I don’t know if it’s just me, or this is common to everyone, but I’m in a constant battle in my head with straw men.
One of them is a fundamentalist straw man. He never smiles, hates everything new, is an arrogant jerk and thinks he’s right all the time about everything. Man, do I love to punch him in the face. Every time I have a glass of wine I laugh at him and his belief that in the Bible wine=grape juice. And I feel so superior.
Another one is the one I call “fan boi.” Whatever the fad of the day is, he’s there. He never has the guts to stand up and say, “I know that everyone else likes this book/movie/song/idea, but not me. I think it sucks.” I like to slap him (He probably couldn’t take it anyway.) When I take a real moral stand (like #ihatefigureskating), I poke him in the chest and show him how confident and sure I am.)
And while there may be a few people here and there who may look a lot like my straw men, I have to remind myself, that they are just caricatures. And the reason that I win every argument with them is because they are my creation – one dimensional, illogical, lame, ill-intentioned, misguided – created to be a foil where I can work out my moral/cultural/philosophical/theological thoughts & ideas. And it’s probably okay. At least in my head.
The danger lies in those places where I move my straw man from just in my head, to projecting them upon real people. So I look at real people, who are so much more complex than my straw man version, and I reduce their deeply held beliefs, ideas to a simple straw man caricature.
Written by charliedean
Topics: This & That