Apparently, not everyone understands that the Colbert Report is satire. His promotion of 'Truthiness' instead of truth, of everyone being entitled to their own "facts" rather than evidence, logic, etc, is NOT meant to actually be the ideal to be worked for.
I've been told that there was an ancient Pagan Celtic Potato Goddess. And that the "traditional Irish and Welsh practice of growing potatoes solved the great Famine in Ireland". Now, actual EVIDENTIARY FACTS show that potatoes were not grown in Europe during Pagan times - it came to Europe after Europeans made it to the Andes in the Americas and brought them back to Europe some time after Columbus ran into the Americas in 1492. And actual EVIDENTIARY FACTS show that the Great Famine was caused by failure of the potato crop - which is why it's called the Irish Potato Famine.
Facts. Lovely things. They describe - accurately - the world around us. Beliefs/dogma/religion/spirituality are different from facts. They work to describe some transcendent reason underlying facts. They are, literally 'metaphysical', beyond the physical. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. They are NOT entitled to their own facts.
Frondly, Fern
Truthiness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
American television comedian Stephen Colbert revealed this definition[2] as the subject of a segment called "The Wørd" during the pilot episode of his political satire program The Colbert Report on October 17, 2005. By using this as part of his routine, Colbert satirized the misuse of appeal to emotion and "gut feeling" as a rhetorical device in contemporaneous socio-political discourse.[3] He particularly applied it to U.S. President George W. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.[4] Colbert later ascribed truthiness to other institutions and organizations, including Wikipedia.[5] Colbert has sometimes used a quasi-Latin version of the term, "Veritasiness".[not in citation given][6] For example, in Colbert's "Operation Iraqi Stephen: Going Commando" the word "Veritasiness" can be seen on the banner above the eagle on the operation's l.
I'm going to amplify this, since all examples I used were from one person, and the behavior is not limited to one person.
ReplyDeleteOh, and http://twitter.com/AriaLeFey, slander is saying something FALSE about another that hurts their reputation. Quoting them, in context, is not false. I hadn't even named you as the source of the examples, but since you want to call this slander, I'll get folks go to the videotape (or at least the twitter timelines) themselves.
Another time, I was told that in movie westerns, John Wayne's character was being sarcastic when calling folks 'pilgrim'. That it meant that the person was stupidly European and couldn't even ride one of the horses Europeans were introduced to by the Indians.
WTF? asked I. Europeans introduced horses to the Americas. They weren't part of Native American culture, mythos, or even USE, just like rifles and dandelions. The person told me I was wrong, I should look it up, etc. Of course I had posted links supporting my facts. Of course the other person in the chat room didn't look at them.
Is the lesson for me to never confuse issues by including facts? Nah.
As Gwynn Green once sighed about the Ar nDraiocht Fein motto "Why Not Excellence?", perhaps we should aim to get everyone up to competence first.
Wow, you really don't get it ..
ReplyDelete