This word. Wednesday. You keep using it. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Well.
Here I am.
I’m alive.
Wobert is real (weal?).
OK. OK. Enough self-sarcasm. Wobert Wednesday should probably be named “Wobert Who?” for as often as I post. I get it. Part of it is my inherent slothfulness at times, plus the absurdly large number of interests that I’m bouncing between at any given time.
You don’t get enough Wobert Wednesday for the simple reason that I’m really bad at managing my time. For that, I apologize. I mean, without my posts to balance out Marty and Frannie, your Snakes and Otters experience is incomplete.
At this point, a less honest person would promise to be better and really put in the work to post something every week.
Not that I’m saying I’m really honest. I’m just not willing to expend the mental energy to make those kinds of blow smoke up your @$$ promises. I mean, didn’t I just type about all the things I’m interested in and how bad I am at managing my time? If I were better at time management, I’d have come up with a spectacular @$$-smoke-blowing promise.
So. You get a promise instead that I will eventually get around to posting a new entry in the vastly entertaining, popular and insightful series I call Wobert Wednesday. And it might even be on a Wednesday when I do it. Might. Let’s not get crazy with the promises, OK?
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A recent Sunday dinner saw an interesting conversation at Casa Robertus. It was Mrs. Robertus’s birthday, and we were doing the traditional thing where we eat at the restaurant of choice of the birthday person. Well, it was takeout from the restaurant of choice. The ‘Rona and all.
Anyway, somehow philosophy came up. I don’t remember exactly how we got to it, but it started a nice little discussion about philosophy, philosophers and philosophical questions. Personally, I think when my birthday comes around next, we need to institute a new tradition and discuss the philosopher of choice of the birthday person. I think this could be really big. Soon, everyone will be doing it.
Anyway, we talked about Aquinas and Augustine, the latter being my eldest female spawn’s favorite. The youngest spawn, The Boy, was perfect I said to be a philosopher. He can take the contrary position to just about anything. Well, I guess it’s better to say his default position is the opposite of what most people think about things.
The Boy, for instance, doesn’t understand why you let people off the elevator before you try to get on. It just doesn’t make sense to him. Don’t ask. It’s been an ongoing struggle. We also talked about the Ship of Theseus, which is a nice starting point for philosophy. One of the other discussions we had was the Shopping Cart Theory of Character. That’s one that I find fascinating and true. We’re actually going to do an episode on that one, but you have to wait until April 29, 2022 for that Hoopajoob. Yeah, we’re planned out that far and even farther.
Anyway, a good philosopher should be able to argue or present both sides of an argument. Granted, The Boy needs to work on understanding the opposite side of questions. See the elevator question above.
I think being a good philosopher should be a requirement for any kind of public service. Wouldn’t politics work better if politicians could not only express their position (OK, it would be nice if they could do that now) as well as their opponents’ in an articulate fashion? Not only that, but the work of Congress would slow to a crawl. Which I count as a good thing. Can you imagine Ted Cruz explaining and praising AOC’s positions before moving on to his own? Imagine her doing the same.
Talk about political theater! They’d probably nearly choke to death trying to get the words out. It would slow things to a crawl. Let’s face it, when Congress is really busy doing things, no one wins except the political overlords and their donors. Big Business and Big Government. Even though things are really divided and have been for a while and will be for some time to come, a lot of bills still manager to get passed.
But I digress…
So, Wobert Wednesday will probably still be sporadic, but there will probably be a common theme running through a lot of them. I’m going to be talking philosophy and philosophers. I know not everyone will be interested in that, but you should be. Philosophical arguments really do form a lot of the culture without you even realizing it. That’s what we’re going to talk about.
