![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So I got dragged, pretty willingly, into watching some TV-on-DVD tonight. The West Wing- something my sister has introduced my folks too. And it was fun. But in the midst of it, someone makes a comment that paraphrases as "That may be grounds for divorce, but not for quitting your job"- and that just seems like a really Weird world view. I mean, quitting your job, ok, you'll find another one. It's just a job, not a family. It just seems like a reversal of what I would see as appropriate values. Work can be a passion, but if it's that much more significant to you than your family is, it feels like something is wrong. It also says something about how taken-for-granted divorce is in current society. (Somethign that came up as a topic of discussion Saturday between Mom and Steve.
So I got dragged, pretty willingly, into watching some TV-on-DVD tonight. The West Wing- something my sister has introduced my folks too. And it was fun. But in the midst of it, someone makes a comment that paraphrases as "That may be grounds for divorce, but not for quitting your job"- and that just seems like a really Weird world view. I mean, quitting your job, ok, you'll find another one. It's just a job, not a family. It just seems like a reversal of what I would see as appropriate values. Work can be a passion, but if it's that much more significant to you than your family is, it feels like something is wrong. It also says something about how taken-for-granted divorce is in current society. (Somethign that came up as a topic of discussion Saturday between Mom and Steve.
A Picture is worth a thousand words. Actions speak louder than words. But the pen is mightier than the sword.
So I've been thinking about the meaning and power of speech, lately. It's come up in a couple of very unrelated conversations lately that I seem to hold statements about existence/relationship/nature almost more seriously than actions that are consistent with those statements. It seems more powerful to label a set of actions than to perform one of them. E.g. it seems to be more real that someone is, say, weird, if someone labels them as such than if they just do something that seems strange. A label seems more permanent: it can be written or repeated, while an action is harder to reproduce: it can be described, but rarely can it be perfectly recreated.
but recreation oughtn't be a factor: if someone says something only once, it is still valid, and if someone does something special only once, that doesn't mean that it wasn't meant. A statement is less ambiguous, often enough though. One can certainly read all sorts of things into a statement, but one has to read them into the intentions behind it. An action can be interpretted in all sorts of ways: it's harder to hold up an action without questioning it, especially when one is down in the dumps.
Action, by being harder to repeat from one's memory inside your mind, seems less persuasive. Maybe it's that words are pithy, and shorter to store and thus easier to reproduce? That seems awfully sad as a reason. I dislike the idea of functioning on snippets- I don't want to be a sound-bite person.
Maybe I've just grown up on many, many words: I spent most of my childhood with my nose in a book, and some of those worlds seemed just as real as the one I live in. Or at least I'd have liked to have those worlds be real instead: Oz was much nicer than much of the 2nd grade. And my family talks a lot and analyzes a lot. So the conversation distilled some truth about situations, the deeper meaning of actions. What is an action without analysis? And how does one do analysis without words? Maybe words are just a higher level of processing, and therefore carry the oomph of thought and effort. On the other hand, an action may be the product of someone else's analysis. But somehow that doesn't quite work, it doesn't quite count- Iim not sure.
The topic is still in process- this is pretty raw writing/thinking...
So I've been thinking about the meaning and power of speech, lately. It's come up in a couple of very unrelated conversations lately that I seem to hold statements about existence/relationship/nature almost more seriously than actions that are consistent with those statements. It seems more powerful to label a set of actions than to perform one of them. E.g. it seems to be more real that someone is, say, weird, if someone labels them as such than if they just do something that seems strange. A label seems more permanent: it can be written or repeated, while an action is harder to reproduce: it can be described, but rarely can it be perfectly recreated.
but recreation oughtn't be a factor: if someone says something only once, it is still valid, and if someone does something special only once, that doesn't mean that it wasn't meant. A statement is less ambiguous, often enough though. One can certainly read all sorts of things into a statement, but one has to read them into the intentions behind it. An action can be interpretted in all sorts of ways: it's harder to hold up an action without questioning it, especially when one is down in the dumps.
Action, by being harder to repeat from one's memory inside your mind, seems less persuasive. Maybe it's that words are pithy, and shorter to store and thus easier to reproduce? That seems awfully sad as a reason. I dislike the idea of functioning on snippets- I don't want to be a sound-bite person.
