Life 101, A Wise Man's Advice for Adulthood

Here's another language problem. One thing that makes the Truth hard to get to sometimes is the use of language that pretends to communicate but actually doesn't. It is language that is really designed to mislead... George Orwell looked ahead to the future. Writing in the year 1948, he imagined a future with that number reversed, which became one of our great novels: 1984 . In it he wrote about a world in which words were used as propaganda, such as "Doublethink." Sometimes journalists have spoken of "Newspeak" , deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language used to mislead and manipulate the public. A contemporary group of English teachers have combined these terms to into "Doublespeak". Every year they collect examples of doublespeak from all over the world. They point out advertisers who boast of "genuine imitation leather," used car dealers who sell "preowned cars," or politicians who who talk about "revenue enha...

This word myth is a word that has two quite different meanings and that's confusing. One meaning is "falsehood".  When we call something a "myth" we mean it's a fairy tale, it's not true. The other meaning of "myth" is altogether different.  In this sense a myth is something that is so true it can't be expressed in ordinary language.  The opening chapters of Genesis in the Bible, for example,  provide a good illustration.  They describe the creation.  (There are two stories actually, somewhat contradictory.)  They are myths, not to be taken as literal descriptions of creation, but the fact of creation.  They don't provide answers to the questions of how creation came about and when (those are questions for scientists), but rather answers to the questions of Who created it and why? (which are questions scientists don't try to deal with.) "Mythic Horse", by Tim Holmes The problem some people have in understanding the Bible...

There is yet a fourth question to which we'll give greater attention later on. It has to do with one's response to everything that is. It's a follow-up question to the other three. After asking, "Who am I?" , "How do all things cohere?" and "Where am I going?" I must ask, "How do I respond? What ought I to do? What is expected of me?" This is the ultimate question. Only to the extent that I'm clear about my identity, my purpose and my relationship to whatever isn't me, can I then get any clear idea of where I ought to go with my life. To some people the word "responsibility" seems awfully heavy. I've gotten a kick out of the name of the Catholic Church in Garrison Keeler's Lake Woebegon as "The Church of Our lady of Perpetual Responsibility." But it needn't be a heavy word. The word simply means "the ability to respond." I believe one could describe the relationship b...

The word "meaning" is often found in conjunction with the word "purpose." The words are related, but by no means synonymous. The word "purpose" delineates a third level of the meaning question. In this sense the word "meaning" suggests intention. When a language teacher points to a word on the blackboard and asks "what is the meaning of this?" she is asking for a definition, our second distinction. Should the same teacher enter the classroom to find a scrawled caricature of herself on the blackboard she might inquire "what is the meaning of this?" in which case she would be asking not only for the symbolism of the drawing, but for its intention or purpose. This aspect of the "meaning" word evidences itself in such everyday expressions as "I mean" or "I meant" to do something, which is to say "I intend: to do it." "Unsurity", Tim Holmes  To ask "Does life have a meaning?...