Thursday, June 18, 2015

Post After A White Night

Reading Gerald Cannon's Youtube comment, posted below, it made me remember a comment the blogger and my one time mentor, Echidne, of Echidne of the Snakes once made.  She said that when she was first learning English, which she writes so much better than most native English speakers that it should put lots of us to shame, the practice of capitalizing the personal pronoun "I" seemed egocentric.   If someone who had the distinction of being asked to play in Elvin Jones group is self-effacing enough to put it in lower case and someone who writes as well as Echidne does makes that comment, it feels kind of embarrassing to keep capitalizing it.   Maybe i'll start capitalizing the "U" in "Us" or the "Y" in "You" or, maybe not.   It would be a hard habit to break, i'd guess.  Though it would cut down on typos if i just used lower case for everything.  One thing is for sure, it would get more flack than possibly demolishing the possibility that the materialist model of the mind as a physical construct would, though that got plenty from people who either didn't understand the several points or just criticized it without reading it.   "It's haaaaarrrd!" was also heard.  Or seen since i had to supply the sound of their whining in my head.   i wonder how evo-psy would explain the evolutionary advantage of that faculty.  Then they can explain ear worms and why it is inevitably the lyrics to the most insipid songs that you only heard because your sister had the 45 and played it about ten times every Saturday until her next favorite awful song came along.  Do you know i know every word to.... Naw,  i couldn't do that the You.  Why those and not "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" or an accurate version of the quadradic formula or something else that is obviously useful? 

I'm going to try to get an hour nap in before i've got to drag myself to work.  I'll figure out a strategy for how to get them to do all the talking today, later.   I'll post something before then. 

2 comments:

  1. My personal pet peeve is the replacement of "who" with "that."

    People are "who." Things, objects, non-humans, are "that." Yet "People that...." is so common a locution to say "The people who...." sounds odd to everyone.

    But people, persons, are not things; yet we objectify them without a qualm. I find it very disturbing; but what do i know?

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  2. I've been trying to catch myself when I do that since you pointed it out. I'm pretty sure it's not something I picked up from my parents or before I became an adult. I don't even refer to animals as if they are things, as is common. It is reasonable to think the practice isn't unrelated to how we really think of living beings as things.

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