Maybe I've just grown up on many, many words: I spent most of my childhood with my nose in a book, and some of those worlds seemed just as real as the one I live in. Or at least I'd have liked to have those worlds be real instead: Oz was much nicer than much of the 2nd grade. And my family talks a lot and analyzes a lot. So the conversation distilled some truth about situations, the deeper meaning of actions. What is an action without analysis? And how does one do analysis without words? Maybe words are just a higher level of processing, and therefore carry the oomph of thought and effort. On the other hand, an action may be the product of someone else's analysis. But somehow that doesn't quite work, it doesn't quite count- Iim not sure.
The topic is still in process- this is pretty raw writing/thinking...
A Picture is worth a thousand words. Actions speak louder than words. But the pen is mightier than the sword.
So I've been thinking about the meaning and power of speech, lately. It's come up in a couple of very unrelated conversations lately that I seem to hold statements about existence/relationship/nature almost more seriously than actions that are consistent with those statements. It seems more powerful to label a set of actions than to perform one of them. E.g. it seems to be more real that someone is, say, weird, if someone labels them as such than if they just do something that seems strange. A label seems more permanent: it can be written or repeated, while an action is harder to reproduce: it can be described, but rarely can it be perfectly recreated.
but recreation oughtn't be a factor: if someone says something only once, it is still valid, and if someone does something special only once, that doesn't mean that it wasn't meant. A statement is less ambiguous, often enough though. One can certainly read all sorts of things into a statement, but one has to read them into the intentions behind it. An action can be interpretted in all sorts of ways: it's harder to hold up an action without questioning it, especially when one is down in the dumps.
Action, by being harder to repeat from one's memory inside your mind, seems less persuasive. Maybe it's that words are pithy, and shorter to store and thus easier to reproduce? That seems awfully sad as a reason. I dislike the idea of functioning on snippets- I don't want to be a sound-bite person.
Maybe I've just grown up on many, many words: I spent most of my childhood with my nose in a book, and some of those worlds seemed just as real as the one I live in. Or at least I'd have liked to have those worlds be real instead: Oz was much nicer than much of the 2nd grade. And my family talks a lot and analyzes a lot. So the conversation distilled some truth about situations, the deeper meaning of actions. What is an action without analysis? And how does one do analysis without words? Maybe words are just a higher level of processing, and therefore carry the oomph of thought and effort. On the other hand, an action may be the product of someone else's analysis. But somehow that doesn't quite work, it doesn't quite count- Iim not sure.
The topic is still in process- this is pretty raw writing/thinking...
So I've been thinking about the meaning and power of speech, lately. It's come up in a couple of very unrelated conversations lately that I seem to hold statements about existence/relationship/nature almost more seriously than actions that are consistent with those statements. It seems more powerful to label a set of actions than to perform one of them. E.g. it seems to be more real that someone is, say, weird, if someone labels them as such than if they just do something that seems strange. A label seems more permanent: it can be written or repeated, while an action is harder to reproduce: it can be described, but rarely can it be perfectly recreated.
but recreation oughtn't be a factor: if someone says something only once, it is still valid, and if someone does something special only once, that doesn't mean that it wasn't meant. A statement is less ambiguous, often enough though. One can certainly read all sorts of things into a statement, but one has to read them into the intentions behind it. An action can be interpretted in all sorts of ways: it's harder to hold up an action without questioning it, especially when one is down in the dumps.
Action, by being harder to repeat from one's memory inside your mind, seems less persuasive. Maybe it's that words are pithy, and shorter to store and thus easier to reproduce? That seems awfully sad as a reason. I dislike the idea of functioning on snippets- I don't want to be a sound-bite person.
Maybe I've just grown up on many, many words: I spent most of my childhood with my nose in a book, and some of those worlds seemed just as real as the one I live in. Or at least I'd have liked to have those worlds be real instead: Oz was much nicer than much of the 2nd grade. And my family talks a lot and analyzes a lot. So the conversation distilled some truth about situations, the deeper meaning of actions. What is an action without analysis? And how does one do analysis without words? Maybe words are just a higher level of processing, and therefore carry the oomph of thought and effort. On the other hand, an action may be the product of someone else's analysis. But somehow that doesn't quite work, it doesn't quite count- Iim not sure.
The topic is still in process- this is pretty raw writing/thinking...
.