A Couple of Words You Should be Familar With

Some stuff I came across while on walkabout around the Internet.

Postmemory

Describes the relationship that the “generation after” (that would be you guys in your forties and below) bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before-to experiences they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up. But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. Postmemory´s connection to the past is thus actually mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation. To grow up with overwhelming inherited memories, to be dominated by narratives that preceded one´s birth or one´s consciousness, is to risk having one´s own life stories displaced, even evacuated, by our ancestors. It is to be shaped, however indirectly, by traumatic fragments of events that still defy narrative reconstruction and exceed comprehension. These events happened in the past, but their effects continue into the present.

-----Marianne Hirsch was born in Romania after the Second World War and immigrated to the United States as a teenager. She is William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Professor in the Institute or Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University, as well as Vice President of the Modern Language Association of America.

Belief

The single most powerful word in the world is "belief". Everything we do, say and think, hinges upon what we believe. People kill for what they believe in, they die for what they believe in and some even spend most of their time worrying about what other think about them.

To understand what a significant force a simple belief is, contemplate the words of American psychiatrist, William C. Menninger, who described behavioral disorders in the following terms:

"Throughout history, people have used a series of...objects on which to project their insecurity; werewolves, incubi, withches, mental patients, Christians, Jews, Catholics, Negroes and many other innocent victims...This insecurity is a fear...of being conquered by (a) horde that is different in some way...Through any means of...persecution...we maintain our security."

I rest my case.

http://gotoblonde.com/word/