Sunday, mid-morning. Carol is walking at
Pine Hill Lakes Park. You are sitting under a mostly cloudy sky facing east at
the earth dam lot waiting for her. – Amorella
1002 hours. Just finished rereading an article, “Potential
Implications of Life and Intelligence in Cosmic Evolution”, by Mark Lupisella. (Preparing
for Discovery: A Rational Approach to the Impact of Finding Microbial, Complex,
or Intelligent Life Beyond Earth); Second Annual Astrobiology Symposium, John
W. Kluge Center at Library of Congress, in cooperation with the NASA
Astrobiology Program, September 18-19, 2014. It can be found online. Something
can be learned from the article, mostly about an outline for thinking ahead
before we encounter extraterrestrial intelligent life. Science fiction is
considered one of several ways of thinking ahead. Metaphysics is even
considered.
1241
hours. Metaphysics reminds me of the word ‘Grok’
in Robert Heinlein’s great science
fiction classic, Stranger in a Strange Land.
**
**
Grok is a word coined by Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961
science-fiction novel, Stranger in a
Strange Land, where it is defined as follows:
Grok is a word meaning
to know intimately.
Grok
means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the
observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in-group experience. It
means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and
it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means
to a blind man.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines to
grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport
with" and "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also,
to experience enjoyment".
Etymology
Robert
A. Heinlein originally coined the term grok in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land as a Martian word
that could not be defined in Earthling terms, but can be associated with
various literal meanings such as "water", "to drink",
"life", or "to live", and had a much more profound
figurative meaning that is hard for terrestrial culture to understand because
of its assumption of a singular reality.
According
to the book, drinking water is a central focus on Mars, where it is scarce.
Martians use the merging of their bodies with water as a simple example or
symbol of how two entities can combine to create a new reality greater than the
sum of its parts. The water becomes part of the drinker, and the drinker part
of the water. Both grok each other. Things that once had separate
realities become entangled in the same experiences, goals, history, and
purpose. Within the book, the statement of divine immanence derived from the
concept inherent in the term grok.
Heinlein
describes Martian words as "guttural" and "jarring".
Martian speech is described as sounding "like a bullfrog fighting a
cat". Accordingly, grok is generally pronounced as a guttural gr
terminated by a sharp k with very little or no vowel sound (a narrow IPA
transcription might be [ɡɹ̩kʰ]).
William
Tenn suggests Heinlein in creating the word might have been influenced by
Tenn's very similar concept of griggo, earlier introduced in Tenn's
story Venus and the Seven Sexes (published in 1949). In his later
afterword to the story, Tenn says Heinlein himself considered such influence "very
possible".
Selected
and edited from Wikipedia - Grok
**
**
grok |gräk|
- verb (groks, grokking, grokked) [ with obj