I've been debating for awhile about changing the title of the blog. I've been blogging no matter what... since January 2005. The content has evolved. My cynicism has reawakened, dozed off and then reawakened again.
When I looked back over the last two year's of blogs, I realized that in addition to adhering to my intitial goal of spreading my belief that everyone has the right to be, say and do whatever is right for them - as long as it does not physically harm another person - there has been a current of seeking out the hypocrisy and getting people to ask questions by thinking about things in ways from many and different perspectives, not just one.
Rather than changing the title completely, I realized that the one I was considering actually fit with no matter what.... Hence the original title + the new one =
So, what does it mean?
The phrase eschew obfuscation is a bit esoteric and arcane, and that's the point of it. A little vocabulary lesson:
eschew /es chü/ verb: to avoid, to shunTo put the meaning in a clearer form - no matter what... avoid being unclear...
obfuscation /ob'fu skā shən/ noun: the act of rendering obscure, unclear, or unintelligble
and have we had a time dealing with that for the last several years. As a point of reference: April 9, 2003. The reasons for invading Iraq are the height of obfuscating, lie after lie, spin after spin, revision after revision.
The phrase eschew obfuscation has personal history also. Working in education, one of the biggest problems of teaching is making things clear for all students. When you have students gaining information in different modalities, processing it in several learning styles, and understanding it with different abilities, it can be very difficult when there are 25 - 30 kids in front of you.
Also, if you stop and think about it, relationships rely heavily on eschewing obfuscation. When two people, or more for that matter, are being unclear either inadvertently or on purpose all kinds of misunderstanding can happen. So, yeah, I've obfuscated at times and paid the price. [I have the t-shirt to prove it!]
In a way, whether it's a personal relationship or a problem between two countries, obfuscation of some sort will probably be at the base of it.
What we need then is to eschew obfuscation.
and they still have that bridge in New York for sale...
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