{"id":4193,"date":"2018-11-04T09:01:05","date_gmt":"2018-11-04T09:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/?p=4193"},"modified":"2018-12-02T07:22:26","modified_gmt":"2018-12-02T07:22:26","slug":"writing-is-a-new-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/writing-is-a-new-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing is a New Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I write in The Interactive Voice<\/em><\/a>, words themselves are thesis statements.<\/p>\n

The lawyer Raphael Lemkin first developed and coined the term \u201cgenocide\u201d in response to the Armenian Massacre at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in the early Twentieth Century. He wanted to legally define \u201cthe destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group<\/a>\u201d as an international crime.<\/p>\n

He needed nothing more than the one word. Once the definition existed, the crime existed, and the world was changed. International law first used Lemkin\u2019s word in the written indictment of the Nazis at Nuremberg.<\/p>\n

In the same way, any common word like \u201cword<\/a>\u201d is a substitute for its own full definition and history.<\/p>\n

New words, or \u201cneologisms,\u201d are a great way to understand your own inquiry and ideas, even if the words you invent never leave your head or desk. Specialists create specialized neologisms or jargon to improve understanding of their disciplines all the time\u2014and not always to complicate them as jargon is often accused<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For years, I\u2019ve thought about a big question and wondered if it required a new word: What guides humanity?<\/p>\n

Despite the gloom of current headlines, a number of editorials and articles this year illustrated how well the human race is actually doing if you go solely by the numbers. Global violence, poverty, and illiteracy levels are at all time lows<\/a>. There are more people in the world and more of those people have a better quality of life right this minute.<\/p>\n

How did this happen? How does the world improve when, individually, we are so doubtful? The Web does a marvelous job illustrating our isolated disbelief. People dealing with day-to-day struggles post and tweet about the coming apocalypse without irony. Divided, each of us is Harper\u2019s Index<\/a>, Jacob Marley<\/a>, and Debbie Downer<\/a> combined.<\/p>\n

Is there a word that explains our resilience despite our doubt?<\/p>\n

One word I found that approaches what I mean is the German word zeitgeist\u2014literally \u201ca time\u2019s spirit<\/a>.\u201d I wrote previously about how we associate essence or genius with particular places as well as people<\/a>. Zeitgeist suggests we also do it with periods in history\u2014that an idea or phenomenon is \u201cin the air\u201d at a certain moment on the calendar.<\/p>\n

Zeitgeist speaks to the communal aspect, but not the direction of our invisible compass.<\/p>\n

I rejected many of the words others would offer. Religion, morality, the golden rule<\/a>, scientific rationality, good government, philosophy\u2014each one of our institutions is flawed. Different characters and groups have used all of them to defend and pursue terrible goals. They are noble only as drafts and helpful only as part of a greater whole.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t post this essay though, if I hadn\u2019t finally thought of an answer. I realized, in this particular exercise, I wasn\u2019t looking for a new word, but redefining an old one.<\/p>\n

The word I wanted was, \u201cwriting.\u201d That was always my answer.<\/p>\n

Writing allows us to record the results of our flawed efforts and institutions and navigate a path between them. In the news, in books and threads and conversations, between the small talk, we create neologisms every day.<\/p>\n

Collectively, humanity finds a way. The world appears awful, and heading in a worse direction, and that perspective is dependably, measurably wrong. The cold war bomb shelters, the Doomsday Clock<\/a>, the Y2K survivalists\u2014unused, unchanged, and unnecessary<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More than a library sitting in some building or even a wiki sitting in the cloud, writing is our hive mind, argumentative and elusive and only as assured as possible in this unpredictable universe. It is our walk with imagination and caution\u2014hope and responsibility\u2014in the face of so much justified disbelief.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the only word that grasps all we\u2019ve been, all that we know, and all that we want to become, and it will be new again tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Read and write on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I write in The Interactive Voice, words themselves are thesis statements. The lawyer Raphael Lemkin first developed and coined the term \u201cgenocide\u201d in response…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,56,46,75],"tags":[102,167,199,236,101,52],"class_list":["post-4193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-course","category-ivoice","category-previewweek","category-writing","tag-algorithm","tag-fear","tag-jargon","tag-neologism","tag-process","tag-writing","post_format-post-format-image"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4193"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4264,"href":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193\/revisions\/4264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}