We’ve all met single-issue voters. “I’m not voting for anyone who will send troops overseas.” Or “I’m not voting for anyone who will try a gun grab” or …
This is a bizarre means of voting but my no means incomprehensible. I’m not a single issue voter, unless “absolutely no communism” is a single issue… Only that one is not. You pull at one edge, say, the government having privacy over individual conscience, and next thing you know you have me foaming at the mouth and screaming about taxes, the Laffer Curve and using blunt instruments for social engineering. That’s because when it comes to the primacy of the individual it’s not a single issue nor simple.
But I understand the people who say things like “provided I have my guns, they can’t get away with that other stuff.” That’s fine.
I’m not a single issue voter but I can kind of see where they stand, and though I might make merciless fun of them, if it’s an issue I disagree with, I can go along for the ride intellectually as it were and follow their – often very flawed – ideas. I also can understand, sometimes, where they came from.
What I can’t get is something else.
Here I have to do one of my digressions – TM – and point out America is very unusual in that people usually take up hobbies they take as seriously as careers when they retire/the kids move out.
It’s not that people in other Western societies don’t have hobbies, but Americans, at least it seemed to me when I came over in 1980 are unusually serious about their hobbies. They sometimes become money-bearing enterprises, but even if not, they’re taken very seriously indeed, not as something that happens when it happens, on its own schedule.
Well, recently I’ve been discovering a subset of the “retirement hobby” which is akin to the “single issue voter” and is the hobby-obsession.
We had an eruption of it in comments from Friday, and we know – I’m sure – many other people with these hobby-obsessions.
Unlike the “single issue voter” these obsessions are usually not something that is likely to ever come up for a vote; they’re not something you can ever convince the vast majority of; but they are treated as if they were one or both of those.
And as such they are unfathomable to me.
We’re going to go beyond the merits of each of these hobby-obsessions. Some of them, like the gentleman who posted here on Friday, I can almost see the merit of. Almost because I think it should be an individual choice thing and I’ve seen it pushed (though not disproportionately by women, I hasten to add) and because there are arguments on both sides. Others, like, say, the locavores are inoffensive but mildly insane, because of course if you convinced EVERYONE to do this, the food chain would collapse. Others still are – I think – pernicious and more than a little scary, for instance the zero-population- growth people who tried to make my kids sign pledges not to reproduce when they were in middle school and who’ve been known to convince young women to be sterilized. (Hint, bucko, if population is that bad, you kill yourself FIRST.)
But regardless of whether I agree with it or not, or whether it bothers me or not, all of these have two characteristics that drive me absolutely up the wall:
1- The people afflicted with one of these obsessions tend to bring it up apropos everything and nothing. Talk about Christmas trees and the zero-growther will pound you to the ground with the massive deforestation this will cause when the population is eleventy trillion. Talk about the new color you painted your nails, and the locavore will start screaming about tints made from local plants.
At best, on blogs and online communities, these people bring the conversation to a screeching halt (and here, yes, I’m going to include also those that in the middle of a discussion on taxes and economics start praising the Lord and telling us to repent – even for those who are believers, like me, that causes almost immediate revulsion – but at least their obsession is traditional.) At worst, in a party or something, you end up having to endure this person who sounds like a corner preacher while you sit there with your drink in hand wondering what you could have done not to bring about the fit.
2- These people treat their pet obsession as a political action thing. They want to convince as many people as possible (nothing wrong with that, which is what should be done, one on one, though might I suggest it’s more effective if the subject actually relates to what’s being talked about? Otherwise you risk seeming like a lunatic.) They want to make the other side of the matter illegal. No matter how irrelevant the subject is, they treat it as if they could just get it on the ballot and made the law, then, ah, then, the world would be perfectly right.
Why do these drive me insane? For the first it’s obvious. It’s not only a breach of manners (and I was raised to smooth over social interaction with manners in a society almost as formal – once you get behind the appearance of Latin devil-may-care – as the Japanese society. When people are openly rude, let alone lunatic, I have no idea how to respond.
The second bothers me because it feeds the first and because the people who want their pet hobby horse made into the law of the land never seem to understand the law of unintended consequences which will ALWAYS bite you in the butt. For instance, those who think we should eat only local don’t seem to understand that some regions of the country simply can’t support that much population, or that other regions of the country would starve without income from their agricultural exports.
This type of thing, should it come to fruition, would do more damage than “the problem.”
But more importantly it’s NOT something that can come to fruition. You’re never going to convince everyone in the land that it’s right and just to stop people circumcising their kids. For one, it’s a religious practice for at least two major religions. For another, it’s a tradition in many families and if it was “good enough for grandpappy, it’s good enough for me.” And for yet another, yeah it might be mutilation, but considering this is one of those parts of the human body that has been subjected to extension, reduction and shaping as far as we can look back in history and from what we can extrapolate from art and modern primitives, stopping it would amount to stopping human nature. It would be like putting in a law that no one can cut his/her hair or style it in any way. This has been managed in very small (or very stupid) communities for a little while, but it doesn’t stick. (Ask Hadrian about forbidding circumcision.)
So going around screaming at total strangers that this is a terrible thing, particularly when it’s apropos nothing (if women were the drivers behind circumcision, it would never have become part of Islam.) will only turn people AGAINST your cause.
To the extent a cause of this type CAN be advanced it’s one on one, person on person, with sensitivity and care.
However, all the issue-hobbyists behave the exact same way. I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I know why.
When masses of people behave in direct contravention to what would get them their goal, you have to do what you’d do with a crafty five year old and think “He says he needs to go potty, but he’s not giving any signs of it, so what does he really want?” (Usually in my kids’ case it was to escape a boring situation and/or to get mommy’s attention because mommy had been busy too long.)
First clue is the resemblance of issue-hobbyism to primitive religion – no, I don’t mean the more complex religions that enjoy you to live a good life, be productive and kind to your neighbors, as well as honoring G-d – I mean the sort of religion where you sacrifice a goat every Saturday and paint your privates purple and you’re all right with the divinity from then on.
