In 1917 Grenville Kleiser published a communication guide called Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases. This guy had time on his hands. The phrases range from alpha to omega, that is, all across the alphabet from “abandoned hope” to “zealous in the cause he affected to serve.”
Hmm. Where did I see the first of those phrases? Oh! I remember. It’s written over the entrance to Hell in Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” And the second? F. Evan Nooe, a nineteenth-century Southerner used a version (zealous in the cause) of the phrase in describing the formation of a “Southern Identity.” Is there any tie between the two phrases separated by 14,998 other phrases in Kleiser’s compendium?
Is there a place where you abandon hope? I’m not asking about the Afterworld. I mean here, on Earth, in the present, and specific. Why is that? Maybe the second phrase has something to do with the first. Why did Nooe feel the need to define the identity of a Southerner? What is it about place that establishes identity? How is it that place defines character? Today, there is a new kind of place where zeal for a cause quashes hope. It’s called the Web.
Well, I guess we could make an argument. In the Afterworld, bad guys, we say, go to Hell. They are bad guys, so that’s where they go. Right? But what about the Nooe’s South in the nineteenth century? One could argue that it, like the Afterworld for bad guys, was a place without hope for a large portion of the population, for slaves. And among those who would have maintained the status quo of hopelessness for some before and even after the Emanciapation Proclamation were those zealous in their actions.
Whereas it is true that character can transcend place—except in Hell—it is also true that place does define identity for many people. In his introduction to Kleiser’s book of phrases, Frank H. Vizetelly writes “foreigners sometimes reproach us for the asperity and discordance of our speech….” That might be as true today as it was in nineteenth century America. There’s a certain asperity that is widespread on the Web and in daily speech. And that asperity seems to originate whenever we limit ourselves and our perspectives, as though we come from a limiting place and are zealous in spreading hopelessness through asperity.
If we have acquired a crudity of thought, is it the product of place, particularly a cyberplace? Have we allowed place to shape our identities negatively? How do we surmount this influence of, to use some of those 15,000 phrases, bellicose humanity expressing its calumnious suspicions in caustic remarks?
Cosmopolitanism is my answer. Think every place. Think of transcending the influence of any single place. Think of acquiring an identity shaped by all places, not a special zealous identity derived from values that include hopelessness for some. Rather, identify with the continuity of life. We don’t have to be creatures of circumstance without a personal code of morals. We can change the babel of tongues and avalanches of scorn produced on the Web in a laxity of mind. Dante did give us an image of a place without hope, but he also gave us another image, the image of Paradise. Be zealous in the cause of tearing down the sign that identifies the Web as a place of hopelessness and asperity.
Hmm. Where did I see the first of those phrases? Oh! I remember. It’s written over the entrance to Hell in Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” And the second? F. Evan Nooe, a nineteenth-century Southerner used a version (zealous in the cause) of the phrase in describing the formation of a “Southern Identity.” Is there any tie between the two phrases separated by 14,998 other phrases in Kleiser’s compendium?
Is there a place where you abandon hope? I’m not asking about the Afterworld. I mean here, on Earth, in the present, and specific. Why is that? Maybe the second phrase has something to do with the first. Why did Nooe feel the need to define the identity of a Southerner? What is it about place that establishes identity? How is it that place defines character? Today, there is a new kind of place where zeal for a cause quashes hope. It’s called the Web.
Well, I guess we could make an argument. In the Afterworld, bad guys, we say, go to Hell. They are bad guys, so that’s where they go. Right? But what about the Nooe’s South in the nineteenth century? One could argue that it, like the Afterworld for bad guys, was a place without hope for a large portion of the population, for slaves. And among those who would have maintained the status quo of hopelessness for some before and even after the Emanciapation Proclamation were those zealous in their actions.
Whereas it is true that character can transcend place—except in Hell—it is also true that place does define identity for many people. In his introduction to Kleiser’s book of phrases, Frank H. Vizetelly writes “foreigners sometimes reproach us for the asperity and discordance of our speech….” That might be as true today as it was in nineteenth century America. There’s a certain asperity that is widespread on the Web and in daily speech. And that asperity seems to originate whenever we limit ourselves and our perspectives, as though we come from a limiting place and are zealous in spreading hopelessness through asperity.
If we have acquired a crudity of thought, is it the product of place, particularly a cyberplace? Have we allowed place to shape our identities negatively? How do we surmount this influence of, to use some of those 15,000 phrases, bellicose humanity expressing its calumnious suspicions in caustic remarks?
Cosmopolitanism is my answer. Think every place. Think of transcending the influence of any single place. Think of acquiring an identity shaped by all places, not a special zealous identity derived from values that include hopelessness for some. Rather, identify with the continuity of life. We don’t have to be creatures of circumstance without a personal code of morals. We can change the babel of tongues and avalanches of scorn produced on the Web in a laxity of mind. Dante did give us an image of a place without hope, but he also gave us another image, the image of Paradise. Be zealous in the cause of tearing down the sign that identifies the Web as a place of hopelessness and asperity.
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