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Showing posts from February 4, 2015

Modern Error #4: Nuanced Nonsense

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Nuance:   1775-85;     <  French:   shade,   hue,   equivalent   to   nu   ( er )  to   shade   (literally, to   cloud  <  Vulgar   Latin   *nūbāre,   derivative   of   *nūba,   for   Latin   nūbēs cloud)  +  -ance  >    Nuance is the stink left by the literary fart of postmodernism. (How's that for an unnuanced dysphemism?) Making subtle distinctions in complex ideas is delightful and even necessary in art and literature. But for apprehending reality, truth, goodness and beauty nuance is cancerous to philosophy, morality, law, politics, and science. Unfortunately in these latter categories nuance has become a cloak for incoherence, error, exaggeration, contradiction, fallacy and stupidity disguised as 'progressive' thinking. Nuanced stupidity should not be confused with mere ignorance. Nuanced thinkers are typically both intelligent, and well educated. Ignorance is merely a lack of knowledge or experience. Stupidity is the inability to process knowledge or e