Words witha Life of their Own

[RWStanding]

Words with a life of their own
Where something is valued ethically, a word or term will often be coined to embrace that perceived virtue or vice. Naturally the word is then defined as carefully as possible, as for legal purposes as well as normal discourse. At that point the new word, or use of a word, assumes a life of its own and the original purpose may expand beyond recognition. If we begin with the word ‘race’ this is nothing more than physical attributes that are inherited, and which have caused humanity to diversify. That diversification almost certainly brings with it a diversification in culture. That cultural diversification brings with it a probable diversification in ethics. Self evidently it is diversity of ethics that is or moral concern and not what preceded it. Indeed, there may be a shared ethical view that the cultural diversification is an egalitarian merit. This last may then be reversed and the merit identified directly with the race and culture, so that one race is perceived as of inherent or inherited, superior ethical merit to other races. Or so identified such that both culture and ethics have the same egalitarian merit, and there is no superior ethic. Both of those alternatives have implications for cultural genocide or cleansing.
It is extremely dangerous to define and inflate ‘racism’ beyond what may be considered its root. A belief that ethical superiority or inferiority is inherited. The third class of society, that of responsible altruism, must resist employing this belief even were it to have some residual validity. Cultural and racial diversity may be embraced pragmatically, on a global basis. Diversification nation or place to place, is a pragmatic compromise. Altruist society employs values not absolute rules.

[TheVisionofEr]

Words with a life of their own

I agree generally though your example is wrong. Seen correctly, however, it serves to show the investment of will or want in words under the changing light of general usage.

Race is a translation of the Latin genus or sometimes of species. Which tended more towards the meaning learned-culture. For example, Pliny described the destruction of the "race [genus] of Pompeii" wherein his father was killed by the volcano in the year 79. When one speaks "Well of the Athenians to the Athenians" (sings to the choir) one is praising the race of a specific genus of the Hellenes found at Athens. The reason being that in former times all the weight was on differentiating man from animal; and correspondingly the particular way human education stamped human beings with their character and raised them towards the gods or the moral good. Even though people knew of genetics in the loose empirical sense of family resemblance this was not given much weight in intellectual life (though it played a political role) since it was not linked to a possible ascent into greater fitness in an Evolutionary climb to perfection or maximum complexity.

The alternative title of Darwin's book, still remembering the old character, is: "the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life". Whereby he preserves the link to Plato known to all educated people before his time through the taxonomic usage started by Aristotle. If one translates Darwin's title "On the Origin of Species..." into Greek one gets something like Genesis ton Eidon and translating back this says: the Origin of the Ideas. More plainly then, one can see that the races are kinds of things (or phenomena), or, in the interpretaion of the Greeks themselves, patterns which correspond to the genius of the human intelligence.

[Sculptor]

Words with a life of their own
Where something is valued ethically, a word or term will often be coined to embrace that perceived virtue or vice. Naturally the word is then defined as carefully as possible, as for legal purposes as well as normal discourse. At that point the new word, or use of a word, assumes a life of its own and the original purpose may expand beyond recognition. If we begin with the word ‘race’ this is nothing more than physical attributes that are inherited, and which have caused humanity to diversify. That diversification almost certainly brings with it a diversification in culture. That cultural diversification brings with it a probable diversification in ethics. Self evidently it is diversity of ethics that is or moral concern and not what preceded it. Indeed, there may be a shared ethical view that the cultural diversification is an egalitarian merit. This last may then be reversed and the merit identified directly with the race and culture, so that one race is perceived as of inherent or inherited, superior ethical merit to other races. Or so identified such that both culture and ethics have the same egalitarian merit, and there is no superior ethic. Both of those alternatives have implications for cultural genocide or cleansing.
It is extremely dangerous to define and inflate ‘racism’ beyond what may be considered its root. A belief that ethical superiority or inferiority is inherited. The third class of society, that of responsible altruism, must resist employing this belief even were it to have some residual validity. Cultural and racial diversity may be embraced pragmatically, on a global basis. Diversification nation or place to place, is a pragmatic compromise. Altruist society employs values not absolute rules.

You have an odd idea about race.
We do not have an example of a word having a life of its own; we have an example of one person, yourself, who has an idiosyncratic notion of what race could mean.

[TheVisionofEr]

"You have an odd idea about race."

Or, maybe you, dear reader, know precious little about history and how people thought in the past.

[Sculptor]

Words with a life of their own

I agree generally though your example is wrong. Seen correctly, however, it serves to show the investment of will or want in words under the changing light of general usage.

Race is a translation of the Latin genus or sometimes of species. Which tended more towards the meaning learned-culture. For example, Pliny described the destruction of the "race [genus] of Pompeii" wherein his father was killed by the volcano in the year 79. When one speaks "Well of the Athenians to the Athenians" (sings to the choir) one is praising the race of a specific genus of the Hellenes found at Athens. The reason being that in former times all the weight was on differentiating man from animal; and correspondingly the particular way human education stamped human beings with their character and raised them towards the gods or the moral good. Even though people knew of genetics in the loose empirical sense of family resemblance this was not given much weight in intellectual life (though it played a political role) since it was not linked to a possible ascent into greater fitness in an Evolutionary climb to perfection or maximum complexity.

The alternative title of Darwin's book, still remembering the old character, is: "the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life". Whereby he preserves the link to Plato known to all educated people before his time through the taxonomic usage started by Aristotle. If one translates Darwin's title "On the Origin of Species..." into Greek one gets something like Genesis ton Eidon and translating back this says: the Origin of the Ideas. More plainly then, one can see that the races are kinds of things (or phenomena), or, in the interpretaion of the Greeks themselves, patterns which correspond to the genius of the human intelligence.

The word "race" is modern, going back to around 1520 borrowed from Italian. Race in English meant running. You are conflating what Pliny said with another word entirely. Genus is not the same as race.

[Sculptor]

"You have an odd idea about race."

Or, maybe you, dear reader, know precious little about history and how people thought in the past.

I'll keep my BA in Ancient History and Archeaology and my Masters in Intellectual History and you can keep your back-of-a-cereal packet idea about race.

[TheVisionofEr]

I'll keep my BA in Ancient History

Dear Sir,

Your degree has been canceled and retrospectively replaced with an enrollment in kindergarten. The immense difficulties of history and the study of human thought forbid the acceptance of intolerably superficial memorization of bunk and false compendiums conforming to the present climate of opinion.

dixi

[Impenitent]

bounce

-Imp

[TheVisionofEr]

It is extremely dangerous to define and inflate ‘racism’ beyond what may be considered its root. A belief that ethical superiority or inferiority is inherited. The third class of society, that of responsible altruism, must resist employing this belief even were it to have some residual validity. Cultural and racial diversity may be embraced pragmatically, on a global basis. Diversification nation or place to place, is a pragmatic compromise. Altruist society employs values not absolute rules.

I would agree, although, I would say it is made clearer when we note the conflict concerning the social meaning and the biological meaning of race (sometimes given in the form of ethnicity & race). And that implied in the particular form of this division is a more basic ground where the way they are distinguished is a place of contest.

Because, the mere denial of the physical meaning is tantamount to a form of brutal mind control.