No Absolutes (except where noted)
Comments (0) Be it affirmed (I didn’t think this needed to be said, but I was wrong) that unless noted otherwise nothing I say is intended to be taken in literally absolute terms:
- If I say, “I love pizza!” I do not mean I love all pizza.
- If I say, “I love monkeys.” I do not mean I love all monkeys.
- If I say, “I’m skeptical about educational research…” I do not mean I am skeptical about all educational research.
When I employ such phrases, I do so in the way they are commonly used– to refer to a significant majority of the pizza, monkeys, or educational research being referred to. For example: when I say “OER initiatives are missing the boat,” I mean “a significant majority of OER initiatives” are missing the boat. If I say “Richard Powers writes great novels,” I mean that most, the majority, or maybe even almost all of Richard Powers novels are great, in my estimation, but I have no desire to waste time trying to quantify the number precisely.
When I mean to be absolute, I will use terms like “all” or “every,” though with an obvious caveat (that I also used to think went without saying): I can only speak from my own experience. Thus I can safely say “I hate all mayonnaise” and “all turds taste bad” even though I am unlikely to actually try every style and brand of mayonnaise and there are a significant number of turds in the world that I have never tasted.
If you don’t believe I am referring to you in any statement I make, absolute or otherwise, then feel free to ignore me. In fact, feel free to ignore me anyway, for any reason. If you feel a need to get defensive about your own work when I say things like “contemporary collage poetry is boring,” first consider the notes above and see if you still feel aggrieved. If you do, then you probably have other things to worry about than my opinion (if the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it… if the glove doesn’t fit, I will acquit… etc).
Themocracy