WHY DO YOU SAY THAT?

Dear Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt

I might have a problem and need your advice.

 Recently I've adopted a method that was shown to me by one of the very erudite influencers who I slavishly follow .... or it might have come from a sermon by the new priest with the funny foreign accent. Anyway, this method, invented by Socrates requires me to follow up statements with a question. OK? When, on the blogs, I'm stumped  and cannot come up with a clever response to comments made by the other bloggers on my blog posts I say "why do you say that?" I think I'm being smart but, from some of the responses it appears that I might be irritating those bloggers. Is this a wise thing to do?

Yours faithfully,

Avery Sillifello.

Dear Avery

While adopting some of the sayings or teachings from the famous Greek philosophers can indicate intellectual cleverness in  some cases, but, in others it can, as you've discovered, become very annoying. When the same trite phrase is used over and over again without any obvious understanding of the discipline that it is derived from you are in danger of looking silli, sorry, silly.

Socrates, as you should know was a very silly fellow, also having the ability to annoy people with his inane questions and contradictions. These were in fact widely known as The Socratic Problem. Socrates eventually pissed off enough people (and corrupted his young followers) so that he was sentenced to death. I'd take that as a warning if I were you.

Why don't you adopt the teachings and sayings of someone slightly less controversial. Enid Blyton might be a start.

Sincerely yours from the top of the tree,

The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt.