Bloggy goodness from FLG

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader gets piles of enjoyment from reading FLG when his dander is up about Plato or Alexander.

Like this post for example.

Enjoy.

Carry on.

5 Comments »
Kevin Kim said:

Very interesting post, but I’d want to ask my fellow Hoya why he has insisted on leaving out the final “-or” in “conqueror.” One such omission is a typo; four omissions — three in rapid succession — is cause for concern! (Or am I just missing the latest Asian-style word-truncation craze? Should I be writing “Emper” for “Emperor” and “Inquisit” for “Inquisitor”?)

On a more serious note, I have to wonder at the diachronic relativism in FLG’s post on Alexander: the notion that we can’t use the standards of our era to judge the actions of those from another era sounds suspiciously like liberal synchronic relativism: we can’t judge other contemporary cultures by the standards of our own.

I’m a fan of consistency: if, for example, you’re free, as an American, to judge other cultures synchronically by American standards (an un-PC stance with which I happen to sympathize), then you should be free to judge other eras diachronically according to the standards of the era in which you live. Such perspectival chauvinism is both natural and inevitable. Alexander himself would probably have approved of such an attitude.



Fear and Loathing in Georgetown said:

Kevin:

My of my posts are both first and last drafts. I read back through it this morning, before reading your comment here, and fixed the conqueror issue.

As for the standards, I probably could’ve been more clear. I’m fine with judging contemporaneous cultures by one’s own standards. I have more qualms about retroactively applying standards developed over the intervening millenia, which have been influenced by all sorts of cultural, religious, economic, and political developments that hadn’t happened yet, and then finding the accomplishments of a man who lived over two thousand years ago entirely unworthy of admiration because he don’t live up those standards in their entirety.



Fear and Loathing in Georgetown said:

“My of my posts are both first and last drafts”

Obviously, many of my comments are both first and last drafts as well.



Kevin Kim said:

I see why my buddy likes your blog so much.

It occurs to me that the issue is complicated by the fact that our current, 21st-century standards of judgment include, in some circles at least, the idea of suspending judgment about other eras and cultures.

As for first-draft posting… I hear you. I’m constantly going back over recent posts and finding typos or bizarre locutions that had no place in the text as intended. Brain farts happen. (And with greater frequency as I get older.) That said, we must keep the GU Ivy League-wannabe tradition alive by minimizing the number of those brain farts!

Rock on.



Kevin Kim said:

But wait — three of the four “conquer/conqueror” gaffes have been corrected! What happened to “[most] of my posts are first and last drafts”?? J’y comprends rien.

Meanwhile, in another part of the world, women are growing nipples on their feet. Evolution is going to leave us men behind. Michael Crichton warned us long ago about the destructive potential of foot-nipples. Are we too late?



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