You seem to be saying that you prefer general words that encompass many concepts rather than specific and more precise words. EX:
>Did you just come up with a new way to say “motivation”? It’s true that some people might get a quick boost from that.
Are motivation and ambition the same thing? I don’t think so. It seems to me that ambition typically encompasses a certain lack alongside it; it seems to most typically occur with some medium-intensity negative emotion.
It’s very possible to say someone is motivated to throw a birthday party for their son or daughter, but you wouldn’t usually say they’re “ambitious to throw a birthday party” — while ambition in its various forms (abstract or tactile) might be a subset of motivation, maybe, I think there’s a useful distinction there.
Of course, the key is having language that works for you — if it doesn’t work for you, by all means don’t use it.
Yeah, I agree that there are distinctions everywhere, and precision is often a good thing. But the thing that ticks me off isn’t quite precision, it’s something else… Remember the example Orwell gives in his essay:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
vs. the same thing in modernese:
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
Your argument can also show that the second example is more precise, and thus better, but to me it feels worse somehow.
Going back to your post:
I came to see a pattern where addicts who relapse seem to face not just the primary stressors of withdrawal effects or hardship around behavior change, but they also seem to generate secondary stressors in their own mind.
Can you hear how it sounds like the second of Orwell’s examples? Not all the way there, but maybe like 50% of the way there?
That said, I’m not going for poetics or linguistic beauty — I’m looking for an easily-used technical term.
I’m not particularly attached to “secondary stressors” — I just want a precise phrase for the phenomenon. Other people in the thread proposed other ones, EX “worrying about worrying” (which is close but I think again not as precise).
You seem to be saying that you prefer general words that encompass many concepts rather than specific and more precise words.
I can believe that you meant something more specific and precise than “worrying sometimes makes things worse” when you said “secondary stressors”, but your post failed to get any more precise distinction across, and if people used the term as jargon they wouldn’t be using it for anything more precise than “worrying making things worse”. (Less sure about the motivation vs “tactile ambition” example since I don’t know of any decent framework for thinking about motivation.)
I respectfully disagree.
You seem to be saying that you prefer general words that encompass many concepts rather than specific and more precise words. EX:
>Did you just come up with a new way to say “motivation”? It’s true that some people might get a quick boost from that.
Are motivation and ambition the same thing? I don’t think so. It seems to me that ambition typically encompasses a certain lack alongside it; it seems to most typically occur with some medium-intensity negative emotion.
It’s very possible to say someone is motivated to throw a birthday party for their son or daughter, but you wouldn’t usually say they’re “ambitious to throw a birthday party” — while ambition in its various forms (abstract or tactile) might be a subset of motivation, maybe, I think there’s a useful distinction there.
Of course, the key is having language that works for you — if it doesn’t work for you, by all means don’t use it.
Yeah, I agree that there are distinctions everywhere, and precision is often a good thing. But the thing that ticks me off isn’t quite precision, it’s something else… Remember the example Orwell gives in his essay:
vs. the same thing in modernese:
Your argument can also show that the second example is more precise, and thus better, but to me it feels worse somehow.
Going back to your post:
Can you hear how it sounds like the second of Orwell’s examples? Not all the way there, but maybe like 50% of the way there?
That’s one of my favorite essays, incidentally.
That said, I’m not going for poetics or linguistic beauty — I’m looking for an easily-used technical term.
I’m not particularly attached to “secondary stressors” — I just want a precise phrase for the phenomenon. Other people in the thread proposed other ones, EX “worrying about worrying” (which is close but I think again not as precise).
I can believe that you meant something more specific and precise than “worrying sometimes makes things worse” when you said “secondary stressors”, but your post failed to get any more precise distinction across, and if people used the term as jargon they wouldn’t be using it for anything more precise than “worrying making things worse”. (Less sure about the motivation vs “tactile ambition” example since I don’t know of any decent framework for thinking about motivation.)