This type of “religion” is of course the oldest form we know and it’s probably built into the human psyche.
It’s there for the same reason writer superstitions (those who write while wearing a blue shirt or by the light of a certain lamp, or…) are there. It allows you an impression of control over a world in which you do not – otherwise – have any controlling power.
Does it work? Who knows? It doesn’t work as magic to establish control, of course, but it might very well work to calm you down enough that you can function. (I know many writers, yours truly sometimes included, who are almost ironical about their superstitions. They know it’s goofy, but they still do them, because it makes them feel better.)
These hobby-obsessions accomplish this and also accomplish a radical simplification of societal and moral choices.
Look, I’m a political junkie. Given my choice and no work to do, I could happily spend the day cruising political blogs and arguing obscure points of policy. This is to me what porn is to other people. I can lose entire days and have no clue where they went.
HOWEVER even I will admit that this is not a hobby without consequences. Depending on how stupid politicians in charge are being (and they START at dumb and go down from there) it can make me nearly-impossible to live with.
Also, we’re living in the midst of very fast technological change that is affecting almost everyone’s job/livelihood and will only get worse/better/faster. (For the record, no, I don’t think we’re heading to a jobless society. I think our unemployment is the predictable result of following European policies. Their unemployment not only didn’t come down after the seventies but has gone up every year and is now structural. If you adopt the same structure, you get the same results. I do, however, think that jobs will change in such a way the change to mine – now writer/publisher/illustrator – will seem mild.)
People need to have a way of simplifying their choices and their way of looking at things. For more… uh… integrated people like a couple of my friends, it might be declaring yourself a politics-free zone once you’ve made a choice of whom to vote for.
Or as I do, when I feel less worried than right now, sane people will go “Okay, then. I can do this, this and this. Beyond that, I’ll mind my own business and work at my job.” I often use novels as defense against all the choices. While I’m in the novels, I don’t have to think about anything else.
But some people are too overwhelmed to do either of those. So they acquire an obsession, something they can use to keep all other choices and thoughts at bay. This is why those come up whenever something is being discussed that might involve their having to think about other issues/choices.
Is it healthy? Well, I don’t think so, but then I’m not a psychologist, except the practical psychologist I had to become as a writer who has to write plausible characters.
Also, I’m not one of those people. It’s entirely possible their back-up plan for coping with the pressure is something out of Theodore Sturgeons “And now the news” and that without the hobby-obsession they’d take up some form of choice reduction involving sharp objects.
So, as annoying as it might be, I think the hobby-issue obsessives we shall always have with us. Let’s endure them in good grace, and ignore them when we can’t. They’re likely to multiply over the next few years too as tech change accelerates and becomes all-pervasive. But if we remember this is a coping mechanism and not a genuine argument, we should be able to smile and let it be.
According To Hoyt 
Sarah, I do have two issues that can put a candidate outside the pale, at least in the sense of no longer taking them seriously.
-Laffer Curve
The Laffer Curve merely states that after a certain point the curve tracking the % of taxation becomes negative and the tax is then counter productive. That in fact decreasing the % of taxation produces more revenue not less. This is so blindingly simple to prove that to pretend to not understand the point is either a false hood or a failure to have ever considered the argument. Either way it marks the commentater as outside of consideration.
-Trickle down economics
This originates with a comic remark by Will Rogers but has never been used by a serious economist. As such it marks the commentater as a comic but not as either a politician or an economist.
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You’re fighting a losing battle. People don’t want facts to get in the way of their mockery.
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Sadly, yes.
I’ve been trying to explain it with the idea of “eating your seed corn” – removing huge amounts of resources from the people, where all wealth is created, and throwing it into the black hole of government causes the amount of wealth created to go down, so the tax revenues go down. Reverse that, give more resources to the people, and the wealth goes up, so the tax revenues go up.
But even that may be too complicated.
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But Laurie — it works so well in the short run. And I’m sure you remember what Lord Keynes said about the long run.
Relevant from a TownHall.com column today:
Oh, dear, I’m laughing and moaning at the same time. That hurts!
It’s like Mother Jones being so outraged about Ryan talking of Makers and Takers, and I’m thinking, well, duh, he’s right.
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Oh, and in some defense of Keynes, there’s a video interview with Hayak where he describes talking with Keynes, who said he was planning to do a big press conference saying Keynesianism didn’t work (as was then obvious from the real world data). Only Keynes died six weeks later.
I’m still amazed at how the Keynesians of today refuse to look at the decades of real data showing, again and again, that it does not work. How many countries have destroyed their economies with it? America’s done it at least three times now, possibly more.
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I will agree in Keynes’ defense: it is unfair to charge a philosopher for the crimes perpetrated in his name by his followers.
Apologies for the failure to remember that the blockquoting function eradicates internal italicization commands. It makes scant difference but was a lapse which I regret.
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It’s like Communism – the last guys who tried it failed because they did it wrong/ had incomplete data/ the sun was in their eyes. We’ll get it right because we know more/ understand psychology/ will do it at night/ whatever and the glorious proletarian classless state will rise from [insert rest of screed here]. Ditto the Keynesians.
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The most (only) interesting thing about such people is that they seem wholly unaware of how counter-productive their efforts tend to be. It is as if, in a discussion of how tiresome and obnoxious Venusians can be, somebody starts in “Oh yeah – let me show you how tiresome and obnoxious Martians can get!”
You will often see a form of this in discussions of Sport. Tell one of these obsessives that you think the NY Yankees are a pretty good team and he’ll start down the line-up, demanding you concur that Derek Jeter is the greatest shortstop to ever play the game, and that Willie Mays couldn’t carry Mickey Mantle’s jockstrap, and Joe DiMaggio was the classiest player evah and … very soon you’re sorry you ever brought the topic up.
I no longer recall the origin of this story, but:
In WWII, in a foxhole on Guadalcanal, some of the younger troops were puzzled about why the Japanese soldiers were trying to taunt the Americans by chanting “We hate Babe Ruth!” So they asked their sergeant, a grizzled veteran (aren’t all sergeants “grizzled veterans”? It must be in the job description. What the heck does “grizzled” mean, anyway?), “Who the heck is Babe Ruth?”
