If I can refine what I was attempting to say, Alison, what I think is that
the scale of 'what can go wrong' has exponentially increased in relation to
the growth of human population and technology. I'm very aware of the
inadequacy of my words, they seem to be falling apart in my mouth.
The all slaves mute point is interesting, no, not by force of legislation,
in the main, although I imagine it was so in Sparta, but by occupation. I
heard, the other week, a very interesting snippet from a US prison, where a
writer in residence had been working with some lifers and got them to do a
Shakespeare play. One said to her something like: I thought I had forgotten
words in this place but this has given them back to me.
>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.<
Agree with you first point, but not your second. In my role as a louche
loquacious uncle-like layabout I get to talk to a lot of kids, the
university down the road is teeming with them, and I do notice how much they
communicate but also how fragile the social relations they form are, so in a
way, socially adept, but not I think cohesive.
>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".<
Yes, I agree. It's not that I think that there was a primordial order as
such, although there must have been some kind of order that caused
construction going on, just that I think that the something wrong with the
Marcus Aurelius machine has become more pronounced of late. It maybe that I
relate all this to childhood and early teens memories of tales when a time
when something definitely went wrong, aka the rise of Nazi Germany and
Stalinism, and something in my nerve-twitches is connecting those memories
of tales told to what is happening now. I dunno, gives me creeps anyhow.
Agree with you entirely about being deeply suspicious about poetry, and
loving it. Nice point!
All the Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet
& Painting Without Numbers
http://www.chidesalphabet.org.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 1:45 AM
Subject: Re: connection
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
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