Wednesday, August 14, 2002 :::
::Idiom of Idiots::
“In the Foreseeable Future”: I have been hearing this one quite a bit lately. In fact, I think this gem is used regularly by anyone who is asked to comment on a time frame where the answer is “Fuck if I know…” Listen for it in congressional testimony, press conferences, or television interviews.
Note: The future is never ever foreseeable. That is why it is called the future. If you could see what was going to happen before it happen, they wouldn't call it the future, they'd call it television. The future is a collection of events and acts that have yet to occur. No portion of the future, be it 10 minutes or even 10 seconds, is foreseeable. There might be things we predict will happen, or there might be strong indicators allowing us to estimate certain happenings, but at no time can we see anything beyond the here and now which is dawning and expiring at a steady and unstoppable rate.
This phrase has been brought into popular usage because it is more comforting to hear mild and meaningless predictions than it is to hear an expert tell you that they have no clue what happens next and that life, yours included, is a crap shoot where split-second circumstance battles statistical inevitability for control of the body count.
::: posted by Mike at 12:48 PM
Friday, August 09, 2002 :::
: : Idiom of Idiots: : (the intro)
This is my first post since returning from my vacation/wedding/honeymoon break. While I was away I took copious notes on elements of society that needed mention, or explanation, or severe criticism, but I don’t think I will share any of those now.
What I’m going to do is to start what will be a recurring element of Societal Nosebleed. I call it “Idiom of Idiots”. This is going to be about different phrases or words in popular usage that I think are, want for a better word, stupid. These are phrases that are thrust from the mouths spit-polish opinion producers then adopted by intellectual invalids who then carry and disseminate them like a virus, passing them off in streams of borrowed dialogue. And all the while they never stop to examine the phrases they are spewing forth.
Examples:
“Terrible Tragedy”: How many times have we heard this since last fall? Take note…tragedy is a word that has its own built-in intensity. It does not need a modifier to illustrate degrees of its meaning. There is no such thing as a Happy Tragedy or a Whimsical Tragedy. Tragedies are bad, bad, bad. A tragedy is not thing that requires any modifiers whatsoever.
“At This Point In Time”: I have two problems with this one…one solid and one esoteric.
Problem One (solid): Is it too damned hard just to say “right now”. This doesn’t sound more eloquent. This doesn’t sound more enlightened, or more intelligent. It’s just using too many damn words in an attempt to sound all these things.
Problem Two (esoteric): Referring to a point in time is faulty because as soon as said point in time has been clearly identified for the purpose of illustration, said point will have already elapsed and become the past. So, for one to refer to “points” in time, they must continue to identify the point continuously until time as we know it expires. This makes for a long press conference. This all assumes, of course, that you believe in time as a liner element of physics and creation and is not as an unmoving, immeasurable, concept without meaning and structure.
So that’s the gist of it. That is what the new segment I will occasionally post will be all about.
Enjoy.
::: posted by Mike at 2:14 PM
