Comment Is Free

Guardian's new blog site, comment is free, is already a few weeks old and it looks fantastic. The posts and the comments are of really high quality. If you are bored reading pointless blogs or pompous newspaper op-eds, read these posts and the responses. Must keep the writers on their toes!

I have commented on a few posts too but then stopped after seeing how ridiculous and stupid my comments looked. And so many posts where I didn't even know if I had absolutely any opinion at all! The world is getting really complex. Too much is happening and there is too little time to be bothered about, say, the latest election results in Belarus or Chile or the nitty-gritties of anti-semitic politics. And perhaps most importantly, we are living a more and more solipsistic and self-centered lives. Think small and think of immediate is now the motto and the guiding principle. Ahh whatever! Just visit the blog and get the comments going. I wish some Indian news paper starts this too sometime soon.

P.S. Found one post where I had an opinion. Still, my comments are the stupidest in the entire thread :(

Update: Some funny comments on the post:
"I'm no philosopher - hence the need for help - but I have a few questions:"

Two questions. Two is not "a few" in Western hard liberal number systems.

First question:

"a) why do people think an understanding of rationality which is over 200 years old is useful now? As Ree said to Bronner why do we want to resurrect bits of our intellectual history?"

Good question. The better alternative would be to abandon any discussion of what people used to think. What time scale would be appropriate? What people thought 2000 years ago? 200 years? 20 years? 20 minutes? 20 seconds? I'll go for 20 minutes else I won't be able to finish this posting.

Second question:

"And b) more generally, what is it about the Enlightenment that people are now taking it off the shelf to polish up and put forward as their political and intellectual credentials? "

Another good question. Um, now let me think..... That's a hard one..... There must be something.... Just one small thing ......

No, can't think of anything. Nothing that's happened in the last 20 minutes anyway.

Now where's that sheep? Time I slit its throat and splashed some wine around, or else we'll get another cold, damp spring and a lousy harvest. You know how it is.

--------------------------------

"Enlighten me" you ask.
Happy to oblige. You know the expression used to refer to people who are a bit unhinged - "a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic"? Well, in your case the level of lunacy you've achieved here is akin to arriving for said picnic, opening hamper and finding not only that there's a couple of sandwiches gone astray but indeed there's nothing at all, save a couple of napkins and a mouldy apple core. Somebody's scoffed the lot - swiped the wine and everything. Then it starts raining and you have to go home.

ROTFL! :)
Other articles in response to this, here and here.