Tag: language

Self-Deprecating vs. Self-Defecating

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“… And he did that irregardless of the consequences,” I said. Yes, I said that, Mr. Student of Language and Mr. Word Lover said the word irregardless, and to my lifelong shame, I thought it was a pretty big deal that I was using a multi-syllabic in context, and I was using it in the company of a big-time erudite fella with whom I shared a love of language. And no, I was not as young as I want you to think I was at the time. Mr. Big Time, Erudite fella gave me a momentary flash of shock before he could conceal it with discretion, and in my convoluted brain, I thought that flash meant he was impressed with my ability to adroitly use a four-syllable word. 

“You know that’s not a word, right?” a person informed me later, much later. “You can say irrespective or regardless, but irregardless is not a word. It’s considered redundant.” We called this woman an obnoxious intellect, and the one thing we all know about obnoxious intellects is that they’re not afraid to show the world how much more intelligent they are. They’re also not embarrassed to correct us one-on-one, in groups, or in front of the whole class. They revel in it as a matter of fact. She wasn’t embarrassed to correct struggling intellects, authoritative intellects, or anyone else temporarily trapped into being in her company. In the aftermath of her smug correction, I decided that her correction should merit nothing more than a couple more obnoxious points on her lengthy ledger, until I found out … she was right. The pain of that realization informed me that the path from humility to humiliation is but a matter of clicks. 

How many word dudes spent a portion of their young lives saying “eckspecially?”, until someone came along and said, “Could you stop saying that, that way? It’s my personal pet peeve.” When we find ourselves in such a position, we probably say, “Saying what, what way?” If you’ve committed such a transgression, you know that some mispronunciations are just so ingrained that if no one ever corrects us, we won’t even know we’re doing it. We’re so oblivious that we might even laugh when we hear someone correct another. Yet, we hear that said that way so often, from friends and family that “That’s just kind of how we talk,” but we still wonder how long we’ve made that particular error. Now that our mind’s eye is open to this faux pas, we hear our bosses say it that way, our parents, and even some big-time, long-time broadcasters, who are paid to speak, and presumably critiqued off camera daily, still say eckspecially on a regular basis.

If you’re as fascinated with language as I am, only because you’ve screwed it up so often, you’ve no doubt focused on (see obsessed) the way your neighbor expresses himself with language. His word choices, examples, and metaphors are so unique that we wonder if he’s from a different culture or country, until he informs us that he’s from a different state that it turns out that state isn’t that far away. Then, he drops an ‘intensive purposes’ eggcorn on us, and we know it’s not just him, it’s everywhere. We hear those who influenced our maturation, and commanded our respect, say, “I could care less,” and we hear our friends say, “I consider the point mute.” Depending on how intimate our relationship is, we might correct them, but even if don’t, we’ll have a conclusion to our confusion: ‘That must be where I got it.’

We all go down different lanes on different days with different people. One guy messes up his tenses with one group, and he shows that he knows what he’s doing with them in another. Another fella abandons all modifiers outside work, then when he’s mixed in with his co-workers, he’s dropping them all over the place. When we work for large corporations, we can learn a lot about your language and our language, by listening to accents, regional dialects, and all of the shortcuts various generations use to express themselves in hip, cool jargon we call colloqualisms. It’s what we hear, what we say, and “That’s just kind of how we talk.”

“I took English as a second language,” a friend of mine said after I corrected her, “and I passed with flying colors. Seriously, I got the best grade in the class. But talking to you, Cindy, or anyone else, on a casual level, is so different that it can prove mind-boggling. There are so many rules, laws, bylaws, and customs that dictate how you speak formally versus informal and casually, and a whole bunch of laws and rules that govern all the different groups and cultures. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to speak with you guys on a conversational level, much less a professional level, and counting English, I now speak seven different languages fluently.”

Our language says a lot about our point of origin, our heritage, our education levels, our social status, and whether we’re cool or not. “No one says, ‘Aiden and I went to the store,’ my niece informed me after I corrected her. ‘We say, me and Aiden went to the store, and that’s just the way it is, whether correct or not, it’s the way we talk.’” We wouldn’t even try to say ‘and I’ among our friends, because we don’t want them to think, ‘She thinks she’s all that.’ We want people to like us, so we alter our programming to serve the group-approved vernacular. We speak different around our former-English teacher-Grandma, “because she’s always ragging on us,” than we do our more relaxed parents, and it takes time and numerous corrections for us to learn the vernacular and colloquialisms our co-workers require if we want to fit in with them. 

