Like I said before I don’t blame Rachel for her justified disdain twords Ruth nor do I hate her character, it’s just that disagree with this particular part of ideology. In a world where nothing stays the same, why would the human individual be the exception to that rule?
Screwball
Daniel here. There is a saying, “Change is the only constant in the universe”. That goes for people too…
It does typically take a fair bit of effort however, unless something traumatic is involved. Could take even more effort to convince others of the change, especially if the others don’t want to believe…
That little speech still infuriates me. What does she know of redemption? Of growth? Of change? Everything she knows about the world comes from the stories she so confidently derides.
Redemption is hard. It is soul-consuming. If it were anything less, it would not be redemption. But redemption is real. It is every recovering alcoholic. Every reformed criminal. Every repaired relationship. To go up to someone who is trying to alter their path to something better, to look them in the eye, and say to not bother?
She’s at best naive, and more likely ignorant.
It is ironic that most of the irredeemable are only so because they can’t imagine they could be anything else. That is their curse. That is their path.
BBCC
I think that would be a pretty bold guess to assume she has no experience but stories. I think that whole spiel pretty well sets up for a reveal someone Rachel was close to kept hurting her, apologizing and turning it around. It’s POSSIBLE it was Ruth, based on this newly revealed backstory, but I think we don’t have enough information to say that for sure.
Abdomino
If Rachel finds herself in using absolutes against others, she should not find it shocking when such is used in kind.
It is hard to imagine that one who has only been in college for, at this point, roughly two years has the same realm of experience as those who have done more.
I do not discount the experiences of youth lightly, I myself am 24 and know just how little I know, but it is when they declare what is impossible, what is fantasy, what is nothing but lies, with such vehement, poisonous certainty that credentials must be called into question.
Maybe you’re right, maybe Rachel had a trusted loved one who took advantage of her forgiveness. That is one single experience. In the course of one’s life, they will be witness to countless stories of redemption, betrayal, tragedy and triumph. It becomes dubious to take a person’s limited experience seriously when one has seen dozens of things more unbelievable happen before their eyes.
I hold Rachel and those like her accountable to this failure in perspective. To do any less would be to make excuses for an altogether autonomous individual, taking away their agency. To do any less would be an insult. A failure not corrected quickly becomes a failing.
If we do not have enough information to question why Rachel feels the way she does of redemption, she does not possess enough to question Ruth’s path to the same. A refusal to compromise another’s path of self-betterment is selflessness at it’s most quintessential. That includes preventing others from doing it themselves.
BBCC
Assuming your experience is universal isn’t a youth thing and most people tend to count things they actually went through over things they’ve heard of or seen.
I’d assume there’s actual backstory among all of the sophomores in Read. It’s just that in this case we’re getting to see the actual backstory between these two.
The diegetic world: it’s not just for film critics anymore.
So it does. Fortunately, I’m old enough that little brain farts like that are a normal and unremarkable part of my life.
Jamie
*senility high five*
Screwball
Alright, Daniel the Human doesn’t know how all this “Junior, sophomore, etc” stuff works, so how about you Americans explain it for the rest of the world? Daniel the Human may just ignore it, but it keeps busting my processors…
Cholma
4 years of college, starting as a Freshman. Freshman leads to Sophmore, which leads to Junior, then finally to Senior.
Needfuldoer
The last four years of regular schooling follow the same pattern.
Felian
Kind of a bummer how in the German School Systems, we only got a rising number for our school years…
There are a lot of norms that don’t seem to have any reasonable basis.
Marsh Maryrose
There’s no particular logic for driving on the right-hand side of the road versus driving on the left-hand side of the road, but it does make life easier if everyone in the local region agrees which side of the road to use.
Apart from people whose right hands were in a cast at the time, the only person I ever knew who offered his left hand to shake was someone whose right hand was completely atrophied (by a congenital condition).
In some cultures there are greetings without body contact — there’s the namaste, the wai, the ojigi, among others — and honestly, there is a certain level of fraughtness/am-I-doing-this-right? with all of them. But offering the right hand to shake is pretty universal among hand-shaking cultures.
And if you’re looking for rational explanations for human social customs…I wish you good luck in your quest.
Sure, but that doesn’t account for why it should definitely be the right hand, or why someone should take exception to the left.
Miles
It’s because left and evil are nearly homonyms in Latin. It sounds dumb but the ruling classes of all of Europe were also incredibly inbred for a few centuries which totally explains that.
Once again, “inbred Europeans” is the best explanation in the thread.
Terry
Actually, shaking the right hand had a couple understandable origins.
