Relowering Your Consciousness

RELOWERING YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS
Thursday March 21st, 2024

 

As a conservat-iberal, I have been wrestling with the concept of relowering my conscious­ness.

I have come up with a whimsical example of relowering your consciousness, and I thought I would share it.  It's based on a scenario -- here we go! 

Suppose you are a Latin scholar, and you have discovered that the literal meaning of "to inculcate" is "to use your heel to force some experiential knowledge, or a piece of inform­ation, into your student's brain."  That is because of its etymology: inculcate is from Latin in (= English in) + calx (heel), yielding *calcā-re (to heel), which must have changed to *-culc-ā-re by a certain tendency for AL followed by a consonant to change to UL in Latin, when the AL is no longer in the first syllable of the word.  (For the change of AL to UL, compare English result, from Latin re-sultā-re (to spring back, to rebound) from Latin  re- (back or again) plus saltā-re (to jump)  -- so "to result" meant originally "to ricochet.") -- So inculcate means, etymo­logically, "to kick or stomp some information or knowledge into a student's brain." -- So our use of "inculcate" meaning "teach" is based on an ancient Roman witticism, more or less two thousand years old.

So, after you absorb this etymology, should you, can you, still use the word "inculcate" to describe any kind of teaching?

Sure you can, if you re-lower your consciousness.  Here's how.  Ask yourself, is it ever appropriate -- is it ever right -- for a sergeant to kick a recruit who is lying down?  You might answer, mightn't you, that it is right for a sergeant to kick a recruit if the recruit fell down because of failing to heed a principle of balance or bodily comportment previously taught by the sergeant.

Voilà!  You have relowered your consciousness.  You can now use the verb to inculcate (meaning to teach a behavior or a belief) as if no one had ever explained its etymology to you.

Frank Newton