The reptiles are in spectacular form today - persecuting Safe Schools is top of the list, persecuting renewables is all the rage, and the Caterists are on the prowl ready to explain yet again how it's coal, coal, coal, oi, oi, oi - but the pond thought it best to start with a philosophical statement to put all the luvvies and the softies in their proper place ...
Ollie is an import, but he makes a fine and important stand ...
Now the pond has just one problem with Ollie's piece.
Oh there might be some wimps and loons who urge him to walk a mile in someone else's shoes and show a little generosity
And there might be some who think his call is merely pragmatic ...
No, the problem comes with that shortening of Aristotle ... a more extended version from the apparent source of the quote, a translation by Karrass 1974, runs ...
It turns out that empathy is just a by-product of emotion ... and possibly the worst emotion of all is love.
There's simply too much love in the world. It's sickening ...and enraging. All these Xians roaming around jibber jabbering about love, and frankly it fills the pond with fear ...and next thing the pond knows, it's rushing towards animals or perhaps to a passing reptile scribbling furiously in The Times ...
Indeed, indeed. This is the reason why the pond reads the reptiles.
Enough of this talk of love or other useless emotions.
What we need is toughness. But what a pity that Moody failed the Arendt test, and failed to talk of the need to remove love ...
Empathy is such an easy, half-baked substitute., and as a result, the pond must accuse Moody of a lack of toughness.
What a pathetic wimp he is, what a quivering blob of jelly.
Arendt knew how to do it as here ...
Yes, damn you wretched love ...
Of course Arendt herself at one point became emotionally involved with Martin Heidegger, lickspittle fellow traveller with fascism, and the pair wrote a lot of nonsense to each other, showing the dangers of love and the way it can get in the road of any kind of coherent sentence.
It can be found at some length here ... but this example of Heidegger doing a Conan, worthy of a young Adolf in its splendid ability to seek isolation in Berghof in the Obersalzberf of the Bavarian Alps will have to suffice ... (and remember typos are just another form of despicable human emotion and quite possibly the work of love)
Now there are any number of versions of this call with regard to concrete situations...
We must in short, become completely inhuman to become fully human, or, if you will, become fully reptilian to understand the reptiles ...
Sometimes emotion, love, empathy, all those vile human emotions will attempt to creep back in, but sometimes this can be useful, provided it can be used simply to get tougher.
The pond was strangely moved, almost to tears, for example, by the latest antipodean example from the Moody playback of a politician doing a Conan ... as expertly summarised by Rowe ... with more Rowe here ...
Looking at that charming picture of young Oliver reminds me of how when we are too young and life-ignorant to understand anything worth knowing, we all wanted to be tough grownups like Dad. Well at least we males did, I don't know what Hannah's rationalisation was, but her taking up with Heidegger might provide a clue.
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