On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 3:11 PM, John Sundman <j...@wetmachine.com> wrote: > I like B. well enough; she's my sister, after all. But sometimes her way of > speaking really depresses me, because she's not a stupid woman but she is > capable of very shallow thought, and I believe that thinking and speaking in > cliches is both a reason for and a symptom of this.
Large organizations abhor non-uniformity; thinking and speaking in cliches precludes the unpredictability introduced by an individual's emotions, heritage, learning, cultures and all of that unpredictable stuff. Not that different from uniforms, bootcamps and ranks used in armies and prisons to drill out your ego, and give you a new identity as a member of the team. The modern organization that places itself beyond the personal sphere of human society is rather new. A lucid observation point in historical time for me for this phenomenon is when the British introduced the organized police and courts in India surprising many of the locals used to a life more personal. Once it happened that Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869), the famous Urdu poet of the sunsetting Mughal empire was brought up on charges of gambling before a British judge who knew Ghalib perfectly well in social circles but refused to show any sign of recognition in the court room. This infuriated Ghalib more than the charges and the fine which he was ill afforded to pay, and he tells as much in a letter to a friend. In the Mughal and other Indian courts when a previously honorable man was brought up on serious charges, his case would be heard with the respect and decorum it deserved, with full regard to his mental state and place in society. There was an interest in the truth, and not merely in evidence. There's little to tell if better justice was meted out under that system, but an evidence based approach appears fairer to most, and so that's what we have today, consistent with the belief that the appearance of justice is as important as justice. Thinking and speaking in cliches is not therefore an isolated social twitch privy only to the blackberry generation.
