What does it all mean?

Did You Know? from Amybeth on Vimeo.

The original video from Carl Fisch, a US educator, is almost two years old but this spin-off was recently sumbled upon, leaving me awe inspired. Growth, for the sake of growth, is apparantly the ideology of the cancer cell, or so says, Edward Abbey. Is growth really synonymous with progress? Or is growth merely a product of progress?

What does it all really mean?

Nooj and I chatted briefly about what it means to us:

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN

and the answer is- we really don't know
9:43 PM me: scary that with all that info there's still so much undiscovered territory, or should that be exciting
9:45 PM noorjehaan: i guess it should be exciting
its just tough to keep up with it all
and tough trying to know as much as the next person
its like we're running and running like rats on those merry go rounds
9:46 PM well that's how i feel about it
others may feel they get somewhere

8 minutes

9:54 PM me: i read such a poignant passage on the rat race
trying to think where

10 minutes

10:04 PM me: "Foucault's work draws attention to the fact that many assumptions in a culture are maintained by language practices that comprise a common tool both for knowing the world and for constructing it. By construction, here, we mean the translation of physical realities into discursive realities. The "dominant discourse" of the US for example, is one that lends great privilege to the "freedom" of the individual. The physical reality of modern life is hemmed in and constrained in many complex ways, from laws that allow police to search automobiles without cause to an economic system that requires enormous amounts of time spent at the workplace under someone else's control.
10:05 PM Nevertheless, this physical and institutional reality is reduced in American lexicon as "freedom".

...Just as all women were far from being chaste, silent and obedient, despite what the dominant discourse of the advice or courtesy books mandated, so also most Americans have limited access to the kind of pure freedom the dominant term seems to imply.

What Foucault noted was that the world we live in is shaped as much by language as by knowledge as or perception. Indeed, according to him, knowledge and perception always occur through mediation of language. We would not be able to know anything if we were not able to order the world linguistically in certain ways.

(Rivkin &Ryan: 2004. Introduction Structuralims, Linguistics, Narratology in Literary Theory: An Anthology 2nd edition, edited by Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. Malden, Mass: Blackwell : 53-54)

I find that extract very fitting here. But c'est moi, what does it mean to you?

CAUTION: Written under duress: A fatigued brain under the unyielding influence of caffeine

The truth seems to be, ... that when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him better than most of his schoolmates or life-mates.

Nataniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter

Blogging, for me, is like being granted immigrant status in a parallel universe but my permit, grudgingly granted, clearly stipulates temporary residence only. Xenophobia, I tell ya.

I'm not sure how lucid this post will be. I may wake up tomorrow morning, and while groggily sipping my morning dose of green tea, cringe at this drivel and dutifully reach for an elusive undo button... For now however, morning is a distant dream.

I had vowed, well not vowed exactly, but solemnly and earnestly promised the trees of this fair land that I would curb my book buying ways. I had to! My shelves, already groaning under the weight of my indulgence, had just last week tacitly informed me that they could not admit another book. Not even a second-hand poetry volume. Now for those with the luxury of a house of their own, some swanky, sturdy new shelves are the quick fix here, but hélas, for me, subordinate of my parent's home, I must make do. I am an ardent follower of whoever it was that said, 'When we are collecting books we are collecting happiness'. (Note to self, do reference this) I have lived these past years trying to emulate the New York author and bibliophile (he had books in his kitchen cupboards, his stair case, the floor... you get the picture...) who, when told by his mate of similar habits, that people, when seeing his books, ask if he had indeed read all of them, replied, 'You obviously don't have enough books'. Now I had been able to stay faithful to my promise to the trees through the lack of proximity to the Exclusive Books sale. Tonight however, I have broken my promise and the trees, I fear, will turn away from me hence. I thought I would just take a peek at the sale tables, and congratulate myself on my self-discipline. It was of course, not to be. Stacks upon stacks called out to me, begging for a home away from the din of the Greek music gratuitously forced upon them by the neighboring Papa's restaurant. My wallet, the major victim in the state of gainful unemployment, could not support them all. So, I've brought home just one, a bargain at twenty odd rands, paid in coins, Roget's Thesaurus. Pleased to announce the acquisition of a Roget's.