From yami@xxxxxxxxx.xxxx Fri Feb 19 16:32:16 1999 X-Digest-Num: 66 Message-ID: <44114.66.294.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 19:32:16 -0500 From: "Steven D. Arnold" Well, one of my looooong-term projects is a philosophical novel with three > characters (all of whom are basically aspects of myself). One is a philosophy > lecturer who is having problems expressing her own philosophy, one's an > English teacher with a hang-up about modal verbs (c.f. General Semantics) and > one's a tantric yogini looking for a culturally neutral mysticism. Sounds like just the cast to get involved in an interesting conversation! > They meet up at a course in guess which language? I'm not doing any work on > it at the moment, partly because I hardly have enough time to keep up with my > masses of e-mail, let alone write a novel, and partly because I doubt if > anyone outside this list would want to read it. That's part of the point, I think. If you have something interesting to say, I think all human beings would be interested. If you start it out in Lojban, you learn Lojban better, you use a language more conducive to clear expression, and you generate interest in Lojban. > {.iecai} Some time back I considered rewriting my ongoing theory of > everything in Lojban, but found that so much of what I'd written was taken up > with redefining concepts that are inadequatley expressed in English that there > wouldn't be much left! {pe'i} you really have to start from scratch. Which is part of the beauty of it, neh? You have to totally rethink all the ideas that were so comfortable in English. It helps point out unclear thinking and helps replace it with clarity... >> Also, I'd like to write some Lojban poetry, and some Lojban myths -- >> perhaps related to a long-dead tribe that once spoke Lojban. >> > > {zo'o} Why did they die out? Invasion by Loglanders? I think there should be some kind of grand battle, maybe magical and involving various old gods and goddesses.... I like the way the Greek myths are written, where one seed is drawn out to create a universe of myth. For example, the golden apple "To the prettiest one" thrown into the party of gods by Eris caused the confrontation with Paris, which led to the Trojan war, which led to the Iliad and the Odyssey, which led to stories about kings and cities and..... Another favorite set of stories is the 1001 Nights..... Yes, a cataclysmic war of kensa je terji...... > Go for it - synaesthesia rules! I think I will...I'll start by making an "old-fashioned" script for Lojban, nothing anyone would use today, but the way Lojban-speakers wrote way back when. ;) >> Similarly, Klingon is big because it has a fascinating culture to go with >> it. >> > > {do drani .iku'ibo} Lojban is intended to be culturally neutral, so we've got > a problem there! Hmm, it seems to me that if Lojban succeeds, it will inevitably develop a culture. The people that speak it will create that culture. I could be wrong, but I'd be surprised. > Yes, but first we need a Lojban Laozi! {zo'o} and remember what the old boy > said: > > {le cusku na'e djuno .i le djuno na'e cusku} *grin* Said by the very person who wrote the Tao te Ching! Of course, in Taoism, two opposite things might both be true at the same time....a concept which /may/ be difficult to express in Lojban! (Comments?) steve