Monday 28 July 2008

On the Loose

The whole of society is on the loose again. It left its tracks in a newspaper this morning:

If we are to tackle obesity properly, the whole of society must become involved in the solution. [1]

If I ever find out where it lives, I shall have it bound and gagged and transported to the remotest corner of the earth, perhaps even have it buried under twelve feet of concrete — a fittingly absurd end to so dangerous and misconceived a creature.

[1] Tagline of Neville Rigby’s “Weight of the Nation”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 27th July 2008.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

So is "we": "If we are to tackle..."; so, indeed, is "tackle". Personally, I'd rather "we" "tackled" fatheads rather than fat bellies.

Anonymous said...

i believe i saw this 'whole of society' the other day, a peculiar beast in a shellsuit with a Gregg's pasty in one hand, bottle of Mad Dog 20-20 in the other. It was shouting "I'll fucking cut your fucking face up you fucking c*nt!" into a mobile phone.

It did not inspire confidence.

i suspect the whole of society is best left out of the picture.

Sky Captain said...

That wasn't Society. That was a Chav, and as a Vodafone shareholder I ask you to go gently on them.
Of course, Mrs. Thatcher stated the obvious truth many years ago; there is no such thing as society.
When Grauniad politicos talk of the whole of society, they mean that they arrogate to themselves(impersonally of course), the legal means to press-gang everybody to their miserable ambitions, on pain of being imprisoned.
What makes Britain civilised is that people are only killed if they resist or are Brazilian.
And after they are coerced, they can claim to be part of 'society'.
Whoo hoo.

Dude said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Deogolwulf,

Sorry to thread hijack, but I thought you might get a good curmudgeonly laugh out of this clip of nonsense courtesy of Zizek.

Anonymous said...

The big problem is that so many individuals have opted out of society that society is no longer an effective force, for good or evil!

Deogolwulf said...

A great stream of "we".

Thanks for the link, Dan. I think if I had met him in that state, I'd have taken pity on him, and given him some more money for Special Brew.

J.K. Baltzersen said...

Of course, Mrs. Thatcher stated the obvious truth many years ago; there is no such thing as society.

Oh yes, there is such a thing as society.

When Grauniad politicos talk of the whole of society, they mean that they arrogate to themselves(impersonally of course), the legal means to press-gang everybody to their miserable ambitions, on pain of being imprisoned.

True. The confusion of society with state or popular majority, or a whole number of other things is dangerous.

When politicos say society must take care of something, they usually mean that government should take care of it.

What they don't seem to get -- and this is true for many cases -- is that society already takes care of that something through decentralized, voluntary cooperation.

Sky Captain said...

Well said.
There is such a thing as society after all.
But when 'Dave' says it, he is the dwarf trying to belittle the giant.
They used to say that Tories couldn't do smart casual.
Now everybody on TV is going around without ties, just like them.
And yes, it still isn't smart casual.

Anonymous said...

"a Gregg's pasty in one hand, bottle of Mad Dog 20-20 in the other. It was shouting "I'll fucking cut your fucking face up you fucking c*nt!" into a mobile phone."

How was he holding the phone?

- ip