Living at the Lunch Table

I used to find myself enraged by the behavior of my fellow humans. Now I just tend to be embarrassed by it. What I find most embarrassing these days is the puerile use of metaphor by people with just enough education to think (erroneously) that they have something to say.

It wouldn’t be so bad if these rudimentary metaphors – ones used mostly in protest – weren’t dressed up as profound statements and if those making these pseudo-profound statements didn’t insist on prancing about during their little tantrums (or parties) of moral exhibitionism.

Lately, of course, these (“metaphoric “) “protests” have been occurring in the form of “die-ins” (very powerful affairs, especially when the participants are giggling and taking selfies on the ground) and police officers turning their backs on the Mayor of New York at funerals and hospitals and other formal functions during which the dignity of the occasion may just be more important than making an impotent point.

All of a sudden, the world is full of half-assed performance artists.

These issues are big. No doubt about it. But maybe they are deserving of intelligent, non-agenda-driven discourse and not stupid, middle-school theatrics.  It's like living at a seventh-grade lunch table.

Protest can be a noble thing; noble things should carry dignity. I have said it before and I will say it again: human dignity is dead; "ism-free thought is dead and the Yahoos are running the joint while the Houyhnhnms are sitting depressed in their stables.