One: most people are right-handed, so offering the right hand was a signifier that you did not plan to pull a weapon on the person. There was nothing preventing the person from pulling one with the left and stabbing while shaking, but it was a gesture of good will that everyone understood. Since it was just a gesture, it wouldn’t matter what the actual dominant hand is, just that it was understood between the people making the gesture.
Two: there is an expectation in some cultures that you do certain things with certain hands, like wiping after using the toilet with the left hand, so you make sure to eat and greet people with your right because otherwise, that would be gross 😛
Do those cultures also have a stigma against washing their hands? Also, do they wipe with their bare hands, instead of toilet paper or, like, a leaf? It’s not gross if your hands are clean.
Bathymetheus
@DT: that particular custom predates toilet paper and indoor plumbing. It’s not often remarked on (though I have seen it mentioned) but up until relatively recently, pretty much everybody was really stinky.
Because, born-in-a-barn person, you offer your right. It’s been the norm for centuries. Offering the left throws people into confusion. And why would she insist other people shake with their non-dominant hand?
Why does it matter so much, though? I guess I’m just an idiot or something, but when people offer me their left hand for a good firm shake, I just respond with my own left hand and think nothing of it. It’s never once occurred to me to take offence.
Inahc
From what I’ve heard, It only mattered back when people would wipe their ass with their left hand and not be able to clean it properly. These days we have wonderful inventions like toilet paper and soap.
As a left-handed person, the most annoying custom is when people expect you to *eat* with only your right hand. Thankfully nobody’s actually hassled me about it but I’m sure there’s been some people silently judging my “wrong” eating.
Felian
i am right-handed so i also wipe with my right hand. i’m less likely to get accidents wiping with my more dexterous hand 😛 and yes i wash both hands afterwards before i touch anything or anyone.
thejeff
Right, but you live in culture and a time with ready easy access to good sanitation.
Now imagine living in time and place without running water and toilet paper. Or in some cases even the leaves suggested above (deserts, northern winters).
Corey
Why do you care about such a nonsense thing, I dont give a damn what hand people shake with and nobody else should either. Its a damn hand, I swear to god people look for any reason to look down on other people.
One of the origin stories behind offering the right hand is to show you were not armed. Why would you not want to shake using your right hand as a lefty? It just allows you to use your left hand to stab them after!
The fact that I had to google “swan to goodness” only shows how little I know about American dialects, and how much I would have sucked had I actually gone into linguistics.
In the Appalachians, “I swan,” is, as the dictionary puts it, “a mincing substitute for ‘I swear.'” It originated in New England as a contraction of “I should warrant.” In the deep South, it has, for some reason, shifted to “I swanny.”
Daniel here, Scouting Movement survivor ?. The right handed shake started off as a means for people greeting each other to show they’re not holding any weapons (since most people are right handed) and mean no harm. With no weapons in the primary hand, it is harder to start a fight. In the Scouts & related groups, you offer a left handed shake as Lord Baden-Powel (creator of the Scouting Movement) discovered many African tribes showed they were unwilling to fight by carrying their weapons in their right hand, again reducing their ability to attack quickly, and offering the left hand as a greeting. When he started the Scouts, he passed the left hand shake as a not-so-secret group handshake…
Have humans only evolved more powerful non-dominant arms or maybe basic multitasking capacity in the past few decades? I’m a filthy right-hander, but if I’ve got a bat in my left hand, I can still swing it. It’s no harder to perform that task, regardless of which hand is holding the object. What am I missing, here? What do people do with their left hands that would prevent them from holding something in them while the right hands are grabbing each other?
thejeff
You can swing it, but you’d be at a disadvantage fighting someone with their weapon in their dominant hand. Think sword fights, not baseball bats.
And yes, it is harder. You’ll have less power, less control. Especially if you’ve spent years training with your dominant hand, which you would do because you’re better with it.
Who’s fighting anybody? I might have a little bit less precision with my left, but not to such a drastic degree that I wouldn’t have time to stab or cosh somebody within handshake distance. Especially if they’re staring obsessively at my right hand the whole time.
begbert2
“Who’s fighting anybody?”
Well, the sort of people who you’d want to extend their empty weapon hand to show they’re not currently stabbing you, for starters.
Maybe back in ye olde tymes, but nowadays people don’t tend to carry weapons on them, so there’s nothing to check for.
thejeff
Right, we’re talking about why the custom started, not “Is it a completely logical reason to continue it today?”
We continue it today because it’s a custom. Just like Europeans tend to shake hands rather than bow as the Japanese do. There’s no logical reason to prefer one over the other, but “when in Rome …”
Charles Kuhman
I remember from my Scouting days that use of the left hand was because it was closed to the heart. But that may be just a story they told us now that I think about it.
