The Greatest Good

As the virus spreads...around the globe and through the spaces in between: from noses and sneezes, mouths and coughs, and hands that shake, as they have for a long time, to indicate and show, that I trust you, believe in you, enough to shake your hand, I sit at my dining room table and look out the window at a spring set to settle, a warming of both heart and soul from a winter in which it began. It began. And things changed. Things like the distance between you and me. Things like gatherings of thousands to revel in athletic feats but also gatherings to learn; classrooms to throw ideas around and push the boundaries of what we “know.” Changed. Restrictions on freedom, for a greater good. We all recognized the greater good. Sacrificed immediately, without a second thought. Not one misgiving. The greater good was obvious. Stop the spread. It can’t spread if we’re not together. Part. So part we shall. For the greater good. How far and how long are not questions we shall ask; not when the greater good is at stake. Science will tell us. We’ll (the royal species) study this virus and learn its ways and model it and get inside it and think like it and solve the riddle of it. So we can get back together. We will. And science will be the tool we use. The tool. Faith will not be the tool we use. To stop the spread of the virus. Faith will not get us back together. Faith will not stop it in its tracks. It can’t be contained with faith. Faith is about the unseen and the unknowable but we need to see it and we need to know it.
It spread so fast. In real time. The bubbles on the maps popped and popped, like cola too high at the top of the glass. Exponential. One became two and two became four and four sixteen...because we foolishly spent time together. Even though ill. Even though sick. Even with symptoms, we ventured out and among...people. What kind of virus forces us apart? What kind of plague makes us realize we get together so much? What kind of insidious spell is cast to drive and force us from one another? Cruel and unusual. This is no time to think of solitary confinement. No time at all. This is quarantine for a greater good. This is no time to question if solitary confinement is cruel and unusual. There is a time and a place for everything and now is not the time and this is not the place. We (the royal species) have to stop the spread. When the spread is contained and the virus mitigated and eradicated, as it will be, then we can address concerns like solitary confinement.
Will you address if it is cruel and unusual? Will you use your beloved science to get inside of solitary confinement, learn its ways, model it, think like it, to solve the riddle of solitary confinement? 

Here’s one for ya: what did the prisoner say to the warden after his stint in solitary confinement? 

Trick question. The prisoner had lost his humanity so said nothing. 

Can humanity be regained once lost? Can the virus be eradicated? Truly eradicated or does it just go dormant, like the humanity of a prisoner in solitary? 

There’s talk of people breaking the rules: still gathering, getting together, being societal. There’s talk that virtual isn’t enough; that people needed to touch. That they just needed to be in the same room, to see eyes and be seen with eyes without a screen. There’s talk. They even talked about the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks and how he talked to the volleyball - Wilson. There’s talk that solitary, now more than ever, may be cruel and unusual, worse, ineffective. There’s talk, in some circles, like corrections circles, that solitary makes for better prisoners—easier to control. Then some talked about the ultimate goal of corrections but it got convoluted when others talked about justice. Plato talked about justice. Retribution is talked about in the bible. An eye for an eye. Some talk like retribution and justice are the same. Talk is cheap, they say.
But the virus, made talk really valuable. Made people want to hear from one another, made them remember the lush satisfaction from gabbing, about things like even the weather, even the virus and the status of things. They talked for hours, forgot about the television and the scores and really got in there and got inside conversations and learned so much about people. People they thought they knew, parents, brothers and sisters, became new and novel and strange with so much talk. “You did what?” Cheap talk came to be cherished. The virus worked in mysterious ways. They talked about people they lost...to the virus. They talked about their prognostications and the future of the species. There was so much talk of the economy and capitalism was talked about in a whole new way. But there’s a time and a place for everything and some felt this wasn’t the time nor the place to talk about capitalism. Some said capitalism makes better consumers—easier to control. Some said capitalism will get us out of this. Some said epidemiology will. Some said they’re the same. Some said that was bullshit. They talked through it. They got together. Against the greater good some said. Some said getting together was the greatest good.

Jesus Got Next

“I got next," Jesus said. “Looking to ball. Cuz I’ve been busy with other shit, ever since The Fall. 

I’m hitting the courts, been itching to play; ball is life, don’t care what my dad say.

Rose from the tomb, I can rise out here. This jewish brother has hops, and a whole NOTHER gear.

