The FDA which has finally decided to allow silicone breast implants back onto the market:
The decision appeared to end a controversy over the safety of silicone implants that lasted more than two decades and resulted in thousands of lawsuits by women who claimed the implants leaked and caused a number of diseases, including cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. The dispute led to the bankruptcy of the manufacturer Dow Corning, a federal moratorium on the use of the implants, and, finally, findings by both the Institute of Medicine and the Food and Drug Administration that the devices do not cause major illnesses.
Surveying the sparse reaction in the blog world I noticed Fersboo in the comments at Bitsblog asks a good question:
Will Dow get their money back?
Heh! I wouldn’t hold my breath, but in all seriousness the human cost of this has been quite large, and not just because of breast implants proven utility as an auto safety device:
A Bulgarian car crash victim was saved by her huge breast implants – which acted as airbags to absorb the impact.
It has been in all the major papers, but has resulted in surprisingly little commentary, though I believe it is a story with far more resonance when it comes to our actual liberty and our future as a free society than almost anything else we will read or discuss over the next few months. Why is it important? Two statements can give us a hint. From Breitbart:
The US federal government has given the beauty industry a long-sought push-up as it lifted a 14-year-old ban on women’s silicone breast implants, despite concerns by some experts they might not be safe.
And from Dr. Daniel G. Schultz, director of the F.D.A.’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health:
We have been looking at this data continuously for the last 10 years. We have been watching as data had been collected, we have been watching as data has accumulated. We believe that from a scientific standpoint, the decision that we’re making tonight is, in fact, in the best interest of American women.
Those two statements are pregnant with meaning. Both should worry all of us because of the mind set they represent. The first for the belief of many that because something might not be safe by some persons standard, which applies to every object or activity known to man, that our government has the right to decide whether we can have the object or engage in the activity. The second because Dr. Schulz, despite doing the right thing in rejecting the unscientific assault on a product millions of women want and by some standards even need, does believe it is his role to decide what is in the best interest of women. To really understand this issue I think we need to go into greater detail about what breast implants and the controversy surrounding them really represent?
We might start with Tammy Bruce, who is none too pleased:
Women surgically mutilating themselves to conform to a media and pornography-driven sick view of what a woman’s body should look like is bad enough. For the FDA to approve a device that even the agency admits is faulty and only ‘reasonably safe’ (whatyever that means), is absurd. But then again, the FDA is now more concerned with the health of pharmaceutical companies and medical profits than they are with the health of individual Americans.
I think the first sentence gives us the rationale for her, and many others, cosmetic surgery is immoral. A shallow surrender to the shallow values of our culture. “Safe enough” for something which is in and of itself objectionable just will not do if you believe our governments role is to decide what risks and trade offs are acceptable for its citizens to be able to consider. More than this is going on though, so let us examine the myriad ways that this particular procedure is wrapped up in the key issues which face us in the months and years ahead. Nor is my belief in this issues importance unique to me, though we are certainly a small group:
In the heady days of the Gingrich “revolution,” with Republican realignment one critical presidential election away, breast implants may seem both silly and dull a subject of interest only to bimbos and nerds. Very Important Conservatives, and their less important friends, have much more serious, much more interesting concerns.
Or so they think.
Breast implants are in fact neither dull nor silly. They are a lot more important than what sort of art the National Endowment for the Arts funds or whether it even exists. More important than a $500-per-kid tax credit or a capital gains tax cut. More important than the survival of the Commerce Department, the future of public television, or whether the U.S. embassy moves to Jerusalem. More important, in other words, than 95 percent of the issues that consume the conventionally wise on any given Washington day. To understand why, however, you have to think about a future beyond the New Hampshire primary, Internet hype, and next month’s mortgage payment.
That is Virginia Postrel in 1996, over 10 years ago. So let us go back to when the implants first were banned. In 1992 Virginia identified several places where the debate put pressure on divisions within our society. On a surface level she notes that the geographic division between places such as Southern California or Florida, “cultures of audacious self fashioning,” which are likely to see cosmetic surgery as “just another manifestation of the will to determine one’s identity,” and the trivial nature it may have in the eyes of a northeasterner.