Charles Kuhman
*closest to the heart, not closed. Darn my insomnia-clouded mind.
“Closed to the heart” implies a lack of blood flow, which could lead to an impaired ability to use the arm, which would really help explain this impression I’m getting, that people are expected to be incapable of performing basic tasks with their left hand.
thejeff
Not “incapable of performing basic tasks”, but “worse at performing complex ones” – like fighting.
Barium
You might actually be ambidextrous. I have a hard time doing things with my non-dominant hand, and I think most people do as well.
I’m definitely not ambidextrous. But my left arm isn’t vestigial, either.
Felian
Well the brain seems to have extra capacity to remember minute details of things that got drilled into us in childhood… and also, song lyrics of songs we didn’t even like!
Discussion (194) - “Blank slate”
Ana Chronistic
oh
OH
…oh…
AntJ
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/redemption/
Victor Riley
First thing I thought of, too.
newllend(henryvolt)
Like I said before I don’t blame Rachel for her justified disdain twords Ruth nor do I hate her character, it’s just that disagree with this particular part of ideology. In a world where nothing stays the same, why would the human individual be the exception to that rule?
Screwball
Daniel here. There is a saying, “Change is the only constant in the universe”. That goes for people too…
It does typically take a fair bit of effort however, unless something traumatic is involved. Could take even more effort to convince others of the change, especially if the others don’t want to believe…
Abdomino
That little speech still infuriates me. What does she know of redemption? Of growth? Of change? Everything she knows about the world comes from the stories she so confidently derides.
Redemption is hard. It is soul-consuming. If it were anything less, it would not be redemption. But redemption is real. It is every recovering alcoholic. Every reformed criminal. Every repaired relationship. To go up to someone who is trying to alter their path to something better, to look them in the eye, and say to not bother?
She’s at best naive, and more likely ignorant.
It is ironic that most of the irredeemable are only so because they can’t imagine they could be anything else. That is their curse. That is their path.
BBCC
I think that would be a pretty bold guess to assume she has no experience but stories. I think that whole spiel pretty well sets up for a reveal someone Rachel was close to kept hurting her, apologizing and turning it around. It’s POSSIBLE it was Ruth, based on this newly revealed backstory, but I think we don’t have enough information to say that for sure.
Abdomino
If Rachel finds herself in using absolutes against others, she should not find it shocking when such is used in kind.
It is hard to imagine that one who has only been in college for, at this point, roughly two years has the same realm of experience as those who have done more.
I do not discount the experiences of youth lightly, I myself am 24 and know just how little I know, but it is when they declare what is impossible, what is fantasy, what is nothing but lies, with such vehement, poisonous certainty that credentials must be called into question.
Maybe you’re right, maybe Rachel had a trusted loved one who took advantage of her forgiveness. That is one single experience. In the course of one’s life, they will be witness to countless stories of redemption, betrayal, tragedy and triumph. It becomes dubious to take a person’s limited experience seriously when one has seen dozens of things more unbelievable happen before their eyes.
I hold Rachel and those like her accountable to this failure in perspective. To do any less would be to make excuses for an altogether autonomous individual, taking away their agency. To do any less would be an insult. A failure not corrected quickly becomes a failing.
If we do not have enough information to question why Rachel feels the way she does of redemption, she does not possess enough to question Ruth’s path to the same. A refusal to compromise another’s path of self-betterment is selflessness at it’s most quintessential. That includes preventing others from doing it themselves.
BBCC
Assuming your experience is universal isn’t a youth thing and most people tend to count things they actually went through over things they’ve heard of or seen.
Ron
I had a bell ringing at the back of my mind, but couldn’t really place it. Thanks for the reference 🙂
Doctor_Who
Ah, so they dislike each other because they were former roommates.
Makes sense, Doctor Doom has the same origin story.
EvilMidnightLurker
You too, right?
MatthewTheLucky
Wasn’t that a frathouse?
Bladeglory
Does Ruth dislike Rachel? I can’t recall any interactions between the two of them before Ruth’s situation imploded.
*checks tag combo*
…if Ruth dislikes Rachel it seems Ruth was too busy terrorizing otherpeople (read: Billie) to give it any panel time. :B
Skater Girl
Oooooooooh. This explains a lot.
MacareuxMoine
Including why she is Rachel and the other Rachel is other Rachel: Rachel moved into their room first. Other Rachel came when Ruth became RA.
