On not caring

[Dhammanando]

Last I checked, Lear, McCartney, the OED, and the others that you quote are not some kind of role models for goodwill or good faith.

The writers and Oxford lexicographers were cited by me to illustrate English usage, not to serve as exemplars of any particular moral excellence. That being so, the extent to which they evince goodwill and good faith is quite beside the point.

[binocular]

The writers and Oxford lexicographers were cited by me to illustrate English usage, not to serve as exemplars of any particular moral excellence. That being so, the extent to which they evince goodwill and good faith is quite beside the point.

Power makes the world go round!

[Dhammanando]

The writers and Oxford lexicographers were cited by me ...

On account of their hard-earned authority, not their power.

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Murray.jpg (78.42 KiB) Viewed 2758 times

If ever a lexicographer merited the adjective iconic, it must surely be James Augustus Henry Murray, the first Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary; although what he would have thought about the word being applied to him—in a sense which only came into being long after his death—can only be guessed at, though it seems likely that he would disapprove, given his strongly expressed dislike of the public interest shown in him as a person, rather than in his work. The photograph of him in his Scriptorium in Oxford, wearing his John Knox cap and holding a book and a Dictionary quotation slip, is almost certainly the best-known image of any lexicographer. But there is a lot more to this prodigious man.


In fact prodigious is another good word for him, for several reasons. He was certainly something of a prodigy as a child, despite his humble background. Born on 7 February 1837 in the Scottish village of Denholm, near Hawick, the son of a tailor, he reputedly knew his alphabet by the time he was eighteen months old, and was soon showing a precocious interest in other languages, including—at the age of 7—Chinese, in the form of a page of the Bible which he laboriously copied out until he could work out the symbols for such words as God and light. Thanks to his voracious appetite for reading, and what he called ‘a sort of mania for learning languages’, he was already a remarkably well-educated boy by the time his formal schooling ended, at the age of 14, with a knowledge of French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek, and a range of other interests, including botany, geology, and archaeology. After a few years teaching in local schools—he was evidently a born teacher, and was made a headmaster at the age of 21—he moved to London, and took work in a bank. (It was only in 1855, incidentally, that he acquired the full name by which he’s become known: he had been christened plain James Murray, but he adopted two extra initials to stop his correspondence getting mixed up with that of the several other men living in Hawick who shared the name.) He soon began to attend meetings of the London Philological Society, and threw himself into the study of dialect and pronunciation—an interest he had already developed while still in Scotland—and also of the history of English. In 1870 an opening at Mill Hill School, just outside London, enabled him to return to teaching. He began studying for an external London BA degree, which he finished in 1873, the same year as his first big scholarly publication, a study of Scottish dialects which was widely recognized as a pioneering work in its field. Only a year later his linguistic research had earned him his first honorary degree, a doctorate from Edinburgh University: quite an achievement for a self-taught man of 37.

[...]

What qualities enabled him to achieve this remarkable feat? It hardly needs to be said that he brought an extraordinary combination of linguistic abilities to the task: not just a knowledge of many languages, but the kind of sensitivity to fine nuances in English which all lexicographers need, in an exceptionally highly-developed form. He was also knowledgeable in a wide range of other fields. But one of his most striking qualities was his capacity for hard work, which once again deserves to be called prodigious. Throughout his time working on the Dictionary it was by no means unusual for him to put in 80 or 90 hours a week; he was often working in the Scriptorium by 6 a.m., and often did not leave until 11 p.m. Such a punishing regime would have destroyed the health of a weaker man, but Murray continued to work at this intensity into his seventies.

Somehow he managed to combine his work with a vigorous family life; another image of him which deserves to be just as well known as the studious portraits in the Scriptorium is the photograph showing him and his wife surrounded by their eleven children, or the one of him astride a huge ‘sand-monster’ constructed on the beach during one of the family’s holidays in North Wales. He also found time to be an active member of his local community: he was a staunch Congregationalist, regularly preaching at Oxford’s George Street chapel, and an active member of many local societies, and frequently gave lectures about the Dictionary. It is just as well that his conviction of the value of hard work was combined with an iron constitution.

https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/201 ... es-murray/

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Power makes the world go round!

[chownah]

The writers and Oxford lexicographers were cited by me ...