My handle’s ferocious, Kyrie got nothing on me, so ambidextrous, I too can part the red sea.

My cross-over’s a carnival ride, littered with broken ankles, and I can do this shit wearing mere sandals.

Brah!

Touch in the paint is Olajuwan fine, even after I consecrate the wine.

Brothers hear me, I got neeeeeeext. Squad’s all right all night, and we aim to wreck.

Snoopy at the point, Garfield in the middle, and both these brothers fit as a fiddle.

Marmaduke’s my four and he’s a la Malone, get outta here with that Karl shit, Moses is the one he condones.

Woodstock is my two and he lives from three, better expand, best widen, stretch your D.

I’m roundin’ out the squad and I’m squaring to score, my wrists are fine, not even a little sore.

I’ve traded in my robe, for some Bird-era shorties, still got the hipster beard, but I’ll drink your 40.

Don’t need a shirt cuz my six pack still rippin, my fast break game will remind you a lot of Pippin.

Damn! Some brothers out here hackin’! Jesus don’t play that shit, you better start packin’.

Stow your fouls under your seats or in the overhead bin, hackin on me is a mortal sin.

Damn, what’s the score of this mess? Shit make a layup, after ball there’s some shit I have to bless.

Gettin’ tight on the sidelines, cats laying bricks untold!, this ain’t masonry, put the ball in the whole.

While we’re young! My brothers. Got things to do. Eternal life and carpentry too.

Come to me children but bring a jump shot, top of the elbow, the wing, just pick a spot.

Fed the masses with five loaves and two fishes, these scrubs found the genie but ran outta bball wishes.

Give’ em the milkshake, take whitie to whole, wrap this up so you can smoke yer bowl.

Million dollar move and a ten cent shot, gonna die waiting next, score or get off the pot.

I raised Lazerus but this game is unjust, a rusted bust, torturous for all of us.

Where’s the passion my brothers? To flush, to score, to finish? You don’t have to be anointed but it won’t hurt to eat your spinach.

This cat trying to model his game on Harden, but after that brick it's like the agony in the garden.

My patience is on trial with this scoring arrested, I just wanted to ball but you know I know I’m being tested.

There’s a lot I can save but this game is habilis; y’all scrubs a species different from the rest of us.

(Jesus’ cell phone rings, Ringtone is the opening guitar riff from Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Give It Away Now) 

Shit that’s my dad, I gots to bounce, and I didn’t get whip, slay, or trounce.

But you fools remember, who was on the sidelines in full flex, cause on my second coming, Jesus got next.”

Expert Opinions

What we've got here..., is failure to communicate.

By what, is truth determined, Paul? Agreement? Tacit or explicit? Do all need to agree or is "more likely than not" sufficient?

Paul, what would you do if indeed facts were pliable? What would you do if you knew your beloved immutable scientific facts were littered, littered I scream, with pliability. 

Did you not see my previous post Paul?

Truth is relative Paul and there aint a dang thing you can do about it. You can "sky is falling" claim that Western Civilization's days are numbered but that won't change the cold hard slap of relativism...Paul. 

And he's gonna use gender to weasel into Postmodernism! Hoo boy. "Supplant Empiricism?" We don't need gender to supplant empiricism, empiricism did that all by itself. But let us not forget the atrocities of WWII what with all of that empiricist glory. 

I can hear Thomas Dolby now: She blinded me, WITH SCIENCE! [literally]

Gender, Paul, is an abstraction; never was it universally recognized as immutable scientific fact. Even Plato would throw up in his mouth with that bullshit. But that is irrelevant. 

I see through you Paul. I know what you are after. I can feel you chasing it, peering around corners, tailing with highest of hopes.

You want certainty Paul. You want a fixed point from which to navigate. Did you honestly think you were going to find it with gender?

Ah nuance and bi-valence and shades and spectrum and degrees how they are loathed. But the Pauls '83 of the world don't realize that the immutable is a vacuum of a different sort, but nonetheless a vacuum that nature abhors.

p.s., 

And did we really need to write:

 insidious postmodern mindset that is beguiling the current generation

ENL 501 Rhetorical Theory - Final Paper

Guten Tag mein Freunden,

as 2020 is mere hours away and I have a few moments to blog, blog I shall.

What kept me from blogging for most of the semester was my Rhetorical Theory class.

