Reductio ad Absurdum
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: None.
Description: The National Rifle Association? You have to laugh or you would greet!
_____________________________________________________________________
Reductio ad absurdum is a mathematical device for proving – or disproving – an idea by taking the argument to absurd lengths. Zeno developed a series of paradoxes four centuries before the birth of Christ that led to major advances in mathematics. The old story of the tortoise and Achilles is a good illustration of one of the paradoxes. You remember the story of how the hero races the animal and the tortoise, though much slower, must win.
Achilles starts, let us say, a hundred metres behind the tortoise. When he reaches the point where the tortoise started it has moved on ten metres; when the hero gets to that place, his rival has moved another metre. Achilles can never catch the tortoise because by the time he reaches a position the tortoise has already been there and gone on. Adsurd? Of course it is! Yet it led to the developments in the theory of numbers and, twenty-four centuries later, to the interpretation of quantum mechanics.
I got to thinking that it would be interesting to apply the method to the response of the National Rifle Association (NRA) to the killings in Sandy Hook, Newtown. They propose that the best way to deal with Bad Guys carrying guns is to arm the Good Guys. Apart from identifying school teachers as Good Guys the NRA gives no guidance on distinguishing between the two groups.
The recent shootings in Newtown, as in Aurora, Colorado, and Utoya Island, Norway, were carried out by previously Good Guys who had unexpectedly gone bad. In Britain, if a twitch of the curtains disclosed a neighbour loading weapons into his car, the police would be called. In the United States a public display of firearms might be a tad unusual but would be unlikely to cause great alarm.
Teachers may be mostly Good Guys but imagine the scenario where a teacher is dumped by his girlfriend on Friday, spends the whole weekend drowning his sorrows, destroying his liver and his sense of proportion. Monday morning, when he arrives at school, mortally hung over, to face his class of ten year olds what more likely than that he will pull out his handgun and shoot the little demon, masquerading as a pupil, who has made his life a misery all semester!
Most teachers will, of course, remain Good Guys under any provocation but it would seem wise to extend the search to other groups with an even higher proportion of Good Guys. Preachers, priests and ministers of religion, for example, must surely exceed the national average goodness quotient.
If you are an atheist you might quibble, but everyone will surely agree that there is one group with a negligible number of Bad Guys: children under ten are, almost by definition, Good Guys; instead of arming teachers, put the guns in the hands of the pupils!
To improve the odds still further, kids who prove their goodness should be favoured. When a child is christened the pastor should give him or her a small-calibre handgun just after sprinkling the water at the ceremony.
When I attended Sunday school we were given a card with a verse from the bible surmounted by an imaginatively coloured depiction of Moses or Saul on the road to Damascus. How much more practical to give every child attending a bullet for his or her christening pistol every time they attend Sunday school. A regular attendee would get fifty-two bullets a year while a back-slider would only get a handful.
This would give priests and pastors a lever in their important role of encouraging goodness. Even the ungodly would have to admit that they are better suited to that task than, say, politicians or NRA members.
It is hard to think of a scenario where a Good Guy would need a rapid-fire assault rifle so it would hardly contravene the Second Amendment if such weapons had to be licensed. In my opinion we should go further and only give the licences to head teachers and pastors.
In most churches, the members of the congregation sit with their backs to the main door unable to see what is going on behind them. It would be immensely reassuring if the preacher, the only one facing the door, could reach out his hand and pluck a loaded assault rifle from the altar to take out any Bad Guys breaking in before they could mow down the worshippers.
There is the more general problem of getting to the Bad Guy before he does something really awful. Do you have to wait for him to show his hand or can you anticipate his intentions? Near Orlando, Florida, a security guard killed an unarmed youth because he feared an imminent assault. Was he a Good Guy for stopping a possible attack on his life or a Bad Guy for slaughtering an innocent kid?
So come on, NRA, your hero is still stumbling along in the wake of the tortoise. Follow your own logic to its conclusions and stop being so inhibited!
Swearwords: None.