Appalled at their ignorance of the Great Bambino, the sergeant proceeded to lecture his boys, explaining that the Sultan of Swat was The Greatest Slugger Who Ever Lived, that he had SAVED THE AMERICAN PASTIME, he revolutinized the game by hitting more home runs in a single season than most of the other teams had hit, that he called his shot in the 1932 World Series, that … By the time the sergeant was starting to run down, “his boys” were seriously contemplating joining the Japanese in chanting “We Hate Babe Ruth!”
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ROFL.
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Having been a political junkie since my parents sent me to kindergarten wearing an “I Like Ike” button (yes, I’m old but not senile) I’ve become a closet libertarian. Do what you want, but don’t ask me to 1) celebrate it or 2) pay for it. (That last includes paying for your health issues if you choose dangerous behavior.)
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I admit that my concern for AIDS sufferers (most were only “victims” of their own stupid behaviour) was limited by the realization that, despite their propagandization efforts, was an illness that only two groups were really at risk of: intravenous drug users who shared needles, and people who persisted in utilizing their waste outlet ports in manners exceeding the design parameters. Geeze – who would have ever though either of those behaviours might increase risk of contracting illness?
I have little sympathy for such special pleadings, viewing them as little better than parenticides begging for mercy on account of them being orphaned.
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We know how to contain incurable, untreatable, fatal STDs. We did it with syphilis. The trick is the very people dying of AIDS went into a rage whenever the notion of mandatory testing and contact tracing was brought up.
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Leave us please not open that can of worms — they make the “No-Circ” monologists look mild. Remember, this is a self-destructive sub-group of a sub-group which deems endangering the national blood supply a Constitutional Right.
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I agree with your points. Both of which are totally lost on Sarah’s hobbiests, and progressive liberals. I am a political junky too. I have been all my life, mainly because I lived abroad for a huge swath of it, and I have seen how other countries treat their people. Do NOT want to see that happening here.
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I wore a little Nixon elephant while campaigning with my dad. Teacher at school asked about our parents’ politics and I quickly found Dad was the only Republican in about five miles at least. Except perhaps the black families who lived across the street, who were a couple of years away from attending Robinson School. Dad was always a political eccentric. He’d been a Trotskyite at the beginning of the Firestone strike, and was stunned when the Communists in charge murdered the sheriff and fled to Moscow, trying to produce a massacre for publicity.
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I wasn’t old enough to vote then, but I do have a very rare button from Nixon’s re-election campaign:
“WHO WANTS DICK?”
>;)
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Why closet? Come out, the water is fine ;)
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I didn’t read yesterday’s comments, so I didn’t know what was the obsession that sparked them. I looked back, saw 415 comments, and decided I was too busy to find out. So I just kept reading here.
Somewhere early on, I started saying, “Hey, it sounds like a commenter I used to see on another blog who often turned discussions to his anti-circumcision crusade.”
Then you mentioned circumcision, and I went back and checked. Sure enough, same guy. Gotta give him points for persistence.
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You know, Germany tried to bann circumcision. Didn’t work out too well, they had to do a quick back step on that one. I don’t understand all the hoopla about it, because it is a religious and personal choice made by the parents. Duh . . .
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You know, if I’d been talking about dubious surgery, like say, when they used to do trepaning (sp) or something, then he’d have been on topic, and we’d have had a discussion — it was the TRUE insanity of assuming women drive circumcision that floored me. Saudi Arabia, say, big matriarchy, right? HEAD>DESK.
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Charles.
Trepanning? Trepanning good! Trepanning’s been good for thousands of years, I think Neanderthals did it. and their patients survived for many years. Caveman got horribly bad headache on one side and fainted, and a shaman somehow instinctively knew that to drill a hole in that side of the skull with a clean tool and let pressure out would cure the condition, even if he thought he was letting demons out. Ask your oldest son. The actress Natasha Richardson fell at a baby ski slope and bumped her head, while her husband was making a movie a continent or so away, and she died because apparently no one in the nation of Canada had the nerve to drill. If the fall had somehow resulted in her being teleported to a Neanderthal camp fifty thousand years or so ago, she probably would have lived. “Spirit woman appeared at fireside! Hm, she seems to have demon swelling this side of her head. Bring me a drill.”
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Maybe you’re thinking about the crazy woman who trepanned herself and videotaped if for You Tube.
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Trepanning DUBIOUS Charles, sorry. People did it for all sorts of nutty reasons and only SOME survived.
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Well, I make a policy of not voting for any candidate from the (Redacted), Nazi or Communist parties without an extremely compelling reason, and at one time that was my single issue reason for voting.
Anyone who has ever seen me in politics on the bar when recreational drug use came might have an idea about hobby obsessions of mine.
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There are simply some things that I will never be able to accomplish in my lifetime. I guess it is a thing of accepting limits, I am not now nor have I ever been Wonder Woman. I find myself explaining to The Daughter that I know I will never be able to read every book or craft every project that I might like to, so I am getting choosier about those I pursue. How is this relevant? No matter how hard I try I will not be able to make the world see sense. So I try to live a balanced life, which I do not think includes fanaticism (how can a one note life be balanced?), and choose my battles carefully.
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ummm hobby-obsessions: Well, at one time I was really obsessed with unicorns. That phase lasted until I was in my twenties. The next thing I became obsessed with was numerology. Plus it helped that to my parents anything strange or occult was taboo. Poetry was also a hobby obsession for awhile. I was pretty pedantic about my views of most of the poets (bad poets) because most of them jumped right into free verse and didn’t study form before writing silly things. Then there was the English professors who thought they were on the forefront of poetry– they were trying to write abstracts and other silly things.
Nowadays I am obsessed with my disease and treatments. I know a lot about it and it has pushed a lot of my interests since. I think I am passed the stage where I was scared of death. Thankfully. But, there are so many things that can go wrong. Plus I get infections easily. Writing and reading helps me to escape.
