Saturday, December 18, 2010

Things they should invent words for

There are people who think that if things are good for some people, they should be made equally good for other people.

And there are people who think that if things are bad for a number of people, they have no right to complain because they aren't the only one in this situation.

We need words - neutral words that do not pass any value judgement either way - for both of these phenomena. Because we need to talk about these phenomena. I've noticed people tend to engage in one or the other without much critical thought, and it's something we need to be aware of.

2 comments:

laura k said...

There are also the people who think no one should have it better than they do.

These words would be difficult to keep value-neutral, I think.

Lorraine said...

I hereby invent the word for people who think that if things are bad for a number of people, they have no right to complain because they aren't the only one in this situation. I hereby dub them "kvitchers." The people they kvitch about might find themselves characterized as kvetchers, but often as not unfairly so. The kvitchers' credo is "kvitcher bitschen," and they are more burdensome and quarrelsome by orders of magnitude.