A Quote by Elif Batuman
There are ideas it will be easy to say in the future that we just don't have the language for now.
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Who are we to be so arrogant as to say 'now WE know what's best, THAT era was full of daft ideas' etc. There will be plenty things we take as normal and good now that future generations will look back at in horror or amusement.
We sift reality through screens composed of ideas . (And such ideas have their roots in older ideas.) Such idea systems are necessarily limited by language , by the ways we can describe them. That is to say: language cuts the grooves in which our thoughts move. If we seek new validity forms (other laws and other orders) we must step outside language.
It's very easy, when things like the gay marriage write-in happen, to get sick of how people view language and say, "ah, come on it's just a dictionary." But then you hear from people who say if you take out "retarded" it won't exist anymore, and there will be no slurs for people to call my child. And that's just heartrending.
For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, "Now, I've arrived!" Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.
In Korean, the word 'future' is made up of two parts. The first part means 'not,' and the second means 'to come.' In that sense, 'future' means something that will not come. This is to say the future is now, and our now is us living our future.
In Italy, you're in your comfort zone when it comes to language, lifestyle, your habits and preparations, and moving abroad is not easy. It's not easy to carry over your own ideas about football, your own methods. You have to get everything across in a different language, and that wastes a lot of energy.
These are ideas. I could say that they just came to me, but it would be more accurate to say that I went to them. Ideas - and new connections between ideas - lead you away from commonly held perceptions of reality. Ideas lead you out here. Ideas lead you into the darkness.
Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express. Let them make the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under a lasting obligation, but, we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations into their minds.
I can never say that I will never return to musical theatre. There may be a part in the future that I really want to do. I love plays as well. I am very open to ideas. I hope to do many things in the future.
In the future, we've forgotten it. It's disappointing to find out that the past is the present is the future. Nobody wants that. And yet, that's what it is. Maybe it's a kind of surrealist move, to use language like "post-racial" - thinking that if you create the language for it, it will happen. I wish it worked that way. But that's not our reality.
All the academy will tell you that the language that is familiar to you is not appropriate. and that's not to say that there shouldn't be a standard, but when I come to school with my friends' language, my grandmother's language, the language in my mouth - you're going to tell me that's improper?
Trying to predict the future is a discouraging and hazardous occupation. If by some miracle a prophet could describe the future exactly as it was going to take place, his predictions would sound so absurd that people everyone would laugh him to scorn. The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic. So, if what I say now seems to you to be very reasonable, then I will have failed completely. Only if what I tell you appears absolutely unbelievable have we any chance of visualizing the future as it really will happen.
We live in our language like blind men walking on the edge of an abyss. This language is laden with future catastrophes. The day will come when it will turn against those who speak it.
...our societies appear to be intent on immediate consumption rather than on investment for the future. We are piling up enormous debts and exploiting the natural environment in a manner which suggests that we have no real sense of any worthwhile future. Just as a society which believes in the future saves in the present in order to invest in the future, so a society without belief spends everything now and piles up debts for future generations to settle. "Spend now and someone else will pay later."
As for language, almost everything goes now. That is not to say that verbal taboos have disappeared, but merely that they have shifted somewhat. In my youth, for example, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can say them, but you can't say 'girl'.
Because I love you.' It was easy to say it this time now that I understood what it meant. Then I quoted his own words back to him. 'Not just when it's easy. All the time.
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