Moving in and out of groups, we might fall prey to colloquialisms such as the ‘fianto contraction that is so popular in certain regions of the country we don’t even know we’re saying it, until some national comedian points it out. Even then, even when the comedian points it out, it doesn’t even get that a big laugh, because no one thinks they say it. Some don’t laugh, because they’ve never heard anyone say ‘fianto before, until they do that night, the next day week, or week when their mom says, “We’re going to go to the store. You can go too, ‘fianto.” The national comedian’s joke proved to be a depth charge joke that travelled the nation, with recipients catching each other committing the offense. It then morphed into ‘fianta, which isn’t a feminine classification of the contraction, but a further colloquialism that incorporates the ‘ta as opposed to the to, in I used ‘ta do it. The colloquialisms also extend to ‘ya as opposed to you, and ‘ferya, as in I’ll do that ‘ferya, ‘fudoitfermi. That’s just the way we talk, and if you don’t, you’re probably too young, too old, or too stuffy, and you don’t understand my demo, my group, or my culture.

We learn how to read the room, in other words, and we know we have to be careful, judicious, and very selective about the words we use. If we use language properly, we can accomplish the perception of the dignified, well-educated and erudite. Some of us strive for those impressions, and we try to use big words before we’re ready, to leap frog our way to greater impressions. “Be careful!” I want to shout out to those attempting to take the big leap to shortcuts that they hope garner impressions that are out of their lane. I don’t shout these warnings from afar, as the intro of this article makes clear. I’ve stepped into the multi-syllabic, malapropism minefield so often that I’ve experienced the, D) all of the above, answer when it comes to the difference between humility and humiliation, and I want to caution them to stay in their lane.

***

“I found out just yesterday that the term is scot-free,” a friend of mine said. I’ve been saying scotch-free my whole life. Why didn’t anyone correct me before?” We don’t correct each other because we don’t want to be that guy, because nobody likes that guy, and I’m only that guy with immediate family members, because I have a ‘better they hear it from me than that guy who will mock them’ motto when it comes to family. It’s also possible that we don’t hear the difference between scotch-free and scot-free, because it’s often so close that it flows so quick and smooth. If we catch it, we say, “Who cares, it was close enough,” which leads to their, “Why didn’t anyone tell me I’ve been saying it wrong for decades” complaint.

***

I didn’t have time to shout, “Be careful!” to Jarvis “the co-worker” when he casually stepped into the big word, multi-syllabic malapropism minefield by attempting to display a learned lexicon. Jarvis “the co-worker” was a big gob-a-goo who may have been dating material 80lbs ago, and he was a little greazy, but that only led us to believe he was smarter than the rest of us. Our equation for that solution was based on the process of elimination. What does an unattractive man with little-to-no charisma focus on? He must been so focused on developing his intellect that he forgot to develop a personality, or keep himself trim, and well-groomed. For all of his flaws, Jarvis “the co-worker” could charm us with his ability to poke fun at himself. Throughout the short time we worked together, the man told a number of jokes regarding his inability to adhere to the hygienic standard, his poor work ethic, and his weight problem.  

“You send that problem over to Jarvis the Hutt,” Jarvis said to a co-worker who was asking the group for help regarding a particular case she was working on, “and I’ll make sure it gets screwed up for good.” We all went quiet for a beat, gathering up what he just said, and then someone giggled, Jarvis joined them, and we all joined in. That comment balled up just about everything we thought of his workplace abilities in a tight, brief joke, and it crushed. Even the little, old lady, who never said anything to anyone, was laughing.

