Metabasis

Metabasis (me-ta’-ba-sis): A transitional statement in which one explains what has been and what will be said.

“There is nothing. Now that we have established that there is nothing, let’s take a look at something.“ My philosophy professor was insane. He thought he was clever. I thought he was insane—totally insane. Not a scrap of sanity. For example, in one class he repeated “because” for forty minutes and then told us it had transformed into “Cosby” exposing the causal mechanism behind Cosby’s jokes and his flagrant perversion (he’s in prison now).

If our professor wasn’t a professor, I was sure he would be sitting on a rag on some street waving around a styrofoam cup. He was already an alcoholic, so he was only one step away from the pavement. Today, we were gong to hear the ethics lecture again—for the fifth time during the semester. It’s a hypothetical situation where we are supposed to figure out what to do:

“A man is waiting for a bus and his pants fall down. They were too big because he had lost weight and pulled the wrong pair from his dresser in the early morning darkness. All of a sudden he notices a flaming baby carriage rolling down the hill toward him. He thinks if he tries to stop it, he may catch on fire too, plus, he does not even know if there’s a baby in the carriage. He steps back and trips over his fallen pants. As he falls to the pavement he catches a glimpse of a baby, apparently dead, in the carriage as it goes by. He’s relieved and sad. Then the carriage hits a bump and the baby flies out crying and lands in the middle of the street. The man pulls up his pants and, holding them by the waistband, runs in front of a truck headed for the baby and scoops up the baby, letting go of his pants, he trips and falls on top of the baby, breaking one of the baby’s ribs and puncturing one of the baby’s lungs. He calls 911 and saves the baby. Over the years, he develops a drinking problem. He’s hanging out in the afternoon in a cocktail lounge and it’s his 45th birthday. A young woman sits down beside him and he buys her a drink. She’s drinking tequila shots. About five drinks in, she tells him she was rescued from a flaming baby carriage when she was a baby. She’s half drunk and so is he.”

What should he do and why?

The class will argue for 20 minutes. The consensus is usually, he shouldn’t tell her who he is and try to get her to hook up with him for the night. Then, tell her who he is in the morning, hoping she’ll go away anyway. If not, they can move in together and she can express her gratitude endlessly and he can live like a king.

This is a bizarre outcome and displays the ethical bankruptcy operative in the United States. 50 years ago that young woman would not have sat down by a strange man. All the baby carriage stuff would not have happened—people held onto their baby carriages back then! What a bunch of crap. I hope it’s not too late to drop the class.

POSTSCRIPT

As he turned around, he saw a burning baby carriage coming at him down the hallway. He pushed open the fire exit and ran out into the parking lot.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.