a post not in the form of a numbered list
For tonight's writing work, I completed a draft of a short story that is partly in the form of a numbered list. (A numbered list of five things, naturally, because five is the appropriate number for this sort of thing.)
It's about four times longer than the first time I wrote it, when it partly took the form of the minutes of a committee meeting; I'm hoping it makes more sense this way. Oddly for a story partly in the form of a numbered list, it manages to have some degree of narrative arc, which the committee minutes version (astoundingly, I am sure) did not.
Also, I am still reading this book about dueling and feuding in early modern France, and in addition to the general existence of dueling and feuding being an argument against the whole assertion that an armed society is a polite society, it's demonstrating what I have thought of for a while as the general problem with libertarian theory, of which I suppose that adage is one expression. Namely: even in an armed society, not every person is or can be armed all the time.
Right now I'm reading the "Escalation" chapter, about the middle stages between the initial offense and rounding up all your cousins to go kill somebody. One of the very common middle stages consists of attacking and maiming your enemy's unarmed servants. Or pets. You don't get into as much trouble, killing a servant, as you would for killing your noble rival. This is nonetheless awfully hard on the servants, who are just trying to make a damn living and not allowed to carry any effective weapons for self-defense. (In our egalitarian age, of course, one could arm the servants. But this would not help the greyhounds, or the horses.)
And even then, when you get past the middle stages, it turns into a lot of people being killed in privies, or in churches, or in carefully-planned assassinations. Which does not seem especially polite.
It's about four times longer than the first time I wrote it, when it partly took the form of the minutes of a committee meeting; I'm hoping it makes more sense this way. Oddly for a story partly in the form of a numbered list, it manages to have some degree of narrative arc, which the committee minutes version (astoundingly, I am sure) did not.
Also, I am still reading this book about dueling and feuding in early modern France, and in addition to the general existence of dueling and feuding being an argument against the whole assertion that an armed society is a polite society, it's demonstrating what I have thought of for a while as the general problem with libertarian theory, of which I suppose that adage is one expression. Namely: even in an armed society, not every person is or can be armed all the time.
Right now I'm reading the "Escalation" chapter, about the middle stages between the initial offense and rounding up all your cousins to go kill somebody. One of the very common middle stages consists of attacking and maiming your enemy's unarmed servants. Or pets. You don't get into as much trouble, killing a servant, as you would for killing your noble rival. This is nonetheless awfully hard on the servants, who are just trying to make a damn living and not allowed to carry any effective weapons for self-defense. (In our egalitarian age, of course, one could arm the servants. But this would not help the greyhounds, or the horses.)
And even then, when you get past the middle stages, it turns into a lot of people being killed in privies, or in churches, or in carefully-planned assassinations. Which does not seem especially polite.