Slippery words and viscous thoughts

By Greg -
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
- Henry Adams

When I pulled the quote from my Google home page I'd read the author as Henry James. I've never heard of Henry Adams. They say he was an historian, author and autobiographer. What does that mean, autobiographer? Writing one's own biography isn't usually thought of as a vocation. One book does not a career make. Maybe he was a ghost writer for other people's autobiographies, something common today among celebrities and politicians but I'd be surprised to learn it was common in the late nineteenth century. Anyway, I liked the combination of metaphors: slippery words and viscous thoughts. Alone, each is less powerful. Together, the slippery words are more dangerous and the viscous thoughts a more serious threat. Together, we feel a viscous mind losing control on the slippery surface of language. Thrilling, with ill in its middle.

So little of what we say can change course once the trajectory is set, without the embarrassment of a fall or the futility of a crash, setback and recovery. Momentum is the man who knows his mind, unfazed by contradiction, unmoved by empathy for the nameless naysayers. Look at any thesaurus for their synonyms of changeable: unreliable; undependable; erratic. A mind alert and quick to change course, which can process information and respond as experience and thought alter pre-conception just as the results of a scientific experiment alter hypotheses -- this mind is popularly recognized as weak, not to be trusted. We who need leaders choose a heavy object on a sturdy track with a powerful engine that steams forward without regard to obstacles or warning signs. We'd rather die decisively than live deliberately.

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