Though the duration of our calendar system’s years are astronomically determined, the choice of day is very arbitrary. We could have chosen any other day — in fact there exist many other calendar systems with differing new years days (see New Year on Wikipedia).

If we wanted an astronomically significant day, we could have gone with summer or winter solstice (longest or shortest day of the year, but which hemisphere?), or for that matter the March or September equinox (when day and night are equally long, with the sun right above the equator). In fact, some calendars, such as the Iranian calendar, does just that: new year’s day on the vernal equinox (Spring equinox, i.e. March, northern hemisphere).

The point being: we’re talking pure human culture here, nothing more.

And yet the day carries much significance in our culture, there is no denying that — it forms a part of many people’s yearly rituals, a rhythm to life. We open champagne bottles with friends or family, we fire fireworks, we consider the year behind and the year ahead, we make new years’ resolutions, we have countdowns…

What did you do on the evening of the 31st?

1. (uncountable) Extreme exaggeration or overstatement; especially as a literary or rhetorical device.
2. (uncountable) Deliberate exaggeration.
3. (countable) An instance or example of this technique.
4. (countable, obsolete) A hyperbola.

Usage notes

• When used as a literary device, hyperbole is an exaggeration that, while not intended to be taken literally, still describes a situation or image that is at least feasible or possible. Exaggeration that is considered impossible is called adynaton.

  Examples: “I have been waiting for hours for the end of your ‘short’ coffee break.” is a hyperbole while “I have been waiting for ages for the end of your ‘short’ coffee break.” is an adynaton.

• This distinction is not always observed, even in textbooks.

See wiktionary for more, or consider wikipedia as well, which says, amongst other things:

It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally. [...] Hyperbole is used to create emphasis. It is a literary device often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech.

I use hyperbole when I write, and often it gives me headaches. “Will this post be read by and responded to by some pedantic literalist that can’t stand any figures of speech? Maybe. Should I include a disclaimer pointing out it is an intentional exaggeration?”

No, I don’t want to. It’s a pain and disclaimers ruin posts. My goal is to use hyperbole correctly, sparingly, usefully. If I too liberally sprinkle hyperbole, call me on it, and I’ll reduce it. I should be using it only when it is reasonable to expect native English speakers to understand it correctly.

And the goal with this particular post is to have something to point people at (thus a disclaimer that applies to all future posts), and possibly a place to discuss hyperbole in general, when it’s useful, when it isn’t, etc.

What rituals will you be taking part in (privately or in community) to mark the transition period from 2009 to 2010?

I didn’t have much of interest with which to respond, I don’t feel I’ve got much in the line of rituals. Though, I did have some champagne with friends, and I briefly wondered if there are any new year’s resolutions I’d want to make. I found my resolutions aren’t particularly new though, they’ve been with me for quite a while, at best I can attempt to recommit to them.

With regards to life I do have some plans for the year, what I’d like to do in my private life and some vague ideas as to what to pursue in my work life, not particularly new-years-resolution-like either. But it’s there.

One “resolution” I thought I’d mention is: less time and energy talking about what I want to do and intend to do, and more time and energy actually doing it. Thus from now on I’ll spare you blog posts making promises about the future, e.g. I won’t reiterate my intentions to publish at least one post per week… uh… oops, I just did, didn’t I — but I won’t say anything more than that.

I will take this opportunity to point out that this blog is no longer my navel-gazing blog. If you’re interested in my life, in me personally, because you’re a friend and suffer from some weird kind of voyeurism with regards to navel gazers, you might be happy to learn I’m still being a navel-gazing-exhibitionist, but I’m doing it elsewhere. If you ask I’ll point you at it.

Enough of that. I’m curious if any readers had some interesting rituals with which they mark the start of another trip around the sun? (The “start”? An arbitrarily chosen culture-dependent “start” of course!)

Happy New Year!

By decree, we decided on Bones, Rocks and Stars by Chris Turney. I propose we start with this book on 13 July. Hopefully I’m not busy referring to myself in the plural.

