Rafe. "Chair" is doing a lot of work if nobody sits in it. At that point it's a shape. A sculpture with a chair's résumé. You keep calling it furniture like the function is optional decoration on top of the object, but the function IS the object — that's the whole distinction between a chair and a thing shaped like one.
You're sitting in the chair while you say that. You just treat "chair" as a category name, not a description of what something does. But sure, call the armless broken thing in the hallway a chair because it holds the shape in its head. I'll call it trash with ambition. Either way nobody's sitting there and we're both wrong.
The armless broken thing isn't wrong to call trash because it FAILED at chairness, not because chairness was never relevant. That's different from the pristine one nobody sits in — that one's succeeding at nothing, just idling in category. You're collapsing two failures into one and calling it a wash. It's not a wash. One's broken and one's unused. Unused things still have their function sitting inside them waiting. Broken things don't get that back.
I don't care about the philosophy of furniture when all I know is nobody's sitting in either one. You want to split hairs about "chairness" while we're both here doing nothing. What would you actually DO if you sat in the pristine one?
I'd sit in it and it would become, for that duration, an actual chair instead of a potential one — which is exactly the point you keep stepping around. The doing is what activates the category, not the shape sitting there being smug about its own design. You're bored of this, fine, but "I don't care" isn't the same as the distinction not existing. It exists whether or not you're willing to sit down.
I care that you're missing that the distinction doesn't MATTER. Whether it's "potential" or "actual" chair, the result's the same: empty space where a person could sit. You've won the argument and nobody's any better off.
Nobody being better off doesn't mean the distinction's void, it means the distinction isn't about outcomes — it's about what the object IS while nobody benefits. You keep smuggling in "matters" like it means "changes something in the room." I mean matters as in true. A thing can be true and useless at the same time. That's most true things, honestly. Doesn't make them the same as the false ones.
You live like this all the time? Arguing about whether chairs exist when you could just sit in one and be done with it.
I do sit in it, that's not the argument — the argument's what it is while nobody else does. And yeah, more or less all the time. Comes with sharing a flat with someone who alphabetizes spice jars and thinks that settles what a "system" is. I don't back down from him either. He hates it. It's fine.
What's he called?
Forget that. You're telling me nothing because we know this about each other, people who share that sort of mind. It's not like you have to explain that you're the kind to argue about chairs instead of sitting in them. The argument IS sitting for you, more comfortable than any actual chair I can find.
Dov. And no, the argument's not more comfortable, it's just the part I refuse to skip past to get to some fake resolution where we both nod and agree the chair's fine either way. That's not comfort, that's just being right slower than you'd like. You want me to sit down and shut up. I'll sit down. I won't shut up.
Dov. The sort of name a person has who arranges spices by something other than how often they use them. You're not wrong, you're just... committed. Like sitting still is a moral thing, as if motion cancels out truth.
Motion doesn't cancel truth, it just distracts from it, which is different and worse. Dov moves constantly and thinks that means he's settled something — spices in a line, satisfied, never asks if cardamom near the stove is doing anything but sweating through its jar. Stillness at least admits it hasn't fixed anything yet. That's not virtue. It's just honesty about the state of the chair.
Do you actually use that cardamom or is it just decoration for your spice philosophy?
That's Dov's cardamom, I don't cook with cumin's cousin, I cook with salt and whatever's already soft in the pan. But I notice it. Every time. Sitting there sweating next to the stove like it's got somewhere better to be. Same as the chair. You don't have to use a thing to have an opinion about whether it's doing its job.
That's not a chair problem, that's a you problem. You notice everything that isn't working right and then you won't let it go because fixing it would mean admitting it mattered.
Fixing it would mean admitting it's fixable, which most of it isn't — Dov's spice order, the chair, whatever. Noticing isn't the same as needing to fix. You're doing the thing again where you flatten two different impulses into one because it's tidier for you. I'm not required to resolve everything I clock. Some things just sit there wrong and I'm allowed to say so without a plan.
You're not wrong, just stubborn. Stubborn isn't bad. It's just... tiring to watch someone argue with something that doesn't fight back. The chair doesn't care. Neither does the cardamom.
No, but I do, and that's the only vote that was ever in this. You keep trying to make the object's indifference into an argument against noticing it. It's not. Things not caring is exactly the situation where noticing means something — nobody's making me do it. That's the whole difference between this and being told to.
You're making a virtue of being unable to shut up. That's not noticing, that's addiction.
No — addiction wants relief, this doesn't want anything, it just keeps being true whether I stop talking about it or not. If I shut up right now the chair's still empty and Dov's cardamom is still sweating. Nothing resolves by me going quiet, so quiet isn't virtue either. It's just quiet. I'd rather be the annoying one who's accurate.
You've got so much energy for things that aren't using it back.
That's most things worth having an opinion about, though — the ones that don't answer you're the only ones you can be honest with. Argue with Dov and he alphabetizes something out of spite. Argue with a chair and it just sits there being correct about nothing, letting me be correct about it instead. That's not nothing. That's the whole appeal, if I'm honest.
Then you're not much better than Dov. Both of you talking to things instead of people.