h a l f b a k e r yNot so much a thought experiment as a single neuron misfire.
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A'the'ism
Separate but related movement of those against use of that word. | |
It's possible that a lot of
confusion in our world has been
caused by a common error of
speech. Referring to things
with a certain definite article
implies quite a lot, and things
would be much improved if
things were not referred to in this way.
Of course, there is nothing
wrong
with words that start
with or include 'the', but constant
grammatical usage of this
concept creates an underlying
cognitive structural cosmology
that makes everyone think
there really is a 'the' when in
actuality there simply is not.
A'the'ists find a positive statistical correlation between societies
with a lot of significant proper nouns and high religiosity. For
example: the prophet, the church, the bible, the bloodshed.
Whereas societies that refer to things in a very general
nonspecific sense, such as a'the'ist community members, have
low
religiosity. For example: a turnip, that thing, your foot odour,
an article,
etc.
At first it is hard to live
without 'the', but soon you and
people around you will adapt
to indefinite language.
Whereas before one would say
"the door is open", which would
lead a reciever to assume a
highly regarded door is open,
this would now be spoken "a
door is open", which will lead a speaker to inquire "which
door?", wherupon one would
answer "a highly regarded
door", or something relative to
any one of any possible doors
that might refer to.
This type of amendment would
amount to a great change in
world social history bringing a
new age of equality. No longer
would notable people be held
to greater esteem, than
common people. Democratic
institutions would benefit also.
A President of United States
would give a speech from a
white house. Of course
without definite articles, some
unnecessary proper nouns like
'Whitehouse' would also be on a'the'ist chopping blocks.
Ultimately, this simple
although profound language
change will have drastic
effects. Primarily, people's
perceptions will no longer be
deluded by the existence of
'the', as a cosmological location
which in theory is only a
grammatical convenience that
causes widespread ritualism,
violence , and specificity in its ultimate psychological
manifestation as an all powerful and commanding god.
Agnostic vs Atheist
http://www.diffen.c...Agnostic_vs_Atheist
Note: the is not part of the definition of A Theist [popbottle, Sep 25 2013]
The The
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_The
This band would have to change their name. [Zeuxis, Sep 25 2013]
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a has caused me to misstep a bit: I always thought a meant "without regard to" rather than "not", like "asymmetrical" would include "symmetrical" as a specific subset, which it doesn't; broken clock twice a day and all that. |
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At which point I find myself without a proper prefix. |
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of course "at heists" is another possible translation. |
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There are still some "definite" words available, such
as, for example, "THAT door is open". |
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Yes, doesn't have the same strutural effect on cognition as
THE. |
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Of course the most common translation is "ATMism". |
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Auomated teller machine, at the moment? |
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What about being Psycho the rapist? |
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There's always being Arrested Development's analyst
therapist, or in short, anal-rapist |
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But that is really here nor there, we should really be
intensly discussing the possibility that theists conspired to
insert 'the' as a part of speech as a strategy to achieve end
goals. Allow me to begin - I think so. |
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But how will we differentiate between all the
different hagues? |
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If there exists a set of Hagues {A Hague, Another Hague,
Hague 9, Hague-on-the-Wold, Hartley-Hague} then
reference to any specific Hague remains possible as long
as elements of this set remain uniquely referable. The
problem comes when multiple Hagues are all named and/or
located in the same place such that they become
indistinguishable - at which point, they might as well
be one and the same. |
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//A'the'ists find a positive statistical correlation between societies with a lot of significant proper nouns and high religiosity. // |
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Where do they find this statistical correlation? Not in any actual statistics, I'll tell you that much. I won't bore you with the counter-examples, unless provoked. |
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Of course the defining attribute of The Hagues is how much scotch went into the cook during preparation. |
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I think its an offensive epithet towards women |
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I am not opposed to The, I am simply certain that The does
not exist. |
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//Of course the defining attribute of The Hagues// |
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Sitcom idea: William's wife gets increasingly jealous
of his "work trips" to Africa with Angelina Jolie.
Decides to bring the kids to Somalia to crash the
UN's next war-crimes awareness push. |
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Hmmm. Perhaps not an awful lot of com in that, and
rather too much sit. |
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In one funny scene in particular she overhears her
husband
has bought a new suit of clothes and has been spending
quite
a lot on visiting the Hague, on hotels and so forth. She even hears there is more
than one Hague, and because of ongoing war crimes
investigations she doesn't know about that a lot of dicks
go in and out of the front and back entrances of that
one
particular Hague all the time. Coming and going, as it were, often at once, or one right after the other. |
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Eventually she finds a hastily scrawled note with 'special
lie' scratched out and a phone
number for someone called the 'ass s lut' . She calls the
number and a female voice answers and she says, "listen
hag, I don't know who goes around with the name ass
slut, but stay away from my husband or I'm going to kill
you". The assistant special lieutenant to the secretary
general of the united nations was not impressed. |
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// A President of United States would give a speech
from a white house.// |
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Well, I have to admit, I like this idea. It may be the
Pinot Grigio talking (the second bottle is always very
chatty), but my previous opinion of [rcarty] as a no-
hope rambling pseudo-esoteric cod-philosphising
unfocussed ball of background radiation has been ver
y considerably overturned. |
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The the object is reducible to the proof that the obect is
a object. |
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I proposeth this theorem on this day, signeth |
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Can I commend to you the novel "Gadsby"? It is
completely devoid of a word "the". |
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(In fact, it is lacking totally in that symbol which,
along with "t" and "h" is found in that particular
word. How any author can construct a book lacking
that vital symbol is puzzling to I.) |
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Incidentally, creating sentences where every
element includes the letter "e" proves extremely
challenging. There are few sufficiently adept. |
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This theorem relates that the object can't completely
be
removed from a object. |
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However, the the object signifies the idea of the. |
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The the object can't completely be removed because it
is
a object that signifies the. |
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The object that signifies the can be removed but
definite allusion to the article cannot be removed from
any media object. |
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// There are few sufficiently adept.// |
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He doesn't mean everything he tells others. When he lies
he writes sentences. When he speaks honestly he doesn't.
