Phrases That Need to Be Retired: "All Natural"

Today The Wag tackles one of the dumbest phrases of all time, "All Natural".

Hippies and Takoma Park residents with fragile constitutions may want to avert their eyes.

Actually, on second thought, stick around. You probably need this more than anyone. Your fragile constitutions are no doubt due to a lack of preservatives in your diet.

The phrase "All Natural" is meaningless on two levels, one philosophical, and the other practical. Let's start with the philosophical one:

There's no such thing as "natural".

Or, rather, there's no such thing as "not natural", which makes it a meaningless distinction.

Webster's relevant definition of "nature" is: "the external world in its entirety", which is to say, "everything but you". The only things that are not in "nature" and are therefore "natural" are:

a) You.

b) Stuff that doesn't exist.

We call anything in the "b" category "supernatural", which is another way of saying "pretend".

Therefore, to say that something is "all-natural" is to say that it exists entirely. Since I've never seen anything that only existed a little bit, that's a really dumb thing to say.

But let's say we take the more common usage of the word, that is to say "that which was not made by a human being from component parts", or "that which is not synthetic".

There's a problem with this, of course, in that synthesizing things is what humans do. Naturally. Plenty of other animals do it to, of course. Chimps fashion tools to get at termites and to brain each other with. Elephants do crazy-cool things with bark. Bower birds... make bowers.

Rare picture of the rapacious Bower Bird making nature his bitch.

We are, of course, better at it, by an order of magnitude or six. So we can make a distinction there, but it's really more quantitative than qualitative. We change our environment - and ourselves - because doing so has been very good to us in evolutionary terms. Put a human in any natural environment, and he'll start making tools and building stuff. Naturally. So in that sense, anything that human beings make is natural. Which leaves us with a meaningless distinction again.

But let's set philosophy aside, and go with the commonly accepted notion of what "natural" means, because what the heck, I'm feeling generous. We're still left with a practical issue, which is that the connotative definition of "natural" is jut flat-out wrong. This is because we usually equate "natural" with "good".

Which it most decidedly is not.

A couple brief lists:

Stuff That Is Natural

Hurricanes
Typhoid
Mental Illness
Pooping in the Woods
Deadly Nightshade
Big Things With Claws That Eat You, Like Bears
Dying In Childbirth
Dying From A Minor, But Infected, Laceration
Dying a Lot More Than We Generally Do Today
Being Very, Very Bored

Stuff That Is Not Natural

Houses
Vaccines
Wellbutrin
Indoor Plumbing
Not Eating Poisonous Flowers
Not Having To Live In The Woods With Big Things With Claws That Eat You, Like Bears
Cesarian Sections. Also, Pain Meds
Neosporin
Retirement Homes
Mad Men

Look, I understand the value of respecting and learning from complex natural systems, but there's nothing more inherently moral about that which is "natural". Sure, we screw up the synthetic all the time, but I'll take it over rampant dysentery any day of the week.

Of course, despite all this, people slap the "all-natural" label on just about anything. Because people keep buying it.

Don't believe me? Do a Google search for "all natural salt". Then marvel at the fact that you come up with ANY GODDAMN RESULTS AT ALL, never mind the twelve million or so I got.

Here's what all-natural salt looks like:


Now here's evil, corporate-controlled, genetically modified salt looks like:


Here's pure salt:


And here's plain old salt:


Notice anything? Oh, yeah: they're all exactly the same. BECAUSE IT'S ALL SALT. It's sodium chloride, maybe with a little dirt thrown in. You cannot improve on it. There is no way in which you can make salt fundamentally saltier. SALT DOES NOT CARE IF IT WAS GROWN ORGANICALLY.

Okay, you can make it Kosher by leaving the iodide out. But then you've still got the sodium ferrocyanide. And if you take THAT out, you're missing out on valuable, all-natural iodide and sodium ferrocyanide.

Now Google "all natural water" and take a gander at the hundred and twenty-six million results you get.

Don't worry. I'll still be here when you get done banging your head against the keyboard.

-- The Prolix Wag
If anyone manages to find an All-Supernatural breakfast cereal, I'm there with bells on.

Phrases That Need to Be Retired: "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time"

This should be a relatively short post, because I can make my case for retiring the phrase "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time" in one sentence. I shall invalidate all future use of the phrase as an excuse for thievery, philandering, drunk driving, manslaughter, shelling one's own troops, hitting things with hammers that should not be hit with hammers, Eighties Hair, and poorly-thought-out land wars in the Middle East with one simple phrase.

