Merry everybody! We don’t cover a lot of our week’s activities, because we get into an involved discussion of holidays, traditions, and “empire level societies,” whatever those are. We get a little talk about Star Wars, though, and we do manage a question. So pretty standard. Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
Which best describes your usual perspective on life these days: Shaken or Stirred? –Dave of Id
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I was remembering your conversation today as I was prepping an essay by Simone Weil called “The Power of Words” for one of my classes. Here’s a sample:
“…when empty words are given capital letters, then, on the slightest pretext, men will begin shedding blood for them and piling up ruin in their name, without effectively grasping anything to which they refer, since what they refer to can never have any reality, for the simple reason that they mean nothing. In these conditions, the only definition of success is to crush a rival group of men who have a hostile word on their banners; for it is a characteristic of these empty words that each of them has its complementary antagonist. It is true, of course, that not all of these words are intrinsically meaningless; some of them do have meaning if one takes the trouble to define them properly. But when a word is properly defined it loses its capital letter and can no longer serve either as a banner or as a hostile slogan ; it becomes simply a sign, helping us to grasp some concrete reality or concrete objective, or method of activity. To clarify thought, to discredit the intrinsically meaningless words, and to define the use of others by precise analysis – to do this, strange though it may appear, might be a way of saving human lives.
…To keep to the social level, our political universe is peopled exclusively by myths and monsters; all it contains is absolutes and abstract entities. This is illustrated by all the words of our political and social vocabulary : nation, security, capitalism, communism, fascism, order, authority, property, democracy. We never use them in phrases such as: There is democracy to the extent that … or: There is capitalism in so far as … The use of expressions like ‘to the extent that’ is beyond our intellectual capacity. Each of these words seems to represent for us an absolute reality, unaffected by conditions, or an absolute objective, independent of methods of action, or an absolute evil ; and at the same time we make all these words mean, successively or simultaneously, anything whatsoever. Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits; and yet we act and strive and sacrifice ourselves and others by reference to fixed and isolated abstractions which cannot possibly be related either to one another or to any concrete facts. In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills.”
No, people do not need to quarantine as a result of receiving the vaccine. You cannot get an active case of covid from receiving the vaccine.
It is prudent to stay separated until enough people have received the vaccine for us to have herd immunity.
Where are our additional facts about why those all-spices are used in winter holiday treats?