We navigate through life by avoiding surprises, it a basic survival trait. The instinct to avoid threats or harm still dominates our lives, it is essential to what we are - obviously.
As we should expect, there are numerous examples of how this essential instinct has moulded itself into modern life. We live in a world of avoidance, as we must.
Ideology seeks to avoid the messy unpredictability of life.
Political parties offer voters the opportunity to avoid their democratic responsibilities by passing it all on to a party.
The EU avoids many of the responsibilities of national government, that’s mostly what it is for.
Bureaucracy is a way of avoiding responsibility by diffusing it within the foggy realms of process and procedure.
The climate change narrative seeks to avoid the insoluble problem that the natural world never can be natural.
It's a long list because avoidance is part of life. Sceptics try to avoid irrational avoidance, but it is not the popular approach. Just avoid and have done with the messy responsibilities of analysis, that’s the popular way. As a philosophy of life, avoidance has a very long history. We can’t avoid avoidance.
Political parties offer voters the opportunity to avoid their democratic responsibilities by passing it all on to a party.
The EU avoids many of the responsibilities of national government, that’s mostly what it is for.
Bureaucracy is a way of avoiding responsibility by diffusing it within the foggy realms of process and procedure.
The climate change narrative seeks to avoid the insoluble problem that the natural world never can be natural.
Gender politics even seeks to avoid the facts of human reproduction in what must be one of the most extreme avoidance ideologies ever concocted.
It's a long list because avoidance is part of life. Sceptics try to avoid irrational avoidance, but it is not the popular approach. Just avoid and have done with the messy responsibilities of analysis, that’s the popular way. As a philosophy of life, avoidance has a very long history. We can’t avoid avoidance.
To avoid a blog post which would go on forever, I'll finish with an old quote which points out that many things are well worth avoiding. Sceptics know that too.
Do not make a Business of what is no Business. As some make gossip out of everything, so others business. They always talk big, take everything in earnest, and turn it into a dispute or a secret. Troublesome things must not be taken too seriously if they can be avoided. It is preposterous to take to heart that which you should throw over your shoulders. Much that would be something has become nothing by being left alone, and what was nothing has become of consequence by being made much of. At the outset things can be easily settled, but not afterwards. Often the remedy causes the disease. ’Tis by no means the least of life's rules: to let things alone.
Baltasar Gracian - The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
Do not make a Business of what is no Business. As some make gossip out of everything, so others business. They always talk big, take everything in earnest, and turn it into a dispute or a secret. Troublesome things must not be taken too seriously if they can be avoided. It is preposterous to take to heart that which you should throw over your shoulders. Much that would be something has become nothing by being left alone, and what was nothing has become of consequence by being made much of. At the outset things can be easily settled, but not afterwards. Often the remedy causes the disease. ’Tis by no means the least of life's rules: to let things alone.
Baltasar Gracian - The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
2 comments:
If in doubt say nowt. So there are many topics on which I do not expatiate.
dearieme - that's what I aim to do unless I make it clear that I have limited knowledge.
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