Anytime we hit that hard, we feel compelled to add a cherry atop the joke, and I didn’t have time to warn Jarvis “the co-worker” to “Be careful!” about stepping into the big word, multi-syllabic malapropism minefield, because I didn’t know was coming. “You know me,” he said “I’m very self-defecating.” I don’t know if people didn’t hear it, because he missed it by just a smidge, or if they thought he was close enough, but when we take the ‘P’ and the ‘R’ out of the sentence and replace them with an ‘F’, we craft an entirely different image in the mind’s eye. My first thought was that Jarvis just committed a slip of the tongue, but that ‘slip of the tongue’ thought generated a conjunctive image in my mind, more disturbing than Jarvis’s error. He was so close that I can only assume that whoever used the term in his company either didn’t enunciate the word self-deprecating very well, or Jarvis wasn’t using his listening skills, because he accidentally entered into my Personal Word Usage Hall of Fame by proudly declaring that he didn’t need assistance removing waste from his body.

“Well, that probably explains why your jokes stink so much,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“You said self-defecating, and I think you meant to say self-deprecating,” I said. He gave me one of those looks that suggested he struggling to understand, but he didn’t want to admit to it, so I explained the difference to him.

“No wonder you gave me such a odd look.”

“Yeah, I was going to say, you probably don’t want to practice that in public.”

“Why didn’t anyone correct me before?” Jeremy wondered aloud. Then, he added, “I wonder how often I’ve made that error, over the years?”

Our personal hall of shame slips probably don’t match Jarvis’s Hall of Fame malapropism, but we’ve all heard things incorrectly and repeated them so often that when obnoxious intellects call us out on them, they introduce us to the fine line between that humility and humiliation. Humility is a statement we make, by choice, that we’re no better than anyone else, and humiliation is something inflicted upon us by others attempting to say that we’re worse than everybody. They’re so closely linked that they’re both rooted in the same Latin term humilis. Yet, if humility is a self-imposed choice we make to think of ourselves less, how come the humiliation thrust upon us by others makes us think of ourselves so much more? 

Yesterday I Learned … VIII

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Yesterday I learned that the makers of South Park predicted that with the advent of AI a college degree in Geology might prove pointless sooner than we think. Being a paid Geologist, as with many studies in informational pursuits, will be relegated to the ash heap of history if AI proves a greater information resource than men and women pursuing answers to geological questions. “It might damage the human element of the profession as a catalog of facts,” supporters say, “but what about new discoveries and new information?” How does AI uncover new information in the field of Geology? Mathematics.

Today I learned that we discovered a planet called Neptune almost solely using mathematics. The planet Neptune is so dim that it cannot be viewed with the naked eye, so based almost solely on mathematical principles, some French guy predicted that a planet had to be acting on Uranus with a perturbing, or unsettling, force in a manner Saturn and the Sun were not. Using Isaac Newton’s laws of gravity and motion as a guide, this French guy theorized that Uranus’ orbits and movements were so irregular that there had to be a planet right … there, causing it. The ellipses in that sentence was filled with mathematical calculations and theories. That French guy was a fraction of a degree off.

I also learned that Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) has recently progressed to something called Artificial General Intelligence (A.G.I.). The difference between the two is math. Most of the research to this point has led to progressions in A.I.’s ability to solve and resolve linguistic problems. The progression into math, or more general intelligence, has excited some and put the fears in a whole lot more.

Tomorrow we’ll learn that no matter what incarnation A.I. takes, it will always require some sort of human input. We fear the extent of A.I.’s capabilities now, but we feared the extent of the internet, yesterday, and the capabilities and unforeseen consequences of fire yesteryear. The gods punished Prometheus for introducing humans to fire. Some suggest the gods feared the progression of the human, others say that that the gods feared for the human race. They didn’t think the humans were capable of understanding the consequences of playing with fire.  

Yesterday I learned that nothing is original, particularly in the arts. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the Sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9. So, give up on the ‘O’ word, original, they say, and strive for the ‘U’ word, unique. Today I learned that Kilmister, AKA Lemmy Kilmister, AKA Lemmy, the lead singer of Hawkwind and Motorhead passed away. Listen to his music, watch an interview with him, or read about the man. If he’s not one of the most original artists you’ve ever heard, then you know this genre far better than me. If we don’t view Lemmy as an original tomorrow, I think we’ll at least acknowledge that he definitely gave new meaning to the Oscar Wilde quote, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.”