Personally I think we all have our obsessions. It is just that the anti-circumcision guy was going after the wrong thing– I mean unless the mother is a drug-addled wh-re, most women want the best for their children. You can’t blame that kind of thing on a group of women when it is a pressured societal thing. Tell me, how many people know how to resist such pressure?
Also I am a game junkie– I can lose days in other people’s worlds whether it is a game or a book. And no, I have never gotten involved with WOW. Thank goodness.
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OH yea, space travel has been an obsession, but I suppressed that one when I realized that it wouldn’t happen in my lifetime. Now that it looks possible, I might start looking at it again. Obnoxiously ;-)
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Charles
Ah, yeah. Yet another of those odd dead-on future predictions by Heinlein. He wrote about space travel, by a timeline that would insure none of his readers would be alive to see it. He saw… some kind of interregnum that would make space travel impossible for a long time. And it would only progress when it became privatized.
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Sarah Hoyt wrote: “But regardless of whether I agree with it or not, or whether it bothers me or not, all of these have two characteristics that drive me absolutely up the wall.”
I assume you’ve read “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer? It explains this phenomenon with great insight including the formation of the mass movement and the psychology of the individual actors.
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C.J.;
I agree on your desires, but despair of their practicality. I looks to me from the fine print on the side of the box that this here country was set up to give your garden variety curmudgeon the right, the license, and the authority to say, “Oh, HELL no!” with extreme prejudice to busybodies. You do have a constitutional right to be left the hell alone.
In the current distortion of the Republic, good luck making that stick.
But in aid of that notion, I’ve adopted a single issue: I will not vote for any Democrat. If they don’t have some other letter behind their name on the ballot, I won’t vote for them. I look to find the Republican endorsements of candidates in so-called “non-partisan” ballots. (Some judges in this state have not, from time-to-time, been nominated or supported by parties, frex.) I don’t care if the guy/gal is the reincarnation of Lysander Spooner, if he’s supported by Democrats, sooner or later, the party will demand the dane geld of him/her, and that’s been the ruin of the nation. So far.
M
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The only — ONLY — vote you can be sure of from an elected politician is the one to organize the legislature. Your representative can be as pro-Life as the Pope, but a vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker renders that moot (as Bart Stupak — and his supporters — learned.) In America the majority party runs the committees and determines what gets voted for, so that a representative who believes in a “Living Constitution” may be what you want, but if his election makes John Kyle chair of Senate Judiciary you’re gonna get judges and justices who strictly interpret the Constitution according to the original language.
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I agree with Mark about the dane geld. I have seen that in my lifetime and I have now adjusted my voting.
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Charles
I agree now. I would have voted for Democrat Bob Kerry, whom I greatly admire, but when he tried to run for President the Democratic party made it perfectly clear that if he really tried to run, they would drag him out in the swamp and drown him, so to speak. Buried him under distorted accounts of the Thanh Phong raid.
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My life is a series of mini-obsessions–a survival mechanism, I think, because it’s the only way I can get things done. I’ll take time off from work, put my head down over what I’m working on, and become a terror at the dinner table.I cannot *see* beyond the horizon of the obsession du jour until suddenly, it breaks, and I become human again.
But if all I need to do to get on the right side of the universe is sacrifice a goat and paint my privates purple, then I’m on it. The kids are old enough now it won’t warp them.
In fact, it may even encourage them to leave home faster ;)
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Made me laugh Kali – but I have my mini-obsessions too.
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I tend to get wrapped up in projects to the point of passing out because I forget to move and stop breathing deeply, or forget to eat and then “thump” followed by thoughts of “my, the dust bunnies are terrible down here.” And then the rest of the family starts warning each other, “Red’s on one of her tears. Don’t bother calling her this week.”
And I can quit dragons any time I want to. Really. As easily as giving up chocolate.
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Wow – another person who forgets to breathe properly when concentrating on something. I don’t get faint, but I do get chest pains and feel like I’m having a panic attack sometimes.
I never forget to eat, though. More’s the pity.
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The dust weasels have eaten all the dust bunnies in my house. It’s why I never skip meals, even when obsessing. You never want to be too weak to fight back.
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I have dust snakes. Yep they are long and huge– kind of surprises me after a marathon of reading and writing.
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So that is what is running all the dust bunnies out into the hallway. . . hummm. I will have to send in the cats to sort that out.
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You fool, it’s the cats that bring the dust bunnies into existence in the first place. Haven’t you ever seen how the dust springs into the air for joy as they pad on by?
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Havey is a machine designed to turn tuna into fuzz which he spreads all over the house.
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We seriously used to wonder about Mittens TGC*OH-UF-PB-LB-J. We would quite regularly clean up more than a cats worth of fur but he still had a think coat and still filled the litter box. I guess this is why cat loving SF fans have understood that there is more to the universe than E=mc2 … so, therefore, why can’t an English lord transform into a dragon?
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YES. Havey sheds three Haveys a day. And as you know, English lords transform into dragons. I’ve been thinking that the Magical British Empire needs a trilogy set in their equivalent of WWI.
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Interesting idea.
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Hmmm, would the Germans try to wake Charlemagne and Frederik Barbarossa to help their cause? I’d think the Hapsburg Empire would have their hands too full dealing with Russian creatures to be much help in that endeavor. (“Gott in Himmel, Chernobog really can posses tens of people at a time!”) On the other hand, imagine the centuries of power that would have built up in the Crown of Charlemagne and a few other items in the Hapsburg treasury. The Imperial branch of the Hohenzollern’s were Johnny-Come-Lately’s compared to the Hapsburg family. Double-headed eagle vs. dragon . . .
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What do the other aristocrats change into? Scandinavians transform into ogres? lol
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It’s forbidden, so not everyone knows…
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The Hapsburg married into so many families to gain money and power, I bet they have a problem with shifting (i.e. when they try to shift, they go into several forms every few seconds– it would also make them insane.)
