Have you noticed that at times you prefer ambiguity over precise meaning? Certainly, you’re not going to say in answer to how much you love someone, “To the last decimal of pi.” Honestly, “a bunch” works just as well—though it isn’t a very poetic or romantic term. “I love you a bunch” is, of course, ambiguous, because bunch is undefined. Love doesn’t lend itself easily—if at all—to quantification.
But then, we really have little choice at times because ambiguity is the best we can do. Take 02/02/2020, for example. Punxsutawney Phil emerged as usual (Actually, he was pulled from his rather confining digs) to pronounce via a “bunch” of be-tuxedoed men in top hats that spring for 2020 would come early. Of course, for people in near-tropical and tropical climes, Phil’s prophecy means very little unless that climate is also associated with the beginning of some monsoonal weather. But in the middle latitudes and especially for the millions who live in the temperate zone, Phil offered hope for the day, a promise of a return to mild and tolerable weather, birds chirping, and Phil’s free groundhog brethren roaming for the first leaves. And yet, we know that spring has never come suddenly; it doesn't spring forth on the Vernal Equinox. Remnants of winter weather mix in with the coming summer warmth, and late frosts can disrupt the budding growth.
Would that the predicting of milder times were so easy. But, as they write, “alas,” it isn’t so. The conditional is unreal and thus requires the subjunctive. Ambiguity prevails as the fashion of the future. What, for example, does “spring” mean? Remember the “Arab Spring” of turmoil, death, terrorism, governmental overthrow, bombing by US warplanes, and the eventual retaking of the Egyptian government by the military in an overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood? Across northern Africa, various groups saw the “spring” differently; the term was ambiguous at best. Now think of the American “spring” in an election year on the tail end of divisive political bickering on the large stage of Washington, D.C., where men in suits made their dire predictions.
“What’s to come” anyone in the early morning of 02/02/2020 might have asked, “other than a continuing ‘winter’ of disgruntlement?” Surely, there’s no disagreement on the future: The specifics that lie ahead are the specifics of the past: Complaining, Accusing, Fault-finding, Anger, and actual Hate. Where’s Phil when you need him to insert the potential for joy with a prediction anticipated by thousands gathered for Groundhog Day?
So, what’s your prediction? Do you forecast a prevailing mildness interrupted only by a few episodes of cooler or colder atmospheric conditions. Are you a harbinger of spring or a continual or continuous denizen of winter moods. Do you predict a continuing winter of discontent? Are you personally determined to bring spring to the world around you? Or, like Gloucester in Shakespeare’s Richard III, do you say, “I am determined to prove a villain/and hate the idle pleasures of these days/Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous/By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams/To set my brother Clarence and the king/In deadly hate the one against the other….”
We all know that Phil can’t predict the weather and that humans speak for him, probably on the basis of the National Weather Service predictions or on those of the most recent Farmer’s Almanac. But on Groundhog Day in 2020, those men forecast some hope for human weather. That others put words into Phil’s mouth is not unlike what happens in a world filled with prognosticators who tell us how to think and how we will live, prognosticators whose lives and predictions bespeak their own discontent. Most of their predictions are dire; spring lies in the distant future, well into June and the arrival of the Solstice. But every so often, someone—or some group like the Punxsutawney officials—proclaims, “Things are looking up; we have much to expect in a bright future.” So, Phil predicts an early “spring” in a year that began in political turmoil and in fears of a pandemic. Of course, we never know what the future portends until it becomes the present sliding into the past. But, for a moment at least on a cold February morning in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, a bunch of middle-aged and old men held up a groundhog for the world to see and proclaimed a hopeful message for all the world to hear.
That message? “The world doesn’t have to continue its winter of discontent. A spring of milder times is possible, but it comes only when we, unlike Gloucester, refuse ‘to prove a villain’ and ‘to set my brother...In deadly hate the one against the other.’ We don’t have to be modern versions of Gloucester.”