So why not post my final paper for your limitless enjoyment. Who doesn't desire to read about Rhetorical Theory with 2020 breathing down your neck like a vicious god, no wait, dog, I meant dog.

ENL 501 Final Paper

Shannon Scott


The narrative of online and adult learners in the world of higher education is one
so far in the background as to be considered scenery. It is there nonetheless, and while
the arc of their story is in some ways similar to that of the traditional college student
fresh from high school sitting in an eight a.m. freshman composition, brick and mortar
classroom, in other ways it is a world apart, with adult responsibilities such as a career
in full-swing, children and all they entail, and mortgage payments and health-care costs
to make homework for their Studies In Literature course seem paltry by comparison.
As a professional advisor of primarily online and adult learners, the rhetorical
opportunities are ample, and this course has provided insight into some of the rhetorical
tools I have used by instinct and some that can now be implemented by design. This
paper is a catalogue of rhetorical tools used and those to be implemented and how they
pertain to three rhetorical categories: Audience, Genre, Invention.
AUDIENCE
According to Maurice Charland (1987), Interpellation occurs as soon as an
individual recognizes and acknowledges being addressed; I interpellate online
students/adult learners, the moment I refer to them as college graduates and I do this
intentionally, as a rhetorical tool. A la Charland’s constitutive rhetoric, I place online
students/adult learners in a narrative, especially a transhistorical narrative, when I
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explain to them how their past transfer credits work toward their present program as
future UMASSD College Graduates. I reinforce the narrative of college graduate by
positing a future by looking at bls.gov and possible occupations and the expected
growth of the expected occupation, and most importantly cite statistics (especially to
first generation and educationally disadvantaged students) that they will be entering
elite company, statistically speaking. By contrasting that almost two thirds of adults don’t
possess a bachelor’s degree, their interpellation into, becoming one of, this elite “group”
of “peoples” begins.
Barbara Johnstone (2002) considers it useful to frame how people orient to their
own and others’ roles in terms of “footing”. For professional advising purposes, the
alignment adult students take up to themselves, as returning students in a new mode of
education, and the others present as expressed in the way they manage the production
or reception of an utterance (as a student ), implies a new footing. I will often suggest to
an adult student, that is also a full-time employee, full-time parent, spouse,
son/daughter, take only one or two courses in their first semester back to get their
“ footing ” in this new role as, degree seeking student.
It is hoped that placement into the transhistorical narrative of College Graduate,
in concert with a foundation of rhetorical footing, helps adult learners form an attitude of
completion, because, per Hauser (2002), attitudes are the first stage (incipient) of the
future we anticipate will occur. This is important for the professional advisor, because
retention and completion are the ultimate definitions of success not only for the
university, school or college, and all the way down to the level of department, but also
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for the student seeking a degree, and not just learning for the sake of learning.
Through the navigation of curriculum and policy choices a student might make in
any given semester, I make it a point to affirm my students’ agency when I remind them
that my job is to help them make an informed decision , but that they make the
decisions. By acknowledging and adapting to the fact that my advisees have the need
of autonomy like my own, I am showing what Johnstone (2002) refers to as, linguistic
“politeness”. Often, I can refer back to a successful decision they made when they need
encouragement or some sense of footing about a new choice they must make.
Per Hauser (2002), I attempt to get colleagues to Identify With a concept, through
sharing a vocabulary of motives, which Hauser defines as: a language for coordinating
diverse social functions. The vocabulary I invoke is: “Retention Is Everyone’s Business.”
The diverse social function is helping online students navigate all that is involved with
obtaining their degree (advising, financial aid, teaching, tutoring, billing, registrar, etc.)
The audacity of such an undertaking requires a rallying cry that unites siloed
departments and drives collaboration toward a common goal.
Under the parameters set forth by Barbara Mirel (2002), the creation of an
Advisement Report that is both easy to use and useful, should be a top priority,
especially in light of the modern, elective-heavy, curriculum, and a digital-savvy student
body. If Redish (1993) is correct, online students, like everyone else using a document,
are busy and will use the Advisement Report as a means to an end: ergo the design of
the Advisement Report with Mirel’s parameters in mind, must also be user in context
oriented.
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GENRE
As noted above, retention is everyone’s business in higher education. Retention
encapsulates not only the year to year retention, but also the graduation of students.
Thusly understood, retention is the exigence to which Genre is the Social Action, as
understood in Miller (1984). With retention the prime measure of success in higher
education, it is the exigence that, over time, has formed and shaped the discourse(s)
meant to counter the exigence. Be they promotional brochures citing ample personal
and academic resources, departmental web pages with pictures of caring faculty
peering over the shoulder of students mid-assignment, or university wide emails posting
