z

Young Writers Society



Society Only By Name- Part Five: General Thoughts

by KingQueenKnave


59) Society cannot exist without the straining backs of those who wish to see its demise. Perhaps Marxists in that respect are correct, but their solutions are not entirely possible.

60) Laissez-faire work on matters of insignificance, such as one's sexuality. It does not justify sloth in the face of suffering.

61) Britain is an inspiring hub of darlings never recognized- according to British politicians, that is. They love to be different.

62) America has issues with understanding that having power makes the wasteland of the destroyed Native tribes more hollow.

63) Antisemitism is a dormant volcano. It often rumbles at the occurrence of a casual comment on finances or social status, or a non-existent world order.

64) What of literature? It is an intense but relaxing sensation. Its commentators, however, are anything but sensational- they are the pop-culturalists of the aristocratic pretense.

65) Science is valuable, but is prone to ulterior motives from warlords. Religion is nebulous, but is immune from all criticism and reasoning to dispute its dogma. This is true about the society only by name across the board.

66) Friedrich Nietzsche was right on some issues. He was wrong on others. He was human, all too human. Some of us are all inhuman by contrast. Some of us know this and confirm it in the mirror, but deny it in public. Others just blindly deny it no matter where they are. Who do we trust? Certainly not ourselves.

67) That one beautiful phrase of Franz Kafka's, that "a cage went in search for a bird", can be applied at certain times. In particular, when the self-anointed knight runs out of damsels and monsters. In particular, when there are no more witches to hunt, when there are no more acts of cruelty to justify for some greater good.

68) Democracy in the pseudo-society consists of choosing between rat poison and spider venom. The lack of an antidote is disconcerting.

69) Debating what is or isn't pretentious is pretentious in itself.

70) Religion has the right to exist, but should not exist as an omnipresent spectre, nor can it become a superpower; a spiritual colonial power. Furthermore, religions have to right to have places of worship, but never compulsory attendance through guilt. That would be difficult, for religion would cease to exist. Religion cannot exist without unexplained guilt.

71) We are bitter when we do not get what we want. We are bitter when we only get what we need. With this in mind, can we conclude that greed precedes charity?

72) Why do we still expect to bow down to idols after their deaths? They may have led lives of unnecessary accolade.

73) I would rather be despised than adored because I prefer truth over hyperbole.

74) Do we even have suitable opinions for the pseudo-society? Should we blindly accept or blindly reject it? Neither. We should survive long enough to build our own buildings to replace the ones tumbling down.

75) Death is feared by those who are alive, not by those who have died. Somehow we forget that when we wishfully think that they are in a better place. They aren't; but nor are they in a worse place. They are free.

76) The darker side of the human spirit cannot be ascertained. Those who go searching in the deep webs of humanity never come back to inform their audience of their findings- they become the finding.

77) We place too much faith in those who are unspeakably horrible. In that instance, forgiveness cannot be a viable option.

78) Christ may have died for our sins, but sin cannot always be evil. We have sinned to produce ourselves and all we love. 

79) Politics is intellectual assassination. The proceedings are akin to observing lemmings competing to see who drowns first.

80) "Find it in your heart to love God"? You don't even love yourself!

81) We've had a hard time of adjusting to neutrality in the society only by name, but it doesn't mean objectivity. It means recognition of bias and working to improve all we can as opposed to everything.

82) The solutions others have conjured up for the pseudo-society only seek to replace it with one built on misandry, misogyny, self-hatred, casual racism and dogmatic horror. It is with some reluctance to say that I'd rather live among the darlings and the dregs than the new aged Social Justice Warriors.

83) "Oh, you are so vague on your own solutions to the problem." Patience, reader. My vision will come in the latter part of this study.

84) I find existence to be a black canvas to develop ideas from others and either defend them or adapt them to our individual circumstances. This gives the moral crusaders a migraine.

Note: You are not logged in, but you can still leave a comment or review. Before it shows up, a moderator will need to approve your comment (this is only a safeguard against spambots). Leave your email if you would like to be notified when your message is approved.







Is this a review?


  

Comments


User avatar
1272 Reviews

Points: 89625
Reviews: 1272

Donate
Sun Mar 27, 2016 10:10 pm
Rosendorn wrote a review...



Hello.

Haven't read previous parts. Just going off what I see here.

I'm not quite sure what to call this, and I suppose that's why it's in other. Regardless of what it is, this is lacking a certain requirement for all written word: reasons to care.

