Subject: [lojban] Re: Specific example of Sapir-Whorf in English OR How Lojban made me think more clearly

From: Theodore Reed <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 15:51:01 -0800

On Sat, 30 Nov 2002 10:33:34 -0500
"Avital Oliver" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> "There's nothing wrong with homosexuals, it just isn't supposed to
> be".
> 
> I assuming "supposed" == "meant" (you shall soon see why I prefer to
> explain using the word "meant"). Sentences similar to these are heard
> quite often by me, and they make me furious. What does "meant to be"
> mean?

I dunno, I'd have thought right away "meant by what?" but then I am a
curious atheist. It reminds me of a passage from Atlas Shrugged:

"Your victims took the blame and struggled on, with your curses as
reward for their martyrdom? While you went on crying that your code was
noble, but human nature was not good enough to practice it. And no one
rose to ask the question: Good? By what standard?"

It's not a terribly shocking question, but you still don't see a lot a
people asking it. So I guess the big thing is, by making it easier to
notice that something is missing from a sentence, does that make it
easier for the kind of people who wouldn't ask the question to begin
with to realize that there is a question to be asked?

.i xamgu fi ma

-- 
Theodore Reed (rizen/bancus) -==- http://www.surreality.us/
~OpenPGP Signed/Encrypted Mail Preferred; Finger me for my public key!~

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second,
it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
-- Arthur Schopenhauer