Wednesday, December 31, 2008

One last thing: a marvelous demonstration of

PC idiocy in people who despise 'breeders'; i.e., people who actually reproduce instead of dying off alone.
Parentitis is the well known if scarcely documented condition that transforms polite, environmentally-aware, socially co-operative adults into pushy bigots who, when they're not making innumerable short journeys in their 4x4s, are to be found at home amassing toxic nappy mountains, cooing noisily over waste matter and £500 pushchairs. So common as to be almost universal in so-called advanced civilisations, the condition is marked by a wholesale reconstruction of sensibility: what was once seen in terms of possibility is now marked as a threat.
So if you have kids you can't be polite, 'environmentally-aware' or play well with others. According to this moron. While I'd agree that anyone who spent that much for a stroller is an idiot, for the rest of it? Apparently seeing things in a different light, now that you've got offspring, is a Bad Thing.

The condition seems to derive from the contemplation of the beloved infant: the eyes widen, seemingly forced apart by the outward flow of that unconditional love which, as all parents' recognise, lies at the very core of being. A wonderful thing, therefore, but for that it may come at the expense of love for everything else, drawing a blanket of equally narrowed-eyed suspicion across the larger slice of reality and dividing the world sharply between the few things known to contribute to baby's well-being and anything else does not.
Ah yes, the fact that someone realizes there are things other than themselves, other lives to consider, is another Bad Thing. And this clown is now wanting to be a father. Here's one of the better things he comes up with:
People often say that parents lose their ability to judge. But this is not true. Rather, their judgement quickens: an enhanced survival instinct takes over, obliterating all other levels of consideration and temporarily closing off the more advanced operations of consciousness.
You see, actually considering protection of your kid from nasties keeps you from considering more 'advanced' things. Like getting rid of people, which he goes on a riff about. Including this:
Altruism, of course, is said to be a uniquely human quality (there are those who deny it even to be this, of course), and there is something magnificent about the thought of an entire species simply switching itself off, without violence or force of anything other than will, to make way for something more lasting. It is unthinkable within the system of nature, unless as the conscious, involuntary corollary to a process that may be occurring anyway. But the absurdity lies not in the aim, which is in many ways laudable, but in the idea that the compassionate motivation in which it originates could possibly see the project through.
A: it's not 'magnificent' to destroy yourself as a species; it's called 'losing'. It's called 'fail' in a major way. And
B: just what the hell does he consider he'd be making way for that's 'more lasting'? Spiderwebs? Birds nests?

Hell with it, he's ruining my mood. I think I've got another of those beers...

3 comments:

Thud said...

I expect no less from the pages of the guardian!...as for pushchair cost...you spend your money i'll spend mine....you are falling into guardian territiry there my good man!

Firehand said...

Oh, be my guest. Someone has the money and want to spend it that way, more power to them. I may think they're an idiot, but damned if I'll try to stop them.

God forbid I start agreeing with that group.

NotClauswitz said...

Good grief, "polite, environmentally-aware, socially co-operative adults" are nothing more than large infants, there's very little "adult" about them by any strtetch of the imagination.