Wordie: Language: Comments

Comment by oroboros, 8 months ago

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:09:24 +0000

"The Red Planet was stripping away the thin veneer of civilisation which papered over the hideous violence which lurked within the reptilian brain of every human bipedal organism. True, the neocortex had been inserted at a much later date, but this desperate engineering "fix" must be considered a failure.

Language, held by the naive and foolish as the crowning achievement of human development, despite its complete lack of universality, was the original culprit for the brutal intraspecies genocide, which is the history of our kind. The dying earth-planet is split into several thousand language groups. Each language acts as a powerful cohesive force within the group and a powerful divisive force between groups. In one small country alone, 750 languages are spoken in 750 different villages which are at permanent war with one another. Accents and enunciation within one language differentiate between one social group and another.

The destruction of the Tower of Babel and the subsequent dissolution of the extant lingua-franca was the original punishment meted out to humankind for its sins. The physical Tower was long ago destroyed, yet within its lingering shadow humans assiduously apply their endless ingenuity to the destruction of their fellow brothers and sisters. Even unto our nearest and dearest we remain strangers. Locked within our subjective world view we communicate as if from the bottom of a fathomless deep. Misunderstanding is hard-wired into our ceaseless, inane, chatter."

--anon

Comment by sionnach, 8 months ago

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:07:45 +0000

Sweet Lord Mother of God. Please make it stop. I'm bleeding from my eyes here and it's messing up the keyboard.

Comment by oroboros, 8 months ago

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:23:45 +0000

LANGUAGE: (1) In part, language is used to assign blame; if the city had a working motto it could be: "Somebody's To Blame" – someone has to be responsible for this (whatever this at the moment happens to be).

(2) Language is arranged to accommodate consciousness, and Life's needs are the grammatical structure for all that humans say. Sentence structure is man's nervous system taking on form in the apparent out-there; among ordinary people, words are unanalytically taken to be things that somehow exist apart from the men who mouthed them (at least in many significant instances).

(3) In this rhetorical system, consciousness must consider itself a noun (the subject) or man could not perceive a distinction between his mental in-here and the out-there; the Equation (I + Not-I = Everything) would implode and consciousness could no longer function as a practical weapon in the struggle to survive; man would be unable to mentally discern between his self and others in an intangible sense and could thus not properly lay-the-blame where it belongs -- on others. Subjects exist in language to express something about action – not vice versa as routine consciousness would have it – but if there is no actual subject (which from the neural-rebel's view there is not) then there is no one TO blame, for action itself cannot be responsible for its acts; the act of your car hitting mine is not what is at fault, but rather you were the fault – you the driver.

(4) When you are ready to assign blame there are two choices: either them or you, (your consciousness, that is) and it has no nature for selecting itself for the distinction: Life did not get where it is today (that is: still here) by blaming itself, and any time a man has the twin choices available, he too has no inclination to accept any blame that insists on finding a home.

(5) When you amputate the noun as the source of blame, as the author of your mistreatment – you cease to be mistreated ("I can accept the hurricanes, but not the realtor who sold me this place and never mentioned their likelihood!")

(6) In its language, Life uses man's speech as a modifier; his consciousness is a qualifier: it does not actually create intangible goods, but modifies them; the mind didn't actually invent religion, fear, in the physical body was its mother, the mind just hung the words on it.

(7) To be a normal person you must perceive no simple nouns nor people; only he who understands what is going on might visually qualify as a simple noun, and internally, in private, as a super-complex verb. --Jan Cox

Comment by reesetee, about 1 year ago

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:16:15 +0000

Another good one: "It is one of the paradoxes of our time that ideas capable of transforming our societies, full of insights about how the human animal actually behaves and thinks, are often presented in unreadable language." --Doris Lessing, here, in a 1992 article about political correctness.

Comment by chained_bear, about 1 year ago

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:41:32 +0000

"Language has often been called a weapon, and people should be mindful about where to aim it and when to fire." (Steven Pinker)

Comment by reesetee, about 1 year ago

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:08:14 +0000

I'm enjoying the Quoties. Nice-looking site, too. That Red Smith quote has always been one of my favorites, only I stretch it out a little: "There's nothing to writing. All you do...." :-)

Comment by oroboros, about 1 year ago

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:26:31 +0000

Re: "quotie"...yah, a relative has a site (Pen4Rent) that has a section of quotations on writing and language. I figured I'd pass on my favorites, especially when I can maneuver 'em onto word pages where the comments are blank.

Comment by repsac3, about 1 year ago

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:51:59 +0000

...and hearing your name is better than seeing your face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FeyGTmw0I0

Actually, I think Laurie Anderson borrowed the part you quote from William S. Burroughs.

Comment by reesetee, about 1 year ago

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:29:43 +0000

Oroboros, you're getting all Quotie on us! ;-)

Comment by oroboros, about 1 year ago

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:37:32 +0000

“The chief virtue that language can have is clarity.”
– Hippocrates (460-377 BC)

Comment by oroboros, about 1 year ago

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:33:52 +0000

"Language is a virus from outer space." --Laurie Anderson