Ultimately, truth is autobiography.
That doesn't mean that there could never be absolute truth on some plane of existence we cannot access (or can access only with great difficulty) or that there isn't an archetype for truth somewhere in the vast universe, but because truth is (most probably) autobiography, it does seem to suggest that we shape and hold our truths as individuals and that these truths most likely are quite different from objective reality, if there is such a thing.
That leads me to believe that individual truths are actually opinions and that opinions are expressed as theater, where the medium is the message and truth is irrelevant.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Forbearance
Thomas Berger (1924- ) is a prodigious American author who "depicts, in the pungent language of the time [midwest, depression era], the passions and volitions of people who might otherwise be overlooked in the universal rush toward oblivion." This quote is from the dust cover of Thomas Berger's twelfth novel, called "The Feud," published in 1983.
At another time, I would like to explore the concept of "the universal rush toward oblivion."
For now, however, it will suffice to enumerate the Principles of Manhood described in "The Feud," to wit:
1. Don't let anybody get away with anything without calling him on it.
2. Always respect the weaker sex and people older than yourself.
3. Be neatly dressed at all times.
4. Never tell anyone else, including relatives, much about your private affairs.
5. Worship the Lord, but never trust a preacher any farther than you can throw him.
6. Avoid being foulmouthed unless provoked beyond your capacity for forbearance.
It is this last principle that indicts me and causes me to defend myself. When I listen to the unending barrage of incredibly ignorant, sarcastic, and mean-spirited invective launched against the current Presidency, I can't help myself. I have reached the capacity for forbearance, and foulmouthedness is my only recourse. There are not enough foulmouthed words to satisfy me. I find myself making them up because the standard dozen or so don't seem adequate to the task.
I've lived a long time, but I cannot remember when a President has been pilloried, hourly, for every breath drawn, every statement made, every handshake, every decision, and every proposal as has the current President.
Can somebody talk me off the ledge?
At another time, I would like to explore the concept of "the universal rush toward oblivion."
For now, however, it will suffice to enumerate the Principles of Manhood described in "The Feud," to wit:
1. Don't let anybody get away with anything without calling him on it.
2. Always respect the weaker sex and people older than yourself.
3. Be neatly dressed at all times.
4. Never tell anyone else, including relatives, much about your private affairs.
5. Worship the Lord, but never trust a preacher any farther than you can throw him.
6. Avoid being foulmouthed unless provoked beyond your capacity for forbearance.
It is this last principle that indicts me and causes me to defend myself. When I listen to the unending barrage of incredibly ignorant, sarcastic, and mean-spirited invective launched against the current Presidency, I can't help myself. I have reached the capacity for forbearance, and foulmouthedness is my only recourse. There are not enough foulmouthed words to satisfy me. I find myself making them up because the standard dozen or so don't seem adequate to the task.
I've lived a long time, but I cannot remember when a President has been pilloried, hourly, for every breath drawn, every statement made, every handshake, every decision, and every proposal as has the current President.
Can somebody talk me off the ledge?
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Learning and Enrichment
Dr. Maxine Greene, an exceptional educational philosopher, when asked what knowledge and skills are worthwhile learning, said this: "Those things that release more and more people for reflective encounters with a range of works of art, works that have the potential to awaken, to move persons to see, to hear, and to feel often in unexpected ways. Perceptive encounters with works of art can bring human beings in touch with themselves. We must awaken in order to continue our efforts to build a just, compassionate, and meaningful democracy. We must help students realize their deep connection to and responsibility for not only their own individual experience but also for other human beings who share this world."
Learning, of course, cannot be guaranteed. There are so many variables connected with “learning” that even in this day and age of academic redundancies, many “learning theories” still abound, and, like the existence of God, no one knows for certain why and how people of various backgrounds and dispositions learn anything. Learning can be measured but only in a rudimentary sort of way. Retention can be tested, but this is not the same thing as understanding. Understanding is a wholistic concept; retention deals with specificities and, even then, is hard to measure although measured perhaps more successfully than understanding. Nor can enrichment be guaranteed or tested. Enrichment is not necessarily a feeling that comes from knowing something or doing a good job at something. Perhaps enrichment is more an attitude or a spirit of “possibility” that sometimes transcends the materiality of educational or professional objectives and goals.
The idea of nuance is a most important aspect of learning and enrichment. The elimination or lack of attention to nuance may be what is wrong with higher education today, which is often far too specialized and shuns or ridicules liberal arts. A liberal arts education is important because it teaches us to think and to think expansively, to consider all the possibilities we can conceive of, and to think critically and not just blindly accept the fashionable or the current policies that are thrust upon us.