Description: The National Rifle Association? You have to laugh or you would greet!
_____________________________________________________________________
Reductio ad absurdum is a mathematical device for proving – or disproving – an idea by taking the argument to absurd lengths. Zeno developed a series of paradoxes four centuries before the birth of Christ that led to major advances in mathematics. The old story of the tortoise and Achilles is a good illustration of one of the paradoxes. You remember the story of how the hero races the animal and the tortoise, though much slower, must win.
Achilles starts, let us say, a hundred metres behind the tortoise. When he reaches the point where the tortoise started it has moved on ten metres; when the hero gets to that place, his rival has moved another metre. Achilles can never catch the tortoise because by the time he reaches a position the tortoise has already been there and gone on. Adsurd? Of course it is! Yet it led to the developments in the theory of numbers and, twenty-four centuries later, to the interpretation of quantum mechanics.
I got to thinking that it would be interesting to apply the method to the response of the National Rifle Association (NRA) to the killings in Sandy Hook, Newtown. They propose that the best way to deal with Bad Guys carrying guns is to arm the Good Guys. Apart from identifying school teachers as Good Guys the NRA gives no guidance on distinguishing between the two groups.
The recent shootings in Newtown, as in Aurora, Colorado, and Utoya Island, Norway, were carried out by previously Good Guys who had unexpectedly gone bad. In Britain, if a twitch of the curtains disclosed a neighbour loading weapons into his car, the police would be called. In the United States a public display of firearms might be a tad unusual but would be unlikely to cause great alarm.
Teachers may be mostly Good Guys but imagine the scenario where a teacher is dumped by his girlfriend on Friday, spends the whole weekend drowning his sorrows, destroying his liver and his sense of proportion. Monday morning, when he arrives at school, mortally hung over, to face his class of ten year olds what more likely than that he will pull out his handgun and shoot the little demon, masquerading as a pupil, who has made his life a misery all semester!
Most teachers will, of course, remain Good Guys under any provocation but it would seem wise to extend the search to other groups with an even higher proportion of Good Guys. Preachers, priests and ministers of religion, for example, must surely exceed the national average goodness quotient.
If you are an atheist you might quibble, but everyone will surely agree that there is one group with a negligible number of Bad Guys: children under ten are, almost by definition, Good Guys; instead of arming teachers, put the guns in the hands of the pupils!
To improve the odds still further, kids who prove their goodness should be favoured. When a child is christened the pastor should give him or her a small-calibre handgun just after sprinkling the water at the ceremony.
When I attended Sunday school we were given a card with a verse from the bible surmounted by an imaginatively coloured depiction of Moses or Saul on the road to Damascus. How much more practical to give every child attending a bullet for his or her christening pistol every time they attend Sunday school. A regular attendee would get fifty-two bullets a year while a back-slider would only get a handful.
This would give priests and pastors a lever in their important role of encouraging goodness. Even the ungodly would have to admit that they are better suited to that task than, say, politicians or NRA members.
It is hard to think of a scenario where a Good Guy would need a rapid-fire assault rifle so it would hardly contravene the Second Amendment if such weapons had to be licensed. In my opinion we should go further and only give the licences to head teachers and pastors.
In most churches, the members of the congregation sit with their backs to the main door unable to see what is going on behind them. It would be immensely reassuring if the preacher, the only one facing the door, could reach out his hand and pluck a loaded assault rifle from the altar to take out any Bad Guys breaking in before they could mow down the worshippers.
There is the more general problem of getting to the Bad Guy before he does something really awful. Do you have to wait for him to show his hand or can you anticipate his intentions? Near Orlando, Florida, a security guard killed an unarmed youth because he feared an imminent assault. Was he a Good Guy for stopping a possible attack on his life or a Bad Guy for slaughtering an innocent kid?
So come on, NRA, your hero is still stumbling along in the wake of the tortoise. Follow your own logic to its conclusions and stop being so inhibited!
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned two novels and is now trying his hand at short stories.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned two novels and is now trying his hand at short stories.