Yesterday I learned that “The death of a language occurs when young people, progressively refuse to speak it.” That’s so obvious that it’s hardly worth writing, but why would young people stop speaking their native tongue?” Steven Pinker writes about this as if it’s a bad thing, which it kind of is, when one puts it in the frame of a death of a language basically killing all links to a culture and the subsequent death of traditions and folklore of said culture. Today I learned that even though the Russian language is not even close to a fear of extinction, Russian parents prefer that their children learn English. They try to teach it in their home and they want it taught in their kids’ schools. These parents pursue this, according to the report, because they want more for their children. They want their children to speak a more universal language to hopefully open up more economic opportunities for them. This could include their children working in the service industry, the tourist industry, or some other industry that they hope will lead to their children an easier life than the one they had to endure. We can’t help but guess that their greatest hope/dream is that their children might find an opportunity that helps them escape Russia. Whatever the case is, they believe that their children continuing to speak something nothing but the “mother tongue” might limit their opportunities in life the way it did theirs. Tomorrow, we will see that most young people are self-serving. They might love their culture as it pertains to their love of family and the essence of their being, and they might want to continue the history and traditions of their culture, but if it does nothing more than romanticize the past, most young people will not carry the torch if it comes at the expense of what they perceive to be a path to personal gains, their personal happiness, or the intra-or-inter-personal connections they develop in life.

Yesterday I learned that one of the last individuals I’d ever expect became a drug addict. If we all sat in a room, with all those we all know and love, and someone asked who’s the least likely to become a drug addict, he probably would’ve been the last one everyone selected. When I found out he became a drug addict, I had so many questions that I couldn’t think of one. To say I was disappointed doesn’t even crack that shell. He was the apex of stability, and all that, until he hurt his back, bad, and he didn’t want to undergo surgery. He preferred to treat his near-crippling pain with painkillers. If you’ve ever been ground-bound with back pain, and it hurts to breathe, you probably have an idea what he was going through. The meds made him feel better, temporarily, and he wanted more of those “temporary” moments, until he got addicted to them. Did it alter his brain chemistry, or did he fear the return of the backpain? Regardless, he became an addict. 

Today I learned that some consider that addiction a disease. Even though the least likely I would expect became one, I cannot grasp that concept. I do not suggest those who state that are lying, excusing the behavior, or have any other ulterior motives. I also leave ample space for the idea that I don’t know what I’m talking about, because prior to this moment, I never knew anyone who suffered from any form of a drug addictions. I just don’t understand how the decision and resultant decisions to continue to take drugs can be classified a disease. Before we try a hard drug, for the first time, we know most of the stories about the harm we could do to our body, and every time thereafter, we know we’re doing greater damage. We also know that we fall prey to various addictions easily, and we know (or I know) that we could become personally, psychologically, and physiologically addicted. As John Lennon once said, “Cocaine was the first drug I ever tried where the moment after I tried it, I wondered how much more of it I could get.” 

Tomorrow, I think we’ll reread Psychology Today’s article that suggests, “There is significant evidence that addiction is a complex, cultural, social, and psychological phenomenon, as much as it is a biological phenomenon … that baffles physicians and philosophers.” Some recreational drugs provide a shot of dopamine that can lead to a restructuring of the brain. Among the many things various deleterious recreational drugs do to the brain, one thing they provide is short-term, artificial fun. They can make a trip to the grocery store fun. They, along with alcohol, can make a good time great. I have little in the way of personal experience with recreational drugs. I was never an addict, but I was a binge-drinker. As a binge drinker, I never understood responsible drinking. “You want to go out, after such a rough week at work, and drink one or two drinks and go home? That’s the exact opposite of what I want to do.” Most addictions, in my opinion, are an addiction to something else, something different than what I’m experiencing in my otherwise uninteresting and unfulfilling life. They’re an escape from the hum drum of life. Very few addicts of anything say, “I do it, because it’s fun, and I like having fun. I know sobriety, and I know it well. It’s boring.” If we had the self-control to do it just once, and no one was affected by it, we could claim no harm, no foul, but how many people have such self-control? Have you ever heard the term chasing the dragon, chasing that first high. It’s way above my pay grade to try to understand if addiction is a disease, but after seeing what happened to a friend I deemed far more capable than me, I walk away with the notion that we’re all susceptible to various forms of addiction, because, as another friend of mine once said:

