Pardon this Intrusion
In Currency of Illusion
I asked her what she was going to teach and she told me language arts.
“What is that?” I asked.
“English,” she answered.
Then why don’t they call it that, I thought.
Chapter 24 The Cosmic Fly Swatter
Our camel above is a painting
by Danuta Rothschild.
It is the frontispiece in the book.
Beyond what you might be told by some artiste extraordinaire, or perhaps some university professor practicing outcome based antics, the stories we tell, served up from the human imagination, cannot be efficiently communicated to others without the proper use of words. And so you have before you our Language Arts page.
There is so much to be said on this topic that we ask you to be patient however unsatisfying it may be (MayBee) for the moment, until we add more pages to this section.
Below we will give a couple of examples of how words can be used and misused, but first we would like to mention the concept of Creative Limitation. So much of our culture today suffers from the abandonment of this principle. To give you a common example, take poetry. Free verse in and of itself is not so terrible, it's just that restricting the authoring of poetry by employing rhyme and meter produces a songlike experience that enhances memory and pleases the mind with its order. The timeless verse of Shakespeare, though free of both rhyme and meter at times, is constructed with their use especially for emphasis. This is witnessed in his most memorable lines. But today the Vulgarians are in charge. Rap music will employ both rhyme and meter yet most of it involves the use of common vulgarities. This is, for whatever reason some pinhead at Harvard can cook up, simply second rate.
Imagine if college football decided the playing field could be any size the teams agreed upon on any given Saturday. Could anybody even watch it?
Imagine trying to make a compelling movie without the use of trashy language, exploding cars, chest beating empty heroes and heroines, and cheap story lines. It was done consistently before 1965. It is even done occasionally today. Oddly enough, director Clint Eastwood is very good at this. Creative Limitation is an imperative for timeless excellence.
Enough on this. Let's explore some Language Arts. Let's look at the use and misuse of words. The use of catch phrases to define and persuade folks is something that needs highlighting, especially since they are used most often in the production of Snake Oil.
Take the term "Emerging Markets." What in Sam Hell does this mean? Oh I know what those who use this term (the financial class) are describing. But it is a partially dishonest term. It is the useful application of snake oil by globalists. Think about it. An emerging market must be one that is sprouting up on its own. It is becoming without any help from anybody. Markets never "emerge," they are sought out and developed and exploited by the natural avarice of people who make their money by exploiting potential buyers with things made by others. Most of them are just paper and contract pushing suits, who have never worked an honest day in their lives. These are the people who use the term "Emerging Markets."
How about the term "Spiritual Energy?" For starters, the term is an oxymoron. It is a contradiction in terms since the word spiritual means literally non-physical, and energy is physical. We won't belabor this term since it is addressed in detail in Pinkerton's book.
Then there is the term "reproductive rights." Now here is a beauty for you. The term could perhaps mean something in China where people are punished for having too many children. But this term used in America is subterfuge. A right is a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something. In America everybody has the right to have children. That's not what those who use this term are talking about. Since everyone already has reproductive rights they are really talking about the right to execute unwanted babies. I heard this term bandied about by a snappy perky New Age Conservative by the name of Hoover on Fox News. You know, the kind of zippy, really with-it Republican that thinks conservatism is just something that needs a new haircut and fashionable suit of clothes. Little Hoover thinks she's the "One" to play "Barbie Doll" with this philosophy. Just ask her. But then I shouldn't have been watching Bill O'Reilly anyway. Aside from his worshipping the god of "Fair and Balanced", who looks suspiciously like Bill himself and happens to be looking out for Bill, he moonlights as a cheap paparazzo, just another Tabloidite. The last time I watched him he teased the audience with a big secret about Raymond Burr which was good for several commercial breaks. Then he dropped the bombshell and told everyone that Burr was gay. Even if this had actually been a secret, I've got two words for Bill O'Reilly:
In the immortal words of Stanley Kowalkski, "So what!"
Someone that we admired very much once said "When words lose their meaning, people lose their freedom." It is a hard concept to comprehend fully and yet it is worth considering.
We intend to provide several pages of terms that are concocted to deflect, obscure and mislead, so that we may become a loyal foot soldier in the war against Newspeak.
We will employ a better use for Language Arts.