More crucially we see a division between those who see health care as being driven by vital needs and those who favor a more pro-choice aspect to health decisions. Cosmetic surgery is almost always for aesthetic reasons, even when the issue is for reconstruction. It is due to the desire of the patient to look different, “not medical necessity.” As Public Citizen stated at the time:
Because approximately 80 percent of these devices have been used for breast augmentation, as opposed to reconstructive purposes, the overwhelming ‘public need,’ not the public health need, for these devices is the psychological benefit of having more perfect or larger breasts . . . . We do not accept that the psychological needs of women, who seek breast augmentation, are legitimate public health needs within the meaning of the {Food, Drug and Cosmetic} Act.
Note the implicit assumption. If we have a desire as consumer that does not fit some third parties definition of a ‘public need’ we do not just not deserve public funding, we cannot even choose to pay for such a thing ourselves or assess its risks and benefits on our own. Public Citizen is supposedly a consumer advocate, but they do not wish to enable or even allow us to make choices for our selves, but to make them for us with the government as its enforcer. Michael Wade here at A Second Hand Conjecture has warned of the political aspects which distort what types of research actually gets funded and the implication of ceding even more authority for such decisions to the political process, I fear even more what choices we will have denied us in the name of our own good.
This instinct goes far beyond breast implants, or even medical care. The environmental and public health movements have determined all kinds of things which are unnecessary from disposable diapers, oral contraception, tampons and toilet paper to our modes of transportation with little regard to what those various items and services might mean to how we fashion our lives. The trade-offs are always by some third party decision maker who may ignore the elements about those products and services that are most important to us in favor of the factors which they feel are most relevant:
Against this onslaught are arrayed the consumers who want to buy these products and the manufacturers who supply them. They try to explain what disposable diapers mean to a mother’s personal freedom or why outlawing juice boxes increases trucking costs and energy consumption. And, facing the FDA, we find women who want breast implants, whether for augmentation or restoration, defending their right to choose.
We have to give a “good reason” for our choices. For those of us concerned about the ongoing drug war, such as the recently deceased Milton Friedman, this is a key point. I have a close friend who often used to justify (despite ample evidence) his vote for Democrats on the Republican drug war. I argued that neither party was serious about doing anything about it, and that the most vocal opponents of it were certain Republicans and libertarians. My point was, how can you truly believe that a party committed to strictly medicinal drugs being heavily regulated to the point that they have to be proven both safe and effective would ever legalize recreational drugs. In a public health sense how could their use ever be justified by the FDA?
Some might find the analogy a stretch, but in addition to the jobs and billions lost by the owners, managers and employees of Dow Corning and other firms caught in the litigation and regulatory morass around breast implants; the careers ruined, the researchers who were humiliated and whose reputations were besmirched; we have stories such as this so reminiscent of drug prohibition:
On February 3, Houston-based U.S. District Court Judge David Hittner threw the book at convicted smuggler Delano R. Martin. Although the federal sentencing guidelines called for somewhere between 12 and 18 months, Hittner went above and beyond in punishing the criminal.”A sentence of 24 months should have a deterrent effect on the defendant and others unscrupulous enough to circumvent regulations intended to protect society, all for the sake of profit,” declared the judge, who also tacked on a $10,000 fine. Martin owes the Internal Revenue Service an additional $38,000 for income tax evasion.
Martin’s crime? Smuggling French-manufactured silicone-gel breast implants into the United States. Trade in silicone breast implants has been illegal since 1992, when the Food and Drug Administration, in a controversial decision, declared the medical devices a health hazard. (See “A Confederacy of Boobs,” October 1995.) According to the government, Martin illegally imported 47 implants in 1995 and has distributed close to 600 implants to doctors throughout the country.
Customs officials told the Houston Chronicle that the implants have become “a major commodity” on the black market, fetching more than $1,800 a pair.
Black markets, jail sentences, prices driven up and attracting the criminal element, the symptoms of denying people what they want based on the idea that what they want is a frivolous indulgence not worth the risks they have freely chosen is familiar.
