Discourse 14: A Return to the Cavern...

[Trollax]

A Return to the Cavern
Or
The Lies of Truth

Once more we return to the cavern problem, with the intent this time of not discovering which ass is more fit to grind corn, but to explore the notion of truth I'll start by repeating the basic premise...

You are walking through a cave system and you come to a cavern, now at the same time, the cave is both an empty, normal cave, full of dessicated bat guano and a few loose boulders, maybe a couple of basalt columns or some stalacties and stalagmites...
However at the same time, the cavern is also a cave with a river of molten lava running through it. Both appear to every single sense you have to be both entirely there and mutually exclusive. You toss a few rocks at the river, and at the same time the rocks both bounce off the floor that is present in one cavern and fall into the river that is present in the other.
You can feel the heat of the lava flow and witness the solidity of the floor (in-part). But which is real? The best answer being, that the separation between the two is an illusion. Both exist, both are real, and are sharing the same space. But the question is; what action do you take? Where do you proceed from that realisation? Every possible answer immediate to the situation can be boiled down to two possibilities; either you cross the river or you don't cross. There are however a myriad or rationalisations for doing each...

You can walk on unsure of whether you yourself are just as bifrucated as this cavern and it's contents, or just continue on after deciding one way or the other. You can also turn around and take the safe option, or attempt to treat the river as real and find a way of ovoiding it.
You can also decide to affirm the opposite and simply walk onward.
Both caverns could also be an illusion and that could be your determination and you just walk on and out of whatever machinery (magickal or otherwise) that is generating it.
excreta etcettera...

How does this relate specifically to truth however? If you consider this cavern as an allegory of any question you face, that the separation between your options is the illusion, where does the "truth" the right answer come from? Well with your determinations about the cavern, the truth comes from within. You decide what to do about the cavern in the same way you decide to pick an answer to your question. The "lies in truth" don't come from the chosing of one option or another, we're always making choices, the lies come from the search for the ultimate truth, trying to determine which cavern is more real than the other. Perhaps you might leave and come back with a battery of scientific instruments and attepmt to study the cavern, but once again, why do you study the cavern? to understand the cavern, or to find out which cavern is real and which is the illusion?

Truth is fine, but it comes a poor-second to what we gain alongside truth: experiencece. Which has more value; the answer to a question or the way we derive the answer? Most-often you will forget the answers but remember how you got there. Figuring out the cavern is irrelevant to your progress, because you can't, but dealing with or "experiencing" the cavern is far-more pressing.

Must dash now, the search for lies in truth is less pressing than my desire to be at my job on time and experience it.

~Cavernous Trollax

[EvilPoet]

"Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets." -Socrates

[Trollax]

"Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets." -Socrates

Petty much, yeah.

~Geological Trollax~

[EvilPoet]

Truth is fine, but it comes a poor-second to what we gain alongside truth: experiencece. Which has more value; the answer to a question or the way we derive the answer? Most-often you will forget the answers but remember how you got there. Figuring out the cavern is irrelevant to your progress, because you can't, but dealing with or "experiencing" the cavern is far-more pressing.

I think Hermann Hesse summed it up quite nicely: "Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it."

[Trollax]

I think Hermann Hesse summed it up quite nicely: "Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it."

Bingo... We understand things as whole interrelated concepts but communicate that in discrete packets of information... otherwise known as words and sentences...

Say here's just a thought for the day... The expansion of terminology and meaning is mostly done by people botching it up and coming up with their own bollocks...

~Semantical Trollax~

[Trollax]

I think Hermann Hesse summed it up quite nicely: "Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it."

Bingo... We understand things as whole interrelated concepts but communicate that in discrete packets of information... otherwise known as words and sentences...

Say here's just a thought for the day... The expansion of terminology and meaning is mostly done by people botching it up and coming up with their own bollocks...

~Semantical Trollax~

[riff]

Say here's just a thought for the day... The expansion of terminology and meaning is mostly done by people botching it up and coming up with their own bollocks...

mmmm... half-right, I'd say.  Yes, a lot of the time you get new words because someone invents a term needed to describe something new, but it's not generally because of a botch or anything.

Oh, wait, I think I misunderstood.  You don't mean new words, but evolved meanings for old words.  Or words like 'irregardless', which isn't a real word, but is becoming one because people use it anyway.  Yeah, that happens a lot.