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Chalk it up to a senior moment. My cats delight in chasing dust bunnies though. I don’t think they taste very good, however, as they always spit them out once they get a bite.
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Sib has two cats and hardwood floors. They ended up with dust Dobermen.
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Exactly. Hardwood floors. Four cats. And Havelock is mostly one large dust bunny.
I’m going to have to find him an harness. The local SF con is asking we bring him to cons… Sigh. They have no clue.
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I have five cats and hardwood floors, but so far they keep the dust bunnies down to manageable proportions. Added to that are the three dogs who wander in and out looking confused most of the time. Cats, I figure represent the females and dogs represent the male humans in our household.
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For some strange reason at one point The Daughter wished to find out if it is possible to breed dust dinosaurs. I now have it on good authority that it is not.
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You can quit dragons? Good heavens, how? Is there a twelve step program? I might need it.
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actually obsessions of that type are pretty normal in the gifted population. It is as Heinlein would put it, one of the stigmata. I know this because my extremely gifted youngest ONLY learned by obsession for a while. (Now he wants to be an aerospace engineer, and has figured he needs to study even the stuff he’s not obsessed with. We used to call him the F-A child, because he had nothing in between and it all depended on obsessions.) I meant the other type of obsession. You know, the one that causes you to lecture perfect strangers on the heart break of the Irish tit-mouse.
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The problem is not the person with a particular obsession, or that obsession per se. The problem arises when the person with an obsession develops a fanatical obsession about converting others to their cause?
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Particularly by stupid means, yes.
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Pain Level got set on “high” today from something I did yesterday, so forgive any excess stupidity.
Politically, I’m somewhere on the right of James Madison. I’m a strict constructionist (them words wus written that way fer a reason, dagnabit!), but I do understand that some degree of flexibility needs to be allowed for new technology (not “new” ideas – there aren’t any). I don’t TRY to push my beliefs (at least, not TOO hard), but I won’t allow others to stomp on them, either. I keep most of my political activism to Facebook. This is a place to talk about writing, writers, and some of the weird things that happen when you put pixels to print. I stray, and our gracious host grabs me by the collar, administers a couple of slaps across the face, and lets me continue to participate (THANK YOU!!!).
Having several widely-different hobbies, I’ve suffered the existence of the “purists” of each. They’re excessively prevalent in stamp collecting. I’ve learned to ignore them. They’re kind of like the writing purists — “if it’s not literature, it’s garbage” — yet “literature” as they define it, doesn’t sell.
Someone mentioned the “Laffer curve”. That’s an excellent example of quantifying one aspect of economic life. You could probably build a similar curve for every aspect of human existence. If you plotted each aspect of a person’s personality, most people would have a cluster of data points near the apex of the curve. A few people would have data points closer to the extremes, but the majority of their behavior would be near or on either side of the apex. Most “one-issue” personalities would plot differently — with the majority of their data points at the extreme. Their world-view is best described as an over-inflated balloon. Sooner or later that balloon is either going to burst (worst-case scenario), or lose the air inside it, and like the balloon, that person will be deflated. Neither scenario is pleasant to observe.
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I think this helps explain why I drive some people crazy. Often, when getting into a discussion on a subject, I will pursue ramifications of the subject matter much further down the rabbit hole than anyone else around me wants to go.
The major difference between me and these evangelical obsessives is that, after I have finished talking about most things, I’ll drop them as if I had been merely talking about the weather, and be ready to discuss the next thing. I think that is part of the problem with the people who need to simplify their world: They don’t let go of things, so if they allow themselves to focus on too many of them, then they get confused because they are trying to think about too many things at once, and that can be very disturbing.
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Interesting. I made up my mind a long time ago, and declared my fb page a “politics free zone”. Had to, or I’d lose my mind. Oh, and yes, my particular “hobby” has semi-sharp objects, as both knitting needles and crochet hooks can be used as weapons.
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Shh, please, we don’t wish to remind the TSA of that.
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As a die hard political junky, I simply cannot fathom a one issue voter’s mind set. Life is not a line of one issue votes. Any law has an equal and opposite reaction, generally not for the good of one and all.
Recently I went round and round with a progressive falling of the edge liberal (who immigrated to Canada and gave up her US citizenship) about wealth distribution. She thinks all people with money are hoarding it and keeping it from the poor people because they are greedy. No matter how it was stated that the rich use their money to make more money for themselves and others, she just thinks that all rich people should just give their money away. They provide jobs, businesses, investment in all sorts of programs, and give generously to charities world wide, but that isn’t good enough. Makes me crazy.
The most important issues to me are:
Fixing the economy.
Returning our military to its proper strength.
Getting rid of king zero’s healthcare law that will make the US medical care as bad, or worse, than it is in the UK.
Changing the tax code to a flat tax like they have in Hong Kong. Makes it fair for everyone, more income equals more taxes. No loopholes or tricks.
And that is just a few of the political issues that matter to me.
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heh. Did she just like Canada, or is she a rare example of someone actually making good on a “If X happens I’m moving to Canada” threat?
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She moved to Canada because she wanted to marry her partner . . . and back then, she couldn’t marry her in the US. So she gave up her citizenship for love. . . whatever. I would never do that, not even for my hubby of 41 years.
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I gave up my citizenship for love. Of course, I’d have moved here anyway…and given it up… um…
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It was really quite simple for me.
Political organizations with a history of mass murder might be more likely to try to commit democide in the future, and ought to be punished anyway, if possible, no matter how long ago and far away.
Of course, after I grew up more, and lost some of the monomania, I found that most of the others issues I cared about tended to line up with how I’d vote on that one issue anyway.
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Sarah, my dear, one day we really must get together for coffee and a rant or 2…or 5.
My personal favorites are the people, usually single issuers, who declare a politics free zone so that they can talk politics without fear of debate. ‘I don’t usually talk politics around here, but…’ Fits in with the whole trying to control stuff that is out of their control theory.
