For "broken home," I would say that meaningless doesn't just mean "has no definition." It can also mean "so singular in meaning that it carries no substantive semantic force." What is a broken home? One might respond with "a home mired in dysfunction." Which is fine if you want to go from "orbital level" to "40,000 feet," but you're stil…
For "broken home," I would say that meaningless doesn't just mean "has no definition." It can also mean "so singular in meaning that it carries no substantive semantic force." What is a broken home? One might respond with "a home mired in dysfunction." Which is fine if you want to go from "orbital level" to "40,000 feet," but you're still not giving "theoretical alien me with no knowledge of human relations" anything I can use to get a handle on it. It's just a euphemism for "a family mode which I believe is harmful to those within it." Is that a kid living with a single parent? A lot of people would say so. What if dad gets drunk and beats mom half to death, or mom poisons kid so she can get attention from medical professionals? Divorce and the not abusive parent taking the kid still make it broken? Every home does damage to those within it. Deciding which ones are "broken" is, at best, four parts "weighing available options" and one part "aesthetic preference," and phrase "broken home" provides no assistance in making that determination. We still have to look. It's a handy euphemism for us to be able to set a certain assumption, but it ultimately obscures more than it illuminates. And making a euphemism the background of your conduct is a disaster.
As for the "ask not" cliche, it's meaningless because it presupposes the existence of a thing that *does not exist*. I have no country. You have no country. We have a government, with a law code, and a set of mores that guide our behavior. These things serve as the guiding principle for the 320-million odd people who live here. When I'm "asking what I can do for my country," which of those am I taking about? Ellsburg and Gravel launched an attack on the government when they released the Pentagon Papers and made sure they couldn't be hidden, but they did it in service of the people. Were they "doing for their country?" The country is a euphemism for "us and everything that binds us." You can't render service to it, because it has no existence separate from its parts. Meaning "ask what you can do for your country" is arguably just an encouragement to view "the thing I want to serve" and "the country" as being one and the same. Which can be really good, or *really, really bad* depending on what that thing winds up being.
Well hey, Sherm. Was beginning to wonder if anyone was gonna' pull over and lend a hand. I'd say that was about a couple of bucks worth.
Since I posted that distress flag, I'd been thinking a little along the lines of the definition and meaning of individual words, and the accuracy and usefulness of the euphemisms and other constructs that we build with them, and how those meanings can and do vary depending on one's point of view and life experience. And your insight helps with a little better mental articulation on that for me. One man's "country" may in fact exist for him as simply a geographical land mass with borders on a map and a population within those lines, and another's more along the lines of what you wrote.
Appreciate you lengthening the rope on my bucket a bit. As I continue to drop it down this particular well, at least it will come back with a bit more water in it than before. So, thanks for that.
Yes, but... one might also suggest that your original insight/perspective is not without value. To say, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," is certainly not without specific and profound meaning. We tend to go through our lives thinking about how a system of government -- which is really just a way of framing how the totality of a community the size of a country -- is serving our needs. But it's an important flip at key moments to think in the other direction: how our daily choices, values, priorities, etc can serve to make that totality better, stronger, more able to stand up to its existential obstacles. It's difficult to see that as cliche or mundane or, as didion puts it, as having "no meaning at all".
Hello, B... Kennedy's words do have a specific meaning for me. Perhaps those more cynical than I (and I have a fairly healthy dose of that these days) may find those words cliche, but I don't. However one parses them out, they impart a specific idea in my mind, and I happen to agree with it. But what Sherm had to say does help my understanding of how other people with other perspectives / experiences might take a different meaning from them (or other such statements), or even find them meaningless, as Didion apparently did. Likewise, I found Jack B's take on the line from the guerilla's book also useful in this regard.
I'd say you're dead on in what you said about how we spend most of our time thinking about how "government" serves us, so when someone proposes a reverse in the direction of that thought it would no doubt be harder for some to assign meaning than others. Just as physical habits are hard to break, so it is with some mental ones as well. And I think that's also a part of the problem of "meaning" differing among people who are reading / hearing the same words.
