Not sure what one calls this
It's that thing where one dispraises or insults a thing, but, on reflection, is that really what's being said?
E.g. I rather like Jay Rayner's line 'I refuse to denigrate the honest pleasures of self-abuse purely to make a point' because, indeed, is this not a harmless private pleasure?
I also have my doubts about 'were they raised by wolves?' to exclaim about people's awful antisocial behaviour. I realise that this may owe something to my very early imprinting on the excellent ton displayed by the Seeonee pack, doubtles inculcated into the mancub by the maternal paw of Raksha the demon: we note that when Mowgli leaves the pack and goes to the habitations of men, he is not impressed by their standards of conduct: "They have no manners, these Men Folk," said Mowgli to himself. "Only the gray ape would behave as they do." Fortunately he has been well-educated: [T]he Law of the Jungle had taught him to keep his temper, for in the jungle, life and food depend on keeping your temper; but when they made fun of him because he would not play games or fly kites, or because he mispronounced some word, only the knowledge that it was unsportsmanlike to kill little naked cubs kept him from picking them up and breaking them in two.
(Okay, he eventually lets in the jungle on the village after severe provocation but even then says no bloodshed.)
But even so, we are led to understand that wolves are a social species and therefore being raised by them would not predicate feral behaviour.
Similarly, the goldfish is much-maligned: it is not a flibbertygibbet with a miniscule attention span but has a longer memory than one might think and can be trained to navigate mazes. This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2712546.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
comments.