In addition to physical limitations based in reality, there are legal limitations based in law, but our prisons (and yours too, I would be willing to bet) are packed with people who thought that those limitations weren't real, shouldn't apply to them, or some such.
This is an obsession of mine. We need rules in society, if we are to all get along in a civil way. You can’t just do whatever you want. We all have obligations towards each other.
Thank you Katy for another wonderful post. Your honesty about your physical limitations is a story of strength and resilience. Your story militates against prevailing notion of disability equates weakness and thus needing protection from the world. Rather it tells to own your own story and be honest about it. The world needs more of this, I dare say, radical honesty.
I am genuinely 5ft 7 - well, I *was.* I seem to have shrunk almost an inch in the last five years??!! I have to say, I found the loss of an inch a bit disconcerting…
One of Jonah Goldberg's mantras is (to paraphrase), "classical liberal democratic capitalism is by far the best way to satisfy the material needs of humanity, but seems very poor at making them feel good about themselves". I've a feeling the "everything is possible if you try hard" people, and their descent into mania, are a manifestation of that need to feel good.
Our society's general beneficence allows that statement to very often be broadly true. Many, many people do work very hard and makes themselves successful. Probably the majority who follow this route - they are very much not the "outliers". But it's as much a function of the soil as it is of the plant, and it will never be true specifically or universally. And the insistence that we must distort society and other's lives to try to make it true in all cases, and for the specific thing we desire to achieve, is the twisting of the virtue of our society into its dark obverse.
The Weebix advertisement becomes inviolable promise - and if I don't get the specific thing I work towards, I have been robbed by society.
Also: I like "possible", as in: Have a go and find out. Maybe I'll fail and learn something. But don't make my decision for me without awfully high stakes. (Your dad is cool btw)
Utopian societies are awfully fearful of not appearing omniscient- I'm thinking Lysenko's agriculture and Maduro's removal of "malnourished" as a hospital category. But it's creative death.
In addition to physical limitations based in reality, there are legal limitations based in law, but our prisons (and yours too, I would be willing to bet) are packed with people who thought that those limitations weren't real, shouldn't apply to them, or some such.
This is an obsession of mine. We need rules in society, if we are to all get along in a civil way. You can’t just do whatever you want. We all have obligations towards each other.
Thank you Katy for another wonderful post. Your honesty about your physical limitations is a story of strength and resilience. Your story militates against prevailing notion of disability equates weakness and thus needing protection from the world. Rather it tells to own your own story and be honest about it. The world needs more of this, I dare say, radical honesty.
I identify as being 5ft 10 tall.
Unfortunately the tape measure says I am only 4ft 10, at a stretch. Fantasy meets reality.
I am genuinely 5ft 7 - well, I *was.* I seem to have shrunk almost an inch in the last five years??!! I have to say, I found the loss of an inch a bit disconcerting…
One of Jonah Goldberg's mantras is (to paraphrase), "classical liberal democratic capitalism is by far the best way to satisfy the material needs of humanity, but seems very poor at making them feel good about themselves". I've a feeling the "everything is possible if you try hard" people, and their descent into mania, are a manifestation of that need to feel good.
Our society's general beneficence allows that statement to very often be broadly true. Many, many people do work very hard and makes themselves successful. Probably the majority who follow this route - they are very much not the "outliers". But it's as much a function of the soil as it is of the plant, and it will never be true specifically or universally. And the insistence that we must distort society and other's lives to try to make it true in all cases, and for the specific thing we desire to achieve, is the twisting of the virtue of our society into its dark obverse.
The Weebix advertisement becomes inviolable promise - and if I don't get the specific thing I work towards, I have been robbed by society.
Also: I like "possible", as in: Have a go and find out. Maybe I'll fail and learn something. But don't make my decision for me without awfully high stakes. (Your dad is cool btw)
Utopian societies are awfully fearful of not appearing omniscient- I'm thinking Lysenko's agriculture and Maduro's removal of "malnourished" as a hospital category. But it's creative death.
With tap there's also the suffering to consider...😜