Tuesday 9 August 2022
Mould
Any one could see, that he was simple-minded, slow at working out the twists of thought, accustomed to let his ideas flow into the mould of words, before dealing with them.
R. D. Blackmore - Christowell: a Dartmoor tale (1882)
A useful analogy this – we certainly can be said to let ideas flow into the mould of words. We see examples of it everywhere, particularly on the internet but also in real life. We all do it, but many people are like Blackmore’s character, they seem to be mostly unaware of it.
The obvious value of Blackmore’s mould analogy is how it highlights something real and important – our thoughts do flow into word moulds, our responses are moulded responses. We are that shallow.
A socially approved word, phrase, sentence or even a non-verbal gesture – these are the moulds. We do not have ideas in the traditional sense, our responses flow into existing word moulds, shaping our response into something socially familiar. It works, but there is nothing creative about it.
To my mind this is one reason why creativity is so readily corrupted into tawdry slogans, woke culture, banal sentiment, comic book media, celebrity culture, vacuous art and the ghastly hollowed-out emptiness we call the entertainment industry.
Yet curiously enough it is quite possible and generally quite easy to prevent ideas from flowing automatically into a mould of words. It is enjoyable too, but marginally more difficult to be creative and allow thoughts to mould new words and avoid being moulded by old ones. Only to a limited degree perhaps, but it can be done, creativity is real.
Oddly enough this does suggest that we undervalue creativity. That would be “undervalue” in the sense that we corrupt it and in corrupting creativity we corrupt everything.
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4 comments:
We had to compose poems when I was a schoolboy. One of mine included "joyful jublification". The teacher said that "jublification" wasn't a word. It still rankles.
I think for most of us, unmoulded ideas are impossible. Thinking involves representing something with mental markers, which is why sudden memories are so fleeting and cannot be called back. To "fix" them, we need words, which is why we label things in our minds and attach them to a symbol in the form of a sound or visual representation. This is especially true with ideas which are to be communicated. We either have a wide repertoire of moulds (given to us by extensive reading and conversation, and reflecting on both) or we use the obvious moulds of cliche and accepted opinion.
By using the language, we all work on the moulds which can be used. Great authors and thinkers have a huge impact. Shakespeare et al have had a huge impact on how we feel; Newton and Darwin et al on how we see our world. Poets, said Shelley, are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. The trick is to stop third-rate pillocks working for the government and media from dictating the moulds which are available to us.
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
― George Orwell, 1984
dearieme - our English teacher would definitely have approved of 'joyful jublification'. Very keen on creativity he was. Mr Frankland - I still remember him well.
Sam - the other trick is to promote those great authors and thinkers and understand the pleasure their greatness can bring along with the insights. I'm sure we don't pay enough attention to this pleasure aspect. As a result we don't sufficiently know those third-rate pillocks as third-rate pillocks before they hog the public arena.
DJ - and much of that was not daring to express thoughtcrime even though it could be expressed. Which we now see of course, although it isn't really new.
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