Of course Postrel notes other divisions. The idea that women should even attempt to make themselves beautiful is a suspect desire to much of modern feminism. Naomi Wolf sees breast augmentation as “sexual mutilation.” This conflict over women controlling their bodies spill over to birth control, where some feminists fight against the pill which poses more possible health concerns (note the repetition of that phrase from the fight against breast implants) than techniques such as the rhythm method or other natural techniques. Tampons have been attacked over toxic shock syndrome and environmental waste. There are alternative treatments and products, they are not “necessary,” at least not in the eyes of their critics.
The third divide Postrel identifies is between medical practitioners and actual scientists.The evidence against implants has always been anecdotal. A woman has an implant and now she has a condition. To the doctor that may be evidence, to the epidemiologist it is meaningless. She quotes from Sociologist Eliot Friedson’s “Profession of Medicine”:
The consulting professions in general and medicine in particular encourage the limitations of perspective by its members through ideological emphasis on the importance of firsthand, individual experience . . . . Such emphasis is directly contrary to the emphasis of science on shared knowledge, collected and tested on the basis of methods meant to overcome the deficiencies of individual experience. And its efficacy and reliability are suspect.” Friedson notes that clinical practitioners often give expert testimony, generalizing from personal experience to conclusions for which they have insufficient evidence.
Needless to say, the doctor to a jury is an expert, and they have driven many products off the market, from toys and breast implants to drugs such as Bendectin and Vioxx. There has never been any credible evidence linking breast implants to disease, but the FDA has always been more attuned to the politics of the issue, and juries have handed out millions based on little more than assertion, though there too the FDA bears responsibility. By indulging the clamor for a ban they legitimized the legal assault in the eyes of juries. Once it went into effect the suits poured in and the enormous judgments followed. We have seen the same result more recently with Vioxx. The courts were so manipulated that companies not even directly involved, such as Dow Chemical lost in court for merely having conducted studies on silicon in a joint venture with Dow Corning. Silicone became more expensive driving up its price and the price of everything made from it. Medical devices which used silicone in other applications were withdrawn or rose in price to cover potential litigation.
The scientific consensus is overwhelming, as the New York Times pointed out in its announcement, though of course implant enemies are unimpressed as in this response to one scientific panel:
a leading lawyer/activist/implant recipient complained that the panel “had focused too closely on scientific studies and had not paid enough attention to the experiences of individual women.”
The head of the FDA at the time, David Kessler, was not impressed either with women weighing the risks differently than his agency:
If members of our society were empowered to make their own decisions about the entire range of products for which the FDA has responsibility,” he said, “then the whole rationale for the agency would cease to exist.
Of course he is right, but that hardly makes me view his decision any more favorably, just his agencies mission less so.
Breast implants are a special case however and that points to an even larger issue than we have really faced yet. They reflect, as pointed out earlier, a desire to alter ourselves, our biological state. That is a choice that is viewed with suspicion by those of many and various ideological flavors. Our medical establishment as well as our public health and environmental establishments see their role as determining and restoring us to “normal.” Nevermind whether they should have any real right or the ability to determine what a normal forest, cultural norm or bodily state is, that norm is what they exist to preserve. Improving is not in the agenda, and the idea that breast augmentation or other methods of “improving” ourselves is even a worthy goal is denied. Medicine is for curing or repair, not augmentation. Thus, even though it is almost always for aesthetic reasons, post mastectomy reconstruction is viewed differently.
As we move further and further down the technological path leading to greater and greater ability to shape our bodies, our minds, personality and even our lifespans we will confront these types of conflicts in ever increasing abundance. As disturbing as I find the breakdown in our regulatory and tort system in meting out justice, the ethical limits on our control over our own biological destiny are even more alarming if placed in the hands of technocratic elites and the activists who seek to control them. To quote Postrel again:
The body, not the Internet, is the next frontier. We are extending control over life itself, over our lives ourselves. That control will, undoubtedly, have some unintended consequences, and bring some tragedies. That is in the nature of things, the nature of life. But so is the attempt to better nature, to bring the born into the realm of the made, to assert human ingenuity against chance.