The philosophical and spiritual aspects of any educational endeavor are just as important as the objective facts themselves. Providing perspective and ideas that oppose policy and governance is just as importance as obedience to principles.
Enrichment deals with philosophies that accompany the operational goals of any profession or endeavor. Perhaps it is "accidental learning." Stimulating a hunger for more learning and understanding is the enrichment philosophy that should underpin everything we do.
Often, what you know today is obsolete tomorrow, but in many cases, what we know today is still knowable and durable tomorrow. The fundamentals do not change. What changes are technological advances, and even these move at a snail’s pace although it seems as though there is so much more available now than ever before, and, to some extent, that is true; however, what most professions and artistic endeavors can rely on is that the fundamentals do not change. For example, language may undergo some kinky and evolutionary morphings from time to time, but the fundamentals of grammar and punctuation still apply.
It is important to adopt a peaceful and righteous attitude (philosophy) toward any work so that one (a) is confident of the fundamentals and then (b) learns that dealing with contingencies is the solution to the puzzles and mysteries of being alive.
There has to be a certain reverence toward the complex processes of learning, understanding, and enrichment. It’s like a sacrament, so to speak, in that everything worthwhile is endowed with a rich history, a rich tradition, a rich present, and a rich future.
John Dewey believed, as did Jean-Paul Sartre, that what we become, what we make of ourselves, depends on what we do with our lives. What we do cannot be simply routine and mechanical; it must be conscious, interested, and committed. If we content ourselves with being behaving organisms rather than reflective persons engaged in ongoing and meaningful activity, the quality of our existence and self-hood becomes thin and pallid. We begin to resemble those T. S. Eliot called "hollow men" or those Thoreau described as living lives of "quiet desperation."
Where does a single human being inexorably stand between the original intent and the ultimate manifestation? In artistry. While many professions and endeavors are a science, many are also very much an art, and it is the artistry of one's profession or endeavor that ultimately leads to understanding and enrichment.
Learning, of course, cannot be guaranteed. There are so many variables connected with “learning” that even in this day and age of academic redundancies, many “learning theories” still abound, and, like the existence of God, no one knows for certain why and how people of various backgrounds and dispositions learn anything. Learning can be measured but only in a rudimentary sort of way. Retention can be tested, but this is not the same thing as understanding. Understanding is a wholistic concept; retention deals with specificities and, even then, is hard to measure although measured perhaps more successfully than understanding. Nor can enrichment be guaranteed or tested. Enrichment is not necessarily a feeling that comes from knowing something or doing a good job at something. Perhaps enrichment is more an attitude or a spirit of “possibility” that sometimes transcends the materiality of educational or professional objectives and goals.
The idea of nuance is a most important aspect of learning and enrichment. The elimination or lack of attention to nuance may be what is wrong with higher education today, which is often far too specialized and shuns or ridicules liberal arts. A liberal arts education is important because it teaches us to think and to think expansively, to consider all the possibilities we can conceive of, and to think critically and not just blindly accept the fashionable or the current policies that are thrust upon us.
The philosophical and spiritual aspects of any educational endeavor are just as important as the objective facts themselves. Providing perspective and ideas that oppose policy and governance is just as importance as obedience to principles.
Enrichment deals with philosophies that accompany the operational goals of any profession or endeavor. Perhaps it is "accidental learning." Stimulating a hunger for more learning and understanding is the enrichment philosophy that should underpin everything we do.
Often, what you know today is obsolete tomorrow, but in many cases, what we know today is still knowable and durable tomorrow. The fundamentals do not change. What changes are technological advances, and even these move at a snail’s pace although it seems as though there is so much more available now than ever before, and, to some extent, that is true; however, what most professions and artistic endeavors can rely on is that the fundamentals do not change. For example, language may undergo some kinky and evolutionary morphings from time to time, but the fundamentals of grammar and punctuation still apply.
It is important to adopt a peaceful and righteous attitude (philosophy) toward any work so that one (a) is confident of the fundamentals and then (b) learns that dealing with contingencies is the solution to the puzzles and mysteries of being alive.
There has to be a certain reverence toward the complex processes of learning, understanding, and enrichment. It’s like a sacrament, so to speak, in that everything worthwhile is endowed with a rich history, a rich tradition, a rich present, and a rich future.
John Dewey believed, as did Jean-Paul Sartre, that what we become, what we make of ourselves, depends on what we do with our lives. What we do cannot be simply routine and mechanical; it must be conscious, interested, and committed. If we content ourselves with being behaving organisms rather than reflective persons engaged in ongoing and meaningful activity, the quality of our existence and self-hood becomes thin and pallid. We begin to resemble those T. S. Eliot called "hollow men" or those Thoreau described as living lives of "quiet desperation."
