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The Dao of Inisherin (first draft)

The Dao of Inisherin Cloaked in elements of eccentric dialogue, gruesome self-mutilation, a captivating score and idyllic pastoral cinematography, The Banshees of Inisherin is widely regarded to be a black comedy characterized by heavily stereotyped Irishness within a loose metaphor to the Irish Civil War of the early 1920s. In the review “ Blarney ” for Slate , Mark O’Connell does well to lay bare the stereotyping in the film as well as its slack ties to the war, describing McDonagh’s Irish setting as “clearly the work of an ‘Irish writer,’ but it’s an Irishness formed as much by distance as intimacy […] reacting against a somewhat abstract idea of the place, informed by an emigrant’s reverence and romanticism”, while the backdrop of war “as a metaphor [is] both vague and clumsy [...] as a political allegory, it seems obviously retrofitted, tacked onto the narrative to add unearned resonance.” Agree or not with the perspective Slate ’s O’Connell offers, the elements described are cer...
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What is 道 ?

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Don’t compare COVID-19 to 9/11

Human communication is fraught with metaphor and simile; these are basic tools which help not only establish a shared frame of reference but allow us to view events from a more detached perspective (seeing the forest, if you will). As such they are crucial in language development. However, their use is not always helpful to providing a foundation from which we can approach or respond to the event(s) we’re analyzing. I don’t mean the notion of “mixed metaphors”, tho that is of course a thing; what I mean here is that too often inapt comparisons are made which detract from our ability to understand that with which are attempting to deal, which seems frequent in propaganda. Recently I have been hearing media, especially left-leaning media, making comparisons between COVID-19 and 9/11, particularly as relates to the death toll. I’ve also been seeing this happening more frequently in social media from friends and acquaintances who are also left-leaning. Ultimately it seems the point they’re...
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