Technocracy is by nature hostile to diversity and freedom. Its goal is control–a uniform future shaped by experts. It recognizes only one best way. So it overrides the judgments and desires of individuals, curbing choice, experimentation, and learning in the name of “scientific” wisdom.Now, however, our technocrats aren’t keeping their side of the bargain. They’re destroying not only choice but progress, attacking not only liberty but truth. They have joined forces with those who seek to quash technology, innovation, and “unnatural” inventions–to create a static society by defamation and decree. By attacking the innocent and emboldening the malevolent, spreading rumors and defying their own experts, they have betrayed the public trust.
How we clothe ourselves, shape our bodies (through exercise or surgery) the objects and experiences we surround ourselves with shape and create who we are. The ability to choose how we live our lives is what makes us human, and the state limiting or taking away our choices limits what we as humans can be. Our identity, its biological and of course sexual aspects (normal sexuality has its own issues caught up in this as well) are intimately connected to how we look and feel. To trivialize it as shallow or superficial and thus within the purview of the state is quite dangerous, and flawed.
I remember at a young age hearing that mantra of the late sixties and seventies, “I want somebody who loves me for my mind.” This was supposed to show a “deeper” character than physical attraction. Even then I knew that was false. Intelligence is certainly a good thing to have, as is education, a good body or being funny. None of them show any moral depth however. The worth of human beings is not dependent on a sparkling personality or other characteristics, but far more humble virtues such as kindness. Yet we do not look down on somebody for admiring an intelligent or witty person. So things such as striving for physical beauty, however one might define it, is certainly nothing to look down upon. It is as legitimate a way to create who we are as any, and worthier than many. Nor should we allow those who wish to determine which aspects of ourselves are worth improving or augmenting any power to do so.
The implications however go further still. In previous essays I have argued that the recent outrage about our civil liberties being eroded are misplaced. I do not mean to imply that issues such as the warrantless wiretapping are unimportant, or worthy of serious debate. I do mean to say that they are not the largest or most prevalent threat to us as a free people. It is the very size and reach of the government. The story of how bogus science, zealous litigators and activist groups acting “on our behalf” limited our freedom, destroyed careers and fortunes is alarming, but it is part and parcel of the technocratic regulatory vision which animates the drug war, invades our privacy, and the privacy of how we chose to live our lives.
This state does not need a warrant, it has an a priori right to bend us to its will and affects literally millions directly every day. We have become so inured to this smothering blanket that we willingly part with information that a murder suspect would need a warrant procured in order to investigate. The very act of not turning over the information, say on our tax return, or to engage in political speech carries legal penalties, including jail time. After having been penalized for non compliance (regardless of guilt in any underlying crime) you have given the authorities license to obtain a warrant to actually determine guilt. As we documented earlier, even drinking beer in England is becoming subject to such invasions. Dow Corning, its shareholders and employees will certainly not get any compensation for their losses nor the women deprived of what they wanted and the unfortunate implant smuggler will not be compensated because the product should never have been banned in the first place.
In addition we have given the state the power to declare a huge number of things illegal, which if they were not illegal (such as importing silicone implants) the reason for even needing a warrant would be a moot point. Over vast swathes of our lives we have given the state a priori power to restrict us, with effects similar to what such an approach has on free speech.
Our property, our income and what we choose to spend them on, the treatments and services we indulge in are how we create our identity. A lack of security in owning and using them are the greatest threat to our freedom. It all ties in together. To artificially partition off some aspects of liberty as “civil liberties” which have primacy is to undermine the very nature of liberty and the basis upon which it can be maintained. The issues around breast implants go to the heart of these many issues facing us. Our complacency here threatens us far more than the Patriot Act, ask those who worked for or lost their savings in Dow Corning. As I said earlier, they will not be getting their money back.
Update: On the humorous side, Over at Chicago Boys, Jay Manifold finds the whole discussion uncomfortable, but in his comments we find this from Mitch Townsend:
I seem to recall that back in pre-internet days (meaning I can’t back up my story), an exotic dancer rolled over in bed and smothered her husband with her after-market modifications. Has the FDA looked into this aspect of the safety issues?
