Re: bad poetry?

How's this for a food generality for you? Hawaii consums the most Spam per
person, than any other state. It averages 4.5 cans per person. Therefore,
hawaiians love Spam. Do they all? Of course not. This reverts to my
University days logic classes. Which means, because there are some
hawaiians who eat none and others must (gag) eat it daily.
tina

>Yeah, I've been thinking about this a bit more and was trying to figure out
>when generalities made sense and when they didn't. I think the closest
>they come to making sense is in examples like the ones you provide below --
>statistical data about specific human behavior. "General" here means,
>literally, "over 50%."
>
>But even this gets a bit complicated. If you're just talking about food
>preferences, that's fine. Yeah, most Puerto Ricans I know like arroz con
>pollo. But when you start adding in more and more statistical behaviors it
>starts to contradict itself, throw in attitudes and it becomes even more
>difficult, and the more complex the composite becomes (in other words, the
>more like a real person) the less likely is the composite to match any
>particular real person -- at that point, it's not very meaningful, is it?
>
>Now when we talk about generalities concerning specific ideas, at that
>point they almost always get ridiculous. When ideas between highly
>disparate religious traditions are flattened out it's usually a sign that
>the speaker either doesn't really know much about any of them, or is
>interpreting them in the light of a separate belief system, or is some
>silly worldpeacenik that thinks we really are all the same and why can't we
>all just get along? It's usually a sign of, or requires, a fundamental
>disrespect for the specific beliefs/ideas of each respective religious
>tradition. Even genuinely common elements (such as "compassion" in both
>Buddhism and Christianity) are so different in the context of their
>respective traditions that it's a bit senseless to categorize them
>together.
>
>These are poor habits of mind, that's all.
>
>Jim
>
>Yocum Daniel GS 21 CES/CEOE wrote:
>>Jim, generally true? or mundanely common? If I were a Pinto Bean farmer I
>>would say that Mexicans, in general, eat lots of Pinto Bean so I have a
>>market for my livelihood, but does every specific Mexican likes Pinto
>>Beans?
>>Of course not but the generality still serves.
>>When speaking of specifics, generalities are little help, but they are not
>>worthless. Jim, I generally enjoy your posts.
>>Daniel
>
>-
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Received on Mon Jul 7 14:39:59 2003