Spring will then mean peace. And regardless of the ambiguity inherent in the word peace, we can all look forward to its coming.
So, again, what’s your prediction for 2020? Try to make it specific.
But then, we really have little choice at times because ambiguity is the best we can do. Take 02/02/2020, for example. Punxsutawney Phil emerged as usual (Actually, he was pulled from his rather confining digs) to pronounce via a “bunch” of be-tuxedoed men in top hats that spring for 2020 would come early. Of course, for people in near-tropical and tropical climes, Phil’s prophecy means very little unless that climate is also associated with the beginning of some monsoonal weather. But in the middle latitudes and especially for the millions who live in the temperate zone, Phil offered hope for the day, a promise of a return to mild and tolerable weather, birds chirping, and Phil’s free groundhog brethren roaming for the first leaves. And yet, we know that spring has never come suddenly; it doesn't spring forth on the Vernal Equinox. Remnants of winter weather mix in with the coming summer warmth, and late frosts can disrupt the budding growth.
Would that the predicting of milder times were so easy. But, as they write, “alas,” it isn’t so. The conditional is unreal and thus requires the subjunctive. Ambiguity prevails as the fashion of the future. What, for example, does “spring” mean? Remember the “Arab Spring” of turmoil, death, terrorism, governmental overthrow, bombing by US warplanes, and the eventual retaking of the Egyptian government by the military in an overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood? Across northern Africa, various groups saw the “spring” differently; the term was ambiguous at best. Now think of the American “spring” in an election year on the tail end of divisive political bickering on the large stage of Washington, D.C., where men in suits made their dire predictions.
“What’s to come” anyone in the early morning of 02/02/2020 might have asked, “other than a continuing ‘winter’ of disgruntlement?” Surely, there’s no disagreement on the future: The specifics that lie ahead are the specifics of the past: Complaining, Accusing, Fault-finding, Anger, and actual Hate. Where’s Phil when you need him to insert the potential for joy with a prediction anticipated by thousands gathered for Groundhog Day?
So, what’s your prediction? Do you forecast a prevailing mildness interrupted only by a few episodes of cooler or colder atmospheric conditions. Are you a harbinger of spring or a continual or continuous denizen of winter moods. Do you predict a continuing winter of discontent? Are you personally determined to bring spring to the world around you? Or, like Gloucester in Shakespeare’s Richard III, do you say, “I am determined to prove a villain/and hate the idle pleasures of these days/Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous/By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams/To set my brother Clarence and the king/In deadly hate the one against the other….”
We all know that Phil can’t predict the weather and that humans speak for him, probably on the basis of the National Weather Service predictions or on those of the most recent Farmer’s Almanac. But on Groundhog Day in 2020, those men forecast some hope for human weather. That others put words into Phil’s mouth is not unlike what happens in a world filled with prognosticators who tell us how to think and how we will live, prognosticators whose lives and predictions bespeak their own discontent. Most of their predictions are dire; spring lies in the distant future, well into June and the arrival of the Solstice. But every so often, someone—or some group like the Punxsutawney officials—proclaims, “Things are looking up; we have much to expect in a bright future.” So, Phil predicts an early “spring” in a year that began in political turmoil and in fears of a pandemic. Of course, we never know what the future portends until it becomes the present sliding into the past. But, for a moment at least on a cold February morning in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, a bunch of middle-aged and old men held up a groundhog for the world to see and proclaimed a hopeful message for all the world to hear.
That message? “The world doesn’t have to continue its winter of discontent. A spring of milder times is possible, but it comes only when we, unlike Gloucester, refuse ‘to prove a villain’ and ‘to set my brother...In deadly hate the one against the other.’ We don’t have to be modern versions of Gloucester.”
Spring will then mean peace. And regardless of the ambiguity inherent in the word peace, we can all look forward to its coming.
So, again, what’s your prediction for 2020? Try to make it specific.
RSS Feed