Where does a single human being inexorably stand between the original intent and the ultimate manifestation? In artistry. While many professions and endeavors are a science, many are also very much an art, and it is the artistry of one's profession or endeavor that ultimately leads to understanding and enrichment.
What is quality?
Trying to define quality is reminiscent of the story about the blind men describing an elephant. One felt the elephant’s leg and thought the creature was a tree. Another grabbed the elephant’s trunk and said it was a snake. One man touched the elephant’s side and declared it a brick wall. The other felt the elephant’s tail and said, “It is a rope.” In the end, though each of the blind men thought he was right in his definition, all were wrong. The author of the story, John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887), concludes:
“So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!”
The idea of quality has many definitions, ranging from the practical to the transcendent. Quality is anything that is both useful and satisfies a customer’s needs or expectations. Quality is also seen as conforming to specifications or an advantageous combination of good price and desired features. Quality is perceived as excellence, freedom from defect, and something that adds value to a product or process. When frustrated trying to come up with an actual definition, people will often say, “I can’t define it in words, but I know it when I see it.”
Quality is an essential, distinguishing attribute of a person, product, or process, and, like beauty, is often in the eyes of the beholder. To add to its elusiveness, what is considered quality today may not be considered quality tomorrow, so it is changeable and evolutionary in its nature as well.
How much quality do we need? In medical transcription (as in other products and processes), we need as much quality as is necessary to ensure the accuracy and clarity of written medicolegal documentation used for patient care and billing purposes.
What does quality cost? When something is done right the first time, quality is virtually free. What is expensive is the constant fixing of un-quality. Every time a layer of un-quality must be fixed, a product or process becomes more expensive and time-consuming. Un-quality can also be downright dangerous, the cost of which is often inestimable.
As individuals or as a team, we either contribute to the quality of a product or we add to its un-quality. Regardless of the definition of quality, one thing is certain: The cause of quality resides in each one of us.
“So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!”
The idea of quality has many definitions, ranging from the practical to the transcendent. Quality is anything that is both useful and satisfies a customer’s needs or expectations. Quality is also seen as conforming to specifications or an advantageous combination of good price and desired features. Quality is perceived as excellence, freedom from defect, and something that adds value to a product or process. When frustrated trying to come up with an actual definition, people will often say, “I can’t define it in words, but I know it when I see it.”
Quality is an essential, distinguishing attribute of a person, product, or process, and, like beauty, is often in the eyes of the beholder. To add to its elusiveness, what is considered quality today may not be considered quality tomorrow, so it is changeable and evolutionary in its nature as well.
How much quality do we need? In medical transcription (as in other products and processes), we need as much quality as is necessary to ensure the accuracy and clarity of written medicolegal documentation used for patient care and billing purposes.
What does quality cost? When something is done right the first time, quality is virtually free. What is expensive is the constant fixing of un-quality. Every time a layer of un-quality must be fixed, a product or process becomes more expensive and time-consuming. Un-quality can also be downright dangerous, the cost of which is often inestimable.
As individuals or as a team, we either contribute to the quality of a product or we add to its un-quality. Regardless of the definition of quality, one thing is certain: The cause of quality resides in each one of us.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Beliefs
I believe that beliefs are perilous and dangerous (that is, perilous to the self and dangerous to the other). If, as Socrates averred, the unexamined life is not worth living, then surely, by comparison, the unexamined belief is lethal. It is hard for us, the supposed superior species, to believe that the human mind is not consistent, unified, and reliable. Unless we recognize that our minds are fragmented and contradictory, we cannot understand how dangerous our beliefs are to ourselves and to others.
What is a belief? It is a psychological state in which the believer holds a proposition or premise to be true. It is a mental sentence or statement one says to the self about someone or something that is held in the mind to be a true thing. It is a feeling or subjective energy, enhanced through repetition and programming, that shapes thinking processes and behavior. Beliefs govern our living experience. Interestingly, we often believe something that has long ago been proven, by our own experience, to be false or untrue.
How do we know that what we believe is true? More fundamentally, how do we even know what we believe? How many of our beliefs are turned over, examined, and analyzed? Can our beliefs withstand comprehensive and honest scrutiny? What do we do, as individuals, when our beliefs are contradictory and unsustainable? Do we readily give up the beliefs that are proven to be false?