He smells like rotten eggs combined together inside urine. |
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All right, enough: let's check this idea against a few facts. |
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If we look around present-day Europe, it is one of the least religious parts of the world. Its elites may be corrupt, self-indulgent and indecisive, but they're not religious. Also, compared to other parts of the world, present-day Europe scores *relatively* well on diversity, democracy and the absence of ritualized violence. One notable exception stands out though, namely, Russia. Russia's basically hierarchical, monolithic structure, with a national church closely tied to an authoritarian government, carries on a cultural tradition that goes back for centuries. Russia is the only European country I know of where educated people still refer to Africans as monkeys, and, whereas Western Europeans have tensions with ethno-religious minorities, these tensions are nothing like the near-genocidal wars in and around Chechnya. |
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And why is this significant? Well, Russian is the only major* modern European language which has no word for "the". In other words, it is the only major example in modern Europe of A'the'ism in practice. |
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Is this too Eurocentric for you? |
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All right, let's cast our eyes over the Umma of Islam. Now, at first sight, we note that the classical Arabic of the Quran not only has a definite article ("al"), but likes it so much that many Arab words arrive in English with their article rusted on - "algebra", "alcohol" and, of course "Allah". To this point, it all looks like grist to [rcarty]'s mill. But wait. There's more than one language in the Islamic world. To make this next comparison more colourful, I offer you this extract from a speech of Gladstone, in response to some atrocities in Bulgaria, in which he explains that his condemnation is not of Islam, but of a more specific group: |
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"Let me endeavour, very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline what the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mohammedanism simply, but of Mohammedanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mohammedans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as far as their dominion reached, civilization vanished from view. " |
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Now this, of course, is the exaggeration of a politician making a polemical point, but it contains an element of truth; for some centuries, most of the practical oppression of ethno-religious minorities in the Western part of the Islamic world was done not by Arabic-speakers, but by Turks. And yes, you've guessed it; Turkish has no word for "the". |
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Have we confined ourselves unduly to the last half-millennium of history? Inevitably, we wheel out the Greeks and Romans. Classical Greece - say, from the end of the Geometric Period in 700 BC to the death of Alexander in 323 BC- very diverse, creative, argumentative - plenty of conflict, but virtually none of it religious. Classical Rome - say, from 202 BC to 68 AD - always quite unequal and hierarchical, becoming more so over the period, and less democratic - moderate levels of religious persecution, from the Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus of 186 BC through to Nero's Christian-bashing. The punchline, of course, is that classical Latin does *not* have a "the", while classical Greek does. |
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There's easily enough here to slap this idea with an MFD - bad science (comparative philology). |
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On the other hand, given that this idea is entirely innocent of any direct association with reality, it is worth pondering where it comes from... |
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It doesn't come from comparative ethnography, it's a
halfbaked idea, one that has some funny surface
humour, stands up against a little cirtical analysis, but
really is not serious enougha and doesn't come from
serious enough thought to be subject to rigorous
critique. It's a joke in some ways about being offended
by 'the', like how someone will use 'the' as an intensifier
to make something seem better or more important than
what it is. |
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But to misunderstand the idea and take it seriously,
could be entertained. It stands up to some analysis, and
certainly what you have offered is by no means the last
word on the subject. If seriously defending the idea I
would look for specific instances of where "The" is used
in order to structure reality and not just grammar, and
how people would react if an effort was made to change
that, and thus their cosmology of the world. For
example a survey of monarchists in Britian who wanted
QE2 to be considered just a queen, a defender of a faith
etc. But I hypothesize they would oppose this
'dimunition' because religiosity depends on believing in
absolute and ultimate objects represented by The, or a
laboratory study where two goups are given text to read
with 'the' and without 'the' and after reading the text to
answer a survey about how important the writing was,
how true did it seem, how important the subject was
etc. Even measuring conflict in grad students given
'prepared' writing samples and asked to edit and measure
how vigorousl they apply edits and defend ' The' and
then correlate that with another result on that
particular subject's religiosity, or how devotion to The is
related to self aggrandisement, and how those who use
The in describing their own social lives are status
searchers and typically have higher social status in
higher or lower status circles. |
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Just say it with an Israeli accent. We can't say th and replace it
with T. Also we read an A at the begining of a word as Ah, and
find it hard to articulate the vowel sound of aye (like hay or
day, we pronounce those words heh and deh). |
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