An attribute of a deity: Omnipresence.
Put yourself in the deep past of illiterate humanity, in the past before the first rune. Yes, there appear to have been purposely scratched stones from a time long before rune writing, but an enduring writing system is a relatively recent accomplishment of our species. If some hundred billion of us have inhabited the planet since our origin, imagine how many were illiterate. Many. Most. Almost all.
Of course, if we wanted, we could count cave paintings as a form of stationary writing, but in those in situ pictographs is where the significant difference lies: Cave walls were stationary stationery; modern writing travels. Mobile writing, mobile forms of communication are our best bet at achieving an earthly omnipresence that transcends time.
Here you are, a reader, and your reading gives the writer a chance to transcend space and time. But there are limitations because you are probably not a reader of all scripts. And that means that someone writing in “letters” you don’t know can’t be with you at this moment and vice versa. But for anyone who understands the symbols of your language, you are, even in your absence, present in your writing. In loco, “in place,” means any place where you send a letter or text, any place where someone reads what you have written.
I bring this up because I have a little familiarity with Greek letters, but no familiarity with Telegu letters. ఠిస్ ఐస్ అం ఎక్సమ్ప్లె అఫ్ వాట్ ఐ మీన్. I believe I wrote “This is an example of what I mean,” but I don’t really know the syntax, so the words might be out of place. Telugu would make sense to millions who write such script, but nothing to those who don’t. To me, for example, who has a pen pal in southeastern India, that script seemed at first glance to be writing from Lord of the Rings or some SciFi film’s alien spaceship: Fictional scribblings. I could admire the free-flowing graceful lines in the script, but only looked on with wonder. Without a translation, both time and place controlled the message.
Our modern hubris amazes me, especially when it comes to modern stationary stationery. Consider art, for example, as a form of modern cave writing. If you go to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., you’ll find a broad range of art, some highly representational; others, not so much. Some, even puzzlingly bizarre, and others, so minimalist that one wonders whether or not they were the products of finger-painting infants or the person who manufactured the canvas rather than a painter. Thus, when I see someone sitting and staring at a large canvas with shapeless splashes of color, I wonder whether or not the artist has really transcended space and time. Regardless of what the people in-the-know say they know, there’s a spectacular difference between a simple sentence sent through the mail or over the Internet and non-representational art hanging on a museum wall. The writer of a simple sentence can be present in his or her absence as long as the language is clear and the script legible. Meaning crosses those two barriers of time and space. But non-representational art is a toss-up. It can mean what I want it to mean because there is no clear meaning inherent in the art, regardless of what the art critics say. Pollock’s art might be a set of fractals upon close examination, but so what? Robert Ryman’s “Untitled” has all the traveling meaning of a cement sidewalk, which, by the way, it seems to represent. Rothko’s rectangles of different color could be hung upside down or sideways. In other words, the artist isn’t as present as the critics say. The art isn’t the artist “in loco” as long as the viewer is free to impose any meaning.
Teach the young that they have the ability to be anywhere in the present and everywhere in the future by virtue of what they write. Teach the young that what they say becomes who they are in their absence. Teach them that what they write becomes mobile stationery that might not disappear with time, enduring like the ancient runes and hieroglyphs that someone somewhere might learn to read and then judge by what is written. That might be a lesson all social media users should learn.
With an attribute of a deity, you are everywhere now and hence through your words. So, I have one wish for you: May your written expressions always be godlike.
Put yourself in the deep past of illiterate humanity, in the past before the first rune. Yes, there appear to have been purposely scratched stones from a time long before rune writing, but an enduring writing system is a relatively recent accomplishment of our species. If some hundred billion of us have inhabited the planet since our origin, imagine how many were illiterate. Many. Most. Almost all.
Of course, if we wanted, we could count cave paintings as a form of stationary writing, but in those in situ pictographs is where the significant difference lies: Cave walls were stationary stationery; modern writing travels. Mobile writing, mobile forms of communication are our best bet at achieving an earthly omnipresence that transcends time.
Here you are, a reader, and your reading gives the writer a chance to transcend space and time. But there are limitations because you are probably not a reader of all scripts. And that means that someone writing in “letters” you don’t know can’t be with you at this moment and vice versa. But for anyone who understands the symbols of your language, you are, even in your absence, present in your writing. In loco, “in place,” means any place where you send a letter or text, any place where someone reads what you have written.
I bring this up because I have a little familiarity with Greek letters, but no familiarity with Telegu letters. ఠిస్ ఐస్ అం ఎక్సమ్ప్లె అఫ్ వాట్ ఐ మీన్. I believe I wrote “This is an example of what I mean,” but I don’t really know the syntax, so the words might be out of place. Telugu would make sense to millions who write such script, but nothing to those who don’t. To me, for example, who has a pen pal in southeastern India, that script seemed at first glance to be writing from Lord of the Rings or some SciFi film’s alien spaceship: Fictional scribblings. I could admire the free-flowing graceful lines in the script, but only looked on with wonder. Without a translation, both time and place controlled the message.
Our modern hubris amazes me, especially when it comes to modern stationary stationery. Consider art, for example, as a form of modern cave writing. If you go to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., you’ll find a broad range of art, some highly representational; others, not so much. Some, even puzzlingly bizarre, and others, so minimalist that one wonders whether or not they were the products of finger-painting infants or the person who manufactured the canvas rather than a painter. Thus, when I see someone sitting and staring at a large canvas with shapeless splashes of color, I wonder whether or not the artist has really transcended space and time. Regardless of what the people in-the-know say they know, there’s a spectacular difference between a simple sentence sent through the mail or over the Internet and non-representational art hanging on a museum wall. The writer of a simple sentence can be present in his or her absence as long as the language is clear and the script legible. Meaning crosses those two barriers of time and space. But non-representational art is a toss-up. It can mean what I want it to mean because there is no clear meaning inherent in the art, regardless of what the art critics say. Pollock’s art might be a set of fractals upon close examination, but so what? Robert Ryman’s “Untitled” has all the traveling meaning of a cement sidewalk, which, by the way, it seems to represent. Rothko’s rectangles of different color could be hung upside down or sideways. In other words, the artist isn’t as present as the critics say. The art isn’t the artist “in loco” as long as the viewer is free to impose any meaning.
Teach the young that they have the ability to be anywhere in the present and everywhere in the future by virtue of what they write. Teach the young that what they say becomes who they are in their absence. Teach them that what they write becomes mobile stationery that might not disappear with time, enduring like the ancient runes and hieroglyphs that someone somewhere might learn to read and then judge by what is written. That might be a lesson all social media users should learn.
With an attribute of a deity, you are everywhere now and hence through your words. So, I have one wish for you: May your written expressions always be godlike.
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