important events, the genre is shaped by retention.
For the professional academic advisor, especially an advisor with a
predominantly online advisee load, there may be, per Eisenhart and Roscoe (2016), an
emerging “check-in” email genre to address the exigence of retention. Some possible
typifications in the genre, include:
● Timing of the email (not too near to the beginning of the semester so as to be
premature, and not too near to mid-term so as to be ignored due to workload)
● Posting of important deadlines, especially partial refund and course withdrawal
dates. These are especially important in the online realm as courses have
varying running times.
● Inclusion of interactive links to available resources, especially academic tutoring
● Interactive link to schedule an advising appointment
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Because the check-in email serves retention, and because retention is multi-faceted, it
is important to keep in mind Bazerman’s (2003) Techniques of Intertextual
Representation , when drafting. Emails too hyperlink heavy may come off as solicitous
and emails intimating text anything over a welcome paragraph in length may appear
promotional or didactic.
Intertextuality, combined with Campbell and Jamieson’s (1990) idea that
rhetorical form follows rhetorical function , can be used to shape the check-in email
specifically, and also to shape advising discourse in general. A la Fahnestock (1993),
advisors can pursue a genre shift via highlighting and omitting certain aspects within
discourse, to move from a transaction approach/genre, to a more holistic
paradigm/genre that better accommodates the retention exigence. Hence, an
understanding of extratextual - not spelled out in the discourse but supplied by context,
by assumed references the intended audience will make (Fahnestock, 1993)- will be
crucial to accommodate retention.
Lastly in regards to Genre, because Eisenhart and Roscoe (2016) noticed that
monitoring fellow rhetors catalyzed typification, the use of professional associations
such as National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) and the Online Learning
Consortium (OLC) to shape both check-in email and advising practices is intuitive.
Through these associations an advisor is better able to know the boundaries of genre in
relation to professional advising but also, and perhaps more importantly, where the
boundary is stretching and where invention, in the form of topoi, might be found.
Consider that Miller (1984) advised that, due to the intersubjective grounding of genre, it
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remains open-ended, and subject to addition. This intersubjective nature is most
explicitly plumbed through professional association conferences and peer-reviewed
discourse.
INVENTION
Metaphor is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another
(Lakoff, 1980). Argument is war, time is money, and life is a highway that I want to ride
all night long. And while my metaphor for understanding the advisement report in terms
of a map to graduation, is effective, it was probably a matter of luck to at least some
extent. To guide metaphor construction in a more reliable manner, professional advisors
(and educators at any level) can reference John Pollock’s (2015) Shortcut: How
Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas ,
specifically chapter five, How We Can Choose Better Analogies :
● Deconstruct analogies to reveal strengths and weaknesses
● Remember that humans favor coherency over accuracy
● Don’t absent-mindedly accept the framing of an idea - be more proactive and
creative about the analogies we accept, reject, and employ
● Remember that analogies are models and models help translate complex
concepts and diffuse data into discrete and potentially useful ideas
● Imagination is more important than knowledge: how we categorize knowledge
and how well we resist categorization, determines how freely our imagination can
retrieve and apply that knowledge
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Employing these guidelines to didactically use metaphor to advise students and explain
curriculum and policy not only serves the retention exigence but also the professional
mantra that advising is teaching .
Helpful, guiding metaphors and finding and then pushing the boundaries of genre
can help aid communications and discourse in professional advising and Chris
Anderson’s Style As Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction (1987), through
analyzing the works of Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and Joan Didion, is
a reminder that style can be as much a tool as content - not just what is said but how it
is said. In this sense, style can be aligned with the aforementioned extratextuality. This
is not remotely suggesting that professional advisors emulate Tom Wolfe in their
discourse, but it does definitely suggest that professional communications can have
some style; it is not a forced dichotomy, an either/or , as style and practicality can both
be present at the same time, even in professional advising discourse. Style can serve
the argument for professional advising to a lesser extent than it does to provide a sense
of freedom for the professional advisors in their communications, so as not to become
rote, robotic and perfunctory. If Anderson is correct, and the presentations of prose
tacitly argues for values and attempt to persuade the adoption of those values, advisors
will be wise to reference some of Anderson’s Techniques for greater presence in
language:
● Repetition
● Amplification - an aggregation of all the consistent parts and topics of a
subject
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● Union of figures for a common object - piling up of several figures to
describe the same idea of image
● Accumulating sentence structures
● Present tense narration - in the “now”
Via Toulmin’s account, McPeck (Eemeren, et al 1996) contends that: Learning to
think critically requires learning the epistemology of each field. This imperative is
