Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> You're reality may be made of absolutes but mine is not. There are no 
> absolutes in my world, not one, everything is a shade of gray.
> 


A view that *everything* is in shades of gray is a far more narrow view than 
even a view that things must be black or white.   At least with black and 
white there are two things to be considered.  With the 'Everything is Gray' 
view, 
there is only one category, one (or no) discrimination to be made.  
Everything 
is gray, even if it is black and white it is still gray.  

'Aboslute' (like 'perfect') is a philosophical term.  When I say that my 
jeans are black, I do not mean some theoretical perfect black, absorbs all 
light, 
black beyond black worlds without end, amen.  And when I say the T-shirt is 
white, I do not mean blazing, blinding pure white.   But the jeans aren't 
gray 
and neither is the shirt.  If we want to say that the jeans really ARE gray 
because there is no such thing as pefect black, it is just as utterly useless 
a 
designation as saying that everything is black or white.  There are gray 
jeans 
and grey shirts but there are also black and white ones as well.

The 'Everything is Gray' argument is, as I have observed, almost always 
employed when someone wants to explain something away that the earnestly wish 
wasn't true, although it obviously is.  99% works really well for me.  
Something 
that appears as black 99% of the time is black as far as my decision making 
goes.  When I run into the 1% that isn't black, I will make adjustments for 
that 
one abberation.  Or else it will catch me unawares to my disadvantage.  But 
the 
odds are in my favor.

What happens, as I have observed, is that someone doesn't want this something 
to be black 99% of the time.  It isn't up for discussion as to whether it 
will occur or appear black that often, they know one time it wasn't black.  
One 
time.  And so it's iffy, it's not *always* black.  Since I know of ONE 
incident 
where it was not black, then it's a 50-50 propostion.  It's either black or 
it's not, one or the other of the two, 50-50, and that makes it gray.  After 
all, we know that if we mix black and white 50-50, we get gray.  So, ergo, 
everything is gray.

If you were bitten by a rabid animal, you know you won't necessarily get 
rabies.  And even if you do get rabies, do you know there was one person two 
years 
ago who got rabies and didn't die?  The first one known to have survived it 
(under a rather ingenious medical treatment that slowed her nerves to the 
point 
that the vaccine acted more quickly than the virus).  So it's really shades 
of gray, isn't it.  No absolutes.

So if you are bitten by a rabid animal, knowing that it isn't absolutely 
black and white, how will you act?   Let me suggest:  You will act as if it 
is 
absolutely black.  You will get the gamaglobulin and the vaccine.  That 
'there 
are no absolutes in my life' would go out the window in heartbeat.

In "my" reality, I can't dismiss things I would prefer not be true by saying 
that after all, *everything* is a shade of gray.  No body really believes 
that 
and certainly no one acts on that belief.  

   </HTML>