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Ah, so that doesn’t just happen to me! I have one friend who has asked me never to discuss politics with him because I’m a better debater and much more informed (yes, he admitted both points) and he doesn’t want to have his “truths” challenged (he didn’t admit that, but it was implied). But when we get in a group, most of that group share his lopsided political perspective; and there he likes to make political commentary to their laughter and encouragement… right up to the point where I start to respond. THEN he pulls out the “Wait a minute, let’s not talk politics” card as a way to shut me up.
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Actual quote: “I’ve made up my mind; don’t confuse me with the facts!”
Then again, that was from the same human whom, upon seeing a friend drag themselves in the doorway, stared in horror as the beaten and bloodied man stated, “I just got mugged.”
Before anyone could say anything else, the blurted exclamation rang out. “Just because they’re black doesn’t make them guilty!”
…Some folks, there’s no point debating.
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Thinking about this a little more, I realize that I am a single issue voter.
I simply always prefer the candidate that is least statist (i.e. the candidate that is least likely to attempt to accrue yet more funding, control and power to the government).
So I guess I don’t see anything wrong with being a single issue voter.
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Determining that, however, you must take into account a multiplicity of factors, thus rendering it not a single issue.
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Except that it’s always fractal in that you can drill down into sub-issues for nearly every supposed single-issue. For example, for anti-abortion folk, they still consider edge cases like if the mother is going to die (and therefore the fetus) anyway or they at least consider the case of rape. So the true single issues (with no caveats, edge cases, etc.) are probably few and far between.
My single issues just happens to be a little broader than some of the others.
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I think when you boil it down far enough it becomes single-issue again, and often the same single issue no matter what the apparent topic: How are we, as a Nation, going to decide the matter? How will we define the parameters within which individuals can exercise choice?
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I’d have to say that I’m a single-issue voter, as well. I look at the candidates and try to determine which of the viable ones (the ones that might actually get elected) will more closely abide by the Constitution. I know full well neither will STRICTLY abide by the Constitution, but usually, one will stand out more than the other. I’ve even voted third-party a couple of times because there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two major candidates. I’ve since given that up as being a lost cause, and just throwing away my vote.
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That’s not single issue. The constitution is what makes us Americans and defending it is an oath some of us swore. (Me at citizenship.)
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Once again, I must throw in my two pfennigs..
1. Don’t forget the Narcissism. This is the flip side of the “ME” generation, and too many Americans have never learned to take into account that just because they are individuals DOES NOT mean that every individual voice is worth paying attention to.
2. Our peculiarly American “Something for nothing” culture. Where everyone is just waiting to be discovered, like Lana Turner sittin’ at Schwab’s. Not everyone GETS to be in America’s “Starting Line-up”, but we raise our children as though we do, to our own peril. We have the right to aspire to greatness, but aspirations alone do not transmogrify a person into that which they desire. Nor do aspirations trump genetics.
3. Symptoms. Another example of the phenomenon you describe, I would suggest, is Hipsterism. A nostolgia for obsolete/outdated technology/pastimes as a form of exerting “control” over things they have no control over.
4. You mentioned Manners, but I would point out the (again, peculiarly American) erosion of Manners as a means of expressing Individualism, the excuse being that if you teach your child good manners, it stunts their individualism. I was raised by parents of the previous generation, who equated manners with civilization, breeding, and a positive reflection upon themselves, so I find myself being seen as “ODD”, when I exhibit manners.
I’m not going to stop, but I definitely feel… anachronistic.
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Let’s see if I can beat Sarah to the punch.
Heinlein, in the Notebooks of Lazarus Long, put it very well:
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide the lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.
However you want to say it, Manners are a good idea, and they don’t have to get in the way of being individualistic. Those who are rude, and when called on it, say, “I’m just being myself”, are just trying to excuse their lack of manners, not showing their individualism.
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Well, that was supposed to be in reply to AlanKNKN. Oops (and, much as I would like to blame WordPress, I don’t think I clicked he Reply link, because his was the last comment on the page at the time).
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Those who are rude, and when called on it, say, “I’m just being myself”, are just trying to excuse their lack of manners, not showing their individualism.
I would be tempted to reply (rudely), ‘Ah, therefore, you admit that what you are is a rude individual.’
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“People tell me that cocaine intensifies your personality. I respond, ‘Yes, but what if you’re an asshole?'”
— Bill Cosby
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Bill Cosby is a national treasure and the world will be lessened by his passing, long in the future may it be.
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Amen –
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Trying to figure out if there’s anything I’m all about that could be considered a “hobby-obsession”.
There’s semi-homeopathic remedies for colds I often urge onto friends when they’re ill. Garlic, tea with local honey (esp. during allergy season), making certain to be very well hydrated.
A lips-pursed idea that everyone ought to be required to work in customer service or food service for at least one year before they’re able to have another job. (I’d prefer food service, honestly.) I think it’d teach people what it’s like to be yelled at for things that are literally not your fault. I think people would treat each other better then. And working in food service, it would teach you responsibility and hard work (as cleaning would be involved). But it’s sort of rare this comes up in conversations and so far no one’s ever disagreed with me. xD; But the topic rarely lasts longer than ten minutes either.
A position even more strongly held than the previous: Christmas music shouldn’t be played in shopping areas or public venues before American Thanksgiving, outside of a few exceptions such as Christmas specialty stores or charity concerts. Since I don’t tend to go shopping in physical stores as often, I have less cause to be pissed off by it and less likely to rant about it.
And one last one: whenever I hear someone talking about publishing a book, I usually ask when the last time they’ve researched the publishing industry and looked into self-publishing. The actual phrasing of it varies, and I have obvious leanings in one direction, but all I really do is urge them to do their research before deciding.
I don’t know that any of those would require I vote one way or another on a candidate. I can’t imagine voting for someone just because they mentioned something about limiting the public performance of Christmas music before a certain date.
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I am behind you on the thanksgiving thing. Do you know they’re already playing it? ARGH.
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While I agree that “winter holiday” songs should not be played before the day after Thanksgiving, I would not legislate it, something about the libertarian streak in me bristles.
