D&D General Questions Regarding the History of the Term "Psionics."

[Anoth]

i am going to politely disagree that all learning is good. One can spend alot of time learning all the wrong things. You can learn things that are just plain not true. You can learn bad habits. And you can reinforce bad training. So i don’t agree that all learning is good.

 

[Azzy]

I think the degradation of commonly spoken English is self-evident by just listening/reading to how people spoke even a hundred years ago, with people commonly using more poetic words and more eloquent sentence structures. Today's common speech, in comparison, can almost come across as simplistic grunting in a lot of cases.

The thing is, people back then didn't consider their words to be anymore poetic or eloquent than people today with modern verbiage. The reason that those words and styles seem poetic and eloquent today is precisely because they are no longer in current usage.

 

[seebs]

Consider the Quaker thing of refusing to be excessively fancy and formal and address people with honorifics, thus, calling everyone "thee" instead of "you". This was called "plain speech" because it was a refusal to adopt spurious honorifics.

It now sounds archaic and indeed overly formal to many people, but that's not because they're being formal, that's because everyone else is so excessively formal all the time that we've entirely lost the distinction we used to have between formal and informal second person pronouns.

 

[Anoth]

Language was much more metaphoric in the past. In literature and even the newspapers just a few decades ago. Read some 19th century Norwegian literature in its own language and you would be astounded. Modern writing can be very much like
Computer programs and very literal. Almost like writing for a technical journal.

personally I am astounded at how many people Today can not grasp metaphor, sarcasm, irony, and allegory. Blows my mind.

 

[seebs]

Degree of literalism and metaphor vary a lot with context and topics, too, and with writers. Idioms change over time. Words move, too. I don't think it's necessarily safe to generalize too much. Kennings are more of a thing in my conversations today than they were 20 years ago.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes. But that doesn't mean that the classics are valuable and memes aren't.

Shakespeare invented all the best memes.

 

[Anoth]

Shakespeare invented all the best memes.

Shakespeare is full of cliches. It’s just they weren’t cliches at the time. He invented them. Someday soon Lovecraft will be cliche and cheesy. That’s what happens with anything that becomes very exposed and imitated.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Shakespeare is full of cliches. It’s just they weren’t cliches at the time. He invented them. Someday soon Lovecraft will be cliche and cheesy. That’s what happens with anything that becomes very exposed and imitated.

Funny you should say that. I was reading a review of the new Colour Out of Space film and I realised that Annilhilation (Netflix) is pretty much the same plot.

And if you distil it down to Alien meteorite has strange influence on people, Quatermass, Doctor Who and a bunch of 50s B movies have done that.

 

[dave2008]

This- and If you facebook- just head over to Tim Kask's page, drop him a line and ask him-he was the (for better or worse) person who brought Psionics to D&D. He has discussed many times on his YouTube show (Curmudgeon in the Cellar) but I don't believe I recall him talking about where he got the name- but it was clearly modeled on Dr. Strange comics and meant to be exceedingly rare among characters.

Wow! We got back on topic - nice work Jeff!

 

[prabe]

Someday soon Lovecraft will be cliche and cheesy.

Already is. Good Lovecraft is Very Good; Bad Lovecraft is Very Bad; there is no middle ground. Sometimes what you need is a thesaurus having a fit of hysterics in an abattoir, but not always (or often).