I don't care much for Orson Scott Card's fictional writings, but lately I've read quite a few articles by him and I've got to say, the man is often one helluvah essayist.
Take this article on Gay Marriage.
Now anyone who has ever been married knows that although the sport is a joyful exercise on occasion, and just downright fun and inspiring sometimes, that it is indeed a noble and good pursuit - it is also a tremendously gritty exercise in human suffering, patience, understanding, resentment, miscalculation, reversal, redemption, love, and can even often be terrifically hard work. One thing it rarely devolves into is gayness, in either the original or modern sense of the term.
Yet the way modern people use words nowadays you would think that the very best way to redefine anything, and then act on those newly invented redefinitions, is not through some historically fixed set of rules for human communications, but by the use of some misprogammed and viral-laden version of Babblefish.
At some point a person comes to understand that most problems on the face of this planet don't really stem from competing interests, but simply from the fact that people have decided that by redefining their interests in anyway they see momentarily fit, and then cloaking those misshapen and mutated malformations in the brightly colored fashions of public interest, and understanding, and tolerance, that they can reshape reality. Into what is another question, but why bother with questions when the sport is the thing.
A word by any other word would still smell as funny and still sound as queer, if not for the fact that in modern usage no one can hear you scream in cyberspace. After all, in the modern world, data is completely interchangeable with Truth, and if you don't believe that, then you've got a queer way of looking at things. Try refreshing your screen till it all becomes clear again.
Now for something completely different, Men coming home to be greeted by their neighbor's children. I've often wondered, since reading the parable of the Good Samaritan, what exactly composes the Good Neighbor. Is it in the head, or in the heart where fancy's bred? Is courage born of sacrifice, or does sacrifice breed courage in the passing man? Does it really matter nowadays?
When children decide that part of maturing is to wish their fellow countryman death and destruction when their fellow countryman is engaged in a pursuit designed to prevent death and destruction then I have to wonder who shepherds the shepherds, and when did the sheep gain control of the madhouse?
The thing about sheep is that they are not very smart, but try and tell the sheep that.
I am reminded of Animal Farm and for one brief moment my mind drifts back to a day when allusions, analogies, and symbols didn't have to be explained. To a time of youth when people, even the young, got the idea that a thing represented more than itself and that ideas had meanings even if some people drifted through life as if they did not.
Now what passes simply passes.
There is a sort of poetic irony to it all.
We've redefined things so many times that no one remembers the last definition long enough to care that we don't.
Save This Page
No comments:
Post a Comment