Regarding snowflakes...

Snowflakes and human beings have both differences and similarities. Let’s look at a few.

Snowflakes, like human beings, are unique and individual.

Snowflakes, like human beings, are fragile.

Snowflakes, like human beings, can be weak as individuals but can have incredible strength in numbers.

Snowflakes, like human beings, are ephemeral.

Of course, there are obvious differences between snowflakes and people; snowflakes are white where people come in all colors, snowflakes cannot hold opinions where people can and must; snowflakes cannot act with a will where people have that power; snowflakes cannot make choices where people must do so continually.

But snowflakes have neither morals nor ethics, and they do not have accountability.

People can have morals, ethics, and accountability. People must make decisions about where they fall, and must bear the responsibility for their chosen direction. And make no mistake...choosing to call someone a name is choosing a direction.

If you wish to insult or belittle me, that is your choice but it is my choice how I respond, or indeed whether I respond at all. But in truth, I’m not likely to find a comparison with a snowflake all that insulting. Or intimidating.

I understand something about snowflakes, and I am unlikely to be insulted by being called one. But perhaps you have something in mind beyond calling me a tiny ice crystal, though I cannot imagine my reaction being any different, your intent notwithstanding.

If, for example, you intend to belittle me then I feel no need to respond, since your need to belittle me makes you look rather pathetic in my eyes. And, frankly, I cannot understand why you should find my self-image so important to your self-image. But if you choose to give me this power over you, so be it. That’s your choice.

The Blues Viking 

The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don't like then you can get your own damn blog.

On stranger, or at least less obedient, tides

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King Canute couldn’t order back the tides. That does not mean he shouldn’t have tried.

The other day I got into a discussion with a conservative acquaintance who commented that my standing in the way of Trump and the inevitable repeal of he ACA put me in the place of King Canute trying to order back the tide. I felt that he deserved a better answer than I could give at the time, and this is it.

The story, as it’s generally now told, is that King Canute (Knut the Great, 995-1035 CE) went to the seaside and tried to order back the tide. He failed, of course, and was forced to acknowledge that there was a power greater than him. But as the story originally said (at least as it was first recorded in the twelfth century) Canute was a pious man who went to the shore with the intent of demonstrating that no mere king had the power to command the works of God. Which he did.

(Perhaps the story was changed to belittle Canute, who was a Dane and thus an immigrant among the Britons.)

In any case, the story is almost certainly apocryphal and has no news value since someone made it all up.

But if I were making up this story, I’d tell it a bit differently. In my version, Canute orders one of his solders to stand at the water’s edge and face the tide, and not to move until ordered to do so. Canute then roars at the ocean, ordering it to withdraw or face his wrath. The ocean, of course, pays no attention. The solder is drowned.

At this point there are several ways you can take the story. You can make it all about the solder, who faced his death with honor (very Klingon, don’t you think?). Or you can have Canute go full Caligula and order his troops to attack the ocean with their swords, and after a lot of splashing about declare a victory and order his troops to gather seashells as “tribute” from his preferred defeated deity (thus making the story The Madness of King Canute). Or here’s a good one...Canute is destroyed by guilt over the loss of the solder’s life and flees to a monastery, and spends the rest of his life as a penitent doing the sackcloth-and-ashes bit.

But my story wouldn’t be about either Canute of the solder that died in the surf. My story would be about a witness, someone who watched Canute’s spectacle and came away with Canute’s message of unchanging inevitability, but later found enough of a reason to stand against an incoming tide (any incoming tide) and drew inspiration from the story of that solder on Canute’s beach, and stood their ground...knowing that even in failure they might inspire the one who might one day win out against overwhelming odds. And maybe if enough people believed likewise the tide would change...as, eventually, tides must.

(At this point I should observe that simply waiting for change is certainly a viable option...but if people are going to die, then standing against the incoming tide becomes a moral act.)

The thing about the tide is that it always goes out just as swiftly as it comes in. You can either wait for it to change, letting yourself be carried by forces you do not control, and hope that wherever you end up will be better, or you can stand your ground.

You might think this last a foolish, pointless gesture, and maybe it is, but maybe not. You’ve certainly heard of Canute’s erroneous legacy, but just because “everyone knows” a thing, that doesn’t make it so...perhaps you can turn the tide. And perhaps not, but there may be someone else willing to stand against it, maybe a lot of someones, and your defiance might give them the courage to try.

You might think you have to keep swimming to keep your head above water, but sometimes drowning is preferable to being carried along with the tide.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.


King Canute on Wikipedia

King Canute and the waves on Wikipedia

The title of this article refers to Tim Powers’ novel On Stranger Tides rather than the Pirates of the Caribbean movie that was loosely based on the book. The book didn't have Jack Sparrow in it. It's well worth a read.
On Stranger Tides on Wikipedia
On Stranger Tides on Amazon.com

"I am not a number, I am a free man!"

The problem with reducing people to data is that you reduce people to data.

I haven’t done much blogging of late, and for that I apologize. (One of the few people who actually read what I write here said something about that the other day.) Actually, I wasn’t writing this as a blog post but as a meme, but it got a bit long for that, and I didn't want to cut it. Read and enjoy, or ignore and move on, as you please.

We often label people according to what we think they should be based on their politics, or according to what we think their politics should be based on who they are (or rather, who we perceive them to be). We are often dismayed be the very existence of things like gay republicans, gun-owning democrats, conservative women, progressive billionaires, and so on. We wonder how they can possibly vote against their own self-interest. We wonder if they realize that by voting the way they do they could be voting against causes that they, or their own particular group, cherish.

But that’s the trap. Not a trap for them, but a trap for us all.

We’re great at pigeonholing people in this country. We like to classify people according to broad demographics and assume, from whatever group we’ve put them in, that we know all there is to know about them. We build complex models of human behavior that tell us what they’ll buy, who they’ll vote for, what television programs they watch, what toothpaste they use, and so on.

While this is certainly a valid approach when dealing with millions of people, it is far less reliable when dealing with individuals. Unfortunately, the principle power-groups in this country, corporations and political parties, have spent so much time developing this process that the individuals that make up these power-groups tend to see all of reality in that way, and dismiss any variations on the individual level as aberrant data.

They never consider how individuals might feel about being classified as aberrant data. This is because data does not feel, cannot feel; data is data. Numbers. Numbers cannot feel, cannot consider, cannot reason, cannot alter themselves in any way; numbers simply are. They are used to keep count but do not, themselves, count.

The real problem is that we all think that way; to some extent, we all reduce people to mere data. Maybe it’s because we live in a society so dominated by a few small powerful groups, such as political parties and corporations, groups that find it much easier to deal with data on millions than with the needs of an individual. Or perhaps we’re all just too lazy to get to know people more than superficially. Whatever the reason, we all do it.

We all look at people in a way that pigeonholes them as a liberal or conservative, a republican or a democrat, gay or straight, hawk or dove, and so on. We assume that if a person is a progressive that they must be totally anti-gun, that if a person is conservative that they must be vehemently anti-gay, that if a person is religious that they must be doggedly anti-science.

This is, of course, absolute crap. No position, no opinion, no philosophy can be assumed with regard to an individual. When you do, you’re reducing the status of that individual to that of a number. And that’s insulting.

Individuals, understandably, do not relish being reduced to numbers, to mere data points that are counted but do not count.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.


The title for this article comes from the opening to the '60s British TV series "The Prisoner". But of course you knew that.