Tag: language

Paperlessness

Today I was at a client’s office who is about to move. And so, it was time to clean out the file cabinets and move as little as possible.

There are rules about document retention so much remains, but I threw out perhaps 10 banker boxes worth of material. All of it useless, or worse. If you roll that way, hundreds of trees died for very little. Certainly energy was expended wastefully.

Concurrently, the same office was giving Slack a try. I’m not sold on it yet, and of course its real value is intra-team, so in my business with many clients it seems to be somewhat misplaced, but still at this client it is picking up steam. (And yes, I am aware of Ryver.)

It seems like many of these productivity tools are designed specifically by and inadvertently for the tech community. They build what they know, but their applicability across sectors is questionable.

But back to paper. Both paperlessness and the frictionless, open communication office have been promised for a long time. But we never get there and I don’t think we ever will.

First, we are physical so we like objects and that includes paper. I will amend this when we are loosed from being meatbags. Second, we are fallen and mistaken human beings, and so communication will always be fraught with peril. “That’s not what I meant” is the key phrase throughout history. I will amend this when we achieve mind-reading, and then only maybe. Our thoughts may still be coded in the medium of language, so imperfect.

Already learning

Proofreading

I am a terrible proofreader. That much is clear after only a week of this blogging experiment. I vomit my thoughts out on the screen, conduct a cursory overview, and then publish. And I inevitably miss spelling errors and many times, entire words. I am sure you have all noticed.

I am generally better than this at my paying job, so this strikes me as strange. Could it be an unconscious level of importance I place on blogging?

Not enough (words for) love

I’m reading Robert Nozick’s The Examined Life. It’s full of good, mind-tingling things, and last night I read his chapter on love. He doesn’t mention this specifically but it reminded me that the Greek’s (yes, back to that language) have 4 words for love, where English has one.

agape

eros

philia

storge

They are pretty distinct and world certainly simplify English, leaving behind a lot of mucking about with adjectives. But at the same time, we would lose out on some great comedy of misunderstanding.

I’m really focused on Greek lately, aren’t I? This despite the fact that I have never attempted any education (self or otherwise) in Greek. I taught myself and took college level courses in Latin for years. And yet I return to Greek for in interesting tidbits more often.

No lesson today. Just bits of info. I assume people aren’t generally aware of this, but perhaps I am wrong?

Epiousios

Welcome to my third blog. It’s been at least 5 years since my last blog post. The goal this time is to post every day, no matter how short. Let’s get started. (No, this opener will not regale you with what this blog will try to be, besides daily. Who knows what it will be. Expectations unformed cannot be disappointed.)

ldsprayergreek

“Epiousios” is a classical Greek word that has fascinated me for a long time. I even own espiousios.me (.com was too expensive for my taste) and it re-directs right here.

For the full background, check out this site and the wikipedia page. Here’s why I love it:

  1. It is a hapax legomenon, meaning it only appears once in the bible or in the entirety of Classical Greek literature. This makes translation difficult.
  2. It is found in the Matthew and Luke Gospel versions of the Lord’s Prayer (see picture above), and that’s it.
  3. Thanks to translation into Latin and then subsequently into other languages, it has been rendered as “daily” for centuries now. “Give us this day ou daily bread …” This blog is supposed to be a daily exercise, so I like the symmetry and opening connection.
  4. The use of “daily” as the proper translation is highly suspect. The Greek word for daily is used throughout the Bible, and it’s not “epiousios.”
  5. Breaking the word apart, it seems more likely that the word is meant to convey the concept of being “supersubstantial,” thus suggesting the we are not talking about physical sustenance here but rather the religious and spiritual concept of the Eucharist.
  6. But, says history and 2,000 years of Church wrangling, we’ll stick with “daily” because, well, you know, because.

So I love it because of its uniqueness and because its an example of how history and institutions really work. The Lord’s Prayer, one of the most important pieces of literature in Western history, said over and over again DAILY all over the world, includes a word which is almost certainly “wrong” from its original meaning. But everyone’s cool with it. Because that’s what we do.