Judging from the fanatic behavior of individuals and large groups on this earth, I would say that it is very difficult for some to abandon their beliefs even in the face of repeated realities that these beliefs are destructive and false. Politics, economic systems, educational theories, and religions come to mind. One does not have to look too closely at any "ism" to know that behaviors associated with the "ism" are often punitive, harmful, and many times lethal. An "ism" is a distinctive system of beliefs, theory, myth, and doctrine that guide people's behavior as individuals, groups, or social and political movements. Think about capitalism, fascism, ageism, sexism, racism, socialism, communism, pacifism, terrorism, altruism, nihilism, buddhism, catholicism, satanism, feminism, voyeurism, heroism, elitism, sadism, optimism, pessimism or any number of these "pre-packaged ideologies" and then decide if these are all good, all bad, or somewhere in between, and think about how these "isms" have affected our world thus far.
I recently read this astounding statement: If we had a computer the size of the known universe and that computer had been calculating since the beginning of known time, it would only now be arriving at its 300th noncontradictory belief. This mindboggling supposition leads me to believe that our individual human minds are full of contradictory beliefs and that our puny thinking processes have a very hard time discerning these contradictions. In fact, it may be nearly impossible for the human personality to recognize its own contradictory beliefs. To help reason through this, try a little sanity experiment: Make a list of the things you believe, and see if any contradict another. Sometimes just the act of writing beliefs in black and white helps us to examine them more closely to determine if we really do believe these things or if these beliefs are a knee-jerk or automatic (pre-packaged) response that we've "inherited" or were raised with and really make little or no sense when put under the microscope of honest scrutiny.
The philosophical study of the relationship between knowledge and belief is called epistemology. How do we reconcile what we believe with what we know, and is there a one-to-one correlation between the two? I think there is not. Many times I have heard someone say, "I can't prove it, but I know it's true." If something is true, then someone must know it based on real experience. If no one knows a thing, then is it still true? That resembles the old Zen-like question about the sound of one hand clapping or whether a tree falling in a forest that has no listener actually makes a noise. How many of the beliefs we hold so dearly actually represent nothing more than wishful thinking? And what is the difference between a belief and a delusion? A delusion is psychiatrically defined as a fixed false belief. A delusion is believed to be pathological (the result of an illness). Whereas so-called "normal" people (defined as sane) have perceptions that are somewhat based in reality, a delusional person has an apperception (illusion) that is not reality-based. In clinical practice, psychiatrists tend to diagnose a belief as delusional if it is either patently bizarre, causing significant distress, or excessively preoccupies the patient, especially if the person is subsequently unswayed in belief by counterevidence or reasonable arguments. How many of us are significantly distressed by our beliefs? If so, is it better to "give up" our beliefs rather than be stressed by them, especially if we can't ascertain whether or not our beliefs are actually true?
It doesn't take much effort to see that we are surrounded by delusional people, and often that enemy is ourselves...unwilling or unable to examine the truth and consequences of our own beliefs.
In "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There" (1871) by Lewis Carroll, (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), the White Queen says, "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
And we still believe in them even after breakfast.
What is a belief? It is a psychological state in which the believer holds a proposition or premise to be true. It is a mental sentence or statement one says to the self about someone or something that is held in the mind to be a true thing. It is a feeling or subjective energy, enhanced through repetition and programming, that shapes thinking processes and behavior. Beliefs govern our living experience. Interestingly, we often believe something that has long ago been proven, by our own experience, to be false or untrue.
How do we know that what we believe is true? More fundamentally, how do we even know what we believe? How many of our beliefs are turned over, examined, and analyzed? Can our beliefs withstand comprehensive and honest scrutiny? What do we do, as individuals, when our beliefs are contradictory and unsustainable? Do we readily give up the beliefs that are proven to be false?
Judging from the fanatic behavior of individuals and large groups on this earth, I would say that it is very difficult for some to abandon their beliefs even in the face of repeated realities that these beliefs are destructive and false. Politics, economic systems, educational theories, and religions come to mind. One does not have to look too closely at any "ism" to know that behaviors associated with the "ism" are often punitive, harmful, and many times lethal. An "ism" is a distinctive system of beliefs, theory, myth, and doctrine that guide people's behavior as individuals, groups, or social and political movements. Think about capitalism, fascism, ageism, sexism, racism, socialism, communism, pacifism, terrorism, altruism, nihilism, buddhism, catholicism, satanism, feminism, voyeurism, heroism, elitism, sadism, optimism, pessimism or any number of these "pre-packaged ideologies" and then decide if these are all good, all bad, or somewhere in between, and think about how these "isms" have affected our world thus far.
I recently read this astounding statement: If we had a computer the size of the known universe and that computer had been calculating since the beginning of known time, it would only now be arriving at its 300th noncontradictory belief. This mindboggling supposition leads me to believe that our individual human minds are full of contradictory beliefs and that our puny thinking processes have a very hard time discerning these contradictions. In fact, it may be nearly impossible for the human personality to recognize its own contradictory beliefs. To help reason through this, try a little sanity experiment: Make a list of the things you believe, and see if any contradict another. Sometimes just the act of writing beliefs in black and white helps us to examine them more closely to determine if we really do believe these things or if these beliefs are a knee-jerk or automatic (pre-packaged) response that we've "inherited" or were raised with and really make little or no sense when put under the microscope of honest scrutiny.
