It’s Furious Balancing

[Gentle Reader -- I have the looming and ominous sensation that this is going to be a long, discursive blog post. It will be "under construction" for a while. When this notice no longer appears here, that's when I have deemed it "finished."]

I tend to filter reality with a bit more negativity than others.¹ I hear news stories or learn about events, and my first, immediate reactions often have black borders to them. Case in point: I read on yahoo! about the mother of a missing girl formally being named as a suspect in the high-profile case in Portugal; the little girl has been missing for four months.

The press are calling it a “shocking twist.”²

The first thing that went through my mind was “Well…. Duh!“

That’s the essence of it anyway. I know you’ve come to expect such erudite verbiage from me.

When I hear about crimes against children, my first thought is to look to the parents — Is there some sort of weird Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy (”MSbP”) Thing going on? Not the by-the-book, standard definition of MSbP (i.e., induced illness in the victim), but the vague sensation that the mother³ /parent has done something to the child in order to have the focus put on themselves, however indirectly. That was my opinion in the Jon Benet-Ramsey case as well, and that had all that Overlaid Weirdness with the child beauty pageants, u.s.w. I certainly can’t claim that the mother in this case is guilty or innocent. I haven’t been following it closely enough to form an opinion. I’m just a tad stunned that what I consider obvious (i.e., look to the parents) is regarded as a “shocking twist.”

Anyway, the purpose of this preamble is to show that I look at things with a darker view than others. My other illustrative example was my reaction to the rookie pitcher who threw a no-hitter in his second major league appearance. I heard that on the morning news and my first thought was “Dude, you do know it’s all downhill from now on, don’t you?” ⁴

These thoughts somehow lead to Roddy McDowall prancing around in my head singing “The Seven Deadly Virtues.”

Now, that’s not as much a reach as it sounds. If you go and look at the lyrics, you’ll see that it offers the Cynic’s View of Human Nature. Courage, Purity, Humility, Honesty, Diligence, Charity and Fidelity all get skewered.⁵

Those lyrics lead to me waxing philosophic on the concept of Courage.

I am proud to be a cynic, and I heartedly disagree with that misquoted Oscar Wilde definition of a cynic as “a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” ⁶ Au contraire. A cynic does now the value of many things, and the amazing lack of those things in Real Life is perhaps what makes her cynical.

[NOTE - More to follow. I need to take a break from the machine. Stay tuned for an updated post.]

1. Some call this “pessimistic” — I call it “realistic.” [↩]
2. I take it the press don’t get out much. /cough [↩]
3. And it is most frequently a mother or female caregiver — [↩]
4. I know that these examples are hardly parallel since the second doesn’t fit the dictionary definition of “cynical.” It doesn’t speak to my suspicions of human nature; I just found it entertaining. [↩]
5. I truly do love that bit about “It’s not the earth the meek inherit — it’s the dirt.” [↩]
6. Oh, do go and read that last link. Not only did I discover that that definition is an out-of-context quote, but I discovered (yet another) blog I have to read. I see eye-to-eye with the writer concerning cynicism and there are cat pictures! Score! [↩]

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Quotes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.