Kinds of Talk

Kinds of Talk

The kinds of talking that EngMajors
talk about is incommensurately different
from the kinds of talking that BioMajors
or Physics, Social Scientists & Psych
Majors talk about, or Administrators
and Institutional Infra-Structuralists:
the ways & ways they talk. Diversity.

Listen for the difference.
It makes a difference
that makes a difference.

Compare VOICE.

Voice is all people in writing &
MFA programs will declare
across the country..
Content’s galore.

Hear for your self.

EngMajors talk about
people who
talk this
way:

Service Project

Just as our Fathers
invented new ways
of service—each a
new service according
his own character:
one—the service of love
two—of stern justice
a third—of beauty,
so each one of us
in his own way should
devise something new
in the light of the
teaching of service,
and do what has not
yet been done.

Martin Buber, “The Ring of Service,”

Work Program (local food)

Reproached by a rich
Brahman Farmer for
begging alms as an idler,
Buddha replied that he
was engaged in even more
important forms of tillage
than that of the soil.

“Faith” is the seed
“Penance,” the rain
“Understanding”—my yoke and plough
“Modesty,” like the pole of the plough
“Thoughtfulness”: my ploughshare and goad.
“Exertion”—my beast of burden.

As a result of this spiritual
husbandry, he achieves the
fruit of immortality, everything
indeed hinging upon the quality
of one’s working, whether one
sets out to be a carpenter, king,
or saint or hedge fund manipulator.

Academics.

“It is only by remaining collected,
and refusing to lend himself to the
point of view of the practical man
that the critic can do the practical
man any service; and it is only by
the greatest sincerity in pursuing
his own course, and by at last
convincing even the practical man
of his sincerity, that he can escape
misunderstandings which perpetually
threaten him.
Matthew Arnold “Function of Criticism.”

“Where there is much desire to learn, there
of necessity will be much arguing, much
writing, many opinions; for opinion in
but knowledge in the making.

Under these fantastic terrors of sect
and schism—fear of dissent, differences
in viewpoint: we wrong the earnest
and zealous thirst after knowledge
and understanding which God hath
stirred up in this city.” Milton, “Areopagitica.”

Liberal Art kind of talk as opposed to (not
to be conflated, collapsed, confused with)
liberal arts.

Sure: any one can boil IT down
to claims, objections, &
assessment—collapse
the differences &
sum IT up in
a course:

Integrating the Triad
call it.



Make it all one: building a
stairway to paradise, another
way of talking--the more
the merrier.