"Nerds read spells at you before taking your stuff."
I'm a lawyer. I've never seen a cleaner explanation of my profession than that. Of course, it's not "without force." Oh, there is force; it's just unspoken. The sheriff who comes to do the eviction, to attach your property, to serve your warrant? He's a man with a gun and a badge that gives him the authority and autonomy to use the threat of that gun to get you to comply. The spell just . . . conjures him, I guess. Maybe the analogy fails there.
In court, I've seen people try to process what is happening to them and fail so many times. Sometimes they get frustrated or angry or even despondent, fight tears; sometimes they say they don't understand or just need a lawyer or more time or money. But, amazingly, almost always they stand there stoically and just take it as if even as they're being thrown into the thresher they still respect its legitimacy.
I'll never understand that. Do they agree that the ideal of the system is Just so what's happening to them is just a glitch? Or is it just hopelessness? Another door meant for them that they cannot enter, as Kafka put it (in The Trial; the parable called sometimes Before the Law). "Nerds reading spells at you" captures that with a succinctness I've never seen. Thanks for sharing that. Great piece otherwise. I mean, so many are. That's, well, that's what the money's for! as Don Draper would say.
"Nerds read spells at you before taking your stuff."
I'm a lawyer. I've never seen a cleaner explanation of my profession than that. Of course, it's not "without force." Oh, there is force; it's just unspoken. The sheriff who comes to do the eviction, to attach your property, to serve your warrant? He's a man with a gun and a badge that gives him the authority and autonomy to use the threat of that gun to get you to comply. The spell just . . . conjures him, I guess. Maybe the analogy fails there.
In court, I've seen people try to process what is happening to them and fail so many times. Sometimes they get frustrated or angry or even despondent, fight tears; sometimes they say they don't understand or just need a lawyer or more time or money. But, amazingly, almost always they stand there stoically and just take it as if even as they're being thrown into the thresher they still respect its legitimacy.
I'll never understand that. Do they agree that the ideal of the system is Just so what's happening to them is just a glitch? Or is it just hopelessness? Another door meant for them that they cannot enter, as Kafka put it (in The Trial; the parable called sometimes Before the Law). "Nerds reading spells at you" captures that with a succinctness I've never seen. Thanks for sharing that. Great piece otherwise. I mean, so many are. That's, well, that's what the money's for! as Don Draper would say.