Sorry I haven't been active. I'm away from home. I'm in Las Vegas, visiting an old friend from way back in the C. in Detroit days, when, her, Zeek, Dave, Ron Kangas & I were once all together.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
And I just think that the overlay you have put on it doesn't fit. It is true, but not in a way that is problematic. But putting what I can only see as a spin on it is a little like Karl Marx writing to the common man that business were "exploiting" his labor, creating a false impression that it was an evil thing. Fact is that to use is to exploit. So our labor is exploited no matter who we work for. Work is always used for something, therefore it is always exploited. That is not evil. But there is also a meaning for exploit that indicates an illicit use of something. And that is the meaning that most people think of. So when Karl Marx said that the common man's labor was, by definition, exploited, he knew that he was being understood as saying their labor was improperly used. And because that was the intent, it was a lie.
I am not accusing you of lying. But I do think that you are stuck in a form of equivocation in your own thinking. You are not making distinction between things that are important and useful and those that are not, but are pursued due to something like addiction. There is a difference. The importance of the written word in virtually every aspect of knowledge, instruction, law, communication, etc., is not evidence of some kind of societal addiction or urge for something otherwise useless or unimportant. That it can be argued to look like an addiction does not make it so. And that some will make certain writings into gods or idols does not make all writing the same. You need more than a similarity in some aspect of observation to make this case.
You keep returning to a variant on the addiction overlay. But until you can make that point stick, it will be difficult to move forward to the next step. Oh, you can move on. But understand that it will be without the structural support of this point — at least from my perspective. I guess I could put on my "back in the days of the LCM" glasses and simply take what someone says and then let the next point add onto it.
But, on second thought, I just can't do that. If the start doesn't make sense, then whatever is intended to rely on it shouldn't either.
I have asserted that you have made no viable point from what I can see. Maybe you have for some others. But I offer my comments so that you have the opportunity to rephrase your position so that it is understandable in a manner that I can potentially move forward with. I think you have heard them. If they do not change your thinking, I do not see that yours have changed mine, so I will leave you to it.
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It's got to be me that's the problem here. I guess I'm failing to make my point clearly.
My use of addiction in terms of written words is an extreme, to drive home how dependent we've become on written words.
Neither did it ever enter my mind to lie. Nor was it or is it my intention to imply that our dependency on written words is a bad thing. Quite the opposite, I think the invention of writing is one of the biggest boons in the history of humankind,
Writing enabled us to build these great civilizations, and enables us to support over 7 billion people on the earth. Our food, water, and waste, even, depends upon written words.
Don't call it an addiction. There's web addiction, cell phone addiction, and professional treatment for them. But I'd hate to test how utterly dependent we've become upon written words. If we could eliminate written words the result would be catastrophic. The world would crash. People would be starving. There'd be riots in the streets.
Let's face it. The GoJ said it all when it said "In the beginning was the Word." John is writing written words, methods that were invented 3500 yrs prior. That sure was the beginning, of being able to write books, and records; of which the gospel of John is part and parcel, and unabashedly dependent upon.
Look at what written words have become. Without them there would be no Bible, no Torah, no Koran, no book of Mormon, etc. It would be chaos and madness. Tell me there aren't people that aren't addicted to these writings. These writings sway the masses like a wave.
Hey, maybe I should just own up. I'm addicted to written words. I love 'em. Got ta have 'em. Yum, yum. And I know a lot of such addicts ...
I spot one now!
Ha ...