There was also a tax court case where a stripper deducted the cost of her implants as a business expense. The IRS maintained that they were a personal expense, not a business expense, and not deductible. The decision went down the middle: they were not a personal expense, since they were in fact an advantage in her work but a hindrance to her usual activities outside of work. However, since they were a modification or improvement of an existing structure, rather than a repair, and expected to either extend its useful life or enhance the income-producing capacity of an existing asset, they were a capital asset and the cost could be recovered through depreciation.
Whoever said being a CPA was boring?
Here is the link he provided to the discussion on this weighty (10lbs!) financial issue.
[tags] Dow Corning, breasts, breast implants, Virginia Postrel, libertarian, science, research [/tags]
powered by performancing firefox
No, there really aren’t, Coelacanth. In fact, it simply does not make sense to say so. A fact is a fact, independent of any feeling about it. Water is wet no matter whether I touch it, look at it, hear it, smell it, taste it, or actively ignore it all together. The Sun is hot; 2+2=4; the Moon orbits the Earth; dinosaurs lived millions of years ago; the Nazi’s lost WWII; the Twin Towers came down on 9-11; socialism is anathema to freedom and liberty. These are all facts, not feelings.
Actually, that sentiment is properly accredited to Socrates (via Plato), and frankly you seemed to have missed the point of Voltaire’s story (it isn’t really human to forsake knowledge for happiness), but whatever.
You don’t seem to understand Providence, which is an external source of power and will. Nietzsche and Rand explicitly and emphatically reject any notion of external sources of power, and indeed flip that notion on its head.
That’s because you presuppose the ability of contradictory premises to exist. Just because you can think of it, doesn’t make it so. Humans do not create reality, we can only comprehend it. When we comprehend it honestly, we comprehend truth. Unfortunately, the Truth is often ugly and unsatisfying so we create fictions to mollify ourselves. Those fictions do not substitute for reality anymore than an actor can substitute for the real figure he portrays.
Fair enough.
There is no logical progression here, but instead a series of stated facts that do not support the conclusions. American health care is the best, but it sucks to be here if you’re poor? Why? As Don points out, poor people may not always have private insurance, but that does not mean at all that they don’t receive health care. I could go on about this at great length, but I won’t here.
I’m not upset. As I first stated, I am bemused by your ramblings. You seem to be entirely unconnected from reality and yet under the impression that you have a uniquely firm grasp upon it. You suggest that you are trying to be open minded about things, and thus you are visiting us here and reading Virginia Postrel, to which I say good on’ya, mate! If you are truly interested in expanding your horizons, please continue to visit, but don’t presuppose that we are ignorant of your views or naive in some way. Each of us here at ASHC has arrived at a similar philosophical place based on our own journeys, trials and tribulations. I think you’ll find that we have contemplated a great deal, and that our individual decisions to hold the individual as paramount in a system of government derives from a commitment to freedom and nothing else.
Such a skill is useful in debates; not so much for convincing others, but for continuing the debate no matter how much your ideas are shot down.
Years ago I argued with my mother-in-law about the ban on implants. For her, jury decisions in tort cases proved the point; all the science went out the window. For that matter, I suspect an FDA ban alone would prove the point for her. And the fact that implants were primarly intended to increase sex appeal by “unnatural means” were a major factor in her bias against implants.
I’ll quibble.
I view things like implants as a moral matter of individual rights, but free markets also have collective value. Free markets have won out, and proven superior to collectivist methods. The Napoleonic Wars, WW1, WW2, the Cold War and other examples come to mind (even the Mexican-American War). While this in theory is a secondary consideration, if in reality the Nazis or the Soviets prevailed, free markets would have become a quaint theory.
Americans tend to embrace pragmatic ideas: the bottom line, victory, success. Our success allows the Canadians to persue silly ideas, safe in the knowledge that Americans will provide military protection (and develope new medical techniques, etc.), while the Canadians look down upon the small minded provential Americans.
