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I don't know what you're talking about, David. Power is hardly a recent invention. History assures me that people have always acted towards other people with what's laughably called "inhuman" cruelty, and lies have existed for as long as language has. Lies are in fact only possible _because_ of language, which suggests we should all be deeply suspicious of poetry, the more so the more we love it. It seems equally clear that people have always been capable of kindness or "co-operative behaviour". Human being are endlessly resourceful, and make societies in positive ways in the most unpromising circumstances. (Are you saying that all slaves were mute, by force of legislation?) And as a small point, re your argument about technology: contemporary teenagers use IT quite intuitively as extensions of their physical social lives, and I'm willing to bet are the most socially adept generation so far because of that. I simply do not believe in some primordial "order" which has now gone "wrong". Wasn't it Marcus Aurelius who said the universe was a machine with something wrong with it? I think he got it about right. "It" was always "wrong". What we as a species haven't been able to do before is cause mass extinction of other species, or drastically change the weather; but this doesn't seem to be the crux of what bothers you. The morality of language, if you can speak of such a thing, ultimately rests in its individual usages. This is much more complicated than people like to think. And there lies, I would say, the nub of it; disingenuity is the least of it. Best A On 24/3/04 12:19 PM, "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Quite true, Alison. But there all sorts of questions appending to those > sacred groves. Too many questions in fact. As best as I can put, in the > short space of an e-mail, it does seem to me that something is going > Terribly Wrong in the language continuum, or web, that is in itself a > refection of how our societies are operating. That reflection is now > invading, as it were, all the areas of speech, I know this is a really > inadequate statement. > > I have a fall back position: it's quite cold in its analysis. Human beings > evolved in groups of about 20 to 30 strong for millennia, family structures > existed but loosely, psychologically we are attuned to such numbers and our > societies are now at a point of saturation of numbers that our attunements > cannot anymore cope with the existent facts. Projections like Muses were > early signs of dysfunction, the Greeks of course had democracies that only > existed for a tiny handful of by modern standards small populations, most > interaction was face to face, among those who had the luxuries of speech and > citizenship, slaves had neither. Power is the word, and the unprecedented > physical power our species has developed, after all, we are but clever apes, > is out of proportion to everything evolution has prepared us for. The safety > valves, the sacred groves, are out of order, all fall'n. > > For all intents modern humans are no different from our Neolithic ancestors > in psychology yet we have societies that have technologies that far exceed > the chipped flints and cave-daubs. > > I do think of poor Marysas often, I reckon btw Zbigniew Herbert's poem on > him was the best ever. > > All the Best > > Dave Alison Croggon Editor, Masthead http://www.masthead.net.au Home page http://www.alisoncroggon.com Blog http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com