NerdHerder
Okay, I just saw the story title, and if we don’t get some Austin Powers style hijinks, I want my money back!
Stephen Bierce
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson (oh), I am for real
Never meant to make your daughter cry…
Screwball
…I apologize a thousand times…
https://youtu.be/MYxAiK6VnXw
Bruceski
I don’t.
https://dami-lee.com/illustrated-internet
newllend(henryvolt)
You mean to tell me there’s actual backstory between these two?
Marsh Maryrose
I’d assume there’s actual backstory among all of the sophomores in Read. It’s just that in this case we’re getting to see the actual backstory between these two.
The diegetic world: it’s not just for film critics anymore.
Lingo
“Two years ago” makes them juniors.
Marsh Maryrose
So it does. Fortunately, I’m old enough that little brain farts like that are a normal and unremarkable part of my life.
Jamie
*senility high five*
Screwball
Alright, Daniel the Human doesn’t know how all this “Junior, sophomore, etc” stuff works, so how about you Americans explain it for the rest of the world? Daniel the Human may just ignore it, but it keeps busting my processors…
Cholma
4 years of college, starting as a Freshman. Freshman leads to Sophmore, which leads to Junior, then finally to Senior.
Needfuldoer
The last four years of regular schooling follow the same pattern.
Felian
Kind of a bummer how in the German School Systems, we only got a rising number for our school years…
Nono
Well I can’t wait for the Sarah/Carla backstory then.
Kyrik Michalowski
Oh… this won’t be good. Damn you blue shading of the past, why must you hurt us with the things we ask for?
Marsh Maryrose
DoA Omnibus Title: “Why Must You Hurt Us With the Things We Ask For?”
Deanatay
Satan grins, leans in, and says, “You’re Welcome.”
Woomy
NICE.
Doopyboop
At last, we will get the origin.
BarerMender
Ruth! Offer your right hand. You and Dorothy, I swan to goodness.
Delicious Taffy
Ruth is a lefty. Why would she offer her non-dominant hand?
Cholma
Because that’s the norm. I’m a lefty and do the same thing.
Delicious Taffy
There are a lot of norms that don’t seem to have any reasonable basis.
Marsh Maryrose
There’s no particular logic for driving on the right-hand side of the road versus driving on the left-hand side of the road, but it does make life easier if everyone in the local region agrees which side of the road to use.
Apart from people whose right hands were in a cast at the time, the only person I ever knew who offered his left hand to shake was someone whose right hand was completely atrophied (by a congenital condition).
In some cultures there are greetings without body contact — there’s the namaste, the wai, the ojigi, among others — and honestly, there is a certain level of fraughtness/am-I-doing-this-right? with all of them. But offering the right hand to shake is pretty universal among hand-shaking cultures.
And if you’re looking for rational explanations for human social customs…I wish you good luck in your quest.
Delicious Taffy
Sure, but that doesn’t account for why it should definitely be the right hand, or why someone should take exception to the left.
Miles
It’s because left and evil are nearly homonyms in Latin. It sounds dumb but the ruling classes of all of Europe were also incredibly inbred for a few centuries which totally explains that.
Delicious Taffy
Once again, “inbred Europeans” is the best explanation in the thread.
Terry
Actually, shaking the right hand had a couple understandable origins.
One: most people are right-handed, so offering the right hand was a signifier that you did not plan to pull a weapon on the person. There was nothing preventing the person from pulling one with the left and stabbing while shaking, but it was a gesture of good will that everyone understood. Since it was just a gesture, it wouldn’t matter what the actual dominant hand is, just that it was understood between the people making the gesture.
Two: there is an expectation in some cultures that you do certain things with certain hands, like wiping after using the toilet with the left hand, so you make sure to eat and greet people with your right because otherwise, that would be gross 😛
Delicious Taffy
Do those cultures also have a stigma against washing their hands? Also, do they wipe with their bare hands, instead of toilet paper or, like, a leaf? It’s not gross if your hands are clean.
Bathymetheus
@DT: that particular custom predates toilet paper and indoor plumbing. It’s not often remarked on (though I have seen it mentioned) but up until relatively recently, pretty much everybody was really stinky.
BarerMender
Because, born-in-a-barn person, you offer your right. It’s been the norm for centuries. Offering the left throws people into confusion. And why would she insist other people shake with their non-dominant hand?
Delicious Taffy
Why does it matter so much, though? I guess I’m just an idiot or something, but when people offer me their left hand for a good firm shake, I just respond with my own left hand and think nothing of it. It’s never once occurred to me to take offence.
