ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

IS THIS ACCEPTABLE

Call me a bluff old dinosaur
if I see things in black and white.
As a slip of a lad
I was good, I was bad;
there were things that were wrong or right.

The teachers taught carefully how we could know
those things that were right or wrong.
A tick for the right,
a cross showed a blight
and you FAILED if you didn’t catch on.

But this age is the apex of wisdom
where acceptable makes what is apt.
For the day can be night
and the dark can be light;
it depends what we choose to accept.

Yeah, a bit of a worry Neville, very confusing for us dinosaurs hey mate.

G'day Ross. Just hold firmly to the first principle of logic and reason which is; A is not equal to non-A. Then they won't confuse you.

Hi Neville

Logic and reason? My goodness, I thought those two old mates had been banished from the land!

Have you noticed how these days people will argue with you, absolutely in the face of facts and logic? It seems they believe they are right at all times and at all costs.

I read something on the other day that said once upon a time people wrote in diaries and got upset if someone else read the entries. Now they post on social media and get upset if others DON'T read it!!

It's a topsy-turvy world.

Cheers
Shelley

G'day Shelley. I don't know how many in the bush poets have ever heard of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault or Jean-François Lyotard.

What you are describing, comes from their influence.

Ah, so true Neville!... And Shelley, what a great poiint about diaries and social media, and how right you are about so much in the world seeming topsy-turvy!

Well, I must be a dinosaur too Neville, because I was only talking to someone this morning about how much more straightforward things used to seem years ago....

Things didn't seem straightforward, they were straightforward. Then postmodernism arrived with its hall of mirrors. Watch one of those way out rock videos where you can't tell reality from fantasy, that's postmodernism in motion.

Well, Neville, I have certainly heard of Foucault, but I can’t claim to have studied his philosophies. I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the other two.

But illogical argument happens all the time these days. Just the other day in a normal conversation with someone, I mentioned a particular item on a website. The other person disputed that this item was there. Usually I just let these things go, but in this case I took out my iPad and showed her. She still argued, and in the face of visual evidence, delivered what she obviously thought was the clincher ... “Well, it’s not on that website on MY iPad!” I kid you not.

There seems to be an inherent inability to back down, admit an error. People have a compulsion to be proved right at all costs, regardless of the facts.

Cheers
Shelley

I managed to stay awake through some of the yooni lectures and I learned about cognitive dissonance. It is a fancy word that means people will hold even more tightly to what they want to believe or what they want to be true , when confronted with evidence to the contrary.
Cult gurus succeed because of that.
e.g. Even when people see the incontrovertible evidence that the Queensland cannot beat NSW in the Origin , they still believe that Queensland will win.

Well, if you say so, Neville, then it MUST be true! Just as surely as I know that my home town of Maryborough is the Centre of the Universe!!!

Perhaps we should both make application to join the Flat Earth Society ...

Cheers
Shelley