Talk about Talking

Dear Dialecticians, Humanists, and Colleagues
Across the Curriculum.


Talking about How-We-Talk


Got to love it: the swirl of confusion generated not
only by talking  about stuff (tokens galore, content
galore) but also by talking about how-we’re-talking,
exposing underlying controlling metaphors and
hidden assumptions, cultural knee-jerk connotations,
questioning definitions, uncovering ambiguities and
indeterminacy carried in  the terms we use/abuse—
 
One moment we’re galloping along, trot trot to Boston
trot trot to Spain, covering ground, getting somewhere
until someone, anyone, pulls the plug on our velocity
and demands: well, what do you  mean by
“logic,”
“good,”
“convince,”
“exist.”
 “is”
“hierarchy,”
“hegemony”
“meaning”
and splash—we realize we’ve been walking on water all
along, now sinking in a wonder-mire of definition and  
clarification and quibble and argument  and down & down
we go, round and round we go loving that old black magic
we weave so well.    Or hating it.
 
My mind-set (affect web-of-belief & bias, prejudice and
conviction) is inviolable, impenetrable, sealed-in tomb &

womb protecting my DNA (directional navigational
algorithms)  and  will not be CHANGED  lightly.
 
I don’t know how it gets changed.
 
I can’t change it my own self—no dials to twist and turn like
some homeostat or I would: twist and tweak me every
day to suit my fancy and the condition my condition is in. ..
 
Sure I can change my mind daily in realtime, deciding this
and that, voting for this or that: now for Chevy,. now for
Ford, paper or plastic,  taste or calories; but my frame of
mind, mind-set, overall attitude—my environ-mentality
say—is unchanged and unchanging. It’s beyond me and my
immediate needs, terms of desire, and control. .
 
"Neither logic nor  sermons convince. "
 
Now imagine a collective mind-set, the environ-mentality
of a relationship, a family, a classroom, a community,
a culture…the protective bubble and sealed-in  homeland
security systems that protect and prevent erosion, corruption,
demoralization. Call it sustainability: that  which maintains
its status quo.
 
Can’t touch it.  Inviolable? It will defend, homeland
security-wise, its broken whirls.