Rich - excellent article ! Lots to digest here. I was just commenting to my husband over lunch that I have never come across anything from C.S. Lewis where I did not feel that it was either beautiful, striking, or true.
You can help spread the word by sharing the contest with friends or restacking:) The rewards are about as counter-cultural as it gets: 1oz. .999 silver coins!
"The answer wasn’t to play act as if nothing had happened in the last thousand years. It wasn’t to try to re-create the environment that led to the original Golden Age of Narnia. The answer was to wield again the long unused weapons and gifts found in the ancient treasure chamber beneath the ruins, and to be faithful to Aslan, even if no one else believed in him." These few sentences paired well with my morning coffee.
A truly inspirational essay here Mr. Tuttle. And thanks for the practical suggestions. The bit about language is well timed for me personally. I was talking to my wife about the nonsense of these new words we keep hearing. At some point my wife used the term "pregnant people" as a joke. I gave her my sharpest eyes and said... "that is a phrase I will NEVER be using. People don't get pregnant. Women do.."
All this to say, thanks for practical ways to refute The Machine in our everyday lives.
I find myself using the newspeak words in a jocular fashion as well and have to remind myself that even using them jokingly, I need to make sure they aren't becoming settled and familiar.
I remember early on during Covidtide when I first heard the phrase "Social Distancing". It initially hit me as extremely Orwellian and almost satirical, but over time it massaged its way into everyone's speech, including my own and all of the awkwardness I first felt in hearing it had faded away and it became a commonplace term. That was an eye-opening lesson for me to see how fast an engineered term, specifically one meant to control our behavior, had so easily infiltrated our every day speech.
Rich - excellent article ! Lots to digest here. I was just commenting to my husband over lunch that I have never come across anything from C.S. Lewis where I did not feel that it was either beautiful, striking, or true.
An additional thought on "Fight to retain or re-establish meanings in your own speech, written or spoken". I just launched a short story contest for "Young Writers Against the Machine" which mirrors the practical suggestions you offer. https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/raising-writers-against-the-machine
Fantastic!
You can help spread the word by sharing the contest with friends or restacking:) The rewards are about as counter-cultural as it gets: 1oz. .999 silver coins!
"The answer wasn’t to play act as if nothing had happened in the last thousand years. It wasn’t to try to re-create the environment that led to the original Golden Age of Narnia. The answer was to wield again the long unused weapons and gifts found in the ancient treasure chamber beneath the ruins, and to be faithful to Aslan, even if no one else believed in him." These few sentences paired well with my morning coffee.
A truly inspirational essay here Mr. Tuttle. And thanks for the practical suggestions. The bit about language is well timed for me personally. I was talking to my wife about the nonsense of these new words we keep hearing. At some point my wife used the term "pregnant people" as a joke. I gave her my sharpest eyes and said... "that is a phrase I will NEVER be using. People don't get pregnant. Women do.."
All this to say, thanks for practical ways to refute The Machine in our everyday lives.
Absolutely.
I find myself using the newspeak words in a jocular fashion as well and have to remind myself that even using them jokingly, I need to make sure they aren't becoming settled and familiar.
I remember early on during Covidtide when I first heard the phrase "Social Distancing". It initially hit me as extremely Orwellian and almost satirical, but over time it massaged its way into everyone's speech, including my own and all of the awkwardness I first felt in hearing it had faded away and it became a commonplace term. That was an eye-opening lesson for me to see how fast an engineered term, specifically one meant to control our behavior, had so easily infiltrated our every day speech.
A wise caution, indeed.
Excellent!