Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 10:48:46 +0100
Subject: Re: Tantalizing times - arguing for atheism....


Hugh and Glen

Enjoying this interchange muchly -

But technical discourse is essential if one is dealing with technical issues -
'plain language' is at best a way of avoiding what are difficult technical
issues.... At its worst? For example the tabloid media - what this has
constructed is a 'plain language' which is in fact a dense technical language
founded on an inefficient use of short syllable words, i.e. to  never use one
word where two or three will suffice.

What then does plain language mean?

regards

sdv

hugh bone wrote:

> Glen,
>
> Let's spare our colleagues on the List by chopping the prelude.
>
> By now, you as well as they, know I'm averse to loaded words,
> like "Other", "binary logic,", residue", "social", "essential relativism",
> "relative essentialism", which apparently have important, meanings for those
> who have studied and interpreted the many authors and many  books you
> mention.
>
> Your own views, in plain language, must include valuable information they
> gave you.  And plain language helps avoid misunderstandings.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >>I think of terror as a feeling that
> death
> >> is inevitable, something that differs from being affected by beautiful
> >>objects or performances**
>
> >But death is inevitable.
>
> >Like Different in what way?
>
> Like the terror of death IMMEDIATELY.
>
> As opposed to the expectation that  beauty and sublime experience will
> enrich a probable future.
>
> >>Our sensibilities being those parts of ideology which we >>relate to,
> which we invest ourselves in.
>
> Interesting - are there sensibilities unaffected by ideology and/
> or people's ideas?
>
> >>Or do we fashion experience out of the void of the world and say "this is
> sublime"?
>
> Perhaps the world/universe/cosmos fashions each human being
> from the multiplicity of what "is", i.e.fields, forces, photons, quarks,
> molecules, genes, proteins, etc., in such a manner that homo-sapiens, of all
> species, is the only one conscious of a present, hopeful of a future, and
> presumably the only species that can experience an inexpressible feeling of
> sublimity.
>
> Someone does like music you like whatever it may be.  Search on the Web for
> "Dust", a television opera by Robert Ashley which has been produced in
> Tokyo, and New York, and is scheduled for Paris in July and Lisbon in
> September. I heard a
> short selection on radio, but have not seen it. Opera without images is
> fine, but opera with images is better.
>
> Regards,
> Hugh