Good Morning Digital Friends & Neighbors! Happy Tuesday Supporters, Members, and Visitors to this little hole in the wall. More fun with words from Epic English Words by Mr. Devoe. On to the vocabulary lesson with some borrowed words from our French neighbors.
*Alamort - totally exhausted; half-dead from fatigue. From the French a' la mort "to the death"
If you are doing something worthwhile, feeling alamort is one of the best feelings you can ever experience. The are few experiences of being tired that are more satisfying. Conversely, if you are forced to do something that is not worthwhile, few things are more frustrating. Much of modern boredom is self-inflicted, but the one real exception is in the realm of compulsion.
When we are forced against our will, the boredom meter starts running. Boredom is not the only meter running, frustration and rejection begin their own slow creep. I am not a fan of forcing individuals to do much of anything against their will, but they also have to accept the consequences of what they choose to do by their own choice. My father's uncomplicated wisdom: when you live with the consequences of your choices, you are an adult. When you pay for your choices, when you live with the reputation you earned or ruined, when you have to deal with the emotional drama you helped create (intentionally or accidentally) you are an adult. Thinking about all that can make one feel emotionally alamort. Perhaps that is why maturity is a shrinking island in our culture.
Apercu - a clever insight; an initial view or rapid survey; [French]
Got Twitter on my mind. It promised to be a platform of rapid , simple communication. Perhaps a place where apercu could happen with greater clarity that other sites that demand you sell your life to read drag-ass articles from people who get paid by the word. Fort a few generations influenced by Sesame Street rapid fire info, it was a natural thing. Twitter, great for quick news, pithy witticisms and clever humor at its inception.
Once Twitter become the playground of journalist and other soulless egos, it became a trolling zone for the Blue Checks and a battlefield in the culture war. For the Intolerant Open-Minded (you know who they are and what they espouse - the hypocritical acceptance cancelers.) it became a place where those who hurt the feelings, made them feel stupid, or effectively poked humor at the sacred cows of the Intolerant Open-Minded got cancelled. Shadow banning was the first experiment, and then removal was the next step. The Intolerant Open-Minded are not people of courage, but they are bold when gathered in mobs and feel safe in numbers. They typically resent anyone with actual apercu. They typically hate the clever, and they drain life off the the creatives they claim as their "tribe." Their main currency is anger and compulsion. Yield or face destruction. Sounds open-minded to me. 😉
One of the best rules for EGO identification is how easily and readily offended one feels. I am not saying we should never feel offended, but the era of thick-skins and Teflon wills is fading in the review mirror. The easily offended and perpetually offended are some of the most tiresome people to give any attention. They suck the joy out of life, they demand unquestioned acceptance while in the same breathe constricting your freedom and condemning your disagreement. No apercu there. Once again one faces alamort when dealing with our disconnected neighbors who advocate for or live among the acceptance-cancelers.
Spring-barn taken by Cindy-Wright (Those little purple flowers, Grape Hyacinth, are my favorite Spring flower. So small and they smell the BEST!!)
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
