Your philosophical metaphor of the day
Thankfully, you don’t see the phrase “Hobbesian frenzy” all that often in newspaper prose. The International Herald-Tribune‘s Jack Healy and Angela Macropoulos manage to get it into their lead paragraph, for very regrettable reasons: A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York was trampled to death by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front ...
Thankfully, you don't see the phrase "Hobbesian frenzy" all that often in newspaper prose. The International Herald-Tribune's Jack Healy and Angela Macropoulos manage to get it into their lead paragraph, for very regrettable reasons: A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York was trampled to death by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front doors and thronged into the store early Friday morning, turning the annual rite of post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting into a Hobbesian frenzy. At 4:55 a.m., just five minutes before the doors were set to open, a crowd of 2,000 anxious shoppers started pushing, shoving and piling against the locked sliding glass doors of the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York, Nassau County police said. The shoppers broke the doors off their hinges and surged in, toppling a 34-year-old temporary employee who had been waiting with other workers in the store's entryway. People did not stop to help the employee as he lay on the ground, and they pushed against other Wal-Mart workers who were trying to aid the man. The crowd kept running into the store even after the police arrived, jostling and pushing officers who were trying to perform CPR, the police said. Let's hope that Healy and Macropoulos find a story where they manage to use the phrase "Kantian bliss" appopriately. Readers are encouraged to write their own lead paragraph for a story that involves their favorite philosophical concept -- Lockean civility, Nietzschean absurdity, Machiavellian lust, etc.
Thankfully, you don’t see the phrase “Hobbesian frenzy” all that often in newspaper prose. The International Herald-Tribune‘s Jack Healy and Angela Macropoulos manage to get it into their lead paragraph, for very regrettable reasons:
A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York was trampled to death by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front doors and thronged into the store early Friday morning, turning the annual rite of post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting into a Hobbesian frenzy. At 4:55 a.m., just five minutes before the doors were set to open, a crowd of 2,000 anxious shoppers started pushing, shoving and piling against the locked sliding glass doors of the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York, Nassau County police said. The shoppers broke the doors off their hinges and surged in, toppling a 34-year-old temporary employee who had been waiting with other workers in the store’s entryway. People did not stop to help the employee as he lay on the ground, and they pushed against other Wal-Mart workers who were trying to aid the man. The crowd kept running into the store even after the police arrived, jostling and pushing officers who were trying to perform CPR, the police said.
Let’s hope that Healy and Macropoulos find a story where they manage to use the phrase “Kantian bliss” appopriately. Readers are encouraged to write their own lead paragraph for a story that involves their favorite philosophical concept — Lockean civility, Nietzschean absurdity, Machiavellian lust, etc.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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