Miscellaneous

I keep seeing articles on how to fight boredom, reading projects and hobbies to pick up during quarantine.  It’s a different world when you don’t have young children.

Never have I felt so powerless, but this is an illusion.  I never had any power over whether classes would be taught this fall, only a sure expectation.  In reality my time teaching my children in the mornings probably has greater direct impact than anything I would have been doing in normal times.

Suppose I am destined to die from this virus.  Given my high blood pressure, it’s hardly inconceivable.  Would it not seem that God has engineered things with an uncanny perfection?  I am given perhaps months of advanced notice, but circumstances conspire to prevent me from undertaking any big final project, as if that’s not what I’m meant to do.  Rather, I am given much more time than usual with my family.

Another thing I keep seeing:  “Now is a time to focus on the two great commandments, especially loving thy neighbor.”  Since all most of us can do for our neighbors (not counting spouse and children) is to stay away from them, perhaps we finally have an excuse to concentrate on that other great commandment, the one nobody talks about much anymore.  A thought for those without young children.

How long to continue lockdowns isn’t really a partisan issue.  I’m not surprised, though, that more conservatives are skeptical about whether the new virus really merits these reactions to it.  Not because any conservative principle is distinctly in play, but because in the Western world “conservatives” and “the Right” are grab-bag terms applied to anyone who hasn’t completely gotten with The Program.  Naturally, such types will be more skeptical of the news media and their experts, so there will be a lot more scatter in their beliefs.  The HBD Right was for a time more alarmist than the mainstream, until the mainstream shifted.  Now I would say that there is a significant group of dissidents who are not so much less worried about the virus than the mainstream as they are more worried than the mainstream is about economic and social fallout.

Arguments in the public sphere are never about who is right, but always about who is the smartest and most compassionate.  If it’s fair to say that conspiracy theorists are ignorant and have disreputable motives, then it’s fair to say that people who go out of their way to make fun of flat-Earthers or to get Holocaust deniers fired from their jobs are bullies.  Anyway, if one grants that people lie to advance political agendas, it is harder to deny the possibility that those with the most power to do this (the media and government in collusion) have at times done so.

As for myself, I never let any of my important beliefs be dependent on 1) the presence or absence of hidden conspiracies, 2) an opinion about the true motivations of any stranger, or 3) how one chooses to translate a word in the Bible.

Female triumphalism:  it’s not cute anymore.  Do you often hear ladies going on about how women are smarter, more compassionate, more responsible,…?  My standard response is “Yeah, well, I can pee standing up.”

Does anyone actually like female warriors in their television shows and movies?  Feminists may abstractly approve their prevalence on TV, but do they actually enjoy action shows at all?  And would those who do like action shows be equally happy with male warriors and the revealingly-dressed women sharing their charms and advancing the plot in some other way?  I for one don’t find the thought that a girl could clobber me at all sexy.  I don’t mind sorceresses and female superheroes–they’ve got magic, after all, so ordinary biology doesn’t apply–and I don’t mind female Starfleet officers, but ordinary women routinely beating up men in hand-to-hand combat is difficult for me to swallow.