07/24/2012
I never cease to be amazed at the capacity of the human brain’s pattern-recognition module to see things that are not there. My own columns seem to be especially prone to over-interpretation.
The other day I did a column for Taki’s Magazine about taking apart the Derb family shotgun. Not long previously I had done a different column on end-of-life decisions for helpless old people, in which I'd declared my intention to quit before I get fired:
I have a good selection of guns and have made up my mind that if it comes to diapers, I shall see myself out with a gun. I will not wear diapers — that’s the end point for me, the milestone I am determined not to pass.
Perhaps putting the two topics together, readers ? well, at least two readers: one at Steve Sailer’s site and one at Taki’s Mag ? have taken this to mean that I am contemplating self-destruction.
I absolutely am not. The family shotgun worked perfectly well. If planning to use it mischievously, why would I disassemble it, with a starting-estimate probability of no more than seventy percent I'd be able to put it back together correctly? (It’s still in pieces, and the current estimate is down to about thirty percent.)
It is true that, being irreligious, I don’t believe there is any large point to human life, nor anything following it. It is also true that I am afflicted with the rather melancholy temperament all too common among the English.
On the other side of the scales, I am very well-socialized, with a strong sense of duty, honor, and responsibility. I adore my family and would not knowingly bring any distress upon them short of the diaper scenario, at which point it’s a matter of weighing different distresses. I am also cheap, and experience pain when I think of all those life insurance premiums going up in smoke, which they would ? my policy does not pay out on suicide.
And then: Why give satisfaction to one’s enemies?
So please set your minds at rest. I hope to continue making myself useful to the immigration-patriot and race-realist movements, and to continue making leftists squeal with indignation, into the indefinite future.
(And if anyone wants my thoughts on suicide in general, I once did a column on the subject. At this point, I have done a column on pretty much everything.)
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.