Let's be fair

In Selbstversuch, Sloterdijk mentions the European religious wars of 400 years ago: "In the 16th and 17th centuries, all of Europe was a battlefield for confessional armies. In psychoanalytical terms: hysterics and obsessional neurotics, armed to the teeth, were beating each other over the head in an attempt to force their symptoms on their opponents." Somewhere Luhmann wonders why philosophers of ethics do not conclude that one cannot, in good conscience, allow all questions to be decided by a bad conscience - nor by a good conscience. He says that they never address these matters.

I before me, except after p

Self-referentiality is often confused with egotism. But egotism is self-preferentiality.

Chili powder or a history of Europe ?

I'm in the doghouse with the in-laws of a friend of mine, Ralf, because of their dope-crazed dog. Being pumped full of cortisone for an incurable skin disease, it rushes around like a mad thing, panting so fast you'd think it's about to hyperventilate, jumping up on things and down again, and generally making a nuisance of itself.

The in-laws brought it along to a barbecue dinner at Ralf's house. I was eating at a low table, fending off the dog who wanted to share the grilled goodies on my plate. I kept pushing it away with my foot, and several times asked the in-laws to restrain it. They refused because "it would make him unhappy". So I finally kicked the dog (not hard) away from my table. He got the message, but the in-laws didn't.

I recently gave Ralf a bag of chipotle powder (dried smoked jalapeños) to pass on as a gesture of appeasement to his stepfather-in-law, who comes from Rumania and appreciates chilis. The bag was from a precious consignment of Mexican chili powders that my sister sends me occasionally from Texas. She asked me yesterday by email what I needed, so I specified chipotle powder, telling her the dog story in explanation of my low stocks.

This was her reply:

What??!! Kicking dogs away from the table is a great tradition of millenia. The Romans, the Angles, the Saxons--I would venture to say all civilizations (and certainly man in pre-history)--have wisely participated. One can't pass on one's genes if one dies of starvation because the fucking dogs are getting all the best food. Better give the family a history of Europe than a bag of chili powder. It might do more good.