Year: 2009

Because Socrates was teaching others how to think for themselves, the Athenian government found him guilty of a crime and sentenced him to death. Things had been going badly in Athens, freedom of thought became a casualty.

We received the following cell phone message from The Fullerton Harpoon who is currently on a fishing trawler in the vicinity of the Sea of Japan and, apparently, has no computer access.

Dear Friends, Happy Thanksgiving. Some of you may wonder what an old, crusty, salt-bitten sea gherkin like the Harpoon is thankful for (some of you may not, and may not care). I am thankful for being part of  a society in which I can hurl my outrageous barbs (i.e. my current working version of the truth) at powers-that-be, and not get locked up;

I am thankful for having a bunch of fertile words and ideas bequeathed to me by people a lot smarter than I am, who happily deigned to bestow their gifts, Bodhisattva-like on the rest of us;

I am thankful for our Friends – a rare few who are able to view the socio-political terrain, and realize that we can do better – a lot better, and who are not terrified by the thought of criticizing the Chimps in Charge.

I am thankful for all the inert Clumps in the dead, sterile center, who peer out to the fertile, incubatorial edges of their paltry weltanshauung and start to sweat yellow fear pellets; for without them we fringers would have no frame of reference ourselves.

And so, from the cold, green-grey waters of the Sea of Japan, I wish one and all of the Friends a Happy Thanksgiving.

And a Happy Flounderday to you, Harpoon!

Here are some famous fringers who did not live in Fullerton.

We just read a very interesting comment by our fellow blogger, The Fullerton Harpoon, who wrote what appears to be a fairly concise essay on the nature of the “fringer.” We have added some fun graphics to the text. Here is what The Harpoon wrote:

I think you guys are confusing unrelated terms. “Fringism” is a state of mind – not a political persuasion. The fringer has been identified as such by those in the gelatinous “center” who have an inherest trust and fondness for, or a personal stake in power structures.

The fringer embraces the supposed insult knowing as he does that independence from entrenched interests brings clarity and objectivity. The true fringer is (or should be) a fairly rigorous empiricist (a fringer with a theological or Idealist bent is likely just to be just plain scary); if he has an acerbic personality and is unafraid to deploy perfectly good Anglo Saxon words then the fringer has the weapons to puncture the hot air-filled balloon the aeronauts in the middle like to waft around in. Hopefully now the picture of the fringer starts to come into sharper focus.

The fringer is an iconoclast by nature or experience, refusing to recognize the graven images idolized by the marshmallowy middle.

The dead center (inertial resistance) is responsible for most of the lack of accountability in local government; the “conservatives” (they’re not) and the “progressives” (they’re not) are actually pretty happy just to share their five little thrones with each other while the real shot-callers keep the apparatus working behind the scenes.

Other definitions are welcome, as usual. Fringers are not dogmatic.