You do not invoke rhetoric to persuade, to the point it is difficult if not impossible to spot ethos, logos, or pathos. I do not see why you are credible, why you are logical, or why you are saying anything emotionally resonating.

On the ethos side, who are you to say this? If you want people to listen to you, then you have to establish a certain amount of credibility. I'm not saying you need to have a degree in this or even lived experience, but you have to establish why you are making these statements and why we should listen to these from you.

On the logos side, do your statements make sense? Sure, to a certain degree, but it's not enough. I'm not saying your claims are false, I'm saying your claims do not have proof. I only say your activism-related claims make sense because I am decently educated in the topics you are discussing via either lived experience or listening to the groups being discussed, but somebody who has no education in this topic will be lost. In order to have a strong argument, you need a certain amount of how you got to the conclusion in your piece.

On the pathos side, do you have a human element? Hardly. You speak exclusively about broad groups without any scrap of the human aspects of it. The thing about society is it's made by people, and while society is indeed separate from people, it is tied to the hip to individuals. Regardless, humans are moved by stories and emotions, deep down, so the utter lack of them here makes your piece something that gets filed under "this isn't important."

Overall, I would focus more on logos and pathos in future pieces, because those two are some of the easiest to employ if you want your arguments acted upon.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

~Rosey




User avatar
1085 Reviews

Points: 90000
Reviews: 1085

Donate
Sun Mar 06, 2016 9:01 am
Mea wrote a review...



Okay, so this part is a bit of an odd beast. It's very different from the rest, jumping around almost randomly. It also kind of throws ideas out there without explaining them as much as they could be.

And I'm in two minds about it. I like #79 -84 (although I don't see the relevance of 80) because they are different from each other but still coherent and they effectively set up your next several parts. (I also like #68 because it's worded cleverly.)

The first part of this, I'm not so sure on. I feel like, since this part comes right in the middle, after you've introduced a lot of the problems with the psuedo-society but haven't offered any solutions yet, that this deadens the momentum and stops the flow. However, I also feel that, by and large, what you have written here is a necessary part of the work, but it wouldn't work as a preface or an epilogue.

The other odd thing about this is that for most of the work, you are very vague about how all this applies to the real word. You don't tend to give concrete examples of darlings and dregs - you don't name names, and you rarely reference any specific real-world society. Then here, everything changes, and we are presented with all these opinions about different philosophers, ideologies, and countries.

Now, these do come in to play later on, and I feel like this part is supposed to be a transition between your beginning parts and your later parts, where you talk about more specific things like feminism. However, this doesn't work as well as it could, because parts 6 and 7 read just like parts 1-4 did. Personally, I think this little interlude would do better after part 7, because most of what it sets up is explored in parts 8-10.

On to the more specific things.

I'd like more explanation of 59, but I realize I would probably understand it better if I had more than a basic understanding of Marx's philosophies.

Laissez-faire work on matters of insignificance, such as one's sexuality.

This sentence just didn't make sense to me. The first thing people think of when they hear Laissez-faire is capitalism, so if you meant something else, or something more nuanced, you might have to explain. Your snappy lines are great, but some of them need further expansion.

Religion cannot exist without unexplained guilt.

I thoroughly disagree with this. Sustained guilt is not a desirable part in my religion - you sin, you feel bad for a time, you repent sincerely, and you move on. I think I understand where you're coming from - things like feeling guilty if you don't attend church one week, or vaguely feeling that you aren't "good enough," or scare tactics of "you'll go to hell!" But those are usually problems with either the social atmosphere of the religion or with your own self-doubt. I would argue that religion can, does, and should exist without "unexplained" guilt.

Christ may have died for our sins, but sin cannot always be evil. We have sinned to produce ourselves and all we love.

This bothered me. I'll admit to not being precisely sure what sin you're referring to here, but regardless, this isn't really the case. If you're referring to sex, sex isn't a sin in and of itself, only when it's used incorrectly. And just because many of the people we love may have been born/conceived out of wedlock, that doesn't mean it wasn't still a sin. Besides, sin is often committed through ignorance, moments of weakness, etc., not someone actually being evil. (I realize I'm doing a really poor job of explaining myself, but this statement as a whole just seems incongruous.) I'm also not exactly sure why you put this in here, as it doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the piece.

Anyway, that's all for this part.





cron
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
— Abraham Lincoln