One, single sentence.

Ready? Okay. Here goes:

No one, in the history of EVER, ever did ANYTHING that didn't seem like a good idea at the time.

In fact, no one, in the history of EVER, has ever done anything that didn't seem like the absolute BEST thing to do at the time.

Because if something else had seemed like a better thing to do at the time, THEY WOULD HAVE DONE THAT.

Sure, they may have realized it was the worst thing they'd ever done in their entire lives the very next moment, but in the split-second the actual decision was made, that was the best their brains could come up with. No matter how hard that may be to believe.

Which is sometimes very hard indeed.

It's a tautology, folks. Universally true, and therefore universally useless as a qualifier.

So, from here on out, whenever you feel tempted to say "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time" with "Boy, Was That a Dumb Thing to Do".

Or I will punch you.

That is all.

-- The Prolix Wag
Because all of my ideas ARE good ideas, all the time.

Phrases That Need to Be Retired: "I Have a First Amendment Right..."

I would like to hereby request that no one ever say the phrase "I have a First Amendment right to [do/say X]" again.

Why? Because the only time anyone ever says that, it's not what they mean. Hell, it only gets said in situations where it's completely irrelevant.

How I know this? Because, in situations where someone's First Amendment rights are actually at stake, one of the following things gets said instead:

1) "As the Court noted in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 'the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.'"

2) "Come back with a warrant."

3) "Don't taze me, bro."

Or, as your parents used to say: "Not in the face, officer! That's how I make my living!"

No, people only say "I have a First Amendment right to [do/say X]" when the issue is not a governmental abridgement of their right to Free Speech, but rather, someone else calling them on the fact that they're being assholes.

It usually goes something like this:

Person A: "Your mother's a whore."
Person B: "Hey!"
Person A: "I have a First Amendment right to say what I want."
Person B: "Well, yeah, but..."
Person A: "And your mother's a whore."
Person B: "Cut it out!"
Person A: "First Amendment!"
Person B: "..."
Person A: "Whooooooooooore."

What that looks like to a casual observer is a vigorous, full-throated defense of the kind of free debate that makes us Americans. What it is, is a rhetorical bait-and-switch.

See, the debate is almost never about whether someone should be allowed to say something (although when it is, people often severely overestimate that right -- more on that in a sec)... it's about whether or not it's a dumb thing to say.

(Note well the Religious Corollary: I am not a bigot because I say your religion is stupid. That's called a theological debate. I'm a bigot if I say that means I should treat all people of your faith as anything other than fellow human beings. Who believe stupid things.)

Say one word, and I will have the ACLU on your ass so fast you won't remember what it feels like NOT being sued.

Usually, people invoke the First Amendment not because their rights are being infringed, but because they're unwilling to take responsibility for the way they've chosen to exercise that right.

With that in mind, let's try the above conversation again:

Person A: "Your mother's a whore."
Person B: "And you're an asshole."
Person A: "Hey, I have a First Amendment Right --"
Person B: "To be an asshole. Yes. Which you're exercising. And I have a First Amendment right to call you on it. Asshole."
Person A: "Quit calling me that."
Person B: "First Amendment!"
Person A: "..."
Person B: "Ashoooooooooooooole."

Of course, if your mother actually is a whore, you're on your own. If the spanking was purely recreational in nature, carry on.

As I mentioned earlier, even when issues of government abridgement of the right to Free Speech are invoked, the people invoking it are way off base. The concept of civil disobedience is often misunderstood, for example.

Civil disobedience doesn't mean you have a right to block traffic, or even protest in a park where you don't have a permit. What it means is that you get arrested for those things on purpose, go to jail, pay your fine, and own it. You use the publicity of the arrest itself to further your cause. You don't whine about it; you don't act all surprised and put upon when the officer actually puts the cuffs on. You go to jail with your head held high, to prove your point. Suck it up.

Similarly, your right to swing your fist always ends where my face begins. If you, say, go to a Town Hall meeting with the intention of shouting down people that disagree with you, guess what? In most jurisdictions, you will get thrown out on the street for attempting to materially interfere with someone else being heard.

And then you'll go on FOX News and cry about how your rights were violated. Because that's how you roll.

Oh, and just because you have a sign and a cause and you really feel it doesn't mean you get to ignore the fire code. Sorry.

-- The Prolix Wag
Wondering what it would be like to have people NOT want to hear what he has to say.