From my Facebook account, posted there today:
What the heck, I’m deleting my account soon anyway, I might as well really say what’s on my mind. I’m struggling lately with the loose way we’re using language and how it has us in such a mess.
1. Not everything is beautiful. What’s with the tendency we have today to want to call everything beautiful? (Actually, I think that’s a liberal-hipster thing.) When a person loses 500 lbs., the sagging skin on her (or his) tummy is not beautiful. While it is admirable, even beautiful, that he/she worked so hard, while they are probably more disciplined than most people, while their accomplishment cannot be celebrated highly enough, the sagging skin itself is pretty ugly IMO, and I think most would agree. We don’t have to say everything is “beautiful.” If everything is beautiful, nothing is. I realize that in certain spiritual and metaphysical ways of thinking, everything truly IS beautiful, and I totally subscribe to that, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
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