Adjectives, Adverbs

The Deficiencies of a Following of Agreeableness

As an analytical language with a linguistic propensity for nouns that in many other languages might have multiple variants for what English combines into one noun, descriptive words are of the essence in English, “love”? “angel” “devil”? “spirit”?  Examples abound as well in our limited use of common adjectives that are essentially void of most meaning, “happy”? “sad”? “funny?” Or overused words that of themselves are often void of much meaning, “amazing”? “nice”? “bad”?.  

Of course English does have a lot more capacity for descriptive meaning that they are often used.  We commonly refer to dark as being the absence of light.  But to what degree?  In Samoan, dark can be expressed as an adjective by any of the following words that all a description of a degree of darkness: faavaeluatai, solo'ātoa, lanu moaga, fagu green, ua leai se ave, ua leai se malamalama, leo, loloto, pito mamao, matautia, palapala, inosia; or similarly as a noun by using uliuli, lanu uliuli, maualalo e uiga, faanoanoa, faʻaninimo, tauaso, pupula, pōuliuli, matafi, faʻanenefu, fa'anoanoa, le fiafia, mafatia, pagatia.  

But can we use other words than just saying “at night it is dark” in English to accomplish something similar? How about “darkish” “dusk” “gloomy” “lightless” “unlit” “darkling” “pitch” “tenebrous” “stygian” “caligious” “rayless”, “shady” “twilit” “crepuscular” “shady” “shadowless” “tenebrific” “lackluster” “foggy” “gray” “soupy” “shadowless” “befogged” “becloudy” “murky” or “fuliginous”.  All are descriptive of different shades of darkness, and while I bethought of these words over the last twenty minutes or so (I could have looked at a thesaurus but wanted to see how many I could come up with on my own and it’s nowhere near the 149 that Miriam Webster says exist.)  But I’m very guilty myself of not trying to explain the kind of darkness that I might be referring to.  

But my love affair with adverbs and adjectives is based on the premise of being able to use more common words and adjectifying or adverbilizing them peculiarly to specify what I am attempting to say.  There is little sense in saying it is a tenebrific night because most people have no idea what that might mean, and a gray night could be expressive of a heavenly shaded clouding over a moon, most might night think gray is a shade of darkness.  I stick often to common words, and try to throw in a couple of uncommon words and create adjectives and adverbs from nouns or verbs, or other adjectives or adverbs and add new uncommon endings.  I have a sort of poetic “ joycean love” affair with the way I use my words to my express what I want to say.  I also have a tendency to use phrases alliteratively to build crescendo, and generally I try to use different words or phrases in each article to accomplish that purpose.  

But the most necessary purpose for me in to attempt to use past experiences, historical or scientific information, and build to a conclusion that will create an emotional response in the reader.  I think that is whyat everyone here on substack attempts to do, and I’m quite sure they are all better writers at conveying their meaning.  Ms. Joyce Vance does that by always ending in the phrase, “We’re in this together.”  Other writers have other methods.  One of the problems I find with substack, and probably about most writers off substack, is we speak to our own audience.  Some of my articles fall flat and don’t get read, but in general I like my twenty to thirty readers and haven’t a great deal of inclination to support myself from my column, so see little sense or need to obtain an audience of thousands.  If I reached that many I would see no point in continuing.  

But my failure, what I have always seen to be my failure, is that my audience does not seem to include the choir who might not already favor, to some extent, what my position on the issues are.  I want to reach and communicate intelligently with those who believe that, in general I am not of their philosophical bent.  

So who do I mostly read on substack?  Writers whom I generally tend  to agree with.  I suppose that might be chalked up to “human nature”.  But my question becomes how do we extend the dialogue beyond to the reaches of some etherious bailiwick to be able to create the non-utopic paradise of a more satisfactory existence of unifying self-expression that melds into a more harmonious relationship with each other?  How do communicate with those we don’t communicate with?  How do mixed-martial arts fighters who have become senators not physically challenge witness?  Where is the meeting hall for those who want to conjoin ideologies and welcome a dialogue with the disagreeable (those who find me anamethic to their own perspective)?

It is not that I am seeking trolls, I am seeking dialogue to bring those who disagree so that we might find common ground.  

I might try to blame it on the times but I can’t. Socrates wandered around Athens, but as far as I can tell none of his conversations led to the “i-see-the-light” moment.  Instead they put him to death.  But why not? It seems he spent a great deal of his conversation trying to make fools of his opponents and they probably thought he was “corrupting the youth” by making the other philosophers seem  less appealing to the eyes of the youth. Or maybe they just tired of Socrates’ trolling them.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer also embarked upon an effort to corrupt the German youth against the un-christianity of Hitler’s excrationative vermination of the normalcy of  the amalgamation of society. 

But by never finding an audience of dissenters how do we find our common affirmations of consensualness?  And neither Donald Trump, or Nick Fuentes, or Ye will soon be invited to my dinner party.