Inahc
From what I’ve heard, It only mattered back when people would wipe their ass with their left hand and not be able to clean it properly. These days we have wonderful inventions like toilet paper and soap.
As a left-handed person, the most annoying custom is when people expect you to *eat* with only your right hand. Thankfully nobody’s actually hassled me about it but I’m sure there’s been some people silently judging my “wrong” eating.
Felian
i am right-handed so i also wipe with my right hand. i’m less likely to get accidents wiping with my more dexterous hand 😛 and yes i wash both hands afterwards before i touch anything or anyone.
thejeff
Right, but you live in culture and a time with ready easy access to good sanitation.
Now imagine living in time and place without running water and toilet paper. Or in some cases even the leaves suggested above (deserts, northern winters).
Corey
Why do you care about such a nonsense thing, I dont give a damn what hand people shake with and nobody else should either. Its a damn hand, I swear to god people look for any reason to look down on other people.
Khorinthia
One of the origin stories behind offering the right hand is to show you were not armed. Why would you not want to shake using your right hand as a lefty? It just allows you to use your left hand to stab them after!
Marsh Maryrose
The fact that I had to google “swan to goodness” only shows how little I know about American dialects, and how much I would have sucked had I actually gone into linguistics.
BarerMender
In the Appalachians, “I swan,” is, as the dictionary puts it, “a mincing substitute for ‘I swear.'” It originated in New England as a contraction of “I should warrant.” In the deep South, it has, for some reason, shifted to “I swanny.”
Bicycle Bill
” ‘Way, down upon the Swanny River…”
Chrissy
Suwannee River 🙂
Joanna
In the Scouts one offers the left as the hand of peace. It’s a sound option.
Screwball
Daniel here, Scouting Movement survivor ?. The right handed shake started off as a means for people greeting each other to show they’re not holding any weapons (since most people are right handed) and mean no harm. With no weapons in the primary hand, it is harder to start a fight. In the Scouts & related groups, you offer a left handed shake as Lord Baden-Powel (creator of the Scouting Movement) discovered many African tribes showed they were unwilling to fight by carrying their weapons in their right hand, again reducing their ability to attack quickly, and offering the left hand as a greeting. When he started the Scouts, he passed the left hand shake as a not-so-secret group handshake…
It is scary I remember all that…
Delicious Taffy
Have humans only evolved more powerful non-dominant arms or maybe basic multitasking capacity in the past few decades? I’m a filthy right-hander, but if I’ve got a bat in my left hand, I can still swing it. It’s no harder to perform that task, regardless of which hand is holding the object. What am I missing, here? What do people do with their left hands that would prevent them from holding something in them while the right hands are grabbing each other?
thejeff
You can swing it, but you’d be at a disadvantage fighting someone with their weapon in their dominant hand. Think sword fights, not baseball bats.
And yes, it is harder. You’ll have less power, less control. Especially if you’ve spent years training with your dominant hand, which you would do because you’re better with it.
Delicious Taffy
Who’s fighting anybody? I might have a little bit less precision with my left, but not to such a drastic degree that I wouldn’t have time to stab or cosh somebody within handshake distance. Especially if they’re staring obsessively at my right hand the whole time.
begbert2
“Who’s fighting anybody?”
Well, the sort of people who you’d want to extend their empty weapon hand to show they’re not currently stabbing you, for starters.
Delicious Taffy
Maybe back in ye olde tymes, but nowadays people don’t tend to carry weapons on them, so there’s nothing to check for.
thejeff
Right, we’re talking about why the custom started, not “Is it a completely logical reason to continue it today?”
We continue it today because it’s a custom. Just like Europeans tend to shake hands rather than bow as the Japanese do. There’s no logical reason to prefer one over the other, but “when in Rome …”
Charles Kuhman
I remember from my Scouting days that use of the left hand was because it was closed to the heart. But that may be just a story they told us now that I think about it.
Charles Kuhman
*closest to the heart, not closed. Darn my insomnia-clouded mind.
Delicious Taffy
“Closed to the heart” implies a lack of blood flow, which could lead to an impaired ability to use the arm, which would really help explain this impression I’m getting, that people are expected to be incapable of performing basic tasks with their left hand.
thejeff
Not “incapable of performing basic tasks”, but “worse at performing complex ones” – like fighting.
Barium
You might actually be ambidextrous. I have a hard time doing things with my non-dominant hand, and I think most people do as well.
Delicious Taffy
I’m definitely not ambidextrous. But my left arm isn’t vestigial, either.
Felian
Well the brain seems to have extra capacity to remember minute details of things that got drilled into us in childhood… and also, song lyrics of songs we didn’t even like!
Nono