Reminds me of two anecdotes, both comic-related, strangely enough.

First is the origin of the word 'quiz' (which I read about in an issue of the Hellblazer comic, and which turns out to actually be true):  two Englishmen (or possibly colonial Americans?  I don't remember) had a bet that the one couldn't make up a new word, and have it become a commonly-used part of the language.  So, the guy makes up the word "quiz", and starts tagging it on walls everywhere.  People see it, and wonder what the hell it means.  After a while, they start using the word to mean 'a puzzle or riddle', as in "That's a real quiz, innit?"  And over time it evolved into the current meaning, 'a short or impromptu test'.

Second is an idea from the comic The Invisibles (which, if you haven't read it, you need to.  All Discordians need to read it).  Near the end of the series, the Bad Guys (basic Evil Conspiracy) occasionally show an ability to do magic things, like controlling minds, or creating illusions or whatnot.  It's revealed that they have this power because the alphabet actually has *46* letters in it, not 26 as all the normals believe.  These extra 20 letters let the conspirators form the words that describe magical concepts... ordinary people can't do magic because they can't really think about it, and they can't think about it because they can't make the words that describe it.

[EvilPoet]

Or words like 'irregardless', which isn't a real word, but is becoming one because people use it anyway.

Irregardless is redundant word. If I remember correctly it is a mix of the words irrespective and regardless. Would irregardless be considered a neologism as well as a portmanteau?

[The Commander]

Hey!  watch your language, there are children present.



The Commander
DIA

[EvilPoet]

Is watching language anything like watching TV?

[SMFabal]

Language is expanded and/or limited by those who use the rules they understand from the language they learn as children.
example: pea. This word is not "real" by Riff's definition. The original word "Pease" was a singular form in German. The French heard "peas", a Germanic plural, so the single word became "Pea".
Other times societies feel a need to suddenly be more specific:
example: corn - Originally refered to any type of grain product.
Sometimes words switch meaning entirley ("Awful" mean "great" during the Industrial Revolution), dropped completly due to lack of use ("thee" - the informal "you") or perverted through transcription ("You" should be pronounced "Thou"). There is even now a "Language" of the "inner city" (Eubonics).

Grammer was not concidered important even to William Shakespeare. As long as everyone understood the words, it was good enough. It was not until the spread of literacy reached the "New" middle class that grammer was suddenly important. It was the tool by which the Middle Class "proved" they were "superior" than the lower class they had not long ago been part of. Webster put together his dictionary to "elliminate improper English."

Language is ever evolving. "Computer" is an old word. It originally refered to a person who used a Abacus to perform "complex" mathmatics. Then there's the matter of changing form; where nouns become verbs, verbs become nouns, and modifyers become both.

I'll get into "real" words later.

[riff]

example: pea. This word is not "real" by Riff's definition.

No, I would call 'pea' a real word.  It's been in use long enough to be wossname... formalized?

I said 'irregardless' isn't real because, although people use it, it hasn't been in use long enough to be considered 'correct'.  The dictionary still calls it "nonstandard".

Would irregardless be considered a neologism as well as a portmanteau?

I don't think it would be a portmanteau word, they're typically more combined than that.  Lewis Carroll's classic example was, if someone asks you about a certain English king, but you can't remember if it was Richard or William, then under stress you might blurt out "Rilchiam!"

[riff]

Random language musing:

My new roommate is black.  In and of itself, this doesn't signify anything.

However, he is also the first person I have ever heard pronounce "damn" as "dizzamn", totally without irony.

[Trollax]

Random language musing:

My new roommate is black.  In and of itself, this doesn't signify anything.

However, he is also the first person I have ever heard pronounce "damn" as "dizzamn", totally without irony.

       

A friend and I back in high school had an all purpose word "MURRR." it was most commonly used as an expletive, I started evolving it into other words
mum became "murrrm"
dad became "durrrd"
and my sister's nickname became "nurrr"
Everyone became pretty pissed off at me in short order over that one...

~MURRR Trollax~

[EvilPoet]

I don't think it would be a portmanteau word, they're typically more combined than that.  Lewis Carroll's classic example was, if someone asks you about a certain English king, but you can't remember if it was Richard or William, then under stress you might blurt out "Rilchiam!"

Oh ok, I see. Thanks for the example - I love Lewis Carroll.