From Stephen King

Wordly Inspiration from Stephen King, reminding me that I look forward to more sleeping and more (well, any at all) writing soon. Well, really I look forward to unlocking my mind from the humdrum that has been dealing with 2022.

"In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives."

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From Hilary Mantel

Wordly Inspiration from Hilary Mantel, searching for trust that I will still be a writer when I can return to these pages.

"Of course, writers find it difficult to trust themselves. It can seem such an inflated claim, that you are a writer. So you think you have to keep proving it, by persecuting paper with ink or pounding the keys, as if you need a self-justifying witness to your own strength of purpose... You can’t measure your productivity day-to-day in any way the world recognizes."

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From Ursula Le Guin

Wordly Inspiration from Ursula Le Guin to help me hold it together while I do flood recovery work instead of writing. I like to think the ideas are scouring through some of the vast silences while I paint the walls. 

"One of the functions of art is to give people the words to know their own experience. There are always areas of vast silence in any culture, and part of an artist’s job is to go into those areas and come back from the silence with something to say." 

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Attention - paid or stolen?

By the end of this post I will have revealed my deepest secret, something about which I feel deep shame. I've never told anyone before but it's time I revealed all.

Um… no I won't. 

I just wrote that sentence to get your attention and I'm admitting it.

Apparently, that's a thing now. On social media I see people sometimes writing, 'Oh I just said that to get your attention' or they might add a picture of a dog which they describe as 'unrelated image for attention'.

Strange thing: attention. Something of yours I can 'get'. And now you are 'giving' your attention to this post. 

But did you actually give me your attention? 

Or did I take it from you?  

From Lucie Britsch

Wordly Inspiration from Luci Britsch: words that hushed my continual self-questioning about whether I should be writing or I should be doing something 'more useful':

"Write like the ghosts of all the women in history who weren't allowed to write are standing next to you wondering what a laptop is and why you're still in your pajamas."

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Evolving (part 4) - the language dance

Parody on the March of Progress

The Evolving series began by looking at Darwin's ground-breaking theory of 'descent with modification' to explain biodiversity in organic lifeforms. In parts 2 and 3, we explored how people have misinterpreted and misused his work ever since, including loading it with various moral judgements. 

Our everyday use of the words evolve and evolution reveals that we¹ think of evolution as purposeful and progressive improvement (a contradiction of Darwin's theory) but also natural and scientific. This (mis)interpretation provides what I call a 'sciencey veneer' over any number of beliefs.

We think of 'evolutionary progress' as how the world works. This understanding is so widely shared it is a common meme. 

So, I'm finally back to my starting point for exploring the words evolve and evolution: what do we mean when we say that language 'evolves'? Why don't we just say that language changes? Is language change like biological evolution? Are we saying that language improves and progresses over time? 

Unsurprisingly, the answers are not straightforward! 

Evolving (part 3) - scientific and natural

Parts 1 & 2 of the Evolving series explored our everyday use of the words evolve and evolution. 

We¹ have rather strange ways of talking about how biological evolution works. When we talk about life-forms evolving, we imbue a random, undirected, aimless process (Darwin's 'descent with modification') with agency, intention and purpose (part 1). We tell stories of change, and of life progressing and improving. 

When we tell 'evolution stories' (with agents and purpose), we add moral judgements about improvement. We meld the two contradictory dictionary meanings of evolution into a hybrid² concept of 'descent with modification (technical meaning) toward improvement and a better state (non-technical meaning)'. This sits behind many moral judgements about the 'value' of various life forms, particularly about non-human animals, e.g. saying that humans are the pinnacle of evolution (part 2).

Our 'stories' of evolution work more like metaphor - a simplifying shortcut - than being an accurate description.

This story of 'evolving' and improving is now the dominant way that we understand the world - not limited to explaining biodiversity (as Darwin intended his theory). We refer to societies, cultures, ideas, businesses, technology, musicians, language (and more) as evolving. 

And that leads to some very dangerous ideas.