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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3169 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 25, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on McGilchrist. Picking up The Count of Monte Cristo again, from Dantes' escape.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. This is the perfect novel to reread. Short, not an ounce of fat, and I have a different interpretation every time. Haunting of Hill House casts a longer shadow culturally, but horror stories where the supernatural embodies secret trauma have been done to death since — heck, even in video game writing.

Castle's story of already isolated, broken people drawing into greater isolation and delusion when on the brink of opening up is really special. I've seen the novel described as a class commentary or a reflection on mental illness, but I think the act of stating an interpretation reduces it. Also, boy could Jackson spin a sentence together.

I read both of those novels, Jackson does not miss.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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