Post by pseudosherlock on May 26, 2011 11:40:32 GMT -6
This came to me as I was typing out the name Ouspensky for the dozenth time on a previous post. I started thinking: "Gee, it would be easier to just abbreviate him PDO and be done with trying to figure it out every time." Then I woke up a little bit and rethought that perhaps I should push myself to have as many reasons to write Ouspensky as possible, and to type his name out very carefully every time.
It occurred to me in this thought that the American habit of abbreviating everything is one of the most obvious methods of expediting going back to sleep. Essentially, as soon as one has the slightest glimmer of understanding of a name or term, one's mechanical inclination is to strip it down to its barest elements and thereby completely forgetting everything they knew of it, making it completely mechanical. This creates an abbreviation that is created to make it easier to not have to think about the original, weighty reality.
My college learning would call it creating a simulacra. The process of taking a symbol and degrading its meaning until it becomes a hollow representation of a symbol.
The best example: Text Talk.
I would dearly like to know how many younger people these days actually don't know what "lol" stands for.
It might be nice to say that this breaks cumbersome phrases and ideas down to simple feelings that can be shared in a faster, more efficient way. Which would be fine if the internal structure of these ideas survived its own simplification.
Personally, I make it a point whenever I have to text to type everything out in long form. Complete with punctuation and capitalization. However, after working on myself I'm trying to stop judging other people for not doing that. Because after all, I'm doing it to remind myself and to keep myself awake, not to personally save and/or control every other human being.
Any thoughts?
It occurred to me in this thought that the American habit of abbreviating everything is one of the most obvious methods of expediting going back to sleep. Essentially, as soon as one has the slightest glimmer of understanding of a name or term, one's mechanical inclination is to strip it down to its barest elements and thereby completely forgetting everything they knew of it, making it completely mechanical. This creates an abbreviation that is created to make it easier to not have to think about the original, weighty reality.
My college learning would call it creating a simulacra. The process of taking a symbol and degrading its meaning until it becomes a hollow representation of a symbol.
The best example: Text Talk.
I would dearly like to know how many younger people these days actually don't know what "lol" stands for.
It might be nice to say that this breaks cumbersome phrases and ideas down to simple feelings that can be shared in a faster, more efficient way. Which would be fine if the internal structure of these ideas survived its own simplification.
Personally, I make it a point whenever I have to text to type everything out in long form. Complete with punctuation and capitalization. However, after working on myself I'm trying to stop judging other people for not doing that. Because after all, I'm doing it to remind myself and to keep myself awake, not to personally save and/or control every other human being.
Any thoughts?