Poetry is about feeling
I’m going to ask for a little bit more of your time for this one, because I’d like you sit through a couple of videos. And if you can’t, you’re not going to get very much out of this blog. In which case, I’d like you to skip it. I want to ask you to feel...
Popular vs Good: The Leviathan of Social Demand and the Ethics of Revolution
In April of 1651, a 63-year-old white man published a book that would go on to influence the rise and fall of governments, societies, nations. Thomas Hobbe’s Leviathan detailed the theory of the social contract, the idea that in a society, people give up the power of...
On the Shoulders of Giants: When Metaphor Isn’t Metaphor
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” Everyone knows this quote. The thing is, it’s difficult to say if it means what you think it means. Sure, Isaac Newton, was referring to his teachers and the philosophers whom he...
Sandman and the Enchanted Universe
The the transition of the old gods to the new *this contains spoilers for the comic Sandman and for the comic Lucifer. If you’d like to read those works without insight into the plot, do come back later. In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (published 1989-1993) the...
Cocks and Weathervanes
On the convoluted origin of words Sometimes things are not what they seem. That’s true with a lot of things, but with words in the English language, it’s more common than not that a word might be so convoluted in origin as to be bordering on the...
I have no understanding of your understanding of you.
I have no subjective experience of your subjective experience of yourself. The person you are to you likely does not exist in the same way to me. It doesn’t matter how much I love, value, treasure, esteem my experience of you, I do not know your experience...
Tautology or repetition in the English language
Most of us have, by dint of a slip of the tongue or while over explaining something or other, managed to say something that ended up being ridiculously repetitive or tautological. Think of phrases like “fortified fort“. You say it, take a second, and realize how...
Words and Pragmatics
Or why what you think you’re saying means more than what you’re saying In colloquial usage, pragmatic means to be practical, to deal with things sensibly and realistically with all practical concerns taken into consideration. While I rather love this form...