misguided. The main reason it is misguided, is because it is impossible. To attempt to
learn the epistemology of a field is a quintessential Sisyphean task; by the time one got
around to learning the epistemology of one field alone, the epistemology will have
changed. Given his birth date, Toulmin should have been aware of Bertrand Russell’s
Barber Paradox, and also G ö del’s incompleteness theorem - just two examples of
epistemologies rolling back down the hill like Sisyphus’ stone. Epistemologies, and
times, change. From a flat earth to geocentrism, from phrenology to spontaneous
generation, science is replete with enough superseded theories to prove that
epistemology is a process in flow.
Martin Heidegger (1962) investigated Being with a capital B and his methodology
was phenomenology. In studying Being this way, Heidegger realized that the starting
point of his investigation is a particular being in the world. His term for this starting point,
was the very pregnant: Dasein. The english translation: being there. To be, there, in the
world is to have a vantage point such that other vantage points are inaccessible.
Consider the analogy from anatomy that all humans have a blind spot - where the optic
nerve exits the eye. But for Heidegger, it goes beyond mere sensation. Because we are
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thrown into the world - the german word geworfenheit - to a time and place over which
we have no control, our vantage point, our perspective is forever restricted. Certain
knowledge, epistemologies, vantage points, are closed off because we are thrown into a
zeitgeist - spirit of the times - from which we never exit. The title of Sartre’s play is no
accident. Returning to Toulmin & McPeck, how can we possibly be expected to meet
the criteria of critical thinker? What do we do if epistemologies change and some
perspectives are permanently closed off?
For professional advising: the imperative changes. Instead of learning
(supposedly absolute) epistemologies, advisors must learn the konoi and idia (Hauser,
2002) as they relate to advising and advisees.
● Konoi topoi - applied to any subject and provide overall patterns of thought
● Idia - generated specific premises peculiar to a subject
I must learn about my advisees, at least attempt to get their perspective, by learning
their why . As in why are they doing this. The good news is that the imperative is
achievable because the more one learns, the easier it becomes to learn new things.
Like a spider web with a new thread and increased diameter, more knowledge can
connect to foundations previously gained. The more I know, the more connections I can
make, the more topoi, the more available means of persuasion, I can find to increase
advising effectiveness.
The narrative of online and adult learners necessarily invokes advisors -calls
them to action. Interpellation casts a wide net; indicts all the players and all the parts
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that make up the whole of the act. More knowledgeable about rhetoric, specifically
audience, genre, and invention, I am now more capable than ever to assist my advisees
and play a role in their ascension to college graduate, which feeds the ravenous
statistics used to influence said ascension, and those statistics will feed the narrative for
future students ad infinitum.
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Works Cited
Anderson, Chris. Style as Argument: Contemporary American Nonfiction . Southern
Illinois University Press, 1987.
Bazerman, Charles. “Intertextuality: How Texts Rely on Other Texts” What Writing Does
and How It Does It: An Introduction to Analyzing Texts and Textual Practices .
Bazerman, Charles, and Prior, Paul A. London: Erlbaum, 2003.
Campbell, Karlyn, Jamieson, Kathleen. Presidents Creating The Presidency: Deeds
Done In Words . University of Chicago Press. 1990.
Charland, Maurice. Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Quebecois. Quarterly
Journal Of Speech, 73 (1987), 133-150.
Eemeren, Frans H.van, Grootendorst, Rob, and Henkemans, Francisca S, et al.
Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory: A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds
and Contemporary Developments . Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 1996.
Eisenhart, Christopher, Roscoe, Douglas D. (2016) The emergent genre of campaign
e-mail in the 2008 presidential nomination campaign. The Communication
Review, 19:3, 159-191, DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2016.1195201 .
Fahnestock, Jeanne. “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts”
The Literature of Science : Perspectives on Popular Scientific Writing . McRae,
Murdo W. University of Georgia Press. 1993.
Hauser, Gerald A. “Acting with Language” Introduction to Rhetorical Theory . Hauser,
Gerald A. Waveland Press. 2002.
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Hauser, Gerald A. “Finding Ideas” Introduction to Rhetorical Theory . Hauser, Gerald A.
Waveland Press. 2002.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time . Harper Collins, 1962.
Johnstone, Barbara. “Speakers, Hearers, Audiences” Discourse Analysis . Johnstone,
Barbara. Malden: Blackwell, 2002. 111-135.
Lakoff, George, and Johnson, Mark. Metaphors We Live By . University of Chicago
Press, 1980.
Miller, Carolyn R. Genre As Social Action. Quarterly Journal Of Speech, 70 (1984),
151-167.
Mirel, Barbara. “Advancing A Vision Of Usability” Reshaping Technical Communication:
New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century . Ed. Barbara Mirel, Ed.
Rachel Spilka. Mahwah: Routledge, 2002. 218-239.
Pollock, John. Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell
Our Greatest Ideas . Penguin Publishing Group, 2015.
Redish, Janice C. “Understanding Readers” Techniques for Technical Communicators.
Barnum, Carol, and Carliner, Saul. New York: Macmillian, 1993. 1-23.
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Stream of Disney Bar Consciousness