On account of their hard-earned authority, not their power.

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Murray.jpg

..............
......... Throughout his time working on the Dictionary it was by no means unusual for him to put in 80 or 90 hours a week; he was often working in the Scriptorium by 6 a.m., and often did not leave until 11 p.m. Such a punishing regime would have destroyed the health of a weaker man, but Murray continued to work at this intensity into his seventies.

Somehow he managed to combine his work with a vigorous family life; another image of him which deserves to be just as well known as the studious portraits in the Scriptorium is the photograph showing him and his wife surrounded by their eleven children, or the one of him astride a huge ‘sand-monster’ constructed on the beach during one of the family’s holidays in North Wales. He also found time to be an active member of his local community: he was a staunch Congregationalist, regularly preaching at Oxford’s George Street chapel, and an active member of many local societies, and frequently gave lectures about the Dictionary. ............
................

https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/201 ... es-murray/

I guess he must have been a great father and active community member and lecturer between the hours of 11pm and 6am between his sleeping, eating, and bathing activities (he did sleep, eat, and bathe I assume).
chownah

[Dhammanando]

I guess he must have been a great father and active community member and lecturer between the hours of 11pm and 6am between his sleeping, eating, and bathing activities (he did sleep, eat, and bathe I assume).

I don't think that follows. "[He] often did not leave until 11 p.m." doesn't mean that he never left until that time. Also the Scotch Congregationalists were pretty strict sabbatarians in those days, so on Sunday he could have spent the morning preaching and the afternoon playing with sand-monsters.


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Murray and the Monster.jpg (19.05 KiB) Viewed 2744 times

[chownah]

I guess he must have been a great father and active community member and lecturer between the hours of 11pm and 6am between his sleeping, eating, and bathing activities (he did sleep, eat, and bathe I assume).

I don't think that follows. "[He] often did not leave until 11 p.m." doesn't mean that he never left until that time. Also the Scotch Congregationalists were pretty strict sabbatarians in those days, so on Sunday he could have spent the morning preaching and the afternoon playing with sand-monsters.


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Murray and the Monster.jpg

OK. Point well taken. Also, he had one of his scriptoria in the back yard of his family home.....so the children could bother one of the scholars (one Mr. Onion who eventually became an editor of the oed) to come and turn the rope for their skipping.
The scriptorium at their home gave murray the chance to exploit child labor which he did with all eleven of his eleven children working for their papa there.....or so it is reported.
chownah

[Dhammanando]

.....or so it is reported.

It's also reported that the Iranian-American film producer Farhad Safinia plans to make a movie of Prof. Murray's life, with Mel Gibson playing the man himself. It is to be based on Simon Winchester's book, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary.

From the publisher's blurb:

The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary - and literary history. The compilation of the OED began in 1857, it was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W.C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.

https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Madman ... 0060839783

[binocular]

On account of their hard-earned authority, not their power.

What is authority, if not power ... and what is power, if not authority.

In any relationship, the one who cares less is the one who has more power.

My earlier reference to power was to you, the way you write in an absolutist manner about what is and isn't quite beside the point, as if you are the arbiter of Truth. And of course since you're a monk and a have a high position on this forum, I have already lost, I am already wrong, it doesn't matter what I say, your opinion will always prevail, because you have more power than I. And to hell with rationality too, because you're the arbiter of rationality as well.
Hence, power makes the world go round.

[User1249x]

is this thread basically a roundabout criticism of Venerable Dhammanando for supposedly not being "dhammic" enough?

[binocular]

is this thread basically a criticism of Venerable Dhammanando for supposedly not being "dhammic" enough?

Someone has yet to reply to the OP question. Instead, people prefered to pursue tangents.

As I don't know what Dhamma is, I can't criticize anyone for not being in line with the Dhamma.

[User1249x]

is this thread basically a criticism of Venerable Dhammanando for supposedly not being "dhammic" enough?

Someone has yet to reply to the OP question. Instead, people prefered to pursue tangents.

As I don't know what Dhamma is, I can't criticize anyone for not being in line with the Dhamma.

I think that if i was to scrutinize, there is a case to be made for the most optimal reply in that situation being something that is less likely to be perceived as elitist and confrontational, something like "mind that whether you care or not does not invalidate the point that i was making".