A Few Matters on My Brain

 

Dine in? Entree at the zombie cafe

Our school textbooks generally reinforce a foolish materialism and hedonism. This goes on in the background, in their assumptions, as much as explicitly. One wonders if the indoctrination is intentional, or if the authors just don’t themselves know any better.

A text I’m currently using to tutor high school students includes in passing the example sentence

“Before we continue the discussion that was interrupted yesterday, let me begin by explaining that pain is something that is felt in your brain.”

Pain is something felt in your arm or other body part, or, more accurately, in your mind. One does not have pain receptors in the brain. 

The problem is, of course, the confusion of the brain, a lump of meat, with the mind or spirit.

“On hearing the word vacation, most people react positively.”

Webster’s 1913 dictionary, or the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), offer for “positive” a variety of meanings: definite, legislated, existing in reality, greater than zero, optimistic, and so forth. For this reason, the term should be avoided. It is ambiguous. But even then, no traditional meaning of “positive” applies here. 

Why this now widespread misuse of the term? 

My sense is that it is an effort to obscure or erase the distinction between “desired” and “good.” Either is vaguely glossed with the term “positive.” Confusing moral issues; seeking to deny morality.

We all just do what we want… and that is good.

I’m not positive that is right.