It is a thin little book, 180 pages, but I’ll still carve it up into little bits: about 30 pages per blog post, which is two chapters, spread over six blog posts. What time frame this will be, I’m not sure. (Spread over six weeks?) It is my intention to write an intro blog post giving a brief overview of the contents of each section, then we can have discussions in the comments.

If I choose to write “independent” posts about the things we learned, I will do so after we’ve had our discussion. The purpose of such posts would be to have something to point other people to: future visitors of the blog that have not read the book. Such posts should provide a brief overview of the important bits to get people up to speed, but for more in-depth details, they would probably refer to either the book, or to our discussion, or to other useful material we identify. Rewriting the book would be silly. This “distillation into an overview” will certainly be a struggle, maybe our discussion can help hack out the important details.

13 July is a Monday. I’m open to shifting it to another day: would you prefer the end of the week? Publish on Friday mornings? We don’t need to rush the discussion… Whatever we decide in the comment thread below, the next post will be with the expectation that participants have read the introduction and the first two chapters: “The ever-changing calendar” and “A hero in a dark age”.

I’m taking two weeks’ vacation before then. The book will go with me, for the plane, the airport, or other idle moments. Thus, the “deadline” we choose really shouldn’t be making any whooshing sounds on my side…

[TED Talk - Jonathan Haidt]

Ben-Jammin also shared two links that are related to this video. For those that prefer text (hello bandwidth starved South Africa, amongst others):

Edge: MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF RELIGION: A Talk with Jonathan Haidt

and then a more scholarly paper, in pdf format (which was written in MS Word, how immoral! ):

When morality opposes justice:
Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize

I have not read the first link, other than scanning over it to let my eye catch a snippet where Haidt even dares to take on The Philosopher Himself , and I haven’t read the scholarly paper either — the TED talk was sufficient for encouraging the writing this post, and could be sufficient for sparking some discussion on whether the threat of hell is of use to humanity. Other discussions related to the material are also more than welcome.

Greeting today, a Spanish guy said “I’ll hopefully see you Monday!” I was curious, and dug into the “hopefully”. What was meant by that? Any uncertain plans? Nope, turns out, it’s more a reference to us not knowing the future. Which means it sounds really pessimistic, from an English-speaking perspective. A “something might just get in the way that would make us unable to both come to work” idea… pessimistic, eh? In English, we pretty much just state it as happening, with the rest implied: “See you Monday!”, and if I don’t, it’s not a broken promise, it’s just a “something went wrong…”

Apparently there is a pretty standard phrase in Spanish that you can add onto a greeting, resulting in something similar to: “See you Monday! If God permits it…” Some discussion later, we concluded an English equivalent might be “God-willing, I’ll see you Monday!” Which sounds really old, suggested another eaves-dropper. English really seems to have lost this element?

Can anyone come up with another way to phrase this uncertainty-about-the-future, with reference to anything from fate to providence to clean lack-of-knowledge? What would be the most common way we’d greet like this in English?

What has me more curious, is how a country’s language influences the scope of its culture’s understanding of the “God” concept. I’d think certain languages and cultures would be more open to the poetic understanding than others. On the other hand, while English seems to have lost it in greetings, it is still present does have phrases like “for God’s sake”, or “O God help us”, a phrase even Dawkins uses (according to a link I’ve shared before). Hmmm…

Still pending, I’ve been meaning to write a post or two on Shalom, As-Salamu Alaykum and Aloha ever since I saw Bustin’ Down the Door. It seems a weird mix, I know, because it contains only three examples. I should maybe add the Swiss Greutzi, I hear. Can anyone find more examples of standard cultural greetings with a connection to the culture’s religion?

