Syllogisms of apathy

• If one is not virtuous oneself, one can still profit from the virtue of others.
  
• There is no such thing as the golden mean. Moderation in all things is a recipe for mindless consumption. Drinking in moderation is unentertaining compared to drunkenness and uneconomical compared to sobriety.
  
• Politics is the process of establishing who's going to impose whose will on whom, or at least of establishing who thinks who's going to impose whose will on whom.
  
• Leadership is a talent exemplified by, among others, the fastest lemming.
  
• Self-righteousness: The common form of righteousness.
  
• If your knowledge of Italy came entirely from Italian television, you'd believe all Italian women were blondes.
  
• Fortune favours the fortunate.
  
• If we were ever privileged to be shown The Truth, we'd be too embarrassed to believe it.
  
• We no longer believe that suffering ennobles, but instead believe that it profits.
  
• Orderly habits are the sign of a disorderly mind.
  
• People make fun of the superstitious, but believe that a well-dressed person is trustworthy, and a beautiful one admirable.
  
• Reading allows us to live vicariously in a fantasy world other than the fantasy world we actually live in. Its chief function is to distract. People don't remember what they read, they don't think about it, they don't apply it in their lives – they don't even follow instructions. Perhaps it's because they've tried doing all these things.
  
• The chief problem with luck is figuring out which is the good and which the bad.
  
• Adoption is a process by which, instead of redistributing income, we redistribute children.
  
• People seem to feel compelled to offer a justification for their actions, but not to examine it.
  
• Euphemism is the politeness of the condescending.
  
• Since we can't tell the truth to ourselves, how can we be expected to tell it to others?
  
• Insecurity is the belief that one's life, to be successful, must be guided by something other than common decency.

Syllogisms of Apathy © John FitzGerald, 2005

Word up!

We live in the most public age in history, so we have more things to hide than people have ever had before. Since we have more secrets, we have to have more places to keep them. To make sure the secrets stay secret in those places, we need passwords.

I’ve got more passwords than the KGB. I have a password at the public library. I can reserve a book from home now, but only if I do it in secret, through a library account that I can only use if I enter my fourteen-digit library card number and the correct password. Besides that, every couple of years I have to provide proof of my identity.

For the first fifty-odd years of my life no one cared too much about who I was at all; now it seems my library card makes me a prime target for identity theft. But then, think of the havoc terrorists could wreak on the world if they were able to log on to my online library account and reserve whatever book they wanted.

I know, I know. There are good reasons for security precautions. There are bad reasons, too. In Ontario we now have to provide official identification when we vote – or rather, when we vote in person. If you vote by mail you don’t have to. Apparently the danger to the public interest from voter fraud is neatly balanced by the revenue it generates for Canada Post.

But the government also mails you a card, with your name and address on it, which you take to the polling station. Why do we need to provide further identification? Are they afraid we’re going to get mugged for these cards on the way to the polls? It’s not like we’re wearing signs reading I’m going to vote and can’t fight worth a damn.

Whatever your opinion is of the merits of passwords, whether you think all passwords are necessary or, like me, have the correct view of them, you must admit that life has changed considerably over the last twenty-five years or so. In 1980 the only secret number I had to remember was the combination to the lock on my locker in the basement of the building I lived in. Now I spend my days logging in to accounts. And waiting while other people log into accounts while I wait in line behind them.

When I got a letter in the old days, I didn’t have to enter a password to open it, even though in getting it to me the post office had left it vulnerable at several points to interception by the nefariously minded or the royally mounted. In fact, we still require no password to open letters, even though the mail is no better protected. You could open one of those drop boxes for letter carriers with a can opener.

I suppose the problem is that the criminals are becoming as computer-bound as we are. They spend so much time entering passwords and checking e-mail that they just don’t have time to go out and bribe a letter carrier to lend them his or her keys for a few hours. So they end up having to conduct their business through the internet, trying to get e-mail recipients to go to phony websites and innocently enter their credit card numbers – and passwords.

