Slaves

Slaves.

Andre Willers.

20 Sep 201

“The reed can only hear by bending to the storm”

“Andiaz”

 

Synopsis:

To hear is to obey . To read is to pay taxes .

 

Discussion :

1.The tower of Bab-El is the death of empires .

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet

 

2.Voluntary slaves :

“Anybody here who hears me and wants a steady job please queue to the right.”

A contract .

 

3.Involuntary slaves .

“No” is not an answer .

 

4. The Irony .

The ancient Greeks classified anyone who could not speak Greek as “Bar-bar” .

Later , anyone who could understand a smidgen of Ur-IndoEuropean was designated as sklabos(pronounced sklävs) “Slav”

 

5.”A little civilization is a dangerous thing “

6.The quest for Freedom .

Everybody in an Hierarchy is entangled in webs of obligation . None are free . Not even the Emperor ,

7.Would Buddha’s fingers tremble if he had to throw the dice to determine whether humans should see things as they really are ? Especially if Kali is the 4-to-3  on favourite . And the Fates are referees .

Never mind the peanut-gallery of Furies .

Welcome to the Singularity .

 

Humbly Ming

 

Andre

 

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Appendix A

http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2004/10/slav_an_etymolo.html

Slav": An Etymology

This is sure to enrage one or two people, but it's worth discussing, even so.

I've long been aware of the claim that the word "Slav" and "slave" had identical roots, and I've also seen more than my share of vehement denials of any such identity by people of Slavic descent who can't stand to think that their glorious ancestors might have had such a humble past. Still, I never bothered to actually look at the origins of the terms until today, and what I found was most interesting:

[Middle English sclave, from Old French esclave, from Medieval Latin sclvus, from Sclvus, Slav (from the widespread enslavement of captured Slavs in the early Middle Ages). See Slav.]

Word History: The derivation of the word slave encapsulates a bit of European history and explains why the two wordsslaves and Slavs are so similar; they are, in fact, historically identical. The word slave first appears in English around 1290, spelled sclave. The spelling is based on Old French esclavefrom Medieval Latin sclavus, “Slav, slave,” first recorded around 800. Sclavus comes from Byzantine Greek sklabos(pronounced sklävs) “Slav,” which appears around 580.Sklavos approximates the Slavs' own name for themselves, theSlovnci, surviving in English Slovene and Slovenian. The spelling of English slave, closer to its original Slavic form, first appears in English in 1538. Slavs became slaves around the beginning of the ninth century when the Holy Roman Empire tried to stabilize a German-Slav frontier. By the 12th century stabilization had given way to wars of expansion and extermination that did not end until the Poles crushed the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald in 1410. ·As far as the Slavs' own self-designation goes, its meaning is, understandably, better than “slave” it comes from the Indo-European root *kleu-,whose basic meaning is “to hear” and occurs in many derivatives meaning “renown, fame.” The Slavs are thus “the famous people.” Slavic names ending in -slav incorporate the same word, such as Czech Bohu-slav, “God's fame,” RussianMsti-slav, “vengeful fame,” and Polish Stani-slaw, “famous for withstanding (enemies).”

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