Clever Quote & a little post

"No one ever spoke so as to be understood by everyone on every point"
- St Augustine

My whole life revolves around language. I study the how and why we say the things we say. I study how computers and language interact. I study meaning and how the meaning of a word or phrase grows and changes over time. All this study makes me hyper-aware of my own language, my own grammar, prosody and innuendo. I recently came across the above quote and felt it summarized some of my own thoughts very well. I've been thinking about the massive amounts of contention in the world today and how so much attention is applied to what people say and how other people interpret it. So often vicious degrading things are said so flippantly we feel that they are humorous or we attack people for unintended innuendo. So often we don't have the patience to let others explain their point of view, or even entertain the possibility that we ourselves might need to change the way that we think. Some things are not right or wrong, they just are. 'nuff said