Morning Coffee – 10/03/2017

A race with no finish line.

Picture this.  It doesn’t seem so bad, does it?  I mean, if the image of a race without a finish line doesn’t make you uncomfortable, that is completely normal.  But should it?  Let us break it down.

‘RACE’ (def) – “a competition between runners, horses, vehicles, boats, etc., to see which is the fastest in covering a set course.” 

A set course is usually something with specific start and end points.  Assuming that the end point is the ‘finish line’, along with the definition in our original statement, and focusing the scope, we can write it like this:

A competition between people, to see who is the fastest to reach the finish line, with no finish line.

Does this start to sound weird?  It should.  Taking it one step further:

‘FINISH LINE’ (def) – “a line marking the end of a race.”

Here the definition of ‘finish line’ includes the word ‘race’ itself.  If we replace our original statement with this definition, we can write it like this:

A competition between people, to see who is the fastest to reach the finish line, with no line marking the end of the race. 

Noticing that we still have ‘finish line’, and ‘race’, lets see what happens when we replace them again with our new understandings:

A competition between people, to see who is the fastest to reach the line marking the end of the race, with no line marking the end of the competition between people, to see who is the fastest to reach the finish line.

Do you see where this is going?  The idea of a race with no finish line should bother us.  It is wrong.  A race with no finish line is no longer a race, and finish line isn’t a finish line without a race.

Social Media has no finish line.
It is not a race.

=CF=