To the Editor:
I am responding to Matt Welander '97's column titled "The True Identity of the SA" [The Dartmouth, April 24]. Mr Welander: and I use the term loosely, I am indeed touched by the amount of thought and time you invested in utterly failing to grasp the point of my original article. Furthermore, through a similar yet substantially less sincere sentence construction, I wish to take this opportunity to point out and applaud both your complete inability to devise a sound philosophical argument and your mind-numbing predisposition for being long-winded, poorly-versed, and wrong.
No doubt feeling your Neanderthallic sense of masculinity threatened by my liberating assertion that perhaps the Assembly (and therefore YOU) do not truly exist, you donned your editorial loincloth and sent your digits airborne. Being a person of such immensely limited retortive worth, you'll surely allow me to take a critical peek at the unfortunate results of your insecurity. Having carefully defined (quite well, to your wanting credit) the syllogic-based argument you wished to employ, the following embarrassment forced its way to your unknowing fingertips: "With this strategy clearly established, kindly allow me to proceed to my first point, being that a certain entity known as the Assembly puts up posters."
Your nascent intellect is amusing and its ponderings not nearly so far away from being less bankrupt than they used to could be. I sum up the worth of your above claim with the colloquially-translated primary Confucian maxim: "If you're broke, don't go buy stuff." What magical lessons you could learn; and what cerebral pains you could spare the rest of us, if only you would take this wisdom to heart!
Of course the Assembly puts up posters! That's precisely my original point. Thus it has become an irritating endeavor to prolong this argument; clearly, the Assembly exists. The very idea that someone would even entertain the alternative is, in my mind, pathetic. I am being heavy-handed with you because I recognize that, possessing the ability to write, there must be some trace of neural firings in your grape, however infrequent and remote; thus all is not decidedly lost.
But it is due to the sheerly asinine nature of your claims that I feel the need to continue; for, being a staunch Wittgensteinian, I am not so much concerned with the minimal merit of your claims as I am with why you felt the need to express them. And after thoughtful consideration, I have masterfully concluded that your response was merely another, heart-wrenching manifestation of a widespread Dartmouth-induced state of mental being to which I shall heretofore refer as D-Guilt.
D-Guilt has somehow seeped into this quiet college town through the psychological mail slot en bloc and established its parasitic self in countless poor souls. How can I make such a claim? Where is the proof? Consider the following scenarios, each decidedly not hypothetical ...
Trying to the cross a Hanover street, a student is suddenly confronted by a driver who feels obligated to stop and does. Yet the student hesitates, knowing that a less aggressive look on his or her part could have prevented this encounter. What creates such unnecessary tensions? I suggest, D-Guilt.
Some nameless person, now forever lost in the shuffle of Hanoverian history, at one point attempted the creation of a student-workshop display beside the Hopkins Center Box Office yet felt obliged to stop in the middle of a cubically-rendered, wood-planing hand. Why this lack of faith in one's mission? Most assuredly, D-Guilt.
Hopefully recognizing your previous glaring ignorance by these points, Mr. Welander, I now ask you to ponder this assertion: your arguments, better left on your personal computer screen (a hint for curbing future urges you may have), are merely a result of your weak-spirited inability to counter the pressures of epidemic D-Guilt. And thus I leave you to counter-parry if you should unreasonably feel the need to do so.
