Pragmatism

In the wake of completing the revised and whole first chapter of 'Wordspace', it's hard to piece together a regular postl. That chapter might even be a good start to an unsellable novella, which is a fascinating thought. Could that be idiotic but moderated optimism dusting itself off, after a long holiday? Let's do some old words. Obscure words are the 'go to activity' here, when exhaustion has set in.

Looking through the Phrontistery once gain, I stumbled over many words that didn't exactly mean what I thought they meant, and many that exemplified just how much sense of meaning we've drifted away from over time. For example, I was under the impression that 'pragmatism' had a meaning similar to 'practical performing of activities', as I suspect most people do. Actually, it's slightly more complex. One definition of pragmatism is given by

pragmatism - doctrine emphasizing practical value of philosophy,

and you can also find others, such as

pragmatism - the doctrine that practical consequences are the criteria of knowledge and meaning and value,

pragmatism - the attribute of accepting the facts of life and favoring practicality and literal truth.

They all mention practicality, but they also refer to doctrine and philosophy. In effect, pragmatism is a version of 'applied philosophy', or perhaps 'philosophy based on events', which is a turn toward actually considering the ends as being more important than the means? Is that right? Pragmatism could literally be argued as the opposite stance to idealism, which is probably very obvious to those more educated than myself. Yes, of course pragmatism is the opposite of idealism, and now I recall that being clear in the past, as a consequence of various readings. It's all too easy to get dragged down to the pragmatic base level of behaviour, and lose track of the reasons why ideals are important to begin with. The ends are not more important than the means. I should know this, having not gone the pragmatic route on many many occasions. Or so you are led to believe...

In rare word dredging, you might also want to check out 'palinola':

palinola: compulsive repetition of an act until it is perfect.

Yes, the Quirky Muffin is a vicious cycle of palinola. What else is there to do, when not working? Oh, you're right. I could prepare for Miami, get down to serious Spanish and Greek learning, recruit some students, wait nervously for the result of the Poland grant proposal, do some Mathematics, or even write Chapter 2 of 'Wordspace'. The palinola must be broken...

O.