The price of convenience is eternal inconvenience, it seems. In the old days, if I couldn't find a book I wanted at the bookstore, I'd ask the bookstore to order it for me, then go back a week or so later to pick it up.

If I can't find a book I want in the bookstore these days, I search a website or two, find the book, log into my account with my password (if I have one) or create an account (if I don’t), fill out forms, supply my credit card number and the special four-digit code, click a button, print out the receipt, log out, then sit back and wait a week or so for the book to turn up.

I have saved the time I would have spent previously going back to the bookstore. Time is money, and money talks, and talk is cheap, etc. The time I save by using my password I can now use for productive activities, like waiting for hackers to steal my credit card information off the bookstore website. Or making erroneous entries on Wikipedia. Or sitting hunched over my computer, entering more passwords.

Word Up © John FitzGerald, 2007

Why we hate lawyers

Jokes about lawyers are very popular these days, and the most popular ones display, especially in these politically correct times, a surprising bloodlust:

What do you call 5000 dead lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A good start!

What do you do if you run over a lawyer?
Back over him to make sure. Then, make another notch on the steering wheel.

What do have when a lawyer is buried up to his neck in sand?
Not enough sand.

Now what do lawyers do to arouse such animosity? Chiefly, the problem is that they're smart. Being smart is definitely démodé these days. It is outré. It is, above all, pas comme il faut.

For one thing, having to acknowledge that someone other than us is smart restricts our ability to perform our duty of esteeming ourselves. Moreover, the existence of a group of people who make good money from living by their wits rather than by doing what they're told to do makes most of us feel inadequate, so we hate them.

Intelligence is also the enemy of the good life, as defined for us by giant corporations. It hinders our ability to follow the directions for living that our employers so thoughtfully send us over our cellphones and pagers, and that Oprah and other corporate giants send us over the airwaves. If we actually exercised intelligence, how could we enjoy Survivor, taking work home on the weekend, or reading all those self-help books? Lawyers are intelligent – they must want to ruin our lives.

Furthermore, lawyers are just not genteel enough. If the people had their way, life would not be marred by such embarrassments as the release from prison of Donald Marshall, David Milgaard, Guy-Paul Morin, Rubin Carter, Rolando Cruz, and on and on. When society says that someone is a murderer, the well-behaved accept its judgment.

Often our hatred of lawyers is justified as a dislike of lawyers' greed. Given the incidence of selfless behaviour on our parts these days, though, we can safely assume that this explanation is but another example of the defence mechanism of projection. Feeling guilty about our own greed, we project it onto some outgroup. Certainly lawyers place a high value on their work, and like to get paid for every second of it. On the other hand, people are willing to pay their stratospheric fees, so maybe they're worth it.

Anyway, if lawyers were that greedy, they wouldn't be lawyers. They'd be where the real money is – playing professional sports. Representing the legal interests of citizens caught up in the toils of the "justice" system, or even the interests of giant corporations, pays peanuts compared to what you can get for batting balls about. And when you bat balls about, people worship you. And you get a lot more time off.

We also justify our hatred of lawyers as hatred of their questionable ethics. Insert your own sarcastic comment about that idea here.

Perhaps I have not persuaded you. Luckily for you, society seems to be evolving in a way which will make most lawyers obsolete. People seem to be losing interest in the mainstay of lawyers' business.

Specifically, they are losing interest in democracy. They don't vote; they don't pay attention to the issues when they do vote; they vote, as Ontario voters have done, to reduce their control over the expenditure of public funds. Democracy just takes too much of our valuable time in a world full of rewarding things to do, like watching So You Think You Can Dance or searching YouTube for videos of dogs dancing the hula. Why not just leave the running of society to the experts?

Once the experts take over lawyers will become unnecessary except, of course, to the experts. At any rate you won't have to deal with them, since your rights will be thoughtfully reduced to a convenient number you can protect all by yourself - the right to pay taxes; the right to have your urine tested; the right to be denied unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, and health care. And, of course, the right to tell jokes about lawyers.

Why We Hate Lawyers © John FitzGerald, 2001

Your new improved conscience!

