Contradictions 7

To Abraham Maslow, “acceptance of paradoxes” is a “self-actualising value that will make you happier". (BPS Digest) Does he mean “telling yourself that you love Big Brother”?

We colonized other countries, and now we wonder where all these other people came from.

If you export armaments, don’t complain about importing refugees.

Brits have stiff upper lips, but we love the orgy of sentimentality that is "the" John Lewis ad.

It never ceases to amaze me that people who've been persuaded that our 'economic strength' will somehow solve Brexit problems also believe that we 'can't afford' policies designed to help everyone in the country. (@mrjamesob)

Clichés about it’s not the winning but the taking part, to succeed you must fail, coexist with cheering on England in the rugby final. If the platitudes are true, why do we watch Wimbledon? Why is there even a Wimbledon? (Oh I see, there has to be a contest to “take part” in, just as long as you don’t try to win. But somebody has to win a contest...)

If all I have to do is be myself, why does the term “impression management” exist?

Since I retired, people are worried that I’ll have nothing to do, so they give me tasks and make suggestions. But they don’t want to hear about the four novels I’ve written.

You can claim judges are out of touch with the real world or you can sneer that they used to be barmaids, but you really can’t do both. (@seanjonesqc)

a) Greta Thunberg is not a child.
b) Why should we listen to anything a child says?

If revenge only hurts the perpetrator, why is there a series called The Avengers? Why was “revenge tragedy” a genre in Jacobean England? The original tale of Hamlet was the saga of a long and elaborate revenge in which everybody gets a poetic comeuppance and Hamlet never stops to think about it once. Those who have done him wrong are picked off one by one. (And doesn’t a group of Marvel superheroes have the same name?)

"Social behaviour is too subtle and nuanced to be defined." So why have I got a book called /Japanese Business Etiquette/? And why are you teaching your children to say please and thankyou?

A Brexit crash out is both a vast threat against the EU, but simultaneously inconsequential to the British public. We have now hit Schrodinger’s Brexit. (S)

Don’t copy other people, but children need the right role models.

It's so weird to see, after 30 years of newspapers lamenting that kids aren't taught grammar any more, the flip to complaining about newfangled useless grammar lessons. (@ariehkovler They never meant grammar – they meant “correct English”, by which they meant “avoiding the five solecisms I was warned against at school”, such as split infinitives and sentences starting with “and”. And Michael Gove thought he was giving them what they wanted. Fronted adverbials to you too.)

Genre fiction is boring. “It’s like watching TV,” says Colm Toibin. He adds: “I don’t have a TV.”

Capitalism is so great that it:
1. Creates homelessness while there are more vacant homes than homeless people.
2. Creates hunger while 40% of the food produced in the U.S. and Canada is wasted.
3. Poisons the environment and then shames you into buying "green" products
(@ClaraSorrenti)

Although Laura Thompson insists that “Only very rarely in her detective fiction did Christie write from life,” the biographer contradicts her own words on every page. (Ahsweetmysteryblog.wordpress.com)

We all agree that we should fly less to protect the environment, but we’re about to reroute motorways and rivers to build a new runway at Heathrow.

Burden young people with student debt and reduce their wages, and then complain that you can’t sell your “dream home”. (Actually you can sell your McMansion in Arizona – just for a lot less than you paid for it.)

"The only people in a position to make a living as poets were the ones being paid to tell a room full of poets who would never make a living from their work how they could make a living from their work." (@poetniall)

We all think we’re special and that conventions are for other people, while being utterly conformist.

We moan about immigrants from Bulgaria, Romania etc but employ them in care homes and manage not to see that someone else has paid for their upbringing and education.

Live the dream, you can do/have whatever you want as long as you want it enough, but the journey not the arrival matters.

a) Isn't it awful that language-teaching in UK schools is declining! No more French and German classes!
b) I'm not sending my children to that school – half of the children speak English as a second language!

Something I've never quite been able to make sense of: If, as a Christian, you believe Jesus's death was good and necessary for our salvation, then why would you become an anti-Semite who demonizes Jews for "killing Jesus"? (@5thCircAppeals)

Every time I say something bad about Corbyn, I'm an elitist snob. Ironically, when I say anything bad about the Tories, I'm a bleeding heart liberal. (@markoftheD)

My favourite is probably the one who spent twenty minutes telling me that he'd been blacklisted by the BBC because his views were so trenchant — in a BBC green room while we were both waiting to appear on the BBC. (@mrjamesob)

Immigrants ought to integrate; let’s save money by cutting English classes.

Brexiteers simultaneously see the EU as so weak that it's on the verge of collapse and something we have to escape from before it does, and so strong that it's been bullying us from day one and throughout the negotiations. (Edwin Hayward)

Parenting is tricky: on the one hand you want an obedient, well-behaved child you can bring out in public (and to restaurants); on the other, you want a daughter who isn’t afraid to push boundaries, ask questions and demand answers from authority. (Makers.com)

The young are obliged to rebel and conform at the same time. (Quentin Crisp)

I love it when religious people try to claim that atheism is a religion as an insult, because they unwittingly are insulting all religions, including their own. (Michael Paulkovich)

Society: The totality of social relationships among humans. The rich, privileged, and fashionable social class. (The Free Dictionary)

I used to get told off for being fervent, outraged, indignant, passionate, by people who complained I had no feelings.

Any autistic person who speaks up about autism is too high-functioning to speak about autism.

Society: "Autistic people are geniuses!" Also society: "Actually, let's hire the non-autistic person." (Chris Bonello)

Be yourself, but not if you’re autistic. (Chris Bonello)

Society: be yourself.
Also society: why are you so odd?
(Nicholas Dunn)

Jews were mocked for being both too poor and too rich, caricatured as both beggars and bankers, pedlars and plutocrats – a premonition of their later fate, to be blamed for both communism and capitalism. (Jonathan Freedland)


Everybody says that gender is a social construct, but we also act like it's somehow an innate part of a person's identity. I started to think the whole concept of transitioning was regressive. (Person who detransitioned)

In the 80s, right-on people looked down on romance and romantic love as an invention of the medieval troubadours. On the other hand they approved of medieval courtly love, where the man yearned over the woman from afar and didn’t even have to meet her in real life. (Courtly love was made up by historians, say later authorities. "That's what we call withholding," say psychologists.)

The paradox of those Brexiters who can wilfully reminisce over their pre birth days of the British Empire and World War II, yet appear to have absolutely have no memory of Britain’s role in setting up the Common Market or the 70 years of a hard border Northern Ireland. (@JamesMelville)

How is no-platforming (boo) different from denying people the oxygen of publicity (hooray)? Or even “just ignoring” them? (hooray)

We want small, fragile young children to take risks, or "learn to manage risk" — when they didn't book the abseiling/canoeing trip and can't get out of the frightening activity. They have no control over the risks they are forced to take.
But we don't like teenagers to "indulge in risky behaviour" like sleeping around and taking drugs and drinking.
And then we want adults to “take risks” – which seems to mean “sleeping around”. And have you heard adults bragging about their drinking?

The Victorians had a much healthier attitude to death, holding elaborate funerals and dressing in black. The Victorians didn’t care when their children died because so many children didn’t live beyond five.

To deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies. (George Orwell on Doublethink)

Breast implants are popular, but clothes are designed for a slim, boyish figure. (Bum implants are also popular.)

The government is ignoring/pandering to the will of the people! (Dec 2018)

I loathe Christmas shopping and the crowds and the way Christmas has become a consumerist nightmare, but isn’t it awful that retail sales are down?

Don’t copy other people, be spontaneous, be yourself, be original and act naturally, but say "good morning" and "excuse me".

“Not only was there a media blackout, but the story was presented in a totally misleading way.”
"I am using this column in a widely circulated publication to complain that I'm being silenced."

The English deny the arguments Scotland uses to be free of the English while using the same arguments for their own ridiculous nationalism. (Andrew McLellan)

More here, and links to the rest.