{"id":262,"date":"2010-04-09T23:54:57","date_gmt":"2010-04-10T05:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/?p=262"},"modified":"2010-04-09T23:56:24","modified_gmt":"2010-04-10T05:56:24","slug":"freezing-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/2010\/04\/09\/freezing-in-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"Freezing in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw a bumper sticker in a parking lot a few weeks ago. It was black with plain white letters: Let Them Freeze in the Dark<\/em>. I stood there for a moment trying to figure it out. <\/p>\n

Then I noticed the vehicle: a large, black Cadillac Escalade hanging over both sides of the parking space and sticking out in back. And then I understood.<\/p>\n

3 thoughts…<\/p>\n

1. What it meant<\/h3>\n

The critical clue was of course the vehicle. Any bumper sticker on a shiny Escalade can probably be interpreted thru the lens of the Escalade itself. <\/p>\n

I had a trouble interpreting the slogan at first, but upon seeing the behemoth it was attached to, the message became clear.<\/p>\n

I got mine, and I’ll be darned if I’m going to give it up. Anyone that thinks otherwise, is a lame, no-good weasel who clearly doesn’t have theirs yet and wants what I got. But I got it, and they don’t, and if they don’t want to drill-baby-drill, well then they’re just gonna be cold all alone, aren’t they, because clearly I won’t, haven’t you figured that out by now?
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

2. The root of all evil<\/h3>\n

This is greed is good<\/em> gone bad. <\/p>\n

A total lack of interest in anything other than personal gratification and comfort. A total rejection of any notion of the general good, of society’s interest, of shared values, of civility. <\/p>\n

It’s moral relativism at the other end of the spectrum: good is only meaningful relative to the comfort it creates; nothing else matters.<\/p>\n

But this attitude is in my opinion the root of all evil today. You’re not the king of me. Only I matter to me and not how I behave toward you. It’s all a game, anyway.<\/em> <\/p>\n

This is nihilism at it’s worst. Nothing is important, so I get to make up the rules. And you better stand back.<\/em><\/p>\n

Is it any wonder Blankenfineship Lord of Goldman-Sachs, sees his work as the work of god?<\/p>\n

This attitude is evil, plain and simple. (And wasn’t the Escalade black<\/strong>?)<\/p>\n

3. My corner of space-time<\/h3>\n

Now in the long-long run, I suppose it is true that nothing matters. <\/p>\n

Dust to dust, after all. All is vanity. The sun will eventually go super-nova, and all this will, I admit, be moot. This pontificating. The bumper sticker. The Escalade. The champagne. The greed. The birds in the trees. The flowers in spring. Everything will eventually be moot.<\/p>\n

But that is not the frame in which I choose to live my life. <\/p>\n

I choose to act as if the ultimate void will never come. As if the birds and flowers are important. As if suffering caused by financial crises is a bad thing. As if poisoning the rivers is bad. As if the mountains majesties matter. As if happiness is a fundamentally good thing.<\/p>\n

I choose a subset of the universe in which ethics are relevant even though they might not be in the long-long term. And in that little corner of space-time, I choose to reject everything that that guy in the Escalade stands for not only as wrong, but as gut-bustingly disgusting. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, I had a veggie burger that day. He probably had a burger and fries and shake and is going to get what he’s got coming to him, hopefully before I start freezing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw a bumper sticker in a parking lot a few weeks ago. It was black with plain white letters: Let Them Freeze in the Dark. I stood there for a moment trying to figure it out. Then I noticed the vehicle: a large, black Cadillac Escalade hanging over both sides of the parking space […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}