Sorry I am returning to this discussion late. Going back, oh about thirty comments to my original discussion with Coelacanth :
I’m going to assume, please correct me if I’m wrong, that you are of European, possibly French or British origin. Having spent some time in said nations, I’m not terribly surprised that you haven’t heard a great deal about Libertarianism or arguments against statism. The dominant mindsets of political leaders in Britain and Europe are so inherently under the sway of statist philosophy that discussing anti-statism or libertarian ideas with some of them would be like discussing sleeve length with a man with no arms. They have no relavant point of comparison and discussion becomes pointless and absurd. Books on libertarian philosophy published in Europe would sell about as well as a book entitled “How To Speak French” would sell in France. Although as regards the Jacobites, for some reason I’ve always liked Bonnie Prince Charlie and his rebels. Ah, the tragic glory of Culloden and the ’45.
Lance addressed this issue more eloquently than I could have.
I confess that I spent a mere few days in Paris more than a decade ago. The highlights of my brief tour were the Arc de Triomphe, Les Invalides (I just had to see the Emperor’s tomb), the Louvre, Montmarte, Notre Dame, and, terribly embarrassingly, Euro Disney. I didn’t really get a chance to explore de toute beauté fleurs de France. Honestly, though, I’m much more attracted to the women of the global south (Africa, South Asia, and South America) than the heroin chic thin women of North America and Europe. The fuller, more feminine, Rubenesque female figure has always held more of an allure for me. As a rule, this look is much more appreciated by Middle Easterners, Africans, Indians, and South Americans than by the global North.
Then I certainly admire your character and compiment you on your confidence and positive self-image. I suspect, however, that most young women (and some older women, as well) do not have the level of maturity and confidence that you do. These are the ones so easily manipulated by the lies fed to them about certain “looks” by the media. I am entirely out of the realm of statistical evidence at this point, but I would suspect that if offered the opportunity to look like Julia Roberts or Angelina Jolie, most American (and possibly British and European women, as well) would jump at the opportunity. While their actual looks and figures may not be ideal (I find both to be unattractive, and I don’t just mean their builds), the way that they are portrayed by the media leads far too many women to believe that they do represent an ideal.
Lol! Jolly good. I have the fortune of having been an athlete in my teen years. Since then, I’ve become an academic. While not incompatible on some theoretical level, in practical terms “athletic academic” is an oxymoron. Oh, except for the jogging nuts in the business college, but we of the humanities don’t associate with riff-raff like that.
As a perfect example of the great divide between the “athletic” and the “academic”, Terry Pratchett’s depiction of the faculty of Unseen University is about the most damnably accurate description of a liberal arts faculty as I’ve ever seen. Fat, bearded professors in funny clothes struggling to determine their actual purpose and duties at the university during the process of consuming seven course meals while generally mucking up the entire educational system and causing great irritation to the students and administrative staff.
Hmmmm,
I am no longer an athlete (blew out my knees) and I decided to end being an academic (though that was the path I was on at the time)but I easily could have been an athletic history professor. I am pretty happy with my body, though if I got any exercise at all I am certain I would be happier. Does that mean I fall short? Should I be labeled because I could look better? The thing is I don’t care much (or I would do something about it) but I am pretty sure I don’t consider that a virtue. I will say that I do miss being able to dunk, or even grab the rim.
Even if hired, you’d have been shunned. An outcast. A “fit” amongst the “fat.” Worse, they’d have made you the delegate from liberal arts to all those faculty senate meetings. No worse punishment can I imagine.
Michael, I love you, you’re hilarious! But there is simply no way forward in our relationship if you cannot bring yourself to agree with me on that first idea. There is no objective reality, hence no facts. There is no reality outside of human perception – and when I say this I mean reality that can be discerned with the senses, there is very much the reality of the ineffable, in my opinion.
That story by Voltaire yields more than the surface argument of ‘ignorance is bliss’, really, that man was a genius. And where could the idea of the Ubermensch of both Nietzsche and Rand come from if not of Providence? To believe that some individuals were born of higher esteem and worth and ability than the muddle about them by pure and utter chance is a little silly, right? They had to come from somewhere. The irony of the innate theism of two self-declared atheists strikes me as funny. It’s hard not to laugh at those authors. They said important things; important, laughable things. They were “rationalists”, and don’t get me started on rationalism. Wow. It’s dumb. And the fact that most rational institutions are founded on the most irrational concepts is more of the funny, contradictory nature of human beings. We are all silly and vain our hapiness and angrer are often totally arbitrary. Look at Chuang Tzu, he laughed at us all the time!
