I love The Oatmeal, but yeah, this one’s a miss
Comment on Here kitty kitty
Live_your_lives@lemmy.world 4 months ago
This meme is making these different disciplines answer questions they were never intended to answer. It’s like complaining that a school principal isn’t out there teaching students: that’s not their role and it would be silly to expect them to do otherwise.
Philosophers would ask something like: what is a cat?
Metaphysicians would ask something like: does the cat really exist or is it a figment of our imaginations?
Theologians would ask something like: how do cats fit in to my religion
sneekee_snek_17@lemmy.world 4 months ago
nadir@lemmy.world 4 months ago
The categories themselves also show his ignorance.
Metaphysics is a sub-discipline of Philosophy.
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 4 months ago
And theology and science stood on philosophy’s shoulders as a means to different ends. It’s almost like the author started at the beginning and selectively broke off little bits to build up a joke, in service of the joke.
The joke didn’t land. That’s cool. It’s not my joke, I’m not offended. But I am mystified by the number of “well akshully…” replies. Had this been intended to be a serious, thorough commentary on various disciplines maybe I could understand the circlejerk around pedantry. But it’s not. It’s a gag based on oversimplification. In a meme community.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
blue@ttrpg.network 4 months ago
Comedy can be and is used to make real criticisms of the world and various institutions. “It’s just a joke” is one of the most common lies.
People can laugh at the joke, or disagree with the criticism it communicates, or both, or neither.
But having and exercising critical thinking skills when engaging with memes in a meme community full of scholars and academics is exactly what I would expect.