's not to say that all of our roads are ugly. There are a few that are pleasant to drive. One example is Pontiac Lake Road which is curvy and I learned follows an old Indian footpath. It also happens to be in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of the state.

To come back to your point of 'Let's try this new thing' vs. 'let's honor the old ways.' and a few others should never be settled, I also agree with that. It is normal in the human experience to try and alter our environments. I think that particular emotion is what permits the book "Who Moved My Cheese" to rise to popularity. It reminds us of the industriousness of the beaver, which is what the old Indian trails around here had to weave through, vs. human ability to construct orthogonal mazes and f*ck with each other like vermin of NIMH.

Perhaps where I starkly disagree with you, because I do as a recovered muddler, is in the degree of error that think-tankers and their associated media outlets should let accumulate before they check themselves and realize that they are failing a laugh test of the first amendment. The proof is they are persuading voters and politicians to build and maintain things that are ugly. The one percent is making work instead of making sense.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will tell the seed of my emotion one more time. I was walking through Regensburg, Germany, with a colleague. She told me that walking on those roads made her want to hold her man's hand while walking her dogs. No roads in SE Michigan inspire such beautiful emotion. Up North? Maybe.

The error of form has grown too large for the first amendment to support, ergo muddling is unacceptable here at the moment. We need politicians to understand art.