You and me, Michael, we truly are talking about the same things. Honestly, we are. We just approach from different angles. Have you read Robert Pirsig’s masterpiece Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? He outlines the duality of Western thought into two categories, which we both clearly represent, and attempts a reconciliation of them, using the metaphor of bike mechanics. Great story.
I don’t think you’re stupid or ignorant! That would be a tall order for a twenty-one-year-old on, what I presume to be, her superiors. I use obtuse language because of an early penchant for nineteenth-century novels (Omar: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped is when I learned about Culloden and the Bonnie Prince – Alan Breck of Stewarts is my highland outlaw boyfriend!). All that I have aspiration to do is make the humble point that many people, myself being one, do not think the way you do, and hopefully to also express that we have a valid reason for doing so. I began writing on this blog with the maxim of “Keep your friends close…” in mind, but have come to change my opinion. You are not enemies of mine as much as opposing political parties are each other’s enemies.
We are ideological opponents, but we strive for the same goals. Unless, of course, you are striving for the detriment of human society then we really are on different pages. But I doubt that this is your intention. My friends say: “Why do you post on that stupid blog? Leave those right-wing Nazis alone, they eat babies.” I don’t agree with my friends, my friends are morons, but they do express the sentiment that this silly partisan duality incurs. It’s worthless.
But don’t get me wrong. I really, really think that some of your ideas – often more clearly outlined by Virginia Postrel – are detrimental to human life. The only reason I found this blog was a link from the Dynamist, the address of which I found at the end of her article in Atlantic Monthly. I searched it because her article made me vehemently angry. She was praising chain stores in their blank-eyed, brainless, frenzied swarming across the world like locusts. It was amazing. To actually argue in favor of the senseless burning of cultural artifacts and rituals in the name of “convenience” and “lower prices” boggles the mind. I am boggled. When it’s all over, there won’t be a scrap of identifiable rubble remaining – in our land and in our souls. We must look to the future, and the only way to do so is to see the limits. We must limit ourselves, now. We must limit progress, production, freedom, science but not thought.
It’s complicated. I can’t really say it all here. I’m sure Michael will have a field day. Please do, by all means. However, I must bow out. It’s exam season and there are exams in the air. Don’t stop the talk.
PS Omar yer cool. Rock on Rubenesque!
PPS This is a nod to the fact that I am not British or French (I would be more eloquent if I were). This is from your quiet buddy from the north. We know and see all up here north of the 49th, and we have our humble opinions.
Yes, but your worldview only leaves us with opinions. Worthless ones at that, aside from fodder for coffieshop discussions.
The people who believe in reality are the people who make the future. Your philosophy leads to an empty, hopeless place. When you grow up you will adopt a pragmatic philosophy, assuming you in fact learn from life experience.
How ironic. Your view is what’s detrimental to human life. You present the same attitude that would have prevented the Green Revolution (and may prevent the next one, resulting in massive starvation), the attitude that banned DDT, the attitude that would destroy us if generly accepted.
It’s always a thrill to be appreciated by the younger generation.
Oh, good Lord, you’re Canadian?!? That burdens you with the baggage from both the Brits and French. Mon pauvre enfant! How do you bear it? Lol. Just kidding.
Yes, and as I’ve pointed out to my co-bloggers, I don’t curve, so prepare thoroughly. Please come visit us again after the stress of exams is over. And good luck!
Coelacanth:
Well you were right about one thing at least:
I am pretty frickin’ funny.
OK, fine. Two things.
So you have changed your mind about me, huh? Compare to:
I knew it. You suffer from geek-envy.
J/K
oh, so NOW I’m the enfant, eh? You can call me the Illustrious Infanta! Officially the last post ever!
Pingback: A Second Hand Conjecture » Wal-Mart-onomics