by New Dornalia » Sun Jan 10, 2016 6:47 pm
by Asfaltum » Thu Jan 14, 2016 5:55 pm
There’s a saying: “May you live in interesting times.”
To begin, it’s a curse. “Interesting” in this case uniformly means “Oh god, death is raining down upon us and we shall all perish wailing and possibly on fire.” If someone wanted to say something nice to you, they wouldn’t tell you to live in “interesting” times. They would say something like, “I wish you eternal happiness” or “May you have peace” or “Live long and prosper” and so on. They wouldn’t say “Live in interesting times.” If someone is telling you to live in interesting times, they are basically telling you they want you to die horribly, and to suffer terribly before you do.
Seriously, they are not your friend. This is a tip I am giving you for free.
Second, the curse is almost always ascribed to the Chinese, which is a flat-out lie. As far as anyone can tell it appeared in English first but was ascribed to the Chinese, probably due to a combination of casual racism and because someone wanted to be a shithole of a human being but didn’t want it to be marked down against them personally. A sort of “Hey, I’m not saying this, those terrible Chinese are saying it, I’m just telling you what they said” maneuver.
So not only are they not your friend, they may be also a bigot and passive-aggressive.
That said, the Chinese do have a saying from which it is alleged that the bigoted passive-aggressive curse may have been derived: "宁为太平犬, 莫做乱世人," which, roughly translated, means “It’s better to be a dog in peace, than a man in war.” Which is a maxim which is neither bigoted, nor passive-aggressive, and about which I find a lot to agree with.
The point is… I’ve been a man in war for a very long time now. I think it would be preferable to be a dog in peace. I’ve been working toward that for a while.
My problem is, I live in interesting times.- Recovered fragment, The End Of All Things
by Godular » Thu Jan 14, 2016 6:41 pm
by Godular » Sun Jan 17, 2016 5:16 pm
by Skaugra » Sun Jan 17, 2016 10:33 pm
by Orthodox Gnosticism » Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:00 am
by Huntaer » Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:42 pm
by Godular » Sun Jan 31, 2016 6:40 pm
by Asfaltum » Mon Feb 01, 2016 5:42 pm
by Orthodox Gnosticism » Tue Feb 16, 2016 9:08 am
by Godular » Sun Feb 21, 2016 11:53 am
by Godular » Wed Feb 24, 2016 6:54 pm
by New Dornalia » Mon Mar 14, 2016 4:38 pm
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