The philosophical study of the relationship between knowledge and belief is called epistemology. How do we reconcile what we believe with what we know, and is there a one-to-one correlation between the two? I think there is not. Many times I have heard someone say, "I can't prove it, but I know it's true." If something is true, then someone must know it based on real experience. If no one knows a thing, then is it still true? That resembles the old Zen-like question about the sound of one hand clapping or whether a tree falling in a forest that has no listener actually makes a noise. How many of the beliefs we hold so dearly actually represent nothing more than wishful thinking? And what is the difference between a belief and a delusion? A delusion is psychiatrically defined as a fixed false belief. A delusion is believed to be pathological (the result of an illness). Whereas so-called "normal" people (defined as sane) have perceptions that are somewhat based in reality, a delusional person has an apperception (illusion) that is not reality-based. In clinical practice, psychiatrists tend to diagnose a belief as delusional if it is either patently bizarre, causing significant distress, or excessively preoccupies the patient, especially if the person is subsequently unswayed in belief by counterevidence or reasonable arguments. How many of us are significantly distressed by our beliefs? If so, is it better to "give up" our beliefs rather than be stressed by them, especially if we can't ascertain whether or not our beliefs are actually true?
It doesn't take much effort to see that we are surrounded by delusional people, and often that enemy is ourselves...unwilling or unable to examine the truth and consequences of our own beliefs.
In "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There" (1871) by Lewis Carroll, (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), the White Queen says, "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
And we still believe in them even after breakfast.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Understanding and Forgiveness
An old French proverb suggests that "To understand all is to forgive all."
In a time when circumstances affecting us seem to be nothing but bad news (worrisome, distressing, depressing, demoralizing...add your own adjectives), it is natural to feel anger, frustration, confusion, and many more emotions that are indescribable because language often fails our feelings. This much I know: I don't feel like forgiving people who have, through their avarice, selfishness, sense of entitlement, lack of compassion, cynicism, ignorance, and mean-spiritedness, hurt others in ways that are unable to be catalogued and unable to be known unless one walks in that person's shoes and experiences that person's fear, for all things take their nourishment from either fear or love. Think of any situation that is in the current news, and it will be hard to find the humility and openness to forgive these kinds of sins. Anger and fantasized revenge seem more appropriate, or we can choose to believe that God invented Karma so she wouldn't have to keep track of every little thing.
Sometimes, anger is a good self-protector, and unforgiveness is a necessary state of being (for a while). It is hard to live in a nearly constant state of fear, anger, irritability, and restlessness, however. It is at the times when we have reached a saturation point that we cast about for ways to restore peace or homeostasis inside ourselves. We seek a way of viewing the world, of reacting to the world and all that's in it (externally and internally), that will give us comfort and ease our minds. That is when instruments of change, such as the remembrance of an old French proverb, often appear to us. If we are both lucky and intentional, these reminders may compel us to think about (meditate on) their meaning in our lives and how we can use them to get closer to our goal of inner peace.
What if we endeavored to understand all? Unless we are God, we cannot possibly understand all. We don't have the capacity to do that, but what if we endeavored to understand, to look past the apparent behavior, the superficial impression? What if we used the compassion that is available to us to try to understand, or even imagine, what is going on inside another person, the one we judge as the sinner, the criminal, the loser, the hopeless moron? Might our efforts to try to understand, even though we can never completely understand, at least get us to a nonjudgmental point of view? Might it get us to a place of forgiveness? And is forgiveness a way to achieve wholeness, a way to diminish the psychoemotional distance between God and self? Between self and other?
Some of us do believe that we are all one, that there is no difference between us, that what we do as individuals affects the whole of the universe. But the world's sentient creatures do not seem to act as though what one does affects everyone else. From childhood on, we are taught to be separate, to be the "rugged individualist," to stand out and apart from the crowd, to compete with one another for market share, to achieve and be the envy of the unachieving masses, to reach our great and lonely potential. Under the umbrella of "love," competitiveness, self-interest, and contrived apartness often fuel our relationships. What will it be like when there is no distance or distinction at all between our separate, tiny selves?
