truth

[Jonathan Lighter]

"If it feels good, believe it."

I bet I could get elected on that platform.



JL





On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 6:49 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: truth
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 4:13 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > Blithely used to mean "deeply-held opinion; conviction proclaimed to be
> > true."
> >
> > Very postmodern, though it bears a superficial resemblance to OED 3b
> > (obsolete). Otherwise, not defined in OED.
> >
> > I just heard a learned person explain that "Before deconstruction there
> was
> > just one truth, but now there are multiple truths."
> >
> > You know, "what's true for you isn't necessarily true for me, and vice
> > ******* versa."
> >
> > That sort of statement, often uttered by people who've never heard of
> > poststructuralism seems to me to be a warping of the unexceptionable
> >
> > "What's true of me may not be true of you, and vice ****** versa."  In
> > other words, I prefer hedgehogs, you prefer goldfish. No prob. Just get
> the
> > prepositions right.
> >
> > Cf. my past, sometimes fiercely disputed, exx. of "fact" = 'idea' and
> > "novel" = 'book of narrative prose.'
> >
>
> Reminds me of the claim that Goebbels once spoke to the effect that a lie
> becomes the truth, once that it's been told enough times. And then there
> are the claims of for-profit schools that all you need in life is a skill,
> so why bother with boring lectures that you don't need and whose only
> purpose is education, not job-training?
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org