What IS the Pot Calling the Kettle Black?

THAT’S THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK

This is an old-time saying that seems particularly relevant today. It comes from the days when cast iron cooking utensils were common. Properly seasoned iron pots and kettles are both black. This is a warning about judging others when you lack the self-reflection to acknowledge your own faults. In other words, a black pot calls the black kettle “Black!” as an insult and is oblivious to the fact that it, too, is black.

Before we go any further I need to call your attention to our need to keep the lights on at SabersEdge. Our only support comes from our readers. If you like our content please support SabersEdge.Online by sharing the website and content, recommending it to others, and telling your friends and family. If you are able we need your support to keep the lights and continue to spread the word by supporting our mission as a Patreon supporter.

SabersEdge Association is creating Videos, Blogs, and Writings for Education and growth | Patreon

We see this regularly all around us today. People who have drunk the kool-aid of the “left” or the “right” regularly consider the other side stupid and oblivious. I hear complaints about one side from the other and both sides are complaining that the other side is “black.” (Usually, that so and so is stupid, reading misinformation, extremists, and/or cultists.) But they don’t see the same qualities they are complaining about in themselves. If you say anything to a fanatic of one side or the other that sounds even remotely like the people they hate they will often immediately turn on you and ascribe to you a whole list of intentions and beliefs that you may not even remotely hold.

This is because the fanatics of the left AND the right put the other side into boxes and no longer treat them as real people with legitimate hopes and dreams. Instead, they become an enemy. What is interesting is that the left and the right thing is relatively new in American History. It originally referred to Parliament and those who sat on the left or those who sat on the right. It was carried forward in the US, especially in the middle of the twentieth century (before the twentieth Century we were not as prone to copy the English or see them in our own actions,) but now it seems to be related to the conservative beliefs vs. progressive beliefs (which at the extreme included communism.) Somehow, this dichotomy has replaced the dichotomy that Americans were traditionally concerned with.

Does this idea make us more free or less free? Does this make us stronger or weaker as a country? Is this right or wrong? Those were the questions that used to concern Americans. But either way, when the pot is so clueless that it calls the kettle black, we all lose. Before we became superficial fanatics most people recognized this and it was a common saying. Help SabersEdge to bring sanity back to the debate by grounding us firmly in ideals that have been proven in the past and will carry us securely through the changes coming in the future. What do you think? Have you seen examples of the “Pot calling the Kettle Black” in your life?