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Ask Arahant: Advice from a Kindly Curmudgeon, Volume III
@cliffordbrown went and made the theme for the month Advice, and what better time than now to revive Ask Arahant. Your kindly curmudgeon is ready once again to answer your questions, as was done here and here.
You all know about advice columns. This is how it works. You ask for advice. I’ll dispense advice. You ask a silly question, I’ll give a silly answer. You ask a serious question, I’ll give a serious answer. I’ll do the best I can, but you get what you pay for, and you aren’t paying for my opinion in anything but time and attention.
So, what questions do you have for the Oracle of the Internet today?
Published in Group Writing
I think this is where someone says something along the lines of “you’d think they’d need one, there must be a lot of cattle there given all the BS they produce.”
Dear Arahant:
It occurs to me that my wife understands me completely. Would I have been better off with a more easily fooled, far less perceptive woman?
Sincerely
Curious in Maryland
Dear Curious,
No. I am sure that having a wife who understands you has kept you out of plenty of trouble all these years. You might have had more fun, but you’d be dead by now.
I’m not sure. I think I get in more trouble because my wife understands me.
Yes, but your wife is a very different case.
In high school I had a joke book of silly questions. I think it was a spoof of a serious book. Here’s one I remember and based on your wonderful recent post on letters, you probably have an answer. If you could rearrange the alphabet, what order would you put it in? Related, how did the order happen?
I wouldn’t necessarily want to rearrange the letters, unless it came with restoring some of the old ones as mentioned in that earlier conversation. Right now, we have an order that people know. We even have a song with a melody written by Mozart. How much could that be improved upon while scrambling the letters around? Probably not much.
As for how did the order happen, that depends on whether you mean the present order or the new one I would propose. In the former case, vast and impersonal forces of history. In the latter, well, that is covered in my argument for the restoration of old letters and expansion of the alphabet.
On the other, other hand, were I to rearrange our alphabet, it would probably be towards the Futhorc order of our previous alphabet, since that was the native English alphabet and to a very hot place with the Romans, Greeks, and Hebrews who developed our current introduced alphabet.
The simplest way would be to just do it alphabetically.
Yeah, that was my initial reaction and idea and still the one I favor.
I’d arrange it by height.
The ‘tall and tap’ method I learned in the military.
Thank you. Found the serious book it was spoofing but can’t find the joke book. Its cover was almost the same.
Serious question: what should I tell my daughter when she asks why people hate Pres. Trump so much? Serious or silly answer, or both, will be welcome.
That is a complex issue. I’m not sure that it’s a silly answer, but it is a simple one: because he’s winning.
Beyond the simple, it comes down to different reasons for different people. For some, it is a matter of distaste for a guy who talks in a lower-class dialect. When W. was elected, I remember reading an article about how Europeans much preferred Bill Clinton, because he was so much more civilized. That made me go look the word up, and I found that the dictionary definition of “civilized” was about a thin veneer of manners. My old definition had to do with how much a man supported civilization, rather than his own aggrandizement, and anyone could see W. was head and shoulders above Clinton by my old measure.
I am sure that with Trump, the Europeans are now telling each other about how much more civilized even W. was, although he could never compete with Obama.
A second group looks at the character Trump built in his life: divorces, bankruptcies, bad business deals, and total self-aggrandizement. They see that and think, “This is a horrible person, and we should not be giving him an office of trust. A leopard cannot change his spots!” Personally, I see Trump more like Prince Hal who transformed before his cronies horrified eyes into King Henry V, a ruler who knew his people all too well, and loved them and his country anyway.
The third group are those on the other side. They are sometimes called Democrats, Progressives, Socialists, Leftists, and other names. Some do hate Trump, because they are true believers and they have to believe that they are good and the other political side is evil, but they don’t hate Trump anymore than they did W., unless it is because he is winning more than W. did. But most on the left simply demonize him because he is not on the left, just as they demonized W., GHW Bush, Reagan, and Nixon, along with our previous candidates, such as Goldwater, Romney, and even McCain when he almost pretended to run against His Anointed Majesty Barack Hussein Obama.
There are other categories, too. Some are heavily tied up with labels, such as “conservative” and “nationalist.” They are conservatives, and Trump is a nationalist, and nationalists are bad.
How many other categories are there? I’m not certain. Every person who hates Trump has their own list of grievances, real and imagined.
But for those who appreciate him, it mostly comes down to what he has been accomplishing. Judges. Deregulation. Reforms.
So ‘aitch’ comes before ‘ay’?
Or was it the other way.
Next you’ll be saying the eye comes before the eee.
Except after cee.
Well, they’re both after the cee.
I don’t see enough beer in this picture.
A very thoughtful and helpful answer to my question, as expected. I covered a lot the same territory in my own response, but not what you said in the beginning. It’s that he won. I think whether people think he’s winning is strangely subjective.
I’m terrified of retirement. I only work part-time, but it gets me up in the morning and out of the house, and gives me a sense of usefulness. Eventually, I will have to give up this sinecure to a younger person. What shall I do?
I will emulate my mom and volunteer at local charities a couple days a week. She is thriving at 82.
It isn’t whether they believe he is winning, it’s that they fear he might be winning.
What Phil said. Or find a hobby where you are making things. Maybe knit or crochet. You can do things like sew clothes or stuffed toys for kids in shelters. The important thing is to stay busy and find a way to be engaged with your community. Volunteer at hospice or a food shelter. Visit people who are shut-ins or in senior centers. Write books or short stories or poems. Get more active in your church. Many have lay ministries or prayer ministries. Or there are things to be done like sending out birthday cards to members. Volunteer at the library. Get out and feed your local crows. The important thing is to have a way to stay engaged. Maybe you could do all of the above. It depends on your energy level.
Arahant: Should I ask a question?
If you’d like. All answers guaranteed to be worth what you paid me for them.
I know retirees that are busier now than when they were working. They might be volunteering at the VA hospital, being more active in their church, doing more gardening, or teaching some adult education classes at the university. And these people are happy. The ones who are not so happy spend all day long watching TV and maybe drinking more.
Gardening at the church to make the grounds look pretty with flowers and so forth.