I was wondering how much social conformity is good. On a scale of 0=anarchy in Haiti to 100=North Korea, the extremes are bad. Maybe a nice, comfortable 65 is just about right; but those guys down the road who like 70 are fascists!
BTW, I use the metric system at work all the time, but I still like Fahrenheit for weather because 0-100 brackets the typical outdoor temperatures, and units should be scaled so that the normal dynamic range runs from 0-100. Which is why miles per hour is fine too. Using metric units for food disturbs me because it sounds like you are cooking amphetamines.
Anyway, part of this deep, deep meditation was fostered by Brit's post on
mispronuncing your own name (Specifically me of mine. Mike is just so tricky). Of course, you can call your self Little Lord Fauntleroy if you want to, or say that your name is sheshefsky and just happen to spell it Krzyzewski. But if someone tells you that you are mispronouncing your own name, the issue of exactly where they get off comes to mind. Which reminded me of these
Swiss hygiene inspectors who will come microscopically inspect your home for cleanliness. And then just today I read about
the Japanese's government's consideration of a certification program for Japanese restaurants abroad to make sure their food is "authentic."Personally, this seems unlikely to fly due to sovereignty, and even if they set something up, the vast hoard out for a little nigiri on lunch hour would never notice. Or if they did, the label authentic would just be a synonym for exclusive. For example, did you know that you can only call a pizza an "authentic Neapolitan pizza" if these
guys certify it? I must have missed their superbowl ad, because I did not know that. And even if you were aware of it, would the label "authentic" mean anything when you were walking into a place to eat? These guys obviously care a lot about their food, but would they like to put up with the Swiss guy telling them how to clean their kitchen? Working from very broad stereotypes, I suspectthat they would kill each other.
Part of these standards also has to do with living in densely populated, often culturally homogeneous, countries like Japan. I live in more or less is in the opposite situation, so I will admit bothers me, particularly if that standard should then be imposed here as some extension of the word Japanese when applied to food made in America. Which would be amusing because Japanese and American culture have long imported, mangled, and riffed of each other in other areas. Are we going to send English language inspectors all over the world to make sure that no incorrect English signs or t-shirts with bizarro slogans get made?
Anyway, that's just a specific instance; The question is, should you tell someone else they are wrong (according to Hoyle) and how big of a gun are you willing to use to make them agree and change? Here are my thoughts:
1. It has to be about something important, where not important means that at most, you shoot me in the arm with a BB gun using only one pump, and very important means that You Have Become Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds.
2. You should be willing to consider the possibility that you are wrong, with a specific, testable, statement of what it means for you to be wrong.
3. If you are going to ever enforce any standards, you have to be willing to accept responsibility for making wrong judgments. The world is imperfect, therefore make imperfect judgments and move along. If they are wrong, accept the consequences. Take the leap of faith, no?
Coming back to my name: 1) as you might guess, it's pronunciation rates little more than a BB to me, as most likely it did (if that much) to my ancestors - who were all smart-asses and who probably made the name up just to mess with the French. 2) I am wrong, but I live in another country than the Netherlands. 3) Whatever.
So, anyway, reading back over this it is clear I'm not meant to be an essayist, but then again, I didn't ask to be born!
Labels: crime and punishment