Michael Chabon's book entitled "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" contains this passage: "But there was always a shortfall, wasn't there? Between the match that the Holy One, blessed be He, envisioned and the reality of the situation under the chuppah. [Note: Chuppah is a Hebrew word for 'canopy,' under which those about to be married stand.] Between the commandment and observance, heaven and earth, husband and wife, Zion and Jew. They called that shortfall "the world." Only when Messiah came would the breach be closed, all separations, distinctions, and distances collapsed. Until then, thanks be unto His Name, sparks, bright sparks, might leap across the gap, as between electric poles. And we must be grateful for their momentary light."
Evelyn Waugh, in his masterpiece of literature entitled "Brideshead Revisited," said: "To know and love one other person is the source of all wisdom."
In a time when circumstances affecting us seem to be nothing but bad news (worrisome, distressing, depressing, demoralizing...add your own adjectives), it is natural to feel anger, frustration, confusion, and many more emotions that are indescribable because language often fails our feelings. This much I know: I don't feel like forgiving people who have, through their avarice, selfishness, sense of entitlement, lack of compassion, cynicism, ignorance, and mean-spiritedness, hurt others in ways that are unable to be catalogued and unable to be known unless one walks in that person's shoes and experiences that person's fear, for all things take their nourishment from either fear or love. Think of any situation that is in the current news, and it will be hard to find the humility and openness to forgive these kinds of sins. Anger and fantasized revenge seem more appropriate, or we can choose to believe that God invented Karma so she wouldn't have to keep track of every little thing.
Sometimes, anger is a good self-protector, and unforgiveness is a necessary state of being (for a while). It is hard to live in a nearly constant state of fear, anger, irritability, and restlessness, however. It is at the times when we have reached a saturation point that we cast about for ways to restore peace or homeostasis inside ourselves. We seek a way of viewing the world, of reacting to the world and all that's in it (externally and internally), that will give us comfort and ease our minds. That is when instruments of change, such as the remembrance of an old French proverb, often appear to us. If we are both lucky and intentional, these reminders may compel us to think about (meditate on) their meaning in our lives and how we can use them to get closer to our goal of inner peace.
What if we endeavored to understand all? Unless we are God, we cannot possibly understand all. We don't have the capacity to do that, but what if we endeavored to understand, to look past the apparent behavior, the superficial impression? What if we used the compassion that is available to us to try to understand, or even imagine, what is going on inside another person, the one we judge as the sinner, the criminal, the loser, the hopeless moron? Might our efforts to try to understand, even though we can never completely understand, at least get us to a nonjudgmental point of view? Might it get us to a place of forgiveness? And is forgiveness a way to achieve wholeness, a way to diminish the psychoemotional distance between God and self? Between self and other?
Some of us do believe that we are all one, that there is no difference between us, that what we do as individuals affects the whole of the universe. But the world's sentient creatures do not seem to act as though what one does affects everyone else. From childhood on, we are taught to be separate, to be the "rugged individualist," to stand out and apart from the crowd, to compete with one another for market share, to achieve and be the envy of the unachieving masses, to reach our great and lonely potential. Under the umbrella of "love," competitiveness, self-interest, and contrived apartness often fuel our relationships. What will it be like when there is no distance or distinction at all between our separate, tiny selves?
Michael Chabon's book entitled "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" contains this passage: "But there was always a shortfall, wasn't there? Between the match that the Holy One, blessed be He, envisioned and the reality of the situation under the chuppah. [Note: Chuppah is a Hebrew word for 'canopy,' under which those about to be married stand.] Between the commandment and observance, heaven and earth, husband and wife, Zion and Jew. They called that shortfall "the world." Only when Messiah came would the breach be closed, all separations, distinctions, and distances collapsed. Until then, thanks be unto His Name, sparks, bright sparks, might leap across the gap, as between electric poles. And we must be grateful for their momentary light."
Evelyn Waugh, in his masterpiece of literature entitled "Brideshead Revisited," said: "To know and love one other person is the source of all wisdom."
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Future of Language Skills
A recent periodical published an editorial that is distressing (to me). The author predicted that the use of commas and apostrophes would fade away during the next 50 (or less) years. With ever-increasing use of the Internet, e-mail, and text messaging, the written language has been and will continue to be watered down, abbreviated, and bastardized to quite informal standards (read: no standards), the likes of which we have not seen since, as a species, we were preliterate. Even now, the gap between the structured formality of the written word and the laxness of the spoken word in civilized society has widened considerably. We see ample evidence of this everywhere, and the illiteracy rate in this technologically advanced country is also shockingly high. While we could long debate the many reasons why these social and educational conditions exist and are evolving into what appears to be further linguistic entropy, it is alarming to reflect on how such informality, for example, might affect dictators and transcriptionists of medical information and other vital information. Perhaps, as in the past, changes in language usage will come about so slowly that no one but purists and ideologues will notice, but if we extrapolate trends from the rapid advancement of global electronic communication ability to the development of global language, we may see an effervescent destructuring of grammatical rules and "good" English. Proper language usage will continue to exist only because it is practiced by those who genuinely have an affinity for effectiveness, clarity, and correctness. It does take a certain amount of enlightened intellect to adhere to correctness in the face of the persistent cultural dumbing-down of language skills; otherwise, swift deterioration is usually the result. As is said in many contexts, "Use it or lose it" applies also to the rules of language.
