Purity Tests

I’ve got so many things tak­ing up my time these days that I have pret­ty much zero atten­tion-span for puri­ty test­ing. I’ve groused about Infi­nite­ly Regress­ing No True Scots­man­ship before, and it seems like it is only get­ting worse. Today I saw an exchange where a per­son was warned away from going to a busi­ness because a fam­i­ly mem­ber of the own­er has dumb opin­ions. This was inter­pret­ed as a nat­ur­al an accept­able response by all par­ties involved in the dis­cus­sion.

I think there is always room to improve our human­i­ty. I think peo­ple should be encour­aged to learn and improve them­selves. I think peo­ple who make a gen­er­al effort to be good peo­ple should be encour­aged, and giv­en a pass when they fuck up. My mis­an­thropy has struc­tured itself in such a way that the trolls and holi­er-than-thous are the ones I’m can­celling. I’m just can­celling them from my own per­son­al sphere though — not call­ing for their ouster from soci­ety at large. Must be a gen­er­al Hoosier lib­er­tar­i­an streak.

I feel the oppo­site of shout­ing about it. Shut­ting down my online accounts, and avoid­ing places in the real world where cre­den­tials are more impor­tant than con­ver­sa­tion is work­ing pret­ty well. I even enjoy the occa­sion­al respect­ful, open, and non-fraught con­ver­sa­tion.

Casseroles, cre­oles, and pid­gins are more inter­est­ing that Robert’s Rules of Order.