Steele uses the word "pathos" to describe what we're seeing. Pathos is like a modern Greek word, πάθος which isn't fancy at all and just means passion. Another Greek word that comes to mind is κάθαρση which means catharsis. Catharsis originally meant "to cleanse" but later on to 'release through drama' as derived from Aristotle's Poetics -- which I've never read. I'm just into the word-sharing between languages. There has been an awful lot of pent-up energy in young people. So the marching is an ethnic release or cleansing.
"In many ways, it's something of a carnival," says Steele
That, along with deborah's opening declaration of "Life's messy" brought to mind the "Life is difficult" pronouncement Scott Peck made in his opening statement in The Road Less Traveled (1978). Looking that up again brought the following from the same book:
Dependency may appear to be love because it is a force that causes people to fiercely attach themselves to one another. But in actuality it is not love; it is a form of antilove. It has its genesis in a parental failure to love and it perpetuates the failure. It seeks to receive rather than to give. It nourishes infantilism rather than growth. It works to trap and constrict rather than to liberate. Ultimately it destroys rather than builds relationships, and it destroys rather than builds people.”
“Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.”
"Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit."
When I see the word πάθος I am taken back to my days working in electronics design. Many Greek letters are used in engineering and math and once I slow down and work out which letter is which I can kind of figure out what the word is. But it is painfully slow, as it is all Greek to me.
One coworker's last name was Gutenschwager, and he grew up in Athens, Greece. He used to laugh about how we pronounced the letters - he pronounced them correctly, we pronounced them like Americans. Fee fi fo fum, and so on. Another friend learned how to translate ancient Greek into English and vice-versa - I mentioned that I was slowly working my way through the Greek alphabet and he recited the entire thing. Some days one gets surprised in unexpected ways...
@Sixty: My chemistry background included lots of exposure to the Greek alphabet and their numbers too: πέντε (5), έξι (6), επτά (7), οκτώ (8), δέκα (10), έντεκα (11), etc., because they show up in the alkane names pentane (5), hexane (6), heptane (7), octane (8), decane (10), undecane (11), and so on. Greek εννέα (9) is skipped and we say nonane after Latin. Go figure. Even the higher alkanes track Greek more than Latin.
There has been an awful lot of pent-up energy in young people. So the marching is an ethnic release or cleansing.
With suffering included in the definition of pathos, the pent up energy currently being held and released throughout the nation isn't exclusive or limited to one particular race or age group.
While the video showing the restraint and death of George Floyd, a black man with his neck under the knee of a white police officer, provided a strong visual that reinforced and ignited perceptions of racial injustice, it also symbolically replicated our national experience of undergoing prolonged and excessive restraint during the Covid Shutdown. With the underlying fear of being unable to breathe and dying alone on a ventilator (with no loved one near) hovering in the back of everyone's mind (regardless of race or age) as we watched and waited.
7 comments:
Life's messy.
I appreciate his take and how he's like, 'been there, done that, and what's the point of replaying it?'
If b;ack people had listened to Malcolm X they would have been much better off by now.
"In many ways, it's something of a carnival," says Steele
That, along with deborah's opening declaration of "Life's messy" brought to mind the "Life is difficult" pronouncement Scott Peck made in his opening statement in The Road Less Traveled (1978). Looking that up again brought the following from the same book:
Dependency may appear to be love because it is a force that causes people to fiercely attach themselves to one another. But in actuality it is not love; it is a form of antilove. It has its genesis in a parental failure to love and it perpetuates the failure. It seeks to receive rather than to give. It nourishes infantilism rather than growth. It works to trap and constrict rather than to liberate. Ultimately it destroys rather than builds relationships, and it destroys rather than builds people.”
“Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.”
"Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit."
When I see the word πάθος I am taken back to my days working in electronics design. Many Greek letters are used in engineering and math and once I slow down and work out which letter is which I can kind of figure out what the word is. But it is painfully slow, as it is all Greek to me.
One coworker's last name was Gutenschwager, and he grew up in Athens, Greece. He used to laugh about how we pronounced the letters - he pronounced them correctly, we pronounced them like Americans. Fee fi fo fum, and so on. Another friend learned how to translate ancient Greek into English and vice-versa - I mentioned that I was slowly working my way through the Greek alphabet and he recited the entire thing. Some days one gets surprised in unexpected ways...
@Sixty: My chemistry background included lots of exposure to the Greek alphabet and their numbers too: πέντε (5), έξι (6), επτά (7), οκτώ (8), δέκα (10), έντεκα (11), etc., because they show up in the alkane names pentane (5), hexane (6), heptane (7), octane (8), decane (10), undecane (11), and so on. Greek εννέα (9) is skipped and we say nonane after Latin. Go figure. Even the higher alkanes track Greek more than Latin.
Pathos, or as Trump would say, SAD!
There has been an awful lot of pent-up energy in young people. So the marching is an ethnic release or cleansing.
With suffering included in the definition of pathos, the pent up energy currently being held and released throughout the nation isn't exclusive or limited to one particular race or age group.
While the video showing the restraint and death of George Floyd, a black man with his neck under the knee of a white police officer, provided a strong visual that reinforced and ignited perceptions of racial injustice, it also symbolically replicated our national experience of undergoing prolonged and excessive restraint during the Covid Shutdown. With the underlying fear of being unable to breathe and dying alone on a ventilator (with no loved one near) hovering in the back of everyone's mind (regardless of race or age) as we watched and waited.
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