Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Declaratives, Interrogatives and Dungballs

Book reviews and grammar lessons. Words mean a lot.

A declarative is an expression of truth. Well, truth in the context that any statement is true unto itself.

An interrogative is what Socrates used as a teaching method, or what GabbyD likes to render. It is a question.

In English Grammar, "declaratives" and "interrogatives" are parts of the "indicative mood".

Now I tell you what. I had 12 years of English in school, compiled 12 college credits in English, endured two-years of Latin and one of German, but I have no idea what a grammatical "mood" is. I know a crabby mood is what my wife gets into before her period. And an exasperated mood is what I get into when driving downtown amidst the chaos that is Filipino road decorum. But a grammatical mood is much like math theory or the philosophy of Hume. It has all the tangibility of a ghost. And it is nine parts as creepy.

But I like declaratives myself. For any assertion is a truth for being an assertion.


"More boys like peanut butter than girls."

That statement is a truth, for it has meaning. Now, it may have nothing to do with facts or reality, for I have no idea what gender bias may exist in a spoonful of peanut butter. Even if the declarative is made up, a lie, it can influence others. So there is a certain truth, a power to influence, in a lie.

Wrap your brain around that, bubba.

Take the declarative assertion "JoeAm is biased against women bloggers". Now again, that statement is a truth, for the person making it (a woman, perhaps) may believe it is so. Or she may just be interested in pushing buttons, who knows. The assertion may also have nothing to do with reality, but it fulfills an objective. Defend oneself at the expense of JoeAm, "for he had the audacity to bring his antagonistic viewpoint and literary nonsense to my blog".

Being JoeAm, I may not like the unseemly declarative, but it has been said, so it is too late to get rid of the peculiar kind of truth it represents. Oh, I could offer up an interrogative response, like "are you nuts, or what?" Or respond with a like-minded declarative, such as "you are an insecure whiner playing the victim card".

But then you end up with a wicked case of bouncing declaratives, each with its own manipulative truth, on a mission to destroy.

When blog commenters lose track of the issue and get personal, you have dung on a blog.

And as you read blog posts and comment threads on Anti-Pinoy or Get Real Post, you find lots of declaratives and a fine smattering of dungballs. The contributors seek to expostulate their wily truths, whether attached to reality or not. They commend like thinkers and seek to destroy opposite thinkers, sometimes with argument, sometimes with dungballs.

What you don't see much of is the open mind. Or the inquiring mind. Or the learning mind.

Everyone has "THE ANSWER" and is not afraid to jam it down other people's throats. Without the slightest interest in understanding how someone else could arrive at a different view.

This undiplomatic approach is from intelligent people, the "best of the best of the best"*. [* From "Men in Black", a movie about alien life forms other than bloggers.]

Never in the history of mankind have so many allegedly smart people pretended to know so much about all subjects, including those live ones they have never met. And never have so many great minds rejected ideas from across the river just because they are from across the river. It is Never Never Land, it is Alice in Wonderland. It is Apocalypse Now. It is surreal. It makes me want to puke.

Humility is found in respect for another person's different place on earth, for his different set of experiences, for his different way of looking at things. It is to be found in the knowledge that "winning", in its most elegant sense, does not mean conquest, but understanding.

There is precious little humility in the Philippines, and the AP and GRP blog sites, which assert their declarative truths that Filipinos are vacuous and inadequate, incompetent, vengeful and wrong-headed . . . represent a living example. They thrive on being closed minded . . . like old-school Filipinos. They are rapturously Ego-bound, dismissing alternative views like water off a duck's behind. They try to intimidate others by name-calling and issuing declarative truths that depart from reality. They are slippery and sly. They whine to win.

They excel at being what they criticize.

They are unremittingly declarative, defining their own truths. Sentence closed with a period.

A dot.

A wee little scratch of ink representing the gross insignificance of what remains. A collective of like-minded self-huggers.

Next up, boys and gerbils, "The Subjunctive Tense", or the strange instance in which a singular noun demands a plural verb. Subtitled "English, the Language Designed by an Insane Lingual Architect".

19 comments:

  1. If I'm not mistaken, you frequently post comments both in AP and GRP. Why are you wasting your time on those blogs? The bloggers there are arrogant, vain and are bullies. I don't care if they are geniuses - intelligence without character is useless. Otherwise, we might as well worship Hitler, Bin Laden, the Unabomber and Ted Bundy.

    Additional info: one of the bloggers there is a known plagiarist and another is notorious for grammatical and spelling errors (despite being a graduate of a well-known and expensive university).

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  2. I no longer visit AP, as the hypocrisy there got so thick that I could not trust anybody about anything. I visit GRP and comment there because Benigno thinks at a more intricate plane than most. I keep thinking he will at some point grasp that his style is a limitation to the truly insightful and constructive writer he could be. But maybe he simply likes the marketing flare of stirring up angst. I confess, the relentless anti-Aquino agenda and negativity is wearing thin.

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  3. "Benigno thinks at a more intricate plane than most"

    i dunno. he banned me for no reason at all, other than, he doesnt want to be challenged. he makes fun of people/generalizes too, which might be defensible, if he had reason to. i asked him; he doesnt. he just wants to.

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  4. Anonymous has a point there, Joe. This article might even trigger the curiosity of others and find out for themselves what the fuzz is all about; worse, even become mindless deferring fans. But seriously Anony, plagiarism?

    Do what you do best, and that is writing good perspectives. Stick to your style. The 'marketing flare' may perhaps prove to be a double-edged sword. Add that to your list of declaratives...

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  5. GabbyD, I'm sorry you got banned. You have a lot to contribute. They yanked my blog site from their blog roll, maybe as a warning shot that if I didn't straighten up and fall into line, I'll get blackballed, too. As if we live for GRP.

