Wednesday, February 11, 2004

On having a say on someone elses say

Having checked this mornings email, I was most impressed to discover that a dear colleague had FINALLY updated his website, and was inviting his peeps to have a wee squizz.
Upon squizzing said update, one has become inspired to bring a few points to light on the excessive use of adjectives, the tendancy to use many synonyms to illustrate a single point, and to be, well, wrong. (without meaning any offence, or intending to cast dispersions upon said colleague, who is of course very clever and smashing and quite a looker too. shut up and get on with it.)
The notion that those who are forced by circumstance to encounter violence on a daily basis are not generally those able to "get over it", as is suggested. Any observation of society will demonstrate that violence begets violence, and for those immersed in a culture of violence, the only real way to "constructively deal with it" is to engage in said violence.
The point is that violence is embraced as an expression of masculinity, because expectations and opportunities are so low or otherwise skewed, violence remains the only valid expression of "masculinity", as incomplete as that may be. This is by no means a "moot concern", but in fact the point of the whole exercise that is Fight Club. Yes, we're back there again.
It is not at all "controversial" to imply that gender is dictated by cultural and socio-economic dymanics, I believe that is in fact the distinction between gender and sex: Gender a social construct; Sex a biological one.
Also, "empirically"? Somehow I doubt that a quantative analysis has been employed in consideration of this issue: not that it is a crime to abuse adverbs (yet).
The notion that "women are inherently evil" is no doubt used to generate a response and create controversy, because as any educated individual knows, the employment of outdated ignorant mysogynistic superstition has no place in academia, or indeed, the common discourse.
Finally, "their" is a completely different word to "there".
Grammatical and linguistic hiccups aside, perhaps the point of the whole exercise is to generate debate. While I recognise that my colleague has some intellectual and ideological divergences from my world view, and a tendancy to overwork adjectives, he does have some valid points.
However, this is my blog, and here I get to engage in some serious subjectivity. Because without our own perspective on life, whats the point in even being here? Aside from the whole looking after the planet for the next generation and planting trees, and righting wrongs etc, that shit goes without saying.
Two days to go until the Green Room is Loser-Free!!! Yeah.