“We’re all chemical.” I had no idea when she said that, but my friend was a Neurology student who specialized in Neurochemistry. *She also said it so long ago that her assessments may have aged, my remembrances of what she said could be faulty and incomplete, and I might exaggerate certain points that she hit, but this is what I remember about what she said. “We can debate the particulars of this very complex subject, and we do, and I can go into those particulars if you want, but it all boils down to that simple statement, we’re all chemical.” The two of us had a long shift before us, and I could’ve asked her for the details, but I asked her to give it to me in a nutshell. “You’ve heard the term brain chemistry, right? Those chemicals in our brain dictate mood. If your brain is not, naturally, producing enough green, you might be suffering from a chemical imbalance that affects your mood in a variety of ways both mild and severe. To relieve that malady, you seek a specialist who prescribes you a dose of green,” she said that trying hard to find colors we don’t associate with mood. “If, however, you’re not suffering from an imbalance, and you have plenty of green, and you then take a green pill, it can provide an excess of green that results in feelings of temporary euphoria. We’re all chemical. The problem with taking certain prescription and recreational drugs is that they introduce these colors, moods, and stimulants artificially. If you don’t need green, and you artificially introduce more green, you have an excess of green, and your brain stops producing green organically. The brain adjusts and sees that we’re all stocked up on green, red, yellow, or whatever color we’re talking about, so it stops producing it. As a result, the next time we take a green pill, the brain has already adjusted its production of the color, so we don’t experience an excess, and that excess produced the euphoria the first time. So, our inclination is to take more than we did the first time if we want that sense of euphoria. This is why they call it chasing the dragon, because you’re continually trying to up the dose to return to that initial feeling of euphoria. Every case is different, of course, and the amount of damage is different too, but when we stop taking the green pill, it can take a while for the brain to start producing green organically again, and that can lead to feelings of withdrawals.” 

*For anyone who is seeking a more comprehensive discussion on this topic, please visit: Psychology Today. 

Guy no Logical Gibberish IV

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“Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fattest of them all.”

“Not you, ma lord, for you still have a rock-solid chin, and it’s normal for a man your age to have bosoms.”

I believed him. I saw that picture I took ten years ago, and I believed my mirror when he told me that not much has changed since. Then the hair stylist spun me around to face a brand new mirror and a brand new form of reality.

“Hey, who’s the beer guzzling, Cheeto lover doing the Jabba the Hut impersonation?” The stylist pretended she didn’t hear what I said. I couldn’t tell if her delicate response was a result of her dealings with the mirror phenomenon, or if she didn’t know what to say. Whatever the case with her was, she found that the best response was to say nothing. Don’t add to the joke, don’t sympathize. Say nothing. 

The little, square sunglass mirrors in department stores don’t tell us anything either. I used to think the mirrors were strategically small due to the limited space their manufacturer’s rented in department stores. If you think they want to display as many sunglasses as they can on the spinning rack, that’s what I used to think. The more I look into those mirrors, the more I think their manufacturers designed them to help us avoid seeing our double chins and everything else that a pair of sunglasses cannot fix.    

***

Waste drives me batty. I’m not just talking about the more customary concerns we have about the amount of food we waste, or the amount of water we use. I’m talking about little things too. I’m talking about an obsessive quality that focuses on doing things like hanging your coat in a closet in the dark, to save electricity. I’m talking about finding something I love (as opposed to need) in a department store and putting it back to save money. My rule is if I still want it two days later money, and I think it’s worth the drive back to the department store I purchase it. I’m also talking about cleaning my plate, no matter how full I am, because I won’t waste food. Most of my obsessions, save for the latter, are quite healthy, but they also evolve some admitted obsessive traits. If I drink a bottle of water, for example, and someone else throws it away with some remnants of water sitting at the bottom, I might think about that amount of water for hours, sometime days.

“Why don’t you drink that?” I asked a friend who was prepared to throw his bottle away with remnants of water at the bottom.

“Because I don’t want it.”

“So, you’re just going to throw that bottle away with perfectly good water sitting at the bottom?”

“Yes, yes I am,” they said before throwing it away.

***

Friends of mine who watched Buggs Bunny as often as I did know that I’ve been ripping that show off for decades. Those who haven’t find me somewhat, sort of funny in a peculiar way. 

