So you think you're self-centred

I have a tendency to write, and think, often about words or situations of egotistic nature, such as hubris. Yet until recently I had never truly known what an ego was and I only found that through the word id.

Your id is the unconscious that craves for gratification and pleasure thus the source of all your impulses. Which then leads into your ego giving preconscious realisation to the id's wants and helping those wants in a way that will benefit the long term and not cause grief to yourself. Finally you have the conscious, or as Freud called it your super-ego. This is where your thoughts lie, your beliefs and the sense of wrong and right. Thus, any guilt you ever feel is created by your own conscious as a mental repercussion of doing something you have judges as being wrong.

So you can see that to be egotistical is to work to realise your id's primal wants without consideration of a moral compass. This would suggest that all the greed and personal gratification people strive for which in turn can cause sadness of others is all due to under developed super-egos, although some may mistake you for being hubris if you where to say 'I have a massive super-ego' even though in fact you are saying quite the opposite.

When you start to think of your brain in this way; id giving the want, the ego the drive and the super-ego the check at the end it can give illumination on why you act as you do. Not that I am suggesting that a lack of super-ego is an excuse to do what you want but it could be a cause.

A helping hand

I have been away for a while not in body but in mind as I have been writing my own book and taken up a musical instrument, breaching new personal horizons. This all in all has lead me back to blogging and in a hubris manner I have been reminded of the word polymath. However, what use is knowledge if you do nothing with it so leading me neatly to the word:

Philanthropist

This means a person engaging in philanthropy; the pursuit of charity with an altruistic humanist touch. It somewhat feels that this word is reserved for those wealthy souls, like Bill Gates, who turn in their later life to champion charities. Yet the way it rolls of the tongue drives me to persist in finding a way to slide it neatly into my everyday vernacular.

This is for once where I am a little stumped, it is all well and good using it as your synonym for a humanitarian or suggest someone's philanthropy when they are generous nevertheless those occasions are few and far between.

Perhaps I need to go to more charity events in order to hobnob with philanthropists . . .

Stinginess

Normally my posts have nothing to do with current trends, they only include what I have found. However, for once I have a word that could be used in this current climate of post recession life

Parsimony

This is, as the title may have suggested, extreme frugality. Thus, you could say that 'the recession has made parsimonious individuals of all of us'. Or, 'because Dave is short on cash he spends his money parsimoniously'.

Not much more need be said on this, so I shall be parsimonious with my words and sign off here.

Finding new words

I have created this blog to be an out let for my expanding vernacular. Just a list of, what I find, interesting words. However, it had never come to my attention what I was doing in creating a list of words with definitions. It is a very crude dictionary, and so to today's word

Lexicographical

This is the act of writing and editing a dictionary. I suppose I should not really be surprised by this subconscious lexicographical tendency. For I was raised in a town with a link, some what tedious one, to one of the original dictionary writers. Dr Samuel Johnson writer of the 'Dictionary of English Language', that predated the Oxford English dictionary, was once forced to stand in the rain, without a hat, because he refused to help his father on his book stall in Uttoxeter. This means so much to those in the small east Staffordshire town that there is a memorial in the market place to commemorate it. So maybe making a dictionary is not such a bad thing as it could lead to inconsequential parts of your life being commemorated.

Your own experiments

Ever had someone inspire and coax your interest in a subject to such an extent that it causes you to go away and find out more by your own means? Well if so you have already encountered this adjective

Heuristic

It means, as I have already hinted at, the act of pointing out, or indicating, to the extent of stimulating interest to cause further investigation. This is one of the few words that I have found for which I love the connotations but struggle to find a straight forward example. My reasoning is thus, if I where to say 'go away and learn about it yourself' it sounds negative. However, the idea of someone inspiring you, such as a great teacher, to the extent that you devote your own time to finding out more, then that is a good thing. Heuristic can also be attributed to trial by error methods of experimentation the idea of learning by doing, rather than learning from someone else's experience you are having your own.

This gives great credence to heuristic learning, to which I would like to add I hope that this blog is heuristic to your interest and expansion of vocabulary. On which note I will leave you to do your own investigation.

I don't like you

There are some strong words out there. Those that hit home most are the negative ones, so if you wish to reference something that you would attribute a negative connotation to this may interest you

Anathema

This is a person or thing that is detested or loathed. Thus, you can have an anathema or anathemas. For instance, one of my personal anathemas is the use of crass language. Anything and everything could be your own personal anathema, making the application of the word near limitless.

So go ahead and loath things if only to give more opportunity to use anathema.

Does it sound nice?

My previous post has got me thinking, what is the difference between something sounding nice and something that sounds nice. Rather sounds like a riddle doesn't it, what I mean is the difference between something sweet sounding and something sweet to hear. Still not with me, well to reference earlier posts mellifluous is something sweet sounding but encompasses both things that are sonorous, like music, and things that are ment to ameliorate or ego stroke.
So, this leads me all in all to sweet nothings and empty words. Are sweet nothings just a gentle kiss to the ear with no meaning or is the meaning in the pleasure we take from hearing them. This is where I fall down unknowing . . .

My personal propensity is for seeing worth in you getting, or giving, pleasure whatever the scenario. Like telling a random person that they look nice, it means nothing and leads no where but it will make them feel good and lets you walk away thinking that you have brightened someone's day. Try it, always makes me feel good. Don't say you smell nice though, that doesn't go down as well.

What do you think? Do you see mellifluous words as sonorous nothings or sweet somethings? I hope you have enjoined reading this, as then to me, although it lacks content, it has meaning.

Ed