[MD] Subject: Re: A Rally Speech

[Woods Woods]

Andre:
Yes but...the Chinese have very strict grammatical rules for what are
allowable combinations. What I was getting at was that most chinese
characters are a combination of pictographs and ideographs. While most
characters are words by themselves they are usually composed of at least two
characters (a simple example: "pirate" is composed of 'sea' and 'thief',
"crisis" is composed of 'danger' and 'opportunity' but is usually understood
as 'dangerous time'.
It really gets very complex but knowing only a few thousand characters can
be used to understand many tens or even hundreds of thousands of words.
The system on mainland China only incorporates approx. 6500 characters!
They used to be written right to left, top to bottom but this changed due to
Western influences ( around the Opium War 1830's ?). So now they are read
left to right.
Again I must stress I am not an expert but I hope it clarifies your
question.



woods:
    This helps.  By the way, if Ron were here he would grab at this moment to discuss 
this topic.  He hasn't been contributing for about 3 or 4 weeks now.  He improved our 
understanding of how western grammar contributes to SOM.  He also tried to 
show how the grammar of eastern languages kept these cultures from 
getting tangled up in SOM.
    I think your right with how the west eroded Chinese values in the Opium War.  I know Bruce Lee, 

a much later historical character, saw how the west had impacted Chinese values 
and he was the first big push of Chinese values across into the west.  Others have followed, such as 
Jet Li and many other events now, Tai Chi, etc...  These events, Opium War, were still in the days 
when the west used the military to force other countries to open up to western capitalism and trade.
    About the characters.  So you mean since a character, "pirate", can mean "sea" 
and "thief", how would they parse out "thief" or "sea", for example, if they are writing or talking 
about the sea (not a pirate, but simply the sea)?
     By the way, I can definitely see how "crisis" is composed of "danger" and "opportunity".  
This goes in step with what I was talking about in the post about morals, degeneration, values, and 
generation.  This is what I was saying about this current economic crisis.  As the degenerate values fall 
apart the dynamic values are present, but the dynamic values are having difficulty latching 
 due to the degenerate values are not allowing these dynamic values to latch.  These degenerate values 
are still trying to hold on and they are pulling many patterns apart as they immorally fail.  In 
this crisis is an opportunity.  All these solutions, but how about application?  
This is a cycle, seasons are cycles, but how cold will winter be this year compared to last year.


woods