Neanderpundit

is ten today. Go spank it!

I tried to leave a comment, and after I typed it and clicked submit, it threw my carefully typed comment away and told me I had to be logged in. Then, I logged in, after having to change my password since I forgot it, and then carefully resubmitted a comment, and it threw that one out too. So I hope you have more luck wishing him happy blogiversdary than I did!

Critical thinking is defined as the ability to question assumptions.

I seem to be relatively unusual in that I almost obsessively question almost all my assumptions almost all the time.

Oh, I don’t often question the assumption that I’m a hominid, or that most people can’t drive worth as damn, or that the mcDonald’s Frappe is the most delectable device that ever nearly brought me to the brink of being a skin-popping insulin junkie. Not to say that I don’t ever, just that I don’t often.

I question the wisdom of what people write. I question the wisdom of what I write. Eventually, I question everything. There are others like me; if you look you will find bloggers who will come right out and say “Damn. X years ago I was completely enamoured of Y, and now i feel like a fool. Sorry for being such an ass” I myself would make that pronouncement, bnut each POST is the very definition of that, here.

Just about the only thing that I have ever questioned that has never given me pause has been my personal faith. No, I’m not talking about beliefs. I question my faith on a very regular basis, and the answer is always the same, which is fine by me.

The conversations with mr Venlet have opened my eyes to a lot of things, one of which is the comfort level of people. People arrive at a comfort equlibrium and are loathe to be unsettled therefrom; I cannot understand but it dawns on me that it is because I incessantly question my assumptions that I arrive at the conclusions that I do.

A powerful lot of people are apparently uncomfortable having their assumptions questioned. They will incessantly revert to the teachings of the Church of somedude, because they read what he wrote somewhere and it made them happy. And there the thinking stopped, never to be replaced by a different idea.

So despite the occasional pissing contests with demonstrably satanic morons like JB, I have learned a couple of valuiable lessons.

1: Use your bullshit detector all the time. Mine is turned to 11 every moment of every day.
2: You can’t fix stupid, especially when it cherrypicks passages from the Bible or some other assumed authority to ‘Prove” their point.
3: Perfectly ordinary, very nice people can be as dumb as a bag of hammers, and utterly disinterested in learning anything.

My litmus test has always been pretty simple. If someone has to lie about something you said to prove their point, they are full of shit. if someone hase to dig around to find a passage in a bible or any other supposed authority to prove the “Truth” of their assertion, they are full of shit. If someone cannot and will not answer a direct question, they are full of shit.

I’m watching “Planet earth” narrated by David Attenborough (I think it may be Sir David, by now) and he briefly shows a musk deer. They look like this.

They grow the fangs for ornament, not defense, or bloodsucking. And they look more like roos than like deer, and are not true cervids. But the first time I saw one I thought, that’s a jackelope. But no, it’s a real damned animal. I’d love to hunt one but they’re killed for their musk glands, from which perfume is made. Me, I can’t imagine wanting to smell like a deer, especially one with fangs, but that’s just me.