[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Fine, but consider less later–that is, medical diagnoses of Harriet Tubman in the middle of a post, or lectures about Barrett’s surname, or irrelevant tangents about 19th century naval law, tend to inspire the pagedown button. Brevity is the soul of wit and all.
[/QUOTE]
Sometimes illustration and exemplification helps or can at least, to those with attention spans that would not be challenged by anything deeper than a fortune cookie, be of interest. For example, the phrase “brevity is the soul of wit” is spoken by Pollonius, a conniver and charlatan and braggadocious character giving hypocritical and specious advice to his son. It comes from Hamlet, the longest play of William Shakespeare, an author known for lengthy plays. The title character of which speaks 1,438 lines of dialogue, which more than 400 years after its first performance is still the most lines of any character in any English language play, and the play lasts 4+ hours when performed in its entirety (which it never is). Does it sound as if Shakespeare was truly arguing in favor of brevity?
Once upon a time there was a prince whose father was murdered. The father’s ghost told the prince "It was my brother, your uncle, who now sleeps with my wife, your mother, and due to the laws of agnatic primogeniture reigns in my place. The prince feigned madness to seek revenge, going mad in the process and leaving a trail of bodies that ultimately included not only the uncle he wanted dead but his mother, his girlfriend, himself, and the bodies of a few schemers as well as several innocent [if not necessarily likable] people.
That’s the same play in under 100 words and it even mentions how Claudius became king. That is brevity. I daresay Shakespeare’s version will be remembered longer.
In any case people act as if “brevity is the sole of wit” is some sort of law. Brevity makes for great one liners and that’s true. It also makes for religious axia and or political beliefs for the intellectually lazy or the congenitally stupid, and much to the point I would argue that the need for quick and easy and concise and rigid answers has caused more damage and suffering in history than slavery, as evidenced by among many other facts brevity of answer was used to justify slavery. (“It’s in the Bible, that’s enough for me.”)
If you are incapable of absorbing more than blip sized information, and I am not saying you are, then I think it goes far to explain the simplicity and logical inconsistencies of your views. Slavery was an extraordinarily complex issue that had no easy answers and that was not, no racial pun intended, a black and white matter (in fact racially it wasn’t either- there were white, Hispanic, American Indian and other colors of slaves in U.S. history).
Slavery no longer legally exists in the U.S. but abortion does. (It existed then as well and was rarely illegal but also rarely practiced before the late 19th century since it so often resulted in the death of the mother.) Anti-abortion activists truly believe that abortion is murder. While I do not share this view, it is easy to understand: a zygote left undisturbed will become a fetus which in due time if born will become a baby, thus it is not hard to see how killing a zygote can be extrapolated into killing a baby. I see enough logical merit to this that while I believe in a woman’s right to choose, I am morally opposed to abortion as birth control in cases where a woman conceived a presumably healthy fetus through carelessness BUT I would never support any initiative to illegalize it.
However, some of their more extreme members find it morally justifiable to murder abortionists. Since they are acting on their views should they be left unprosecuted because abortion is offensive to many people and innocent people (i.e. the unborn, who by definition have harmed nobody) are being killed?
And if you believe they should be prosecuted, and if it is true that murder to end suffering is not morally wrong, why shouldn’t they be prosecuted for murdering an abortionist? Why acknowledge a law you disagree with when you can, or why * bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns
that patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,*When one might a more just world make with a bare bodkin or semi-automatic?with bare bodkin or automatic weaponry, your own or somebody else’s quietus take?
**The italicized portion * above is borrowed from Shakespeare’s 5,000 line/30,000 word ode to brevity- no wonder the play is so universally condemned and forgotten.
