[PLUG] Linux Distros

Geoff Burling llywrch at agora.rdrop.com
Mon Aug 26 22:20:24 UTC 2002


On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, Preston Crawford wrote:
>
> On Sun, 25 Aug 2002, Geoff Burling wrote:
>
> > > Please don't use the term "anti-christ".  We should not confuse real-world
> > > evil with ancient mythological mumbo jumbo.
> >
> > This is interesting. The ``ancient mythological mumbo jumbo" you mention --
> > the symbols, allusions & trope of the Judeo-Christian religion -- are part
> > & parcel of Western Civilization. Just as Buddhism is integral to Japanese
> > culture, Taoism to Chinese, & Hinduism to Indian. In other words, one
> > doesn't have to believe in the ideas this complex of symbols embraces, but
> > avoiding its contribution to our language impoverishes your ability to
> > communicate. According to the literary critic Northrop Frye, no major
> > literary work of Western Civilization since about AD 300 fails to use
> > this background either explicitly or implicitly. (And the exceptions draw
> > upon an alternative set of -- in your terms -- ``ancient mythological
> > mumbo jumbo".
>
> As I said earlier, I think using the term "anti-christ" shows a lack of
> ability to communicate. It's the rhetorical cousin to comparing someone to
> Nazis or Hitler, in mhy opinion. It shows that the person using the term
> doesn't have the ability at the time to come up with a meaningful way to
> explain his opponents position. It's very easy to say "All you people
> think Red Hat's the anti-christ." Rather than to say something more
> meaningful.

I disagree.

The misuse of the terms ``fascist" & ``Nazi" have so blurred the meaning
of these words that they have become empty & pejorative words. Anyone
from an offical in a police state to a person enforcing common etiquette
can be called ``fascist." (As a point of Fascist trivia, not all Fascists
were anti-Semitic: there were Jewish Fascists in England before Hitler
came to power in Germany, & Italian Fascists -- the folks who coined
the term -- didn't explicitly persecute Jewish Italians until Hitler
forced Mussolini to do so. At the same time, not all Fascists seem to
embrace the ideal of civil obedience & law & order: look at the
proclamations of contemporary neo-Nazis.)

Anytime someone starts clearly throwing cliched insults around is a
clear sign that this person has stopped thinking & is lashing out with
emotion.

The image of ``Antichrist", on the other hand, is still a fresh & precise
one. He is a human so evil & opposed to humanity that Tolkien's Sauron or
Melkor pale in comparison, who is supposed to emerge in the Last Days
before something like Jeme's long-awaited revolution occurs.

Granted, caling someone the Antichrist, or Sauron or Melkor without any
explanation why possibly betrays a likewise lack of reasoned thinking,
but the original statement merely was describing how a certain organization
was perceived in a short, easily-understood sentence. Much like one of
my favorite lines from the late magazine _Spy_, where the negotiating
methods of a pair of Hollywood agents were described as not
``good cop--bad cop, but bad cop--Antichrist".
>
> Secondly, I'm not sure how ancient the tradition of the anti-christ is. My
> understanding is that Revelations was included into the New Testament
> somewhere during the middle ages, by the Catholic Church. It didn't used
> to be part of the Bible originally.

It dates to AD 75-100, when the Book of Revelations was written. Maybe a
generation earlier. Higher textual criticism theorizes that this work is
based on a lost Jewish prototype.
>
> Anyway, other than that, I agree with the rest of what you said. I just
> think using "anti-christ" is kind of weak. Getting offended or bothered by
> it is silly, but it's still a weak term to use.
>
I'm taking the rest of this discussion between Jeme & me offline for
everyone else's benefit.

Geoff






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