Those of us who have watched at least 4,000 monster movies know that if we have the correct worldview, savage monsters will not attack us. We also know that when it’s not convenient for the plot, they won’t attack.

When aliens attack, I suggest that we try using bullets and any other technological artillery available to us on them. Our leaders might try to achieving some sort of peace accord with them, and our scientists might suggest a methodical approach based on reason. If the aliens are as intellectually superior as sci-fi movies suggest, however, the nature of beings suggest that they evolved into intellectual beings at the expense of their physical strength. If that’s the case, we should introduce them to brute force to see how they react. We can be sure that most of our moviegoers, and other creative minds, will insist that bullets won’t work, but what if they do? What if, in our exhaustive search for their vulnerabilities, we find that they’re just as susceptible to bullets, and all of the technical artillery, as we are. Would we pursue that? We might in the streets, as those battles would involve personal confrontations that lead to survival of the fittest, but would our world leaders follow suit? If they eventually did, and we achieved victory would it ring hollow for us? In the immediate aftermath we might celebrate our victory. We might hold parades for our heroes, and one of the heroes for a day might take to the mic and drop a Ghostbusters’ phrase on us “We came, we saw, we kicked their butts,” and we might repeat that glorious phrase for a day or two. After the glory of victory dulled, and we all returned to our daily routines, many of us will recharacterize our victory. The idea that we were able to devastate their inferior forces will leave many of us feeling disillusioned, and we will experience survivor’s guilt. They will recharacterize our victory as primal in nature, and they will suggest that, as a species, we haven’t progressed much since Genghis Khan. Some of us might even start campaigns that focus on asking the aliens to give us another chance, and the alien’s second planned assault will capitalize on that sentiment to divide and conquer us. 

*** 

The Machine is a sci-fi flick in which a team of scientists devise a mode of communication to help us remember. They do not have the technology to develop internal mechanisms that could be inserted biologically, and even if they did, they decide that they won’t pursue it, because that might create some form of compulsory participation. These scientists are wary of anything having to do with compulsory participation that could lead us to characterize their intentions as ominous. They simply want to develop a intangible means to help us communicate in a way that we never forget.

“This might not be such a good thing,” Paul says. Paul’s team of technological scientists are devoted to the communication platform of the program. Paul’s concern addresses the programs of the remember team.

“Why,” Paul asks rhetorically to deflect any suggestion that he is jealous of what the remember team is creating, “because the power to forget is almost as vital to mental health as the power to remember. Some psychologists say that if we weren’t able to forget our worst memories, or our worst thoughts, as we grow, it might stunt mental and emotional growth in such a way that we might all become basket cases forever trying to correct the past. 

“I saw a documentary that interviewed people with a memory syndrome that is the opposite of amnesia and other forms of memory disorders listed. It’s called hyperthymestic syndrome. Sufferers suggest that they remember everything that ever happened to them so well that they relive them in real-time with real-time and acute emotion. Some of them are miserable, and some of them are basket cases because of it,” Paul adds. “If our program allows people to never forget, I submit, they never will, and they will pay the cost for it in ways we cannot foresee.”

“Perhaps, we shouldn’t have bad thoughts then, Paul,” the lead scientist proposes. “Perhaps the collective can teach other people not to have bad thoughts.”

Taken aback Paul says, “With all due respect sir, I don’t think you recognize the totality of what you’re saying.”

“Let’s not forget the primary directive of [the machine],” the lead scientist deflects, mentioning its temporary name. “It’s communication. Communication in a way Alexander Graham Bell couldn’t even dream. The acute memory function of our [machine] is not its sole purpose, but I think everyone here, except Paul, will admit it will be a wonderful byproduct.”

Paul does not concede on the issue, but he agrees to shelve his concern as they devise a way to pitch it to corporate leaders. “I don’t like the name The Machine first of all,” Paul says. “We need to develop a name that suggests that The Machine can bring communities together. A grandmother can keep tabs on their grandkids without having to call their estranged children, long distance friendships can be maintained, and a number of other communications of the sort. We need to focus on that. We need to describe how people can use this utility to gather together in intangible ways that supersede the telephone.”