Are you bothered by a guilty conscience? Do you lie awake at night worrying that you’re doing things you shouldn’t be doing? Do you sometimes think that you’re just a bad person?

Well, now your problems are over! Using the same techniques used by space-age environmentalists, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED is now able to offer you complete, total, and utter absolution for your misbehaviour!

How can we do it? We do it in the same way that leading environmentalists like David Suzuki and Al Gore are able to fly, take long motor trips, and maintain large homes while espousing environmental responsibility! That’s right, friends, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED is now issuing morality credits!

When Al Gore flies around the world to promote environmentalism, the plane he flies in is pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at an enormous rate. To compensate for that, he purchases credits for the amount of carbon dioxide his plane produced from a company or organization which has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by that amount.

NEW IMPROVED CONSCIENCE CREDITS work in much the same way. We have assembled a large group of people who are faithful to their spouses, file honest income tax returns, obey the highway code, and in many other ways live morally exemplary lives. We monitor their behaviour carefully, and on each of the many days that each of them passes without committing an ethical or moral infraction we issue them a credit for one day of virtuous behaviour. They can then trade this credit on our International Ethical Exchange.

So, if you’ve been worried all day about having cheated on your spouse yesterday, relief is just a phone call away! Simply call your broker and purchase a NEW IMPROVED CONSCIENCE CREDIT!

And here’s good news for you dieters! If you fall off your diet for a day, two days, or even more, we have credits for you, too. We have assembled a large group of people who have had lipectomies, laparoscopic band surgeries, and gastric bypasses. Their weight losses are now available to YOU in the form of diet credits!

Lead a new, guilt-free life, without having to change your lifestyle! In fact, your purchase of conscience credits will encourage others to be good so that they can obtain credits. The world will be a better place, thanks to YOU!

Your New Improved Conscience © 2008, John FitzGerald

Bowling with Orwell

The last words George Orwell said to me were “Get away from me, you fucking faggot.” He was pretty well Americanized, by then, of course, which was why he called me a faggot instead of a pansy, which was what he called fairies when he was writing in England.

Not that I was a faggot, fairy, or pansy, of course. Or that I was not, for that matter. Where, with what, or to whom I was putting it was simply irrelevant. George, or Rick as he was then known, was just trying to distract attention from what I really was, which was the only person in Chicago who knew who he was.

It was 1951. Supposedly George had been dead for a year, so it wasn’t surprising he’d try to make me look like a freak. Not that these days we consider faggots to be freaks, or even faggots. But in those days faggotizing someone was a pretty good way to hurt their credibility.

There could have been another reason, of course. His last English wife later married a homosexual; maybe it wasn’t the first time she’d done that.

I mean, have you seen the pictures of her? – Sonia Brownell, I mean, aka Sonia Blair, aka Sonia Orwell. I have. If I’d been married to her I wouldn’t have been faking my death and heading off to America to live as Rick Blair for any reason as yet known to mankind.

I imagine that seemed like a masterstroke to George, Americanizing his real name as Rick Blair. I’m sure he thought that Americans were too illiterate to know who George Orwell was, let alone to know that his real name was Eric Blair. And his attempts to disguise himself were pretty half-hearted. His new accent was good, but pretty well all he'd done to alter his physical appearance was get rid of that fungus on his upper lip which stood in for a moustache and get a decent haircut in place of that British one he has in all his pictures, the one that looks like a johnny-mop.

Or maybe he was just brilliant. If he’d gone out of his way to disguise himself people might have been more suspicious. In those days wearing a beard, for example, was pretty well advertising that you were an egghead and a Red.

Which was what he was, of course. That hadn’t changed. And here he was in disguise, in America, masquerading as a loyal American. In those days people were finding Reds under every bed, so I wasn’t surprised to find one competing in my bowling league. Try telling that to the FBI, though.

”I wouldn’t put anything past a Red, of course,” one of their agents said, obviously trying to humor me, “and there is a sort of resemblance, but we’re talking about one of the best amateur bowlers in Chicago. How did he get so good in two years? George Orwell officially died in ’50, and Rick Blair won his first tournament in ’52. And his neighbours say he’s been living here since ’47.”

