Tuesday,
August 18, 2009 at 10:46pm
"You
can't prove he didn't
do it!"
This nugget of "reasoning" is so frequently used that despite what I'm sure I've said about it before, I'm going to engage in another diatribe about how ridiculous and pointless it is. The initial obvious thing to state is, you can say this about anything. You can't prove that an invisible Santa Claus army doesn't roam the skies Christmas Eve, delivering presents that manifest in your house, along with the magic dust making your parents believe they actually bought them. You can't prove we're not the product of an advanced alien simulation machine. You can't prove a strictly orange juice diet doesn't cause cancer in cats. None of those sentences amount to anything for the same reason, and it's not because they are hard to conceive. Usually when this is employed in the media it's met with the opposition just kind of staring at the person who said it. It's depicted as a "gotcha!" moment, when it should be ridiculed for how badly it makes the defendant look.
This is employed when they are on the defensive, when they have nothing left to say, and when they try to equate their exposed lack of a reasonable position with yours. It's like two monkeys who are in a fight, one slinging crap all over the other (the "good" arguments degrading and making the other monkey look and smell bad). The other monkey subsequently flings some the shit collecting on it's face back and proclaims, "HA! Now you look like me too!" Poor, poor monkey. But people are quick to fling shit as well. They comfortably do the same thing and everyone in the room stands in awed silence at the bastard's "ingenious maneuver." Why? People are dumber than monkeys. It's not even dignified enough to be labeled as an excuse. An excuse implies that there was even a reason, albeit usually a bad one, that they did something. No, this is employed purely out of desperation and panic. It's a shift of blame to the guiltless party.
At the very least it's annoying, and at it's most, it's a proclamation to the damming of reasoning and responsibility of those with the burden of proof. But let's switch gears a little. How and why would we get to the point of endorsing this behavior, and why are we so quick to ignore or not recognize when it's imposed? Who is teaching us to be this way?
Talk about bad parenting. This applies to more than one's inability to formulate an argument. I recently got done working for the band at my high school. Why do the instructors say "in a few years the band may be good enough to reach this or that level"? The theory I'd suggest is the area and upbringing of the kids. If you come from a household that didn't aspire to anything more than a middle class household in an increasingly degrading area, then you get to a sport that requires aggression, passion, and competence, the skills have to be beaten into you because they aren't already there. More than half of the band is in 8th grade or a freshman and they have half the amount of kids that were there when I was marching. I'm certainly not outright bashing the kids or anything so don't mistake my meaning, I'm just trying to wrap my head around how the instructors feel compelled to double speak, and the kids come across as lazy and unable, when clearly neither need nor should be the case.
And given that the kids aren't just lazy and unable, it's a sick irony to hear "if you guys just do this, we believe you'll get to semi-finals, finals, etc." They know your lying, you know your lying, but somehow both of you still believe it! Why? It's the practical reality of seeing and being there everyday fighting against the potential you know you can live up to, that's never been reinforced or manifested in clear and supportive ways. There are many individuals on the field who could march corps, and some kids who barely get their feet in time a quarter of the time. Everyone is reduced to the level of their weakest participant. All the effort is wasted if you can't persuade them they are doing it for themselves. Then in that instant you bring up how important the scores are. Conflicting?
So is there a way to tie together bad reasoning, bad marching, and bad parenting? It's all a lack of personal responsibility. As a parent, you let your flaws bleed over, literally, into your kids. As young adults you have little recourse or inclination to identify and fix those flaws because closed minds don't perceive any consequence. Then as a potential decision maker and example setter you're trust into a world of which the majority you don't agree with, and react in the same way an unmotivated, small-minded, and scared child would.
This nugget of "reasoning" is so frequently used that despite what I'm sure I've said about it before, I'm going to engage in another diatribe about how ridiculous and pointless it is. The initial obvious thing to state is, you can say this about anything. You can't prove that an invisible Santa Claus army doesn't roam the skies Christmas Eve, delivering presents that manifest in your house, along with the magic dust making your parents believe they actually bought them. You can't prove we're not the product of an advanced alien simulation machine. You can't prove a strictly orange juice diet doesn't cause cancer in cats. None of those sentences amount to anything for the same reason, and it's not because they are hard to conceive. Usually when this is employed in the media it's met with the opposition just kind of staring at the person who said it. It's depicted as a "gotcha!" moment, when it should be ridiculed for how badly it makes the defendant look.
This is employed when they are on the defensive, when they have nothing left to say, and when they try to equate their exposed lack of a reasonable position with yours. It's like two monkeys who are in a fight, one slinging crap all over the other (the "good" arguments degrading and making the other monkey look and smell bad). The other monkey subsequently flings some the shit collecting on it's face back and proclaims, "HA! Now you look like me too!" Poor, poor monkey. But people are quick to fling shit as well. They comfortably do the same thing and everyone in the room stands in awed silence at the bastard's "ingenious maneuver." Why? People are dumber than monkeys. It's not even dignified enough to be labeled as an excuse. An excuse implies that there was even a reason, albeit usually a bad one, that they did something. No, this is employed purely out of desperation and panic. It's a shift of blame to the guiltless party.
At the very least it's annoying, and at it's most, it's a proclamation to the damming of reasoning and responsibility of those with the burden of proof. But let's switch gears a little. How and why would we get to the point of endorsing this behavior, and why are we so quick to ignore or not recognize when it's imposed? Who is teaching us to be this way?
Talk about bad parenting. This applies to more than one's inability to formulate an argument. I recently got done working for the band at my high school. Why do the instructors say "in a few years the band may be good enough to reach this or that level"? The theory I'd suggest is the area and upbringing of the kids. If you come from a household that didn't aspire to anything more than a middle class household in an increasingly degrading area, then you get to a sport that requires aggression, passion, and competence, the skills have to be beaten into you because they aren't already there. More than half of the band is in 8th grade or a freshman and they have half the amount of kids that were there when I was marching. I'm certainly not outright bashing the kids or anything so don't mistake my meaning, I'm just trying to wrap my head around how the instructors feel compelled to double speak, and the kids come across as lazy and unable, when clearly neither need nor should be the case.
And given that the kids aren't just lazy and unable, it's a sick irony to hear "if you guys just do this, we believe you'll get to semi-finals, finals, etc." They know your lying, you know your lying, but somehow both of you still believe it! Why? It's the practical reality of seeing and being there everyday fighting against the potential you know you can live up to, that's never been reinforced or manifested in clear and supportive ways. There are many individuals on the field who could march corps, and some kids who barely get their feet in time a quarter of the time. Everyone is reduced to the level of their weakest participant. All the effort is wasted if you can't persuade them they are doing it for themselves. Then in that instant you bring up how important the scores are. Conflicting?
So is there a way to tie together bad reasoning, bad marching, and bad parenting? It's all a lack of personal responsibility. As a parent, you let your flaws bleed over, literally, into your kids. As young adults you have little recourse or inclination to identify and fix those flaws because closed minds don't perceive any consequence. Then as a potential decision maker and example setter you're trust into a world of which the majority you don't agree with, and react in the same way an unmotivated, small-minded, and scared child would.
