Posted by Bob on December 1, 2005 at 5:51 pm
In my old “Partisan Dictionary” which I wrote in the Southern Partisan in the early 1980s, the following definiton appeared,
“Manners, n,
A formalized substitute for courtesy.”
Manners if doing whatever is fashionable and written down. Courtesy is concern for the other person.
By the same token, “ethics” is written down. Honesty, like courtesy, needs no explanation.
I have pointed out that the moment someone said something to me that sounded like they were getting around to “something you would like to have,” I would quote to them the Draconian penalties for bribing a staffer.
This was often unfair. I had honestly misinterpreted where they were leading. But it also gave me a certain reputation as a person who could not be trusted with even a hint of a bribe.
Why, exactly, was I so nasty about such hints of offers?
“well, Bob, it’s because you were raised in the Bible Belt. The Book taught you that ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against they neighbor’ even if they pay you.”
And that is what really worries me about Wordists. My ancestors were proud to die to a man around the leader they had sworn fealty to long before the Gospel, much less the Old Testament, ever got to them.
I don’t lie, I don’t cheat, I don’t steal, and I honor my word not because some Book told me to be that way, but because I AM that way.
If you want to know about someone, let them talk. When a person justifies honesty by quoting a Book, you had better put your wallet in a safe place.
His Book can change tomorrow. His INTERPRETATION of his Book can change tomorrow.
Honesty is what an honest man takes for granted.
Wordism is for psychopaths.
#1 by Dave on 06/23/2009 - 7:36 pm
Words are used to seduce people into giving their personal loyalty to something that is impotent, an essential of political domination.
The majority of us give our political loyalty to what is merely plausible. And the worst kind of plausibility is the kind that is most convincing.
That death walks on cat’s feet is basic. It is particularly true regarding the matters of pretended loyalty. This is what makes the Wordists weak, even the committed and militant types. They never truly confront the falsity of their loyalty, preferring self-deception, giving their personal loyalty to words instead.
#2 by shari on 06/23/2009 - 8:47 pm
Of course, wordism is more than one generation tangled, but I think that untangling is coming.
#3 by 1Reader on 06/24/2009 - 4:04 am
Very well written, I had strikingly similar thought just the ther day. Lets ask ourselves what really matters, what has mattered and what will matter in the end. What are we, what do we let define what we are. Has what we really are gotten completely distorted, do we give too much importance to what you described as books, beliefs. What consequnces does this have, do we risk losing what is fundamentally important, and what really defines us?
What is it that really makes use what we are. A book does not make me into what I am, it is not what has made me into what I am. What I am today is part of my ethnical being more than anything else.
Without ethnical awareness, and taking ethnical reality into consideration. We risk losing everything that means, we risk losing what really makes us what we are.
If we are to need a book to tell us those things you described, how to behave toward each other and so forth. Then just like you said, that is pretty darn sad, the book can be changed at anytime and what would such thoughtless following mean then. The way we treat and view each other, the culture if you so wish in its true meaning, is something which has been nurtured over countless generations, is based on reason and does not need instructions. It would be a sad day, the day instructions would be needed.
That is also why I shy away from using the word ethics as well. What is that, a list of universal rules? How about just using our reason and sensibility. What about good and evil, are those also something of our own sensibility or does someone need to define it for us. I can name quite a few bad things which by major institutions have been seen as “good”. The end point is that, it is dangerous to let someone else define those things for you, as if they are rules and not perceptions of reality.
#4 by Simmons on 06/24/2009 - 10:28 am
For an example see the Jim Jones cult. A torrent of bizarre words changed human behavior not one whit. Yet they try again and again to manage human society, and they fail. Thank god they have the respectables and the semis who blanch from the Mantra, they being deceived that society can be mangaged with “conservative principals.” I say take that crap to Gary,Indiana by all purposes a nigger ghost town best forgotten by the white/jewish elite be they liberal or conservative. (Gary is a fourth world city being abandoned by even the social do-harmers).
#5 by backbaygrouch4 on 06/24/2009 - 5:08 pm
Off topic.
‘TIS AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS NO GOOD
The Game Cock governor has an Argentine firecracker. No big deal there, though the exposure may be more nefarious than the sin. As a long time observer of SC politics, perhaps Bob could let us in on the inside story, But, more importantly, is there any chance Bob could become a talking head for the life of the scandal, thus drawing attention to the site and the mantra. Yes, it is a tad whorish, but, then again, politics is thatt kind of business. Just a thought, Bob. Hope you’re well. You are needed.
#6 by Simmons on 06/25/2009 - 9:56 am
That kind of scandal would have gotten Thurmond another term. I doubt Bob wants to comment on BS useless politics nor do I think the Mantra is gonna need such stunts to be “found.”
The wheels are coming off this jalopy called America, where a third world populace struggles to pay first world debts thru a second world banking system, and the sociopaths are gonna have to find their scapegoat. Now we know who that is gonna be, straight white men.
Que the Mantra
#7 by shari on 06/25/2009 - 11:28 am
I am reminded of a preacher I used to listen to back in the 70’s. He said that when he went into that, He prayed, saying, Lord, there will be those I can help,and those I can’t help. Help me to know the difference.
#8 by Simmons on 06/26/2009 - 1:36 pm
For entertainment purposes Ol’ Prof Fleming is conducting a mommy prof symposium at his site in relation to the idiocy of SC’s gov. The usual, who can quote Aquinas or Augustine the firstest and the bestest. But lo and behold the Ol’ Prof throws a bone to heredity in one post commenting on the difference between man and woman.