Self-development instead of self-unfolding? (was: Re: [ox-en] Free time)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 13:07:44 +0100
Dear Graham and native English speakers!
Graham: I'm so glad that you endured the German list for so long now
and it makes me really happy to see the English part finally spring
into existence making your life much easier :-) .
Yesterday Graham Seaman wrote:
This is a picky little point away from the main issue, but is it possible
to find a replacement for the word 'self-unfolding'? It sounds bizarre
in English - I assume it means something like self-development, but it
conjures up images of a piece of paper with a clockwork mechanism inside
for me.
Yes I know that this is not an existing word in English. On the other
hand I thought it's easy to build new words in English, isn't it?
As far as I know, this came from the choice of words by the
translator for Stefan's article.
I can't remember exactly. Anyway Joanne liked it and so I sticked to
it in the interview. But I'll not fight for this word.
The reason for making a point of this
is I well remember other groups in the past who couldn't talk outside
to people outside their little group because they had their own
terminology which sounded like a bad translation (eg. maoists with
'we must defeat the running dogs of capitalism' (what on earth IS
a running dog?)).
Good point. We already have the term "GPL society"
("GPL-Gesellschaft") which is already a bit strange ;-) .
Does self-development mean the same as you (or Stefan) meant by
self-unfolding?
Actually because I don't know this for sure I sticked to
self-unfolding. It does definitely not mean self-actualization
("Selbstverwirklichung") where we had a discussion on the German list
some time ago.
Self-development, however, seems to have a number of connotations I
think are valid. And even [http://dict.leo.org/] sees it that way.
Well, I think it would be better to replace "self-unfolding" by
"self-development".
What do others think?
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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