Hotel Bar

           at Disney

                         EXPENSIVE

There is m-o-n-e-y, there are different languages and accents I hear. And yet, there are tattoos and people that have been at the bar for "far" too long - droopy eyed and slow to turn their heads.
And yet, the chandelier hanging from the ceiling is as big as a barn, and the bartenders have vests on and you'll find not a speck of dust, dirt, or grime.
CLEAN.
Part of me wants to rail against Disney, to grab some goer and yell in his/her/cast member face: This is not normal!!...that spending soooooooooooooooo much money to get to a place to spend soooooooooo much money is, AGAIN, not normal.
And yet, my wife loves the place, and my kids, my privileged kids, love the rides and the character breakfasts and lunches, and they light up like a damn xmas tree even though it seems to me, like all of humanity inhabits Epcot and Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom, so much so that you can't go five feet without pausing to let someone move left or right or "excuse me," or "sorry."
Oh lunch for four? $160...pre tip. They got you by the balls.
BUT WHY?
You came here voluntarily.
WHY?
You knew what it would cost. So, who is to say what normal is? Walter Disney? You?
Certainly not me.
Alas, it depends...on where you are, what you are, how you are, when you are, and most importantly,
WHO YOU ARE.

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Real Time with Bill Maher

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Real Time with Bill Maher

https://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher

There are three truths

in the world.

There's your personal truth.

No one's gonna take that

from you.

Jesus is your savior.

Mohammed is your last prophet.

Then, there's like

a political truth.

That's just what becomes true

when it is repeated

enough times. Okay?

But then there's

the objective truth--

There's the objective truth,

which are the methods or tools

of science are invented

-and designed to establish.

-Right.

Those are true, whether or not

you believe in them.

And so, I say, "You can keep

your 6,000-year universe,

but understand that that's

a personal truth that you get

from your personal religion."

If you rise to power and have

control over laws

and legislation

in a pluralistic land,

it is a recipe for disaster

if you're going to take

your personal truths and create

laws that have to then apply

to everyone.

What if you rise to power and feel that if you don’t adhere to your personal truths,

you will burn in hell for eternity?

To which truth can you refer to help determine when a mass of biology is a person? To
which truth can you refer to help determine when the termination of that mass of biology is
murder or reproductive rights.

It is not a Stephen Jay Gould non-overlapping magisteria/Rudyard Kippling nary the two shall
meet SITUATION.

Oh and by the way, there is no objective truth. Truths are relative to culture.

How could a perspective-limited species get at objective truth?

Perhaps this is out starting point for living with each other.

Accepting relativism.

The Royal You - Perfection

The Royal You

We Asked, The Royal You answered

President Trump had a “perfect” phone call with Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

What have you ever done that was perfect?

I got an A in 9th Grade Social Studies, does that count? - Ferris Algonquin, Luber

Really? - Halle Berry, Native Clevelander

Pulled out in time. - Cole Richer, Trouser Stain