October 14, 2009

The Referendum

Tim Kreider mentions a truth few people outwardly acknowledge in an essay about “arrested adolescence”:

Quite a lot of what passes itself off as a dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own choices as the only right or natural ones by denouncing others’ as selfish or pathological or wrong. So it’s easy to overlook that hidden beneath all this smug certainty is a poignant insecurity, and the naked 3 A.M. terror of regret.

Incidentally, the James Salter quote which struck Jason Kottke, “For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing its opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox,” is exactly what Rohrer’s Passage was trying to pin down.

posted by in culture, humans, observations | * | 1 comment 

comments

  1. KevinQ on October 14th, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    Quite a lot of what passes itself off as a dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own choices as the only right or natural ones by denouncing others’ as selfish or pathological or wrong.

    I don’t think it’s just our society, though. I think that’s just human nature. I mean, isn’t the formation of every religion encapsulated in that one sentence?

    K

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