An Elephant of One's Own

In the old Spanish blog, one of my most popular posts was an interview I did with an unusually articulate grey-cheeked parakeet, in which the bird in question patiently explained what he saw as the flaws in human social organization, and recommended a social outlook more like his own, on the basis that widespread adoption, by humans, of this alternative system and philosophy (in which communal nest-building played a prominent part) would dramatically reduce intraspecific conflict, as well as freeing up valuable time and energy for more productive and interesting pursuits, such as chirping, or looking sleek and dapper. For this blog I no longer have a parakeet, so I will instead go for a Pre-Columbian Granite-faced Person (PCGFP). We have them here in Ecuador, you see, so it's convenient. ME: Making big stone faces on Easter Island wasn't a great idea, was it? PCGFP: On reflection, no. I think we got a bit carried away there. It was like one day someone said "Hey, ...

Quicko. There's this dead good story in the Bible somewhere, called "The OK Salvadoran". It's about this bloke who is set upon by Trump supporters, gets mugged and beaten up and is left for dead in a pool of blood and vomit near the entrance to the men's restroom in a shopping mall in Baltimore. Well, after about ten minutes a Nobel prizewinning economist with a recessionary chin and anti-austerity beard comes along, glances at the bloke and makes a mental note to mention him in his weekly syndicated column as an example of the failure of current government policy to stem the rising tide of social unrest. He then disappears into the gents. A few minutes later, a Social Justice Warrior with green hair and gender-fluid eyebrows happens past on the way to the Preferred Pronouns' Toilets, which are next door to the Gents. Seeing the half-dead man lying on the ground, one is immediately triggered, as the sight reminds one of a dee...

OK, I haven't got very far with it, but at least I'm trying. The thing about John Rawls is that he writes like a convalescent Mantovani strung out on Valium in a Llandudno retirement home. I can just about manage two or three paragraphs of A Theory of Justice at a stretch without drifting into catalepsy, but that's about it. This looks like being a long haul. But hell - I managed Atlas Shrugged last year, so I should be able to cope. In fact, this ought to be child's play in comparison. At least Rawls doesn't try to pretend he's a novelist. And no, don't take my word for any of this. Have I already mentioned I am in the early stages of premature senile dementia brought on by chronic oxygen depletion? I think I have. If I was a young man with a normal haemoglobin count and fewer work responsibilities, I daresay I could rip through Rawls in an afternoon. Being terminally degenerate isn't pretty. But I am resolved not to go gently into that ...

I mentioned it earlier, in connection with the Kafka's Crap Friend test. The latter, as I say, is a good way to find out if you have any friends or not. The Cow Test, on the other hand, serves the purpose of determining if a given person, friend or not, has the sort of dark authoritarian streak that you would do well to be forewarned about before getting too involved. I first heard this story from Rossana, a Uruguayan acquaintance I knew briefly in Granada. She had a degree in Cultural Mediation from the U. of Seville, but I didn't hold that against her. Not initially, anyway. Admittedly, nothing says "I am an interfering busybody" more than those two words "cultural mediation" in juxtaposition, but well, let's face it, most people don't choose what their degree is in, it just sort of happens to you, you just wake up one morning and find you have a degree in something crap and borderline unemployable, which you accidentally studied while in a deep ...

All right then. But I have a ton of work to do, so this will have to be long. The irritating thing about the Need for Power (nPower, in the cute jargon of psychologists, but see below) is that the people who suffer from it think everyone has it. Ghagh. Yesterday, for example, in my Saturday morning class, there was a text on the wolves/sheep dichotomy accidentally popularized by Schultheiss back in the noughties. Rather stupidly, I chose myself as a clarifying example of that type of person misleadingly referenced in the text as a "sheep", remarking that not only did I not want power over anyone, but that I have always felt that wanting it constitutes in and of itself a serious mental disorder, and have to keep reminding myself that not everyone sees things that way. This was when everyone in the class simultaneously directed at me that "Teacher, you have just sprouted antennae, a proboscis and compound eyes" look. I should have known better, I know. Anyway, t...

This was always one of my stalking horses in the old Spanish blog. I mean, really: "liderazgo". What a turd of a word. They take an English word, misunderstand it (probably) by an angle of about 10deg, small but significant, badly adapt it to the Spanish phonetic system, add a silly suffix, and (this is where you want to scream) turn it into a cardinal virtue, the attainment of which requires you to read three self help books per month (check out your local supermarket, just past the turnstile and before you get to the apples and tomatoes). As a teacher, I have a particular aversion to "leadership", for the simple reason that it's one of those things, usually the main thing and in some cases the only thing, that my job description and the mission statement of whatever institution I am working for tells me I have to instill in my students, irrespective of the subject taught, and which I have neither the inclination nor, probably, the means to instill. I don...