December 30, 2004

no man is a cog

4 Comments

hjsdert08.jpg
“No man is an island.” –John Donne, 1624
“No man is a cog.” –Hugh Mac­Leod, 2004
[Just added this bit to The Hugh­train]

4 Responses to “no man is a cog”

  1. Colleen says:
    December 30, 2004 at 5:14 pm

    Hmmm…I don’t know about this. Maybe “No man *should be* a cog.” Or “No man *need be* a cog.” I could even get behind “Treat no man like a cog” if it were a little pithier and not so dam­ned bibli­cal.
    But I’ve been a cog and I’ve met cogs, so I have a little pro­blem with that first assertion.

  2. hugh macleod says:
    December 30, 2004 at 5:20 pm

    Colleen,
    By that logic, you could also say, “No man *should be* an island.”
    You want to pith around with Donne as well?
    You were never a cog. You were simply misin­for­med– either that, or pla­ying Chic­ken with a self-imposed limi­ta­tion..
    No man (or woman) is a cog. Deal with it. ;-)

  3. Colleen says:
    December 30, 2004 at 7:46 pm

    Ah. Got it. I con­cede the point.
    On the other hand, from the woo-woo pers­pec­tive (which is how I was loo­king at the Donne quo­ta­tion in the moment), I still think that while we can elect to put our­sel­ves in insa­lu­brious or even unhelp­ful situa­tions (cog para­digm), we can­not cut the Nietzschian, collective-unconscious type threads that bind us to huma­nity no mat­ter how we phy­si­cally or psychi­cally try to dis­con­nect our­sel­ves.
    But I’m too old and wise to go sled­ding down a seman­tic slope with you, Slick, so again, I’ll just con­cede the point. :-)

  4. John says:
    December 30, 2004 at 7:50 pm

    Why fight the fee­ling of being a cog: go with it, man. At the end of the day, it’s just a wrapper.