People sometimes say that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but Sordel heard a longer version of that which makes rather more sense. "Which is better: a stopped clock or a clock that is slow by five minutes?" The paradoxical answer, the clearly incorrect answer, is that the better clock is the one that is stopped because it is right twice a day.
People going around celebrating the purported accuracy of a stopped clock are missing the point.
Doubtless (in some sense or another, one day) the world will end, and there's a chance (since there are many churches) that a small band of devoted religious followers will on that day be celebrating the arrival of "The Rapture" or somesuch. Should a Pythonesque hand descend on that day from a fluffy cloud and gather up God's True Believers, they might feel entirely vindicated.
The correct division is not, however, between those who happened to be right and those who happened to be wrong, and in this those atheists delighted at the conspicuous humiliation this weekend of Family Radio Worldwide are just as mistaken as the ardent followers of Harold Camping.
The correct division is between those who are sort of muddling through but inaccurate and those who, while accurate, are totally broken.
There is no rational eschatology under which the people who are saved are those who happen to adhere to a religion in which salvation is accorded to those either a) born into the right race/religion or b) able to calculate a correct date based on conjectural dates of events in the Old Testament.
If God's hand is going to descend from a fluffy cloud and gather up Jews, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or Harold Camping, then the god running the system really hasn't given the rest of us much to go on.
It's true that God might not play into human ideas of fairness, but being saved by an unfair god is not really much different from being damned by it. Salvation should not be like buying a lottery ticket.
Broadly speaking: if a religion only functions accurately at one moment of history, you'd be better off with one that is somewhat helpful whatever the day, date and time.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Those Nine Preferences In Full
Under the Alternative Vote system, voters would get (would have got) the ability to register up to nine voting preferences, which is all very well and good, but I got to the Voting Station this morning and made a disturbing discovery.
I don't even have a first preference.
While certainly I have been an undecided voter in earlier elections, this is the first time that I have looked at the voting form without having given any real thought for which party I would like to support with the mickle might of my vote.
Moreover, this was not just a "Lib Dems or Labour" thing. Even David Cameron - a man who probably used to wear a morning suit to buy his morning newspaper but now makes much show of not being able to put his hands on one for a Royal Wedding - was in with a chance of the Sordellian imprimatur.
Nick Clegg, aka the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, could well have swung it for the Lib Dems. Ediband The Unknown could have taken it for Labour. It was certainly not unthinkable that the Greens would stand secure beneath the impregnable aegis of my cross.
The problem, though, was not a lack of interest, but a genuine lack of what for want of a better word one must call an Alternative. If it's true that the Eskimos have an unusually large number of words for snow (and according to Wikipedia it isn't) then we had better start working on a larger vocabulary for the otherwise indistinguishable shades of political platform upon which we are invited to lavish our electoral enthusiasm.
It's a sad day for something-or-other when one has a more decided preference on what socks to wear than one does for which party should govern, but that seems to be my predicament.
(Admittedly, Sordel is unusually attached to socks, like a recently-liberated house elf.)
Still, it's comforting to think that despite my near-complete aporia, my vote will have been registered with the same vanishing significance as someone who actually cares.
I don't even have a first preference.
While certainly I have been an undecided voter in earlier elections, this is the first time that I have looked at the voting form without having given any real thought for which party I would like to support with the mickle might of my vote.
Moreover, this was not just a "Lib Dems or Labour" thing. Even David Cameron - a man who probably used to wear a morning suit to buy his morning newspaper but now makes much show of not being able to put his hands on one for a Royal Wedding - was in with a chance of the Sordellian imprimatur.
Nick Clegg, aka the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, could well have swung it for the Lib Dems. Ediband The Unknown could have taken it for Labour. It was certainly not unthinkable that the Greens would stand secure beneath the impregnable aegis of my cross.
The problem, though, was not a lack of interest, but a genuine lack of what for want of a better word one must call an Alternative. If it's true that the Eskimos have an unusually large number of words for snow (and according to Wikipedia it isn't) then we had better start working on a larger vocabulary for the otherwise indistinguishable shades of political platform upon which we are invited to lavish our electoral enthusiasm.
It's a sad day for something-or-other when one has a more decided preference on what socks to wear than one does for which party should govern, but that seems to be my predicament.
(Admittedly, Sordel is unusually attached to socks, like a recently-liberated house elf.)
Still, it's comforting to think that despite my near-complete aporia, my vote will have been registered with the same vanishing significance as someone who actually cares.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Abbottabad-a-Bing
At a time when the moral compass for international affairs seems to be having significant difficulties pointing steadily in any direction, let alone North, Sordel would like to take a moment (with all due deference to Buffy) to suggest a new doctrine:
"What would Michael Corleone do?"
Much as the Obama administration chooses to say that justice was served on Osama Bin Laden by U.S. Special Forces, our ideas of what is just, proper and "right" don't really embrace murder.
Sordel is not being squeamish or scrupulous though. We all love it when bad things happen to worse people, and this is what makes Corleone justice so compelling. Helicopters, assassins dropping through the darkness ... sure, it's a bit "Part Three", but Michael would assent, just as long as he could brood over a Catholic rite while it was taking place.
Pilotless drones firing rockets into a meeting of the Five Families? If the shadows are suggestive of chiaroscuro and a snatch of Italian opera is played, why not?
Risible Whack-a-Mole while trying to kill Qaddafi in the ruins of Tripoli? The Don demurs.
Michael Corleone's guiding principle was not morality, but effectiveness, and it wouldn't be hard to be on the side of democratic governments were they more effective. Protecting civilians, for example, is such a laudable aspiration, but there comes a point when an incompetently attempted good deed is even less welcome than a boldly effected crime.
Unfortunately, there is an admitted flaw with this new guiding light.
The event most typical of the Corleone approach is not the raid on Osama Bin Laden that took place in 2011, but the attack on the World Trade Center that took place in 2001. Ultimately, an ethical system that is enamoured of effectiveness to the exclusion of all other attributes owes its existence to the man who has now become its latest and most prominent victim.
Justice has been served all right, but only the poetic variety.
"What would Michael Corleone do?"
Much as the Obama administration chooses to say that justice was served on Osama Bin Laden by U.S. Special Forces, our ideas of what is just, proper and "right" don't really embrace murder.
Sordel is not being squeamish or scrupulous though. We all love it when bad things happen to worse people, and this is what makes Corleone justice so compelling. Helicopters, assassins dropping through the darkness ... sure, it's a bit "Part Three", but Michael would assent, just as long as he could brood over a Catholic rite while it was taking place.
Pilotless drones firing rockets into a meeting of the Five Families? If the shadows are suggestive of chiaroscuro and a snatch of Italian opera is played, why not?
Risible Whack-a-Mole while trying to kill Qaddafi in the ruins of Tripoli? The Don demurs.
Michael Corleone's guiding principle was not morality, but effectiveness, and it wouldn't be hard to be on the side of democratic governments were they more effective. Protecting civilians, for example, is such a laudable aspiration, but there comes a point when an incompetently attempted good deed is even less welcome than a boldly effected crime.
Unfortunately, there is an admitted flaw with this new guiding light.
The event most typical of the Corleone approach is not the raid on Osama Bin Laden that took place in 2011, but the attack on the World Trade Center that took place in 2001. Ultimately, an ethical system that is enamoured of effectiveness to the exclusion of all other attributes owes its existence to the man who has now become its latest and most prominent victim.
Justice has been served all right, but only the poetic variety.
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