IV - Buried Inside

Mandate piled on mandate, verdicts stacked high, dust-covered and time-worn,

signed by solicitors general and bound by library services.

A mounting legacy of heroic solutions and failed actions that can’t be

normalized and interpreted away -used to placate all the lives shamed and

denied.

Custom is the greatest of weavers: devoid of useful memory and locked in fixed

movements.

No small madness confusing symptoms with cause.

A convenience of definition.

Condemnation narrowed to a point.

Better to drill it in.

Benign as a bullet, meanings are inseparable from purposes.

We want to do something, and a definition is a means of doing it.

If we want certain results, than we must use certain definitions.

But no definition has any authority apart from a purpose…

I.A.

Richards, Interpretation in Teaching