How many of us can remember the rules? Let's start with the parts of speech. How many are there? Do you remember learning this in 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade? There are eight parts of speech: Noun, pronoun, verb/verbal, adverb, adjective, interjection, preposition, and conjunction. Conjunctions are further subdivided into three types: Coordinating, subordinating, and correlative.
A coordinating conjunction is used in a compound sentence. A compound sentence is composed of two independent clauses (sentences that can stand on their own) hooked together by a coordinating conjunction and requiring a comma before the coordinating conjunction. Coordinating conjunctions are easily remembered using the mnemonic (a word trick to help memory) FANBOYS, where F is for, A is and, N is nor, B is but, O is or, Y is yet, and S is so.
Here is an example of a compound sentence with proper punctuation (a comma) in front of the coordinating conjunction: "The red fox came to the edge of the road, and he stopped to look for oncoming traffic."
I'd like to continue with an explanation of subordinating conjunctions, but first I'd like to say a word about phrases and clauses in general. Some word combinations in sentences are called phrases. Phrases do not contain both subjects and predicates. Phrases are subdivided into noun phrases (e.g., "The tall, dark-haired, mysterious man") and verb or adverbial phrases (e.g., "should have gone to work") or prepositional phrases (e.g., "in the morning."). Prepositional phrases usually function as adverbs or adjectives. Unlike phrases, clauses contain both subjects and predicates. Some clauses are, in fact, complete sentences.
Don't let subjects and predictates scare you. A subject is nothing more than a noun (person, place, or thing), and a predicate is nothing more than what happens to the person, place, or thing. In some sentences, the subject and predicate can each be as short as one word (e.g., "Jane cried."). "Jane" is the subject, and "cried" is the predicate. Why did Jane cry? Perhaps it is because she is mourning the decay of correctly structured language in our culture. The following sentence is more typical in length: "The hungry children ate everything except the kitchen sink." Here the word "children" is the subject ("hungry" is the adjective that helps describe the children), and "ate" is the verb. "Ate everything except the kitchen sink" is the entire predicate. It tells what the subject did.
Sometimes verbs do not describe action but instead describe conditions. These are called linking verbs because they link subjects to words that describe them or rename them. Sentences with linking verbs can also, however, be divided into subject and predicate. An example of a sentence with a linking verb is as follows: "The captain of our football team was my brother." "The captain of our football team" is the subject, "was" is the linking verb, and "was my brother" is the predicate. Here the linking verb does not describe an action but, rather, describes a condition. Some sentences can be very complicated, but these are examples of basic patterns that will help in understanding more complex sentences if you plan to spend weekends diagramming sentences.
An independent clause is a complete sentence containing a subject and predicate. More than one independent clause can be joined together by a coordinating conjunction to form a compound sentence (as previously mentioned). A dependent clause, however, contains a subject and verb but cannot stand alone as a sentence. Dependent clauses begin with subordinating conjunctions such as after, although, as, because, before, even though, if, since, unless, when, and while. Subordinating conjunctions connect clauses of unequal importance, and the subordinating conjunction appears at the beginning or in the middle of a sentence. Since a dependent clause waits for its fulfillment from another part of the whole sentence, it cannot stand alone. For example, if I said to you, "If you study this grammar lesson with curiosity," and just stopped there, you would naturally wonder, "Yeah, so? Then what?" You are waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. "If you study this grammar lesson with curiosity, you will become rich and famous." It could happen.
Another kind of dependent clause begins with a relative pronoun such as who, which, or that. These are known as relative clauses, and they can also occur in the middle of a sentence. For example, "I know a man who has six toes" demonstrates a relative clause ("who has six toes").
Any sentence that contains one single independent clause is a simple sentence and requires no punctuation other than the period (full stop) at the end. If a sentence contains multiple subjects and one verb, it is still a simple sentence (e.g., "The white count and amylase were normal on admission but were rapidly deteriorating." This is a simple sentence with two subjects and two verbs, not requiring punctuation except for the period at the end.
In my work as a trainer of medical transcriptionists, most of the errors I see in grammar and punctuation usage cluster around just a few (but important) concepts:
1. Recognizing and correctly punctuating a compound sentence;
2. Recognizing and correctly punctuating an opening prepositional or adverbial phrase;
3. Recognizing the "dual" use of a conjunctive adverb and how to punctuate it according to its job in the sentence;
4. Recognizing and resolving comma splices and run-on sentences.
We will take up the thread tomorrow.
