Although I consider relevant the theme of this image-comparative, I’m also aware I’m adumbrating and consequently misleading. If I knew more about the thematic of this image and blogpost, I might even be labeled as propagandistic. However, since I think of myself as mostly ignorant, I’m at worst misleading but not propagandistic.
I actually believe – at the moment – the difference as I’ve illustrated it, namely ‘square’ vs. ‘a square’ is related to differences between Biblical and secular language.
Within, contemporary language ‘a-‘ can be a negating prefix or an indefinite article. Thus, the Biblically found Amen (A-men) may mean some kind of negating of men. This seems at least rationally if not reasonably derived. If one recognizes the Divine supra-human associated with God and His being not of men then ‘Amen’, while ostensibly salutatory, may be interpreted as a negating of ‘man/men’ thus denoting Divine. And of course God is Biblically rather than secularly derived, thus the importance of the Biblical/secular distinction.
Back to the image. If the prefix ‘a-‘ is negating – as in Amen meaning not of Men and thus, possibly, of God – then ‘a square’, while technically not a prefix, may mean ‘not square’. Thus, ‘a square’ might conjure circle, triangle, rhombus, or any non-square geometry, including the haphazard square I’ve drawn. The synonymous-like alternatives of such a negation are so numerous – to include not only square , triangle, etc but so too ‘dog, ‘spoon’, ‘spaceship’, etc. – anything at all might be relevant as ‘a square’, i.e no square or not square. Worse, it may follow logically, the only ‘square’ one can find will, in fact, be ‘a circle’, ‘a rhombus’, ‘a spaceship’, etc. Where does the make-it-up-as-we-go-along end and the rootedness begin?
Here is another example along the same lines. Suppose, I see you at some distance and wave. The wave is in the form of ‘a hand’ and is meant as ‘hello’. A palm is facing you with five fingers relaxed but outstretched. Is such ‘a hand’ communicating ‘hello’? May such ‘a hand’ be communicating ‘not hand’? If ‘not hand’ the meaning of such a wave might be a converse of hand such as. . . well, foot or feet . . . or head . . . or backside or anything except ‘hello’. The convolutedness seems endless.
I’m aware this linguistic in conjunction with Old and New World Orders is not the common concern of New World-Old World dichotomies which seem class and economic concerns. I can only explicate that, for myself, language is a facet of an otherwise colloquial New World-Old World Orders meme. I can’t say the Old World Order sense of language is the, in fact, original or archetypical language with the New World Order being the subsequent development. The opposite may be the case. Maybe the negating ‘a’ was archetypical and the indefinite article ‘a’ the development. I don’t know. In either case a kind of progress is implied, much the same way Isaac Newton’s calculus is thought a progress within math. However, any such progress seems peculiarly functional. Such valued functionallity is far from fact, let alone truth or Divine.
Even worse, functionality itself is discrete entity whence other entities, (aesthetics, arts, even moods) are – at times and consequent of functional demands – precluded. In fact, functionality can be thought as simply foundational with no higher inspiration. If so elevating functionality can be said to usurp more mutual or inspiring concerns; A case of subject orientation surpassed by object orientation. Another way of expressing it may be as historical materialism usurping the Renaissance or usurping the Enlightenment or usurping both.
Such patterning as I’ve tried to express may speak to my peculiarities or lacks. I don’t know. I know I myself, in my formative years, adopted the ‘a’ as indefinite article as being the normative. However, the last decade or 2 seems to have exposed the alternative sense not only of ‘a’ as negation, a sort of micro-concern, but also an indeterminateness of language itself, a sort of macro-concern.
Mind Askew 