MyQuest | my thoughts on life's journey

Truth & trees

Reading in Belden Lane's Ravished by Beauty, 

It isn't accidental that the English word "true" derives from the Old English treow, meaning "firm and dependable, like a tree."

Berry on good words

truth, nature, imagination, affection, love, hope, beauty, joy. Those words are hard to keep still within definitions; they make the dictionary hum like a beehive. But in such words, in their resonance within their histories and in their associations with one another, we find our indispensable humanity, without which we are lost and in danger.

Lakoff on the Santorum strategy

George Lakoff, once again, reminds progressives not to cede the public discourse to radical conservatives and to quite strengthening the radical conservatives by using their language.   Rather, develop one's own based on progressive values.  Lakoff made these points after John Kerry's defeat and progressives got better at following his advice, which is one reason I think that they did well in 2006 and 2008.  

Liberals tend to underestimate the importance of public discourse and its effect on the brains of our citizens. All thought is physical. You think with your brain. You have no alternative. Brain circuitry strengthens with repeated activation. And language, far from being neutral, activates complex brain circuitry that is rooted in conservative and liberal moral systems. Conservative language, even when argued against, activates and strengthens conservative brain circuitry. This is extremely important for so-called "independents," who actually have both conservative and liberal moral systems in their brains and can shift back and forth. The more they hear conservative language over the next eight months, the more their conservative brain circuitry will be strengthened.

Language & Others

This choice sentence from an article by Hilton Als in the New Yorker on the South African playwright Athol Fugard (why has he never won a Nobel?):

Language not as a tool of self-definition--who am I, and what can I be to you?--but as an instrument for categorizing others, and thus shaping them for one's use.

On another note, the essay opened powerfully.  I wish I could write an opening sentence as good as this one:

The two men look as though they'd crawled out from under a rock into a landscape of broken glass and shit.

Saying it out loud is even more fun.  The sounds of the words have evocative appeal.

The Limits of Language

A post on Lindbeck & Whitehead (I really need to read me some Lindbeck), the limitations of language, and the implications for pluralism and interfaith work in the 21st century.   An excerpt:

We live in an era where the realities of inter-religious education, cross-denominational communication and trans-national citizenship are going to challenge all of our inherited traditions and conceptual frameworks.

If we are unwilling to do so and insist on simply repeating the same rote answers week after week under the misguided impression that we are being faithful to the tradition … we are in danger of an irrelevance that leads not only to extinction but ultimately failure to accomplish our great commission.

 

Occupy Language

A provocative essay on not only the language of the Occupy Movement, but how we should occupy language itself in order to remove the colonial, racist, discriminatory practices that currently exist in common American English.

Occupy Language, as a movement, should speak to the power of language to transform how we think about the past, how we act in the present, and how we envision the future.

Inundated by Words

An excellent piece by George Will (sounds like Andy Rooney).  I couldn't agree more.  Here's my favourite bit (before the ending, which I won't post but allow you to discover on your own):

Solemn warnings about nonexistent risks, and information intended to spare us the slightest responsibility for passing through life with a modicum of attention and intelligence — these express, among other things, an entitlement mentality that the nanny state foments: If something bad or even inconvenient or merely annoying happens to us, even if it results from our foolishness, daydreaming or brooding about the meaning of life, we are entitled to suesomeone for restitution.

Language, Land, & the Eucharist

A good essay on why our language matters, particularly in relation to the land, agriculture, and ecology.  It is also an essay about my favourite poet, Wendell Berry, and about the Eucharist.  Enjoy.

After graduating from college, I lived and worked in Central America and devoted many years to acquiring the agricultural tools I thought would be helpful in working with others to grow food. But the more agricultural and ecological science I learned, the more I was filled with an unmistakable sense of the dissonance between the language and practice of those sciences and the theological convictions that had led me to the work and study of agriculture in the first place. At stake was a problem that certainly involved issues of correct application of agricultural tools to particular people, places, and needs. But the problem concerned more than issues of application; it had to do with fundamental questions like: what is land? What is it for? How to characterize our relationship to it? What does it mean to receive it, like our lives, as gift?

Brooks on Metaphor

A great column from David Brooks about the pervasive nature of metaphors and how they affect our thinking.  It is entitled "Poetry for Everyday Life."

Alter on the KJV

Robert Alter writes about the King James Version of the Bible and its influence on contemporary English, particularly through the works of authors like Ernest Hemingway.