How many of us can remember the rules? Let's start with the parts of speech. How many are there? Do you remember learning this in 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade? There are eight parts of speech: Noun, pronoun, verb/verbal, adverb, adjective, interjection, preposition, and conjunction. Conjunctions are further subdivided into three types: Coordinating, subordinating, and correlative.
A coordinating conjunction is used in a compound sentence. A compound sentence is composed of two independent clauses (sentences that can stand on their own) hooked together by a coordinating conjunction and requiring a comma before the coordinating conjunction. Coordinating conjunctions are easily remembered using the mnemonic (a word trick to help memory) FANBOYS, where F is for, A is and, N is nor, B is but, O is or, Y is yet, and S is so.
Here is an example of a compound sentence with proper punctuation (a comma) in front of the coordinating conjunction: "The red fox came to the edge of the road, and he stopped to look for oncoming traffic."
I'd like to continue with an explanation of subordinating conjunctions, but first I'd like to say a word about phrases and clauses in general. Some word combinations in sentences are called phrases. Phrases do not contain both subjects and predicates. Phrases are subdivided into noun phrases (e.g., "The tall, dark-haired, mysterious man") and verb or adverbial phrases (e.g., "should have gone to work") or prepositional phrases (e.g., "in the morning."). Prepositional phrases usually function as adverbs or adjectives. Unlike phrases, clauses contain both subjects and predicates. Some clauses are, in fact, complete sentences.
Don't let subjects and predictates scare you. A subject is nothing more than a noun (person, place, or thing), and a predicate is nothing more than what happens to the person, place, or thing. In some sentences, the subject and predicate can each be as short as one word (e.g., "Jane cried."). "Jane" is the subject, and "cried" is the predicate. Why did Jane cry? Perhaps it is because she is mourning the decay of correctly structured language in our culture. The following sentence is more typical in length: "The hungry children ate everything except the kitchen sink." Here the word "children" is the subject ("hungry" is the adjective that helps describe the children), and "ate" is the verb. "Ate everything except the kitchen sink" is the entire predicate. It tells what the subject did.
Sometimes verbs do not describe action but instead describe conditions. These are called linking verbs because they link subjects to words that describe them or rename them. Sentences with linking verbs can also, however, be divided into subject and predicate. An example of a sentence with a linking verb is as follows: "The captain of our football team was my brother." "The captain of our football team" is the subject, "was" is the linking verb, and "was my brother" is the predicate. Here the linking verb does not describe an action but, rather, describes a condition. Some sentences can be very complicated, but these are examples of basic patterns that will help in understanding more complex sentences if you plan to spend weekends diagramming sentences.
An independent clause is a complete sentence containing a subject and predicate. More than one independent clause can be joined together by a coordinating conjunction to form a compound sentence (as previously mentioned). A dependent clause, however, contains a subject and verb but cannot stand alone as a sentence. Dependent clauses begin with subordinating conjunctions such as after, although, as, because, before, even though, if, since, unless, when, and while. Subordinating conjunctions connect clauses of unequal importance, and the subordinating conjunction appears at the beginning or in the middle of a sentence. Since a dependent clause waits for its fulfillment from another part of the whole sentence, it cannot stand alone. For example, if I said to you, "If you study this grammar lesson with curiosity," and just stopped there, you would naturally wonder, "Yeah, so? Then what?" You are waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. "If you study this grammar lesson with curiosity, you will become rich and famous." It could happen.
Another kind of dependent clause begins with a relative pronoun such as who, which, or that. These are known as relative clauses, and they can also occur in the middle of a sentence. For example, "I know a man who has six toes" demonstrates a relative clause ("who has six toes").
Any sentence that contains one single independent clause is a simple sentence and requires no punctuation other than the period (full stop) at the end. If a sentence contains multiple subjects and one verb, it is still a simple sentence (e.g., "The white count and amylase were normal on admission but were rapidly deteriorating." This is a simple sentence with two subjects and two verbs, not requiring punctuation except for the period at the end.
In my work as a trainer of medical transcriptionists, most of the errors I see in grammar and punctuation usage cluster around just a few (but important) concepts:
1. Recognizing and correctly punctuating a compound sentence;
2. Recognizing and correctly punctuating an opening prepositional or adverbial phrase;
3. Recognizing the "dual" use of a conjunctive adverb and how to punctuate it according to its job in the sentence;
4. Recognizing and resolving comma splices and run-on sentences.
We will take up the thread tomorrow.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)