Archive for Concepts
Neoteny
Keeping resolutions is hard. And this finishative business, I tell you, is super hard.
For instance: I broke the resolution I made a few weeks ago to stop reading. This week I read a book. An entire book.
I may claim as attenuating circumstance the fact that it was a non-academic book. Very much so. Though there are somethings in there I can definitely use in school work. In the middle of more or less explicit references to different types of body fluids and more or less elaborate descriptions of their flow, there are real gems, like the following:
“Neoteny” is “remaining young,” and it may be ironic that it is so little known, because human evolution has been dominated by it. Humans have evolved to their relatively high state by retaining the immature characteristics of their ancestors. Humans are the most advanced of mammals – although a case could be made for the dolphins – because they seldom grow up. Behavioral traits such as curiosity about the world, flexibility of response, and playfulness are common to practically all young mammals but are usually rapidly lost with the onset of maturity in all but humans. Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.
Tom Robbins, in Still Life with the Woodpecker, p. 19.
Finishative
I was talking to by brother yesterday about my usual “problems” (namely, interest in a million things, but in nothing in particular). My brother, in his typical wisdom, diagnosed my problem as “too much initiative, too little finishative”.
He found this neologism in one of those airline magazines. I thought it was a brilliant concept, one that reflects my ailment really well. After all, I deserve a degree of “Professional Beginner”, for all the language, music, dance courses in which I finished the first level and that was that.
The word my brother was using was “acabativa” (we speak Portuguese). I googled it and found 513 links. The one I liked most had as title something like “This must be the reason my blogs have stopped coming”.Which really shows I have a textbook case of finishative deficiency (it sounds so… musical).
Thinking about how I could turn this scenario around, I appealed to blogging once again. So I thought “how would one say “acabativa” in English?” (so I can write about it here). I found 42 results for a google search of “finishiative” and 64 for “finishative”. The sources: sites with advice for sales, business, management, chess strategy, Christian and Hindu sermons…
Moral of the story: I think that a bit more finishative goes well everywhere. Starting with this writing of mine — because even finishatives must start somewhere.
P.S. You might be wondering why I picked the spelling “finishative” over “finishiative”. Reply: while the extra “i” makes “finishiative” resemble “initiative” more, the “i” in “initiative” belongs to the “initi-” root, whereas the “finish-” root is i-less. Maybe you were not wondering about this, nor even interested. To which I say, “oh, well.”
