The Curmudgeon Speaks

The things which irritate an old man...

As I took my morning walk today I noticed a car with a bumper sticker that said, 'I'd rather be riding transit'. And my first thought was, then why aren't you? Why don't you sell that thing, give the cash to the government to put towards transit, and then take the damn bus where you want to go. They're all over the place. I see them every day. Stop signaling whatever virtue you mean to shame me over and put your money where your mouth is.

Then it hit me. You don't want your money to go to transit without a pile of mine to keep it company.

Well, guess what? I don't want to take transit. I want to take my money (which I earned and you did not, by the way), buy me a car, and go wherever the hell I want to go whenever the hell I want to do it. And I do not want nor expect any of your cash for that right.

In other words, blow that empty posturing out your nose, and keep your hand out of my pocket.

Love is not 'just' love

I cannot begin to tell you how many times I've been told that Love is Love. If there is a more senseless defense of a concept I cannot imagine what it might be.

We may as well assert, Table is Table or House is House. While such statements may be technically true, they in fact tell us nothing about the table or the house. Perhaps the table has a broken leg and cannot stand on its own. The house may be in dire need of repair. If either of these situations exist, we work to fix the problems. Yet if house was just house or table, table, we would we leave them alone. We would have to if they are simply what they are and nothing more.

I believe the trouble is that to fix the table or repair the house we must have some idea of what a good table or a good house are. But for some odd reason we don't appear to have the same sense about something so important and critical to our well being as love. The only conclusion I can draw is that, under certain circumstances anyway, people don't want to have a judgment made about love. They simply want the kind of love which they happen to want, whatever that is, and without question.

Well, what's the value of love if we cannot question it and have a sound, robust defense of what it might be? What indeed is the inherent value of love at all if all it is is whatever the speaker wants it to be? Short of that, the Love is Love argument really isn't telling us anything at all. Or, perhaps, it's telling us something worse. It's telling us that selfishness and narcissism are the rule of the day.