Thinking

With the recent hot weather (I know...I know, it's summer time so I should expect it!) my body has been trying to take advantage of the cool nights and the hot mornings...It slows down in the hot morning and speeds up in the cool nights. I wake up in the morning and I lie in bed thinking of how hot it is outside my room and that if I start moving around i'll only be in more heat. It's so tiring that I usually sit htere...the worst was when I sat there for 2 hours!
That brings up my topic (which I mentioned last post): Thinking and not doing anything.

I think a lot. I LOVE to think. I love when I can just sit down like The Thinker by Rodin. However, as I grow older, I realize that very few jobs allow you to just that: think. (Google does! but you have to have a pretty good resume to get into their R&D lab).

Another topic on my mind of late has been my English Degree. I've pondered over the specifics of what my degree is teaching me and I've concluded that I have learned skills most applicable to a lawyer...without the law degree. But...what is the significance of mastering one's own native language? To add to it, what is the significance of mastering the language of the world? (english is spoken in 90% of countries as their primary 2nd language). Also, what ancient occupation was equivalent to the English degree?

As I contemplate these questions, I recall that English is a language controlled by those in power.--People don't just make up random words, they make up words (and more importantly, terms) that sound like other significant things and force you to think of certain things when they are spoken. Mastering one's native language is the equivalent of taking up the powers of rulers. (Rulers were made rulers because of 1 of 2 things: their ability to communicate, inspire, incite, and command; or their ability to force, coerce, and pressure others.) When you master your native language, you gain a power over your countrymen that is unseen and unknown to them. When you learn to persuade people to fulfill your objectives, you are essentially controlling them. You are made a leader over them.
War is a very persuasive form of rhetoric: it clings to emotions and uses force to persuade the other side to surrender and submit. So even when rulers are waging wars, they are using language to do it. [I may touch on this at a later time].

Thinking empowers you. Without thinking, you are not. ("I think therefore I am"). If you stop thinking for yourself, you stop pausing every now and again to determine what it is that YOU want and what your opinion is, then all of your actions are for and in behalf of other people. (they control you.) Chances are, if you don't do a lot of "thinking" you are following other people who you assume are leading you in your best interests. And usually those people have become so skilled at your native language that they are capable of convincing you on things to the point where you don't even think about them (Hegemony) I would say that thinking and rhetoric go hand in hand, because sometimes you have to persuade yourself in order to break from other people.

So to recap what I just said: Knowing Rhetoric (which I am using synonomously with the term " mastering one's native language" or in my case, mastering the use of English) allows you to become a leader and a ruler.
Thinking helps you break from other people's rhetoric and start using your own rhetoric. It makes YOU into a person, rather than into a slave. And if you don't think...you're nothing!