I've been questioning what direction my life has been going in lately. Or, more accurately, i've been questioning how i'm living my life. This came about due to the myriad of things that are going on in my life, this MindBodyGreen site, much music i'm listening to at the minute (George Harrison, John Lennon and many more. Not gonna give you an exhaustive list, that'd steal too much focus and sap the snappiness from this post which, if i'm totally honest, is already struggling to be appealing) and a few other things.
To cut to the chase, i'm busy trying to be a better person. I'm working on my self-centredness because i believe many of the world's problems stem from too much ego in some form or other. Won't go into the whole shebang, suffice to say that it creeps into politics and more (governments that put money before principles ruin lives and teach some citizens that wealth is more important than values and ethics). Sure some of it's human nature, but human endeavour is more powerful than that. My way of trying to improve this situation (in my life, at least) is to save the image in the above link as my desktop and also use a bit of linguistic relativism to help me too.
A bit of linguistic relativism, you say? Whaddaya mean by that? Well, i'll tell you what i mean by that. You may have noticed that i'm not capitalizing the 'i's in this post. The idea is that a capital 'i' represents a cult of self-importance. A self-honorific if you like, conveying an arbitrary importance of the speaker. I don't believe it's that common in world languages actually (Spanish 'yo' doesn't use it, neither does French 'je'. After that i'm stumped). I know there are many Asian languages that have a plethora of honorifics for others and it would be easy to speculate that members of that speech community behave better towards each other. Only speculate, you understand.
I'm thinking that by de-capitalizing the 'i', i'll encourage a sense of humility within myself. Hey, it's worth a go. I'll not do it in academic essays or whatever... So far it seems groovy. Obviously i'm not doing it at the start of sentences either - i'm not anti-grammar, just pro-experimentation.
Well, what do you think? Have i lost more of the plot or am i onto something? Comment maybe?
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Ha, i recently did this in a poem, the insignificant i of little importance. However, like you I have been doing some soul searching and realize that maybe i should be more forthright as this little i needs to be thought more of and be less insignificant in the i's of others. So, i am beginning to think i should start using capital i in bold in a larger font than the rest of the text to make myself heard and get a little respect. Jacx
ReplyDeleteGood idea, i think it sounds good.
DeleteI hope it works too, but i gotta say i don't think you're insignificant! You've been very helpful and inspirational, whether in a personal capacity or around Edge Hill (especially Question Mark!).
Peace and love,
M
I have tried a similar experiment before, replacing "i" with "one"… "one would think" rather than "i think" because I hated that much of what was written involved too much "I." In the end, I got tired of it and just continued using "I" as I always had. I do agree with you that too many of the world's problems stem from big egos. I like your proactive step to squash the ego. It shows gumption.
ReplyDeleteAh that's cool, thanks for that! It remains to be seen whether i get tired of the 'i' thing, so far it feels pretty natural. Did it feel that way when you started?
DeleteCheers for the comment! :D