Bearing | Commerce | Ecology | faith | Intercourse | Media | Nature | Technology

"The tao that can be spoken is not the tao."

Sometimes the use of language –despite good intentions– is too obscure, or may tell us less about a subject than a fully informative discourse could reveal.

By turning the purpose of language communication upside down, the deliberate use of words to disguise the actual meaning is a pervasive problem.

In this sense the use of words with very elastic meanings –that is to say with meanings that are imprecise depending on the context in which the word or phrase is used– can be used to cover-up and not expose the most important details that would more completely inform readers.

Examples of such words are: nature, technology, health, subject, environment, moral, fiction, person, economy.

The use of these rhetorical devices is what makes any writing more polemical than informative. Polemical pieces are very much like propaganda in that they tell a reader far less than meets the eye. A polemic is a form of argumentative writing that is so disputatious and contentious that the meaning is not as obvious as the dispute.

Propaganda is by definition such biased use of speech or writing as to misinform, deceive or lie to an audience and thus to cover-up, rather than disclose, matters.

John Ciardi, NPR: On Words with John Ciardi Podcast.

Media refers literally to "midst" -- in the midst of-- and by extended use we mean the manner in which we converse with others. Hence media is the use of print, voice, tone, melody, or images to convey ideas.

Figuratively speaking: The Medium is the metaphor.

Marshall McLuhan, Canadian scholar and critic of communication's theory suggested that "the medium is the message."

Among the earliest printed books.

The message is composed of words; some can have multiple meanings or varied shades of meaning.

Bearing, is a noun

boat balance magnet ball bearings imgres torso

1)       [in sing. ] a person's way of standing or moving :

• the way one behaves or conducts oneself : behavior, an acquired characteristic. A trait of posture and gait.

2)        relation or relevance: the tangent has slight direct bearing on the circle.

3)        the level to which something bad can be tolerated : tolerable threshold.

The storm was bad enough, but now the tornadoes' damages are past bearing.

4)       Technology: a part of a machine that bears friction, especially between a rotating part and its housing. • a ball bearing.

5)       Architecture a structural part that supports weight, such as a wall that supports a beam.
• the point at which a structural part rests upon a supporting structure, such as the specific area of a beam that rests upon a wall.

6)        the direction or position of something, or the direction of movement, relative to a fixed point. It is typically measured in degrees, usually with magnetic north as zero : the destination point is on a bearing of 015°.
• ( one's bearings) awareness of one's position relative to one's surroundings :

7)       Heraldry a device or charge : armorial bearings.

8)       the act, capability, or time of producing fruit or offspring : I gave myself up to the bearing of children.

Challenges to easy comprehension

Commerce, commercialism & advertising.

television and political culture

"The television commercial is the most peculiar and pervasive form of communication to issue forth from the electric plug."

"An American who has reached the age of forty will have seen well over one million television commercials in his or her lifetime."

"By bringing together in compact form all of the arts of show business–music, drama, imagery, humor, celebrity–the television commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology since the publication of Das Kapital."

p. 126

Of course the practice of capitalism has its contradictions. . . . But television commercials make hash of it."

"If that universe of discourse [the context in which propositions are either true or false] is discarded, then the application of empirical tests tests, logical analysis, or any of the other instruments of reason are impotent."

p. 127

"The television commercial has been the chief instrument in creating the modern methods of presenting political ideas."

p. 129.

"Because the television commercial is the single most voluminous form of public communication in our society, it was inevitable that Americans would accommodate themselves to the philosophy of television commercials."

They and "We accept them as normal and plausible form of discourse."

"an unprecedented brevity of expression."

"The commercial always addresses itself to the psychological needs of the viewer."

"It is instant therapy."

"The commercial asks us to believe that all problems are solvable, that they are solvable fast, and that they are solvable fast through the interventions of technology, techniques, and chemistry."

"This is, of course, a preposterous theory about the roots of discontent. . ."

p. 130.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business. (New York: Penguin, 1986).

Next.

faith

God Laksmi

Saint Peter's dome in Rome painting of God contrasted with the Indian Goddess of Fortune Lakshmi the Hindu Goddess of wealth, prosperity (both material and spiritual), fortune, and beauty.

Neil Postman quotes Hannah Arendt:

This state of affairs,which indeed is equaled nowhere else in the world, can properly be called mass culture; its promoters are neither the masses nor their entertainers, but are those who try to entertain the masses with what once was an authentic object of culture, or to persuade them that Hamlet can be as entertaining as My Fair Lady, and educational as well.

Audience participation:

Filling the pews with congregation members Postman suggests

"that is the problem, not a solution to one."

Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 124.

Next.

Intercourse

to be born - nativity, native status; hence genetic endowment
urge
character
original characteristics
conditional relation

Moral

The point or ethically relevant purpose of a story, case study or subject. The lesson to be learned from an experience, story, reading, drama, or film.

:

Manifesting and believing in high standards with direct consequences for how one conducts their lives, their affairs and their responsibilities. The criteria used by societies, or persons as to actions and beliefs that are acceptable as opposed to unacceptable with regard to relations between two people or among members of private or public groups.

Paradox of culture.
Gaston Bachelard's paradox about science.
Population.

A self contradictory or rationally unacceptable conclusion drawn from two or more rational premises, that –nonetheless– is true.

Absurd but still veritable.

Insanely correct but verified by common experiences.

For instance.

Technology is older than science!

Next

3. The paradox of knowledge is that to be in possession of knowing is to lose an inherent capacity of that knowledge to exercise good judgment in demonstrating wisdom.

The radical role of faith-based groups.

"The Dunkers came close here to formulating a commandment about religious discourse: Thou shalt not write down thy principles, still less print them, lest thou be entrapped by them for all time."

p. 31.

The premise of this book: Amusing Ourselves to Death –