I've found all of this quite interesting. I've always liked our language and the words it consists of, and how we use them to communicate with each other in both mundane and profound ways. Thanks for taking the time to give me some more input. As with the others who did, I do appreciate it.
For "broken home," I would say that meaningless doesn't just mean "has no definition." It can also mean "so singular in meaning that it carries no substantive semantic force." What is a broken home? One might respond with "a home mired in dysfunction." Which is fine if you want to go from "orbital level" to "40,000 feet," but you're still not giving "theoretical alien me with no knowledge of human relations" anything I can use to get a handle on it. It's just a euphemism for "a family mode which I believe is harmful to those within it." Is that a kid living with a single parent? A lot of people would say so. What if dad gets drunk and beats mom half to death, or mom poisons kid so she can get attention from medical professionals? Divorce and the not abusive parent taking the kid still make it broken? Every home does damage to those within it. Deciding which ones are "broken" is, at best, four parts "weighing available options" and one part "aesthetic preference," and phrase "broken home" provides no assistance in making that determination. We still have to look. It's a handy euphemism for us to be able to set a certain assumption, but it ultimately obscures more than it illuminates. And making a euphemism the background of your conduct is a disaster.
As for the "ask not" cliche, it's meaningless because it presupposes the existence of a thing that *does not exist*. I have no country. You have no country. We have a government, with a law code, and a set of mores that guide our behavior. These things serve as the guiding principle for the 320-million odd people who live here. When I'm "asking what I can do for my country," which of those am I taking about? Ellsburg and Gravel launched an attack on the government when they released the Pentagon Papers and made sure they couldn't be hidden, but they did it in service of the people. Were they "doing for their country?" The country is a euphemism for "us and everything that binds us." You can't render service to it, because it has no existence separate from its parts. Meaning "ask what you can do for your country" is arguably just an encouragement to view "the thing I want to serve" and "the country" as being one and the same. Which can be really good, or *really, really bad* depending on what that thing winds up being.
My two cents, anyway.
Well hey, Sherm. Was beginning to wonder if anyone was gonna' pull over and lend a hand. I'd say that was about a couple of bucks worth.
Since I posted that distress flag, I'd been thinking a little along the lines of the definition and meaning of individual words, and the accuracy and usefulness of the euphemisms and other constructs that we build with them, and how those meanings can and do vary depending on one's point of view and life experience. And your insight helps with a little better mental articulation on that for me. One man's "country" may in fact exist for him as simply a geographical land mass with borders on a map and a population within those lines, and another's more along the lines of what you wrote.
Appreciate you lengthening the rope on my bucket a bit. As I continue to drop it down this particular well, at least it will come back with a bit more water in it than before. So, thanks for that.
Yes, but... one might also suggest that your original insight/perspective is not without value. To say, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," is certainly not without specific and profound meaning. We tend to go through our lives thinking about how a system of government -- which is really just a way of framing how the totality of a community the size of a country -- is serving our needs. But it's an important flip at key moments to think in the other direction: how our daily choices, values, priorities, etc can serve to make that totality better, stronger, more able to stand up to its existential obstacles. It's difficult to see that as cliche or mundane or, as didion puts it, as having "no meaning at all".
Hello, B... Kennedy's words do have a specific meaning for me. Perhaps those more cynical than I (and I have a fairly healthy dose of that these days) may find those words cliche, but I don't. However one parses them out, they impart a specific idea in my mind, and I happen to agree with it. But what Sherm had to say does help my understanding of how other people with other perspectives / experiences might take a different meaning from them (or other such statements), or even find them meaningless, as Didion apparently did. Likewise, I found Jack B's take on the line from the guerilla's book also useful in this regard.
I'd say you're dead on in what you said about how we spend most of our time thinking about how "government" serves us, so when someone proposes a reverse in the direction of that thought it would no doubt be harder for some to assign meaning than others. Just as physical habits are hard to break, so it is with some mental ones as well. And I think that's also a part of the problem of "meaning" differing among people who are reading / hearing the same words.
I've found all of this quite interesting. I've always liked our language and the words it consists of, and how we use them to communicate with each other in both mundane and profound ways. Thanks for taking the time to give me some more input. As with the others who did, I do appreciate it.