Well, someone named Rick Blair has been living here since ’47, anyway, probably someone who looked like George Orwell. Perhaps someone the Reds had got up to look like George Orwell. Or like someone who looked somewhat like George Orwell, after which they worked on Orwell to get him to look somewhat like what he’d looked like before. That wouldn’t have been hard for them to do, given that the Russian state controlled the medical profession, which meant they controlled the plastic surgeons.

They didn’t take me seriously at the papers, either. They claimed to have checked him out thoroughly, but given the number of Reds in the newspaper business they’d claim that whether they’d checked him out or not, wouldn’t they?

He wasn’t that great a bowler, either. He knocked me out of that tournament in ’52 with some of the cheesiest strikes I’ve ever seen. The ball only found the pocket about once in every six frames, but the pins kept falling down. Don’t tell me there’s nothing funny about that. Don’t tell me the Reds couldn’t have installed radio-controlled tipping devices in those pins to make them fall over even when he threw one in the gutter. Fortunately for them he at least could manage to keep the ball in the alley. But that was pretty well it. There was hardly any spin on his ball. It curved like a girl’s. If he’d been one of the best women’s bowlers in Chicago I wouldn’t have been suspicious, because that’s how well he bowled. That’s pretty fair bowling, sure, but you don’t win men’s tournaments with it.

Anyway, what little he knew about bowling he’d learned from me. Call me naive, if you want, and why shouldn’t you want to? I am naive, I admit it. I had this brilliant idea that I'd show him how if he just applied himself to becoming a good bowler he could perfect his game and achieve some success as an individual, and that would show him the hollowness of the communalist claptrap with which his commie head was infested. I gave him a lot of valuable tips, man – he never had a better coach than me. And when won his first tournament, did he thank me? No. When he won other tournaments, did he thank me? No. When he won the big tournament in ’54 and I ran over to congratulate him, did he finally thank me, then? No – he said “Get away from me, you fucking faggot.”

Which was when I stopped being naive. The scales fell from my eyes. I saw that once a commie, always a commie. Even his own individual accomplishments had failed to get him to see the emptiness of his worship of the great god Proletariat. I should have known. My brother-in-law was a Baptist, and nothing would make him see reason, either.

But as I said, the FBI was no use. They treated me as if I was some kind of nut. Richard Nixon tells them about spies passing secret messages along in pumpkins, him they believe. I identify a red hot obvious Communist mole underground in the second largest city in America, they act as if they’re being nice to some kind of raving crackpot.

Okay, I’m no more sane than the next guy. We all have our quirks. Maybe being able to spot the rotten apple in the barrel is a quirky ability. Maybe not everyone has it. But if most people don’t have it don’t you think they’d show some respect for someone who does?.

And so our lives diverged. The struggle to unmask this threat to our country had cut into my practice time, and by ’58 I was bowling in fucking industrial leagues. Orwell, of course, went on to set a record (since surpassed) for high triple in a state elimination series for the American Bowling Congress. A commie spy ends up being recognized by the American Bowling Congress! Well, it’s not like I didn’t warn them. I did my bit.

I did my bit and so did thousands if not millions of others, and what did we get for it? Well, back then we got called witch hunters and Red-baiters, and we got to watch as the witch protectors and Red-praisers set up a society in which people like Rick Blair are heroes and every marginalized person thinks he has a right to run the country. The hypocrisy makes me sick – calling me a faggot and then turning around a few years later and telling me I needed to be more understanding of homosexuals. I understand homosexuals. American homosexuals are Americans. That is, they’re just like us, and they’re not like Rick Blair, and they’re not like the people who tell us we have to be more like Rick Blair. Or whatever it was he was calling himself back then.

Bowling with Orwell © John FitzGerald, 2006
The characters in this fictional work are not modelled on or intended to
represent any actual person, living or dead. Any resemblance between these
characters and any actual person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.