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not legislate it, but maybe bomp them on the head. Instead, I just go “ARGH”
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I await the shopping mall that advertises: Christmas Music Free Until December!!!!!
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I’d totally vote for someone who promised not to sign/nullify the signing of some idiot order that’s the equivalent of SOPA/PIPA which will destroy self-publishing.
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I’m rather obsessive on at least one of my hobbies, it is true: the stereotype of “How do you tell the pilot in the room? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you!” is unfortunately true, though I try not to enthuse too much unless called for.
However, I don’t let it affect my politics. When picking candidates to vote for, I didn’t care what their votes on the FAA reauthorization bill were – I checked how they voted for TARP, for Homeland security, for the various non-passed budget incarnations, the debt limits, the bailouts, the indefinite detentions, SOPA, etc. For the challengers, I had to regretfully decline a few who were otherwise extremely admirable human beings, because their economic theory and their statements about the unchanging future of social security, medicade, and medicare were non-functional. Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.
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Want to hear the ultimate in Political Pragmatism? Here it is:
“Unless you’re making seven figures after taxes, no one gives a flying f*** what your opinion on world affairs, taxes, or anygoddamnedthing else is; so sit down and shut the f*** up.”
If Moderators on Internet fora followed that rule, most people would be able to use the ‘net on a 300 baud dialup connection again…. >:)
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I agree on political hobby obsessions – some of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard are from people going through those (obsessions are symptoms of other problems, political or not).
On the other hand, people who are obsessive about their hobbies can be a lot of fun. Isn’t that the essence of fandom?
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Actually political or crazy social things they can’t control. I for instance despise the “boar Tusks” style of lower-lip piercing. However, I figure sometime this fad will pass, they’ll remove the rings, the lip will heal. And FURTHERMORE it’s NONE OF MY BUSINESS.
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around 1992 at Central Sun New Age store, a young man came in with vampire fangs mounted as permanent caps. I was expecting to see that become a fad, but I never saw it again.
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It is a fad. It’s just a highly specialized one. I see it from time to time, or used to.
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Ummm – well – I think it is a great fad when one of them attacks and you can control them with their piercings. I have to admit that I fantasize about it sometimes. We used to use a ring through the nose to control bulls–
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A friend of mine has a comment set to put a stop to any discussion of piercing — “Anybody that would voluntarily allow somebody else to put holes in them has never been in combat, or they’d know better.” My take, exactly!
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One of my best friends did two tours in VIetnam and has an earring. I don’t know I’d suggest applying this theory to the general population.
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I have no issue with earrings, it’s the boar-tusks piercings that bother me. Look, I grew up on Asterix!
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It is traditional in my family that women pierce their ears for each generation for which they are the matriarch. I have three right now. One for me, my children, my grandchildren. And as soon as my great granddaughter gets here, I will have one for her generation as well. My mother will add one, that makes five for her. Some of us only do one ear, but I like symmetry, so I have both ears done.
Having said that, I will not, and do not, like face jewelry, and pierceing something like the tongue or other, ahem, parts is just down right gross.
For many cultures, piercing is part of their culture, and for some part of their religion. I simply accept it is what it is, unless and until it just grosses me out. They have every right to do it, but I can’t bear to look at it.
I have one tattoo, in honor of my murdered son. He loved body art, and would always tease me about getting a tattoo. One day, I told him if he died before I did, I would get one. He did, so I did as promised. Everyone liked different things. Body art is fine, but I don’t like to see it on a face or neck. Just my personal thing. My son has his tattoos from the Marines, for his brother, and from being a cop. Oh, and for his kids. I think tattoos need to be carefully considered, and have a really important meaning, because they can’t wash off after a few days.
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” … people who are obsessive about their hobbies can be a lot of fun.”
Considering I just spent the morning reading a ‘zine called “Implosion World” I have to agree :)
I found it during a futile search where I tried to figure out first, if jarring a blasting cap is enough to set off a bundle of dynamite, and second, how to have 2 out of 5 people survive having said bundle of dynamite tossed at them.
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ps, I’m hoping somebody with one of those fun obsessions chimes in here and lectures me on how to write this scene :)
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1) Modern high-quality blasting caps will not go off absent electrical or thermal ignition unless they are specifically designed to do so (which some are, typically in military applications.) However, older and/or cheaper ones will. They become less stable as they age, although they also become less likely to go off at all. The old-style thermal ignition ones (that are meant to be set off with a fuse) are still widely available, as is fuse of various speeds. (Fuse is typically labeled with some rate of burn in length-per-second. One way to cause hijinks with fuse is to have somebody purposefully or accidentally swap “fast” fuse for “slow” fuse. Or just have it be defective from the factory. There’s a scene in one of the “Lone Ranger” reboot movies where a “fast fuse” causes some excitement: things like that really happen.)
2) Keep the bundle reasonably small and you can just wave the Explosions Do Weird Things wand. (This is also known as the “Valkyrie Rule,” after the plot to kill Hitler with an explosive device which missed by inches.) It can kill who you want and leave who you want alone. The things to watch are a) the pressure has to have somewhere to go other than squishing the putative survivors – nobody survives any kind of real explosion in a confined space, b) the explosion can’t be so huge that there’s no way to avoid overpressure or just being vaporized, c) ideally there has to be room for the survivors to be “blown clear” so nothing hard for them to hit either in flight or when they land. If it’s okay for them to be beat up a little, blowing survivors through a window (not too high off the ground, please, and not modern multipane tempered glass) and non-survivors into a wall is always doable. Or, if they can be beat up a lot, blow the survivors through a soft wall and the non-survivors into a hard wall. Or out a window that IS too high up.
3) If professionals are involved don’t have them do stupid things with high explosives. Just don’t. Stupid people don’t get to be explosives technicians. Even people who buy small amounts have to take tests and be certified and bonded by some appropriate authority. Also, in any organized setup (modern construction/mining/demolition) blasting caps and explosives are not kept in the same place until it’s time to combine them. Low-quality explosives (like fertilizer) are readily available: dynamite is not. If you are writing historical this may not be a problem, depending on area and circumstance. The scene in The Quick and the Dead where the storekeeper sleeps on the dynamite, while exaggerated, is not entirely beyond the pale: you really could buy it at the hardware store during some time periods and in some places.