“I take it you have an idea for a name,” one of the other scientists says.

“I don’t,” Paul replies humbly facing down the challenge, “but I think the name should involve properties equivalent to a net or a web that brings people together.”

“A worldwide web?” the scientist asks. “That sounds a little ominous, like if you step into the web you’re trapped there.”

“I agree with Paul though. The idea of a worldwide gathering sounds compulsory,” a fourth scientist says, “it can lead one to think if they’re not interacting, they’re missing out, which has its own marketing possibilities, but it can lead, as you suggest, to a more ominous sound. How about we focus our presentation on the idea and power of two people interacting? You can interact with your grandmother in a way different than by phone. Interacting, interweb, or internet?”  

***

Why did one group of people separate from the primary group of their day and eventually start speaking an entirely different language? When one ancient tribe splintered off from the primary society of the time, their language began to deviate from the primary language. The idea that they developed different customs is not as remarkable, because they did so to adapt to the climate of their new land, but why did they develop a different language? The initial deviations were probably subtle at first, but some began to deviate so much, over the course of hundreds of years that they sounded nothing alike. English and German, for example, might have some similarities, but for the most part the sounds are so different, they almost sound like communication from different beasts. Then, we have the stark differences in sounds from the neighboring countries France and Germany. French sounds fluid and poetic, and German sounds anything but. This is to say nothing of various forms of communication heard in countries that speak Mandarin, Arabic, and any of the other guesstimated 6,909 + languages now spoken throughout the world. Were the initial transitions so gradual that the communicators found them unremarkable at first and thus not noteworthy, until they incrementally evolved into a different language?

As we spread our search our search for answers out, we eventually find ourselves back to some point of origin, or the initial, primary form of communication heard throughout the relatively small world of communicators. There are a number of theories regarding the when, where and how various languages started, including the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and it’s Greco-Roman parallels, but at this point in history, linguists have no definitive, documented history of transitions people made to other languages and other forms of communication. The history of languages is well documented, of course, but in my research there are no definitive answers, and I must admit I’m almost as uninformed as I am curious about the transitions in language that led to the phenomenon of so many variations people around the world have for describe the nouns around them and the verbs of their every day life. 

***

If I ever achieved some level of notoriety as an artist, I would learn to pick my battles. In the beginning, I would probably view every battle as germane, as people questioned everything from my art to my integrity, but after a while I’m sure I would learn to disregard some pot shots. 

A popular artist has to deal with many battles, on many different fronts, on a daily basis. As we see in customer reviews on Amazon, and elsewhere, every piece of art is either too something or not something enough. Most artists would say, as Don Schlitz once wrote, “You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.” Pick your battles, in other words. One battle I would draw up troops to fight is the ‘fake’ charge. When discussing artistic works, or artists, the ‘fake’ charge is often the last refuge of a critic who cannot express themselves well. Fake is such an arbitrary charge, and it’s subjective, but once it begins to gather moss, it’s so hard to defeat. Music aficionados probably hear this charge 100 different times about 100 different artists when discussing music. The contrarians often say fake and sellout in conjunction with one another, and most of just roll our eyes and walk away, knowing that the person actually knows little to nothing about music, but there are times when it sticks. A friend of mine said he thought the music bands Green Day and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (RHCP) were fake. I never enjoyed the music of Green Day, but I did like the RHCP at one time. I probably considered them susceptible to the charge, but after that man dropped the ‘fake’ charge on RHCP, I couldn’t listen to them without thinking how artificial they were. I didn’t consider them fake over night, of course, but with every listen I became convinced that if they were more organic in the early years, but they lost it over time, in their efforts to prolong their career. Saying that an artist is fake is so arbitrary and impossible to prove, of course, as anyone could say as much about any artist who ever created more than one piece of art, and it’s almost as impossible to disprove. I don’t know the legality involved, but if an influential critic from a major magazine levelled such a charge against me, I would probably expend all resources to challenge that assessment. I know the man’s opinion would be protected by the First Amendment, and the critic could say that it was just his opinion, but I would take that fight to the stage, in the media, and anywhere and everywhere I could to defeat that critic’s charge in the court of public opinion. My motto for this fight would be, we just can’t let this go, because once it sticks we’re done.