    1DC, I think the plagiarism goes back to one incident early on from one of the writers, who now is not quite so blatant about where that writer gets ideas and information. I had not thought about inadvertently plugging the site, but I don't mind much. I retain GRP in my list of blogs that I visit, not wanting to be as vengeful as they are. Perceptive readers will figure them out quickly enough, anyhow. But I shall continue to do what I do here, eh? Thanks.

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  6. "I visit GRP and comment there because Benigno thinks at a more intricate plane than most."
    ---> An intricate thinker will not use ad-hominem attacks and cyberbullying for rebuttals. Benign0 is notorious for both.

    "I keep thinking he will at some point grasp that his style is a limitation to the truly insightful and constructive writer he could be. But maybe he simply likes the marketing flare of stirring up angst. I confess, the relentless anti-Aquino agenda and negativity is wearing thin."
    ---> Why would he change his "Aquino sucks" and "Everyone who does not agree with me sucks" stances if these are what made him (in)famous to begin with? If it's any consolation, though, his "Aquino sucks" stance is already making him look shallow, one-sided and a paid hack. Actually, there are rumors that he is indeed a paid hack.

    "I retain GRP in my list of blogs that I visit, not wanting to be as vengeful as they are."
    ---> People like benign0 do not deserve respect or kindness. Spare your kindness for someone else.

    I don't find benign0 special at all. He's just another heckler with internet access.

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  7. I don't know, Anonymous, like how Joe sees it, I think Ben'O is one impressive 'heckler' to say the least, not that i'm a fan or anything, wish i could speak for Joe though... His playful yet well-meditated insights challenges the very dogma which we advocate for and has this knack for screwing it in his favor. Man, i hate that guy... Come to think of it, Anony you're actually right.

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  8. 1DC, ha, nice circle there.

    Anon, maybe you and I are simply in different places on the timeline of exploration, or have different things that interest us right now. I can see why you wouldn't want to deal with Benigno. I'll continue to extract what I can if it is enlightening to me, personally, as even opposite views or really stinko attitudes can sometimes do.

    Don't make too much of it. It isn't a war.

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  9. Okay okay, I just dumped GRP from my blog roll. Ilda makes my skin crawl. Which is an amusing visual, I know. My values are 180 degrees of separation from hers.

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  10. @1DC:
    "His playful yet well-meditated insights challenges the very dogma which we advocate for and has this knack for screwing it in his favor."
    ---> Maybe before, but not anymore. His usage of mudslinging, ad hominem attacks and cyberbullying for rebuttals is proof of how lame he is now.

    @ Joe:
    "Okay okay, I just dumped GRP from my blog roll. Ilda makes my skin crawl."
    ---> Finally, you dumped GRP. I can't blame you if feel that way for Ilda. She's so "trying hard" (read: a poser). She'll pick an insignificant topic, overanalyze it (just to make herself look intelligent) and then call on her troll-friends to fight over it in the comments thread. Grammar-wise, she's good. But the substance of her articles will make you go "What's new?" or "So what?" She gives good women writers a bad name.

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  11. Well, Benigno and I have had our disagreements from way back when I was contributing posts to FV and he was commenting there and linking to his GRP blog at the same time.

    I don't read his blog...for many reasons...but mainly because I think he's an asshole.

    But he reads my blog once in a while and posts nasty comments. And when I reply to his comments he runs off to his blog and attacks me with a post and links it to me thinking that I will follow him there. But I ignore him.

    Benigno is a maladjusted immigrant who has a chip on his shoulder because he tries so hard to be one of them and they probably accept him as one of their own but he just can't make himself feel at home.

    And so, he spends his free time obsessing about the Philippines instead of putting down roots and focusing on making a life in his adopted country, wherever the hell that is. You are his complete opposites in that sense so you can give him a different perspective. You can hold up a mirror to him. The reply to his Get Real blog is Get a Life!

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  12. MB, Australia I believe. Your main reason seems abundantly sufficient to me.

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  13. "Humility is found in respect for another person's different place on earth, for his different set of experiences, for his different way of looking at things. It is to be found in the knowledge that "winning", in its most elegant sense, does not mean conquest, but understanding." ... i love this.

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  14. the above is as close as Desiderata's "As far as possible, without surrender,
    be on good terms with all persons.
    Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
    and listen to others,
    even to the dull and the ignorant;
    they too have their story. "

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  15. Anonymous, the last time I've read BenO use the words ad hominem was against Trosp... r u but 1 and the same person?

    Joe, i think you should change the name of this site from The Society of Honor to the Society of Anti-BenignOs... Who's in favor?

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  16. Mariano, thanks!

    1DC, ha, but no thanks. I don't want to publicize him. Antagonist Parallelaxe called it the "Society of Horror" once, and I actually rather like that. It gave me a good laugh.

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  17. @ 1DC: Benign0 may not have used the exact term "ad hominem," but it is a known fact in the Pinoy blogosphere that he is not above mudslinging just to put down his opponents.

    And I don't think Joe should change the name of this site to "The Society of Anti-Benign0s." Otherwise, he would be no different from benign0 (ex.: labelling all his critics as "idiots"). It just so happened that the aformentioned blog post was a thinly-veiled criticism of benign0 and ilda. Hence, the comments would naturally be about them.

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  18. Anon,

    I guess the secret it out. Benign0 is NOT interested in ANY FORM of discussion. Accept his world view or you are stupid. Wow, talk about delusions of grandeur. His mother must have told him that he was special every night before tucking him into bed.

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  19. uhm, Anony, for the record, i was just kidding about the renaming... Although, a blog against self-righteous bloggers would not be a bad idea, for the sheer reason that they deserve a dose of their own medicine.

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