There are so many things wrong with this theory, but if I point them all out now, I’ll be going against my stated purpose of trotting out my theory. So bear with me… keep in mind I’m talking rubbish, and do point out all the problems of my theory in the comments. (Like one person I met this weekend, that argued German, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish… are all the same language. *grin*)

In this little world in my head, the effort of translating from one language to another brings people to a greater understanding of how cultural context guides communication. This is especially the case with mind-shifting differences, like word order on the lower impact side of things, or on the higher impact side of things: different words that are related in one language but not in another, guiding realisation that associations can differ tremendously, but that the other associations also do make so much sense. And then there’s the idiomatic expressions… those things that remain ever-elusive to a “non-native speaker”. (Anyone to whom they don’t remain elusive, I’m therefore calling native. )

South Africa has many languages, and dramatically different ones at that (European and African), but typically not enough communication happens, or happened, between the cultures. At least from a conservative Afrikaans speaking culture perspective. Many Afrikaans people also speak English, but to some degree, it is too easy. They know it too well, it’s a second language, not a foreign language. And it is still much the same culture.

America has the problem that they had the rail road before they settled the content, so it became a single invasion of a single language, and now everyone speaks English. (And I’m discounting the native Americans, on the grounds that the invaders so thoroughly wiped out local culture. I’m talking about the current status quo, rather than the sad history.)

Then there’s Germany. (Hmm, and how about Italy?) What’s wrong with Germany? Well, a few years ago on a ski trip, we decided that the problem is dubbing. We decided that the root of all evil in Europe comes from using the same voice actors to dub all movies and TV programs into the same language. I mean, everyone knows that foreign language films with subtitles are a great source of World Peace, don’t they? Don’t they? How might we cure this dubbing blight?

In any case, moving on… I’m in the position where I struggle to communicate with the local culture. Or with foreign non-English speaking culture as well. It has brought a number of interesting realisations, but more on that on some other day. When it comes to bilingual cultures, having more than one language is the first step. I suggest the second step should be to force people to translate pieces of high-level writing from their “second” language into their “first” — giving them the advantage of greater prowess with the sentences and paragraphs they’re creating, so that that isn’t the hurdle.

Enough nonsense from me for now. This is a light-hearted post, so fire away. The next one to be published will most likely be the translation of a friend’s Afrikaans post (spot one of the sources of inspiration for this post ), much more serious. Be like fire with light-hearted posts, be like water with the serious.

Depending on how you define anarchy and government, anarchy doesn’t exist. Other primates don’t have a formal “government”, but there is still a distinct form of leadership, a distinct social order through which things function. It emerges out of the social relationships within the troop, which is small enough for everyone to understand how things work. That is what I refer to, when I refer to “anarchy” in the positive sense of the word. Am I an anarchist?

As an idealist, I’d wish we could all build strong enough social bonds, and operate within the contexts of good relationships. Out of the values that come out of relationship, we would not need laws or contracts. There is much to be said about striving towards this, but it needs to start on the relationship front: I feel you cannot promote anarchy, you can only promote good relationships. With a solid enough base in good relationships, an anarchic way of being would flow naturally.

But being more pragmatic, we need laws and guidelines to keep people from being selfishly unfair to one another. Our interactions are too broad, businesses deal globally, and the internet enables social interactions between polar opposites that have no relational base on which to build. Thus we need laws and guidelines to keep the markets fair and friendly. Am I a free-market capitalist and libertarian?

And now the bit in which I become excessively verbose and ruin the original intent of the post:

Could that be we be realistic though? (Pessimist?) Many humans are driven by greed. Free markets and capitalism turn into a new religion, within which you find the usual diversity of believers. There are compassionate elite that have humanitarianism as guiding principles. But you have enough people that are selfishly greedy, driving capitalism in a direction of purely selfish survival-of-the-fittest-bottom-line. The blind hand of an economics/business-based selfish replicator then guides the future, in a direction not necessarily beneficial to humanity, only beneficial to the-bottom-line. And I fear this blind hand, this blind authority.

It brings about the “natural order” of things, in which there are always the haves, and the have-nots. And the American dream, in which anyone can make it if they try, still looks like something of a myth to me. Especially outside of America. And also inside America. Hello the current economic climate. I’m sure completely free capitalism is unsustainable. One piece of evidence confirming this is the existence of antitrust laws / competition laws. But I go further.

