Sunday, November 15, 2015

What I meant


This is what I meant.

Thanks Lesley.

9 comments:

Lesley said...

And thank you for linking Lucy. It had been bothering me all day.

Les said...

Thanks for this. It was bothering me much of the day as well after seeing various FB posts, and it helped to see your comment in your earlier post today, Lucy. Thinking about it a lot today, and had similar thoughts to Lesley's post. Well put.

HKatz said...

I understand better what you were saying in the previous post. The people saying these things on social media are measuring and weighing humanity in a weirdly abstract, unfeeling way. They pretend to quantify things that can't really be quantified. And they pretend they're "above it all," when they so very much aren't; they've got unexamined anger and malice in them, and a need to enjoy feelings of superiority (which to them is a kind of security blanket).

Roderick Robinson said...

Me too.

Lucy said...

Cheers.

Lesley - you're welcome. It was such a beautifully succinct, well worded and articulated rant it deserved attention, and it voiced a sense of growing anger and 'not-rightness' that had been bothering me but I wasn't quite able to put into words properly.

Leslee - glad you followed it, it is a relief and a comfort when someone articulates one's own bothersome feelings so sharply.

HKatz - so glad you picked this up, I felt I wasn't explaining things well. Your response is similarly well articulated.It is a kind of disingenuous, perverse superiority.

Robbie - thanks, glad yous saw it.

I don't actually do facebook myself, but had come across much the same sort of line in other forums and comment threads, on one occasion a thing along the lines of 'why pray for Paris, why not for XYZ where people are suffering even more' framed in a kind of cartouche in pretty writing in pseudo-poem form, clearly a copy-and-paste thing, which only reinforced the odious smug sanctimoniousness of it.

Nimble said...

Thinking good thoughts in your direction.

Catalyst said...

Thanks for linking, Lucy.

Lesley said...

I'm discovering that many people feel the same way: https://www.the-pool.com/news-views/opinion/2015/46/sali-hughes-on-the-paris-attacks

Lucy said...

Thanks for that Lesley, it's a really good article, her arguments and analogies are spot on, but it's touching and funny too, I liked her memories of France and what it meant to her. That Indie 'think piece' headline about 'corporate white supremacy' is appalling.

I'm afraid I do think also that there's subtextual degree of begrudging of sympathy for France in the Anglo world in general, though I probably wouldn't stick my neck out and say it other than in a comments thread on my own blog, not least because it's falling into the same trap of bitterness and division, and if so it's only one element.