4) One fun way to have real dynamite go off without the need for a blasting cap is for it to have been stored in static conditions too long. Long story short, dynamite needs to be rotated occasionally. If it isn’t, the explosive material will settle in the carrier matrix and reach concentrations near the exterior which can be detonated by impact or acceleration. (Harold talks about this indirectly in Stephen King’s The Stand. If the dynamite doesn’t get rotated, it “sweats.” This is caused by the explosive seeping out.)
5) Praises be upon Bugs Bunny’s name, but dynamite and TNT are not the same thing. Dynamite is just the name for the final product you get when you infuse a carrier matrix (usually some kind of clay or diatomaceous earth) with some kind of explosive. Historically dynamite was made with nitroglycerine. Nitroglycerine is extremely unstable and can be detonated by impact or even agitation: infusing it into an inert carrier matrix prevents it from spontaneously detonating from incidental impact by spreading it out. When the dynamite is exposed to an ignition source the ignition pushes the nitro closest to the ignition past critical and generates a shock wave which pushes through the rest of the matrix and detonates the rest. You can make dynamite with all kinds of explosives (including TNT, which is used in some forms.) But dynamite will be labeled “dynamite,” not TNT. If it’s the kind of dynamite which contains TNT, it will say so on the packaging, but it won’t just have big letters that say “TNT.”
6) Dynamite is still reasonably available, but will not be found in a modern, reasonably-budgeted operation as it has been phased out in favor of safer materials. If it’s the present day and there’s dynamite around, there’s going to be a very specific reason. If it’s been sitting in somebody’s basement for thirty years, it’ll go off the first time somebody glares at it in anger.
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I knew I’d find what I needed if I fished in the reservoir of Hoyt commenters :)
I’ve got most of this covered–it’s the 1930s, and the people who built the bomb are more into political philosophy than chemistry or even bathing too frequently, aka, anarchists. So how it goes off can be covered by the Valkyrie Rule as well.
Other points duly noted, and the room shall be reconfigured to shape the blast in odd ways. Some will be blown into a bedroom, others off a balcony.
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Marc has it pretty well covered (I worked drilling and blasting rock for about a year, as well as always having an unhealthy interest in explosives). ANFO, a fertilizer diesel mix (like was used at Oklahoma City) I would not call low grade however, it is more powerful than must types of blasting powder (we always called them ‘powder sticks’ or ‘sticks of blasting powder’ even though they were generally a clay-like substance, we used some plastic explosive ones, but never actual powder) unless it gets wet. Wet it has much less power, even the commercially made ‘water-resistant’ ANFO, also wet ANFO produces an orange colored gas when it goes off (can’t remember what it actually is right now) that is poisonous to breathe.
If you are having them build the bomb themselves, it might be helpful for you to invest in the Anarchist’s Cookbook, very detialed directions on building home explosives.
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I have read more than one person say that the Anarchist’s Cookbook is really sort of a cointel thing in that if you follow the recipes in it, you will likely kill yourself. Not having read it, I couldn’t say, but it wouldn’t be my go-to book either for literary research or actual antisocial activity. :)
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I got to help an oilfield explosive supply Co. dispose of odds and ends one year at an airshow. My group through it would be a couple of boxes worth to add to various shots – it was a whole second truck load! The shooter-in-charge yelled, “buffet!” We set off car alarms all over the airport. Some good stuff too, and some that was sweating badly enough that the cardboard boxes were falling apart.
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Thanks to all the people who responded to this prompt. I really have no need to know this, other than I, as an ODD, enjoy learning all sorts of stuff. Learning is fun!
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Going to post this in the diner too. I am a single issue voter, my single issue is “What is best to keep the Constitution Of The United States as the guideline of humanity’s future?” I.O.W. I am a Usaian.
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Yeah, my friend, but in that religious devotion, you’re SO not alone.
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Yes
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I have an obsessive personality, so I understand obsessions. I could also be termed a single issue voter (pro-2nd Amendment) but after that single issue, if both (or however many candidates are running) are realitively similar on that issue, I judge and choose them on all the other issues. For example, Harry Reid is pro 2nd Amendment (although I fail to see how he manages to hang out with all the rabid anti-2nd Amendment folks he does without serious problems, but he manages it) I disagree with him on practically all of his other stances however, so if I lived in Nevada I would have a VERY hard time voting for him, since the Republicans have never put a rabid anti-2nd amendment candidate up against him, this wouldn’t have been an issue.
To prove I’m not totally single-issue, I did vote for McCain in 08, but it was an issue I struggled with, and if he wouldn’t have been running against a radical communist I doubt he would have got my vote.
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A former acquaintance (former because of geography) managed to combine single-issue obsessions in politics and religion in such a way as to inflict misery on an entire college. However, at the last minute, the P.T.B. decided that requiring students to take a full course load and then adding hours of mandatory “community service” without any advanced warning was asking too much, even at that school. My associate went on to become one of the youngest representatives of the World Council of Churches, where the lat time I heard of her she was inflicting selfless narcissism in the guise of theology on a “sad and weary world,” to quote one of my least-favorite Christmas hymns.
But she means well *shudder*.
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And she was doing it “for their own good” – *another shudder*
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Time to haul out the old C.S. Lewis quote again: “Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Sadly, it’s ALWAYS time to haul out the old C.S. Lewis quote…
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shudder echo.
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I mean the sort of religion where you sacrifice a goat every Saturday and paint your privates purple and you’re all right with the divinity from then on.
Gentian Violet. Dyes things rather well, I hear, and also fights yeast infections/thrush. Just the thing for divinity!
*runs off to do lunch with the mother-in-law*
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You will NOT tell your mother in law I recommended this. You WILL NOT.
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Oh, gods, no. She’s terribly mundane and has disapproved of me for over 20 years now. I try to never tell her anything interesting.
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