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ecbritz · 05-09-2013, 08:33 PM

I won't make an appeal to the Holy Mother of God to express my frustration at misspelling "rapture", as we have recently seen a forum member do after being driven up the wall. I've read somewhere that if you arrive in heaven and God asks difficult questions, you may always say: "May I have a word with Your Mother?". So better not sour your relations with Her. Especially since some of us here are not too far removed from the Pearly Gates. (This is a reason, I suspect, for some of the grumpiness.)

The wombat's observation that you don't have to twist the meaning of the word parasitism to attach a more morally-neutral value to it, is interesting to me because it was used as a case-in-point in an article about deconstruction.

Deconstruction is all about twisting meaning. We are conditioned to associate the words we know with fixed meanings. But while the sign (the word as it sounds) might be more or less fixed, the meaning can go this way and that in the natural course of using language.

The value of a sense of humour is that it allows certain kinds of deconstruction to occur. Deconstruction means that one construction is destroyed while another construction simultaneously takes its place. Suppose somebody says something very seriously and you can't help laughing about it, then the thing said is deflated by your amusement and becomes ridiculous rather than weighty. It's part of our human intelligence that we laugh and start "deconstructing" as soon as meaning is presented too gravely. Laughter is one way for the mind to avoid being intimidated by predominant assumptions. And so forth.

In the course of reading French philosophy I have stumbled upon some remarkable stuff, especially in feminist theory. The self-sufficiency of the female, as opposed to the dependency of the male, was once related to the "lips caressing each other" distinguishing the female organ, in stark contrast to the pitifully lonely organ of the male.

I do not recommend these subversive French ideas to forum members. Rather get on with coding those HTML's.

05-09-2013, 08:33 PM	#64
ecbritz Book Concocter Posts: 59 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: China Device: Sony Reader	I won't make an appeal to the Holy Mother of God to express my frustration at misspelling "rapture", as we have recently seen a forum member do after being driven up the wall. I've read somewhere that if you arrive in heaven and God asks difficult questions, you may always say: "May I have a word with Your Mother?". So better not sour your relations with Her. Especially since some of us here are not too far removed from the Pearly Gates. (This is a reason, I suspect, for some of the grumpiness.) The wombat's observation that you don't have to twist the meaning of the word parasitism to attach a more morally-neutral value to it, is interesting to me because it was used as a case-in-point in an article about deconstruction. Deconstruction is all about twisting meaning. We are conditioned to associate the words we know with fixed meanings. But while the sign (the word as it sounds) might be more or less fixed, the meaning can go this way and that in the natural course of using language. The value of a sense of humour is that it allows certain kinds of deconstruction to occur. Deconstruction means that one construction is destroyed while another construction simultaneously takes its place. Suppose somebody says something very seriously and you can't help laughing about it, then the thing said is deflated by your amusement and becomes ridiculous rather than weighty. It's part of our human intelligence that we laugh and start "deconstructing" as soon as meaning is presented too gravely. Laughter is one way for the mind to avoid being intimidated by predominant assumptions. And so forth. In the course of reading French philosophy I have stumbled upon some remarkable stuff, especially in feminist theory. The self-sufficiency of the female, as opposed to the dependency of the male, was once related to the "lips caressing each other" distinguishing the female organ, in stark contrast to the pitifully lonely organ of the male. I do not recommend these subversive French ideas to forum members. Rather get on with coding those HTML's.