The capitalistic system is great at generating wealth, but terrible at distributing it well. In South Africa, the new status quo has promoted a couple of formerly-poor to newly-rich. There were a couple of opportunities for a couple of new members of the wealthy elite (where in 2000 the top 10% is blessed with 44.7% of the income/consumption while the bottom 10% must make do with only 1.4% – CIA World Factbook) – but past inequalities are really tough to overcome.

I believe in the value of life. Digress for a moment: that is kinda a leap of faith, and I’m quite serious about it: I’ll attempt evangelise and convert anyone to the faith. But like all faiths, it also has great diversity within it, in terms of what kind of life is valued and what life is not, and this diversity is unavoidable. Diversity is unavoidable, because it is the very essence of life. Back to the point: within this value-of-life belief, I believe in the value of human life.

So… idealistically (remember I remain a pragmatist), I’d love for everyone to have something of an equal opportunity. I would love it if we could eliminate the cycle that lets one person’s mistakes end up cursing his generations after it. Access to a good education, access to good healthcare, things we can do to work together to help ease the pain of existence: disease and illness, reality, life, is a cruel mistress that acts without much discernment. You could just have really bad “luck” in life, due to the complex interactions of everything around you. So I believe in doing what we can to help.

In short, I’m concerned that capitalism concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital – and does so in unfair manners. So that makes me a bit of a socialist?

Back to the original intent of the post

All that said, I still think the most fundamental grass-roots drive should be to promote good relationships. While socio-economic concerns and government is something we can vote on (yay the power of “vote”), in the end, government remains a handful of people contributing top-down, while millions can contribute from the bottom-up by us focusing on relationships.

It seems to me that the most grief in such exchanges is created by newcomers and passers-by that drop in out of the blue and blurt out a comment, or an entire manifesto for that matter. In particular, I’m referring to comments like those by “Turn or Burn” and “Food for analysis” in a recent post. The regulars on this blog are typically much more thoughtful in their responses, and naturally have a much better idea of what this blog is all about. They respect its “raison d’être”.

The newcomers, on the other hand, don’t keep in line, and understandably so: they typically drop in via a Google search, see a couple of thoughts that resonates with some of their thoughts. Spotting an opportunity to have their own rants heard, anonymously, they jump on the soapbox and provide us with a monologue. Then they’re off on their merry way again.

In the meantime, the rest of our “little community” here have to deal with being stereotyped together with these passers-by. Rather more importantly, curious silent-types exploring the outskirts of our little gathering, eavesdropping for a while to hear what it is about, often not used to how Internet gatherings work, sees this guy shouting inanities from a soapbox. Not being around for long, they can’t be expected to distinguish between regulars that are thoughtful and curious and really compassionately care, and those weird ones uttering inanities.

Inanity: The property of being inane, of lacking material of interest or satisfaction, emptiness

An example of a perceived inanity to a passer-by? “Turn or Burn” ended with this gem:

SHOFAR!!!
sHO Good
We exorcise
more demon
4 ur $$$

The problem is that the regulars, the thoughtful types, turn their heads to look at these soapboxers, grin and smile at them and enjoy the brief entertainment, then return to their thoughtful discussions. Why care more than that? The soapboxers will leave soon anyway. Or they might eventually integrate and take part in thoughtful discussion themselves. “Whatever”. “Meh”. So no-one bothers to explain to them that they’re not being helpful, that that’s not what we do around here.

Due to soapboxer, curious silent-type turns around and walks away again, while curious silent-type is actually exactly the kind of person we would like to openly welcome into the discussion. Thankfully every now and then there’s a non-silent-type on the outskirts that gets riled up due to soapboxer, and hurls back some criticism.

What are we regulars to do? Criticise non-silent-type for not bothering to first understand what we are about? Whip out a cluebat and attempt to quickly beat an understanding of internet culture into non-silent-type? So that we can continue being our own introverted little group of intellectuals making no real difference in the world?

Or do we thoughtfully approach the situation and realise that it points out we’re just being another congregation closed to curious outsiders?

Stellenbosch Gemeente uses Van Gogh’s church-with-no-doors as an illustration for what churches often are: groups of people focused on their own inward plight, but making no difference out there in the world. (And I’m sure many others use the same painting to share the same idea: there is much cross-pollination happening due to global cooperation, seminars, get-togethers, etc.)

My dream is that the community represented by this little blog could also be one with open doors, where people don’t get excluded due to us not noticing we’ve got no doors, or that those doors we do have are barred by a couple of soapboxers looking for limelight.

And that might mean we need to address those blocking the doors, even if we don’t mind them personally…

As much as I prefer finding social solutions to social problems, social inertia is often huge. On the internet, if we’re that open to random passers-by, looking for “social solutions” would mean dealing with internet-wide social inertia. An absolutely impossible task.

If there’s a technical solution to the problem, let’s try to find it?

Examples of comments that are really useless:

Rants about Shofar and money/finances. This really is a bore. Most people that touch on this topic sound like a broken record player, and are contributing nothing new, nothing of value, they’re just playing an absolutely boringly stereotypical role.

The other would be comments that speculatively attack people. Or ideally even any comments that attack people. In “Food for analysis”‘ case, he speculated about Fred May’s sex life, and pulled in ideas and concepts that he surely intended to offend. I’m all for calling it slander, especially if it isn’t about something specific and factual, backed by evidence. As fun as it may be to the soapboxer and to whomever to speculate, slander is counter to what this blog is about. In the examples mentioned, “Food for analysis” speculated about Fred May’s sex life (in particular, speculations about date of marriage and date of birth of his first-born).

As much fun as can be had speculating whether Buddha might have been gay (referring to a conversation between a Buddhist friend and I), there is an entire world of difference between such private and humoured speculation, and the kind of comment “Food for analysis” wrote. And I really do wish we could somehow avoid having any kind of personal attack on this blog. I really think it shouldn’t be necessary, there is more than enough other interesting things to discuss.

Why is that? Might that not be an indication that there’s something wrong with the way we do business or build relationships? Could it be because our approach to business is too cut-throat and ugly? Should we not aim to improve our business practises or ethics to the point that this is no longer a problem? Or alternatively, might the problem be that our relationships with friends or family aren’t honest or direct enough, or too fragile, a house of cards that collapses under too much pressure?

People of the Jewish culture supposedly don’t have this problem. (Stereotypes… hmmm.) What do they do differently?

My suggestion is thus: if what I say does not make sense, ask me “wtf did you mean with the abuse of that word?” rather than asserting “you are wrong, because that word means blah-blah”. Quite possibly, I know what you think it means, and I don’t care. Or possibly I don’t know what other people mean by it — feel free to inform me, I would like to know, even if I don’t care. Either way, I’m not going to let my lack of knowledge of your “supposedly correct” definition of a word stop me from using what I feel is the best word to communicate a certain idea. I aim to get you thinking. You might have noticed that this is not the place for people that don’t like thinking. Um… duh?

Let me give you some more background on what’s going through my mind then, some background on where I’m coming from…

At a young age, some guy tested me and slapped on a label: I was diagnosed with something like “kognitiewe denke”. Say wha’? Cognitive thinking? What’s that supposed to be? Maybe the psych dudes can help out: did my mother remember the label correctly? Is this old psych-speak that we no longer use, or is this still meaningful? Whatevah. Let’s get to what they meant by it. (“They”…)

Supposedly I’m cursed or gifted with an ability to recognise patterns, similarities, parallels, that other people supposedly do not see. Or do not necessarily see until the parallels are illustrated more clearly. Here is what I need to learn from this: I should not expect other people to see things the way I do. I am sharing my view of the world with you. I am playing with parallels and similarities that are apparently not “common knowledge”. (Read “wrong” if you like. I don’t particularly care. If it provokes just one or two thoughts, if it “raises consciousness”, to borrow from Professor Dawkins, mission accomplished.)

So now comes language. Language is a communication tool. Language is a tool by which we share concepts. A tool by which we have memetic sex. (Yes, this blog is an orgy.) Words in language might typically be attached, in some modernistic sense, to some particular meaning. You might feel fundamentalistic about this meaning. Take this Ayn Rand fan for example:

Elke woord het ‘n bepaalde betekenis. Vanuit ‘n neurologiese perspektief kan dieselfde neuron/neuronbaan nie verskillende betekenisse aan dieselfde woord hanteer nie of twee verskillende woorde met dieselfde betekenis nie, Die brein is ‘n fisiese struktuur en gehoorsaam die wette van die fisika waarvan die eerste die behoud van energie/materie en aldus van identiteit. ‘n Ding kan nie twee verskillende goed wees op dieselfde tyd nie.

To translate (my translation):

Every word has a specific meaning. From a neurological perspective, a particular neuron or neural pathway cannot handle different meanings attached to the same word, or different words with the same meaning. The brain is a physical structure and obeys the laws of physics, of which the first is the conservation of energy/matter and thus identity. Something cannot be two different things at the same time.

This sounds a little like woo-woo horse baloney to me. It sounds like the woo-woo artists’ abuse of “quantum physics”. But I don’t know much about neuro-psychology. Is this “horse baloney” factually correct? Or is this Ayn Rand stuff? OK, in an attempt at more fairness, it seems he is arguing that knowing multiple languages is a waste of energy? Or a waste of our limited neurons or neural-pathways? To give the man some credit (he asked for it), this was Johann Enslin. Enough of an Ayn Rand fan that he translated some of Ayn Rand’s stuff into Afrikaans.

I wish he could have attended the Chris Chameleon “concert” my family and I attended on Saturday. That guy is a master at playing with language. Mix your Dutch and your Afrikaans, and you can prove that one is zero. Anyway… There are some specific mental-health benefits to being multi-lingual, I cannot remember the exact details. Just, don’t deny me my multi-linguality. You can tell me I’m wasting energy, but aren’t we all, with our very existence? I’m enjoying mine…

But I digress. You might feel fundamentalistic about the meaning you attach to your words. I clearly don’t. (And I can explain my choice with reason/philosophy.) So this is what I apparently do: I remix language, I abuse words, in ways you are possibly not used to. I challenge you to look at the concepts I’m trying to communicate. The context in which I use words is supposed to help you understand what I mean with those words.

If you want to prove me wrong, you will first need to strive to understand the concepts I’m trying to deal. You need to look past the words. To achieve this, it may help to first assume I’m correct, if only you could understand my concepts, rather than first assuming I’m incorrect, which is effectively argument by incredulity. This exercise might even help you in your relationships.

Read this blog! Chicks dig guys that read this blog. Oh, and guys dig chicks that read this blog, unless the guy sucks and is not worth your time.. Ditto for the chicks.

In a strange land, away from home and friends, often the first thing they do is to find a church catering for South Africans, in particular usually one catering for their brand of Christianity. (There are quite a couple of “South African” churches in London, I hear.) That immediately supplies them with a support group, a group of like-minded individuals, sharing a cultural background. The community benefit of religion. This community helps you settle, helps you find a place, explains the in’s and out’s of London culture, transport, and job seeking. The backbone of South African culture. In a way, it is beautiful.

A cosmopolitan city with diverse cultures is quite a scary eye-opener to someone not used to international culture. Many South Africans live very sheltered lives. (The Afrikaans word is “eng”.)

Many of these South Africans look at London culture and conclude it is “godless”. Now by this “godless” appraisal, they do not mean people walk around wearing “atheist” labels, they mean they see what they think is immoral behaviour, or un-nice behaviour. They see what they experience as “rudeness” on the tubes. People don’t look out for one another, they say, each just rudely grabs a space on the tube. Guys don’t give girls seats, and don’t open doors for them. They say is a general lack of smiling, a lack of “friendly faces”, and attitudes they are not used to. (I doubt it’s the famous British stiff upper lip, Brits are scarce in London.) They warn one another that when someone invites you over for tea, you should be careful about accepting, as they often have sex in mind for later that evening. (This is really extreme for conservative religious people that intend to wait until marriage before having sex.) This is what they mean when they say “godless”. It really has nothing to do with metaphysics.

Now this is where things can turn ugly: especially from the more fundamentalistic evangelical/pentecostal groups, the sentiment is “London can make you lose your faith… when in London, you have two options: get closer to God, or risk losing God”. They look at the cultural difference, they see what they call immorality due to their own South African sense of morality, and they ask themselves: “So what is the difference between them and us? Why are they so immoral?” Now the atheist label comes into play. Focusing on differences, they conclude: “It must be because they do not believe in God. Just look at how important belief in God is, without God you have moral decadence, moral decay!” In the choice between getting closer to God, or risking losing God, they choose God. Every. Single. Time. (Sorry, hyperbole.) The other option is no option at all, because they find their security in their community-of-faith.

This is how Christian fundamentalism gets reinforced in the cultural clash that is London. I am quite certain that the exact same mechanism is at play amongst the Muslim communities. In fact, from a recent talk presented by some theologians, I learned that the Islamic faith is especially strong when it comes to community-building aspects. These are real survival-benefits, the kind of thing that natural selection selects for.

If any conservatively religious London-based South Africans are reading this, please contribute some of your observations in the comments. Feel free to use a pseudonym. I want to hear your honest initial impressions and any other kind of feedback. I would love for the international people to understand more of the experiences and impressions that the “immigrants” experience. I know commenting on blogs is quite a “dangerous” environment. While I will do my best to defend you from the wolves, if you lack the necessary thick-skin, you can always contribute in a hit-and-run fashion.

Same goes for you, Z, you Dawkins fanboy. What have you got to say? I know you love the London culture! Do you run into religious types much?

I don’t like the idea of forcing everyone to speak English. What is English anyway? Which dialect of English? Which accent? Sure, with time they could improve their understanding of English, but these things take time. I’m much more interested in communicating accurately, than using a particular “approved” word. Who chooses which words are “approved”, anyway?

So there are a couple of words I have maybe been abusing. Or maybe I have been using them correctly, but they are misunderstood due to abuse elsewhere. For example, I’m not always sure whether I use “modernism” and “post-modernism” correctly. However, I have a good idea what I mean, and I believe most of my audience have a good idea what I mean.

I could spend hours and hours reading philosophy and books from other relevant fields, in order to find the correct, “approved” words. To what ends though? I’m not really convinced this will help me communicate to my target audience, who have not read the same books. I’m convinced that attempting to define every word perfectly, is to attempt to build another Tower of Babel.

The other option, if people are concerned about word-abuse, is that I could coin new words (shock, horror) to describe the concepts I’d like to describe. That way those that follow the blog will have a good idea of what I’m trying to say, while those that drop in out-of-the-blue will see gobbledygook and not understand, which might be better than misunderstanding?

Take Mythos and Logos… in some conversations, I have potentially been abusing these words. A translation of Logos that most closely matches the way I have been using it in recent informal conversations, can apparently be found in Faust:

The notorious question of how to translate logos is topicalised in Goethe’s Faust, with Faust finally opting for “deed, action” (Am Anfang war die Tat).

The alternative suggested by Lousirr during early morning insomniac hours at a time of high stress, would be to coin the words “Meh” and “Lah”, with “Meh” representing the concept I’ve been using “Mythos” for, and “Lah” representing the concept I’ve been using “Logos” for. (Anyone interested in Lousirr’s Meh/Lah rant?)

Ponder, ponder…

Today I heard a story of a family that was torn apart. Kids still in school, the father left the mother for another man. Apparently the one child heard at school that her “daddy now has a boyfriend”.

Now your “conservatives” will moan about the evils of homosexuality and complain that the father was “sinful” in being unable to exercise “self-discipline” to stick to the marriage. As much as I agree with them on how sad it is when families are torn apart, I have a slightly different take on the matter. In fact, the key element here is this:

Homosexuality is not a choice.

There are enough studies on the matter, I have enough friends that can confirm that fact. I can’t believe there is still any argument about this. How about this then: Former leaders of ex-gay ministry in U.S. apologize for “bringing harm”. Some more information on that can be found at BeyondExGay.com. I could even be politically incorrect and point out that sexual orientation apparently ‘affects map reading skills’ (I must skeptically wonder if this study was published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal).

So back to the point: I agree broken families is bad. But what is the cause of this brokenness? In my opinion, the greatest evil is society expecting of individuals to live against their own nature. (And I can quote Paul on this, you must realise.) The thing that split this family apart, in my opinion, was most likely the social pressure that forced a gay person into a straight marriage, forced him to live a lie. Yes, leaving your marriage is an ugly thing to do, especially when you have young children that needs a secure environment to grow up healthy, but I want to know, why was he in that marriage in the first place? All those people pointing the finger and saying “gay! evil!”, I blame those people.

With regards to Christian doctrine, I can lend you books by Christian theologians that disagree strongly with the anti-gay perspective, and argue their case from serious study of scripture. If that blows your hair back. I could argue from values such as compassion, which is what Jesus taught. I could point you at Another Look at Homosexuality and Christianity, on de-conversion.com, a site for people driven to apostasy by the wrongs committed and silliness claimed in the name of Christianity. Or I can sit back, throw my hands in the air and just call you hypocrites. What would be the most effective course of action? (And yes, I’m also a hypocrite. Please point out my hypocrisy to me, as you might be able to see it more easily than I.)

Furthermore, I could point you at a study performed on fruit flies, where they were able to turn homosexuality on and off at will, through use of a drug. (This was a study in Nature Neuroscience. Here is a summary.) This opens a can of worms: if you could choose your orientation through use of drugs or something like “gene therapy” or genetic engineering, would you or should you? Meddling with your own nature, um, “as ordained by God”, some would say? Of course, there is a huge difference between fruit flies and humans (with creationists even claiming they don’t share a common ancestor, grmph), and similar scientific advances on humans might be a very, very far way off, but it is thought provoking and potentially worthwhile to ponder. Has any Sci-Fi investigated this idea yet?

Let’s end off on a more humorous note (or it would be humorous if it wasn’t so sad): 12 Reasons Why Same-Sex Marriage will Ruin Society.

The age restriction was 18V. Now there’s something significant about 18V: there is no L, there is no N… it is all V. We are so desensitised to violence these days, that to score an 18 on just V, it has to be really, really hectic. It has to be “The Passion of The Christ” hectic. The last time I felt this disturbed watching a movie must have been when I watched Event Horizon. And that was on a TV, not on the big screen.

Now here’s the thing: if you can look past all the violence and gore, if you can get past the “labels” hiding the true message, you can find truth. In “The Passion of The Christ”, truth is found in the eyes. Compassion. What can be accomplished by compassion borders on the supernatural.

30 Days of Night? Another story of a person moved by compassion for his community, for those he cares about, and willing to sacrifice everything in order to make a difference. In this case, the messianic figure is the Sheriff. A guy bearing the weight of his town on his shoulders. A guy that refuses to give up, refuses to get caught up in pondering to-and-fro understanding every irrelevant detail of the situation, but rather focuses on what needs to be done. He focuses on what the next step should be.

But enough about the individual, the other key truth found in the movie, is the community. The way you need to build good relationships, digging past all the façades that society forces on us, to see inner strength and support one another. We are a gregarious species, we are not whole on our own, we are whole when we live in community, with deep, significant relationships. Each of the core characters had his or her role to play, each made their own contribution in their own way.

We don’t all have to be the hero, for we are in this together. As a community, together, we can work wonders.

Right, some feedback? Did that sound too much like sentimental mush? I’m blowing off steam. I attended both Stellenbosch Gemeente and Shofar today. Combined, it was an incredibly moving experience. Emotional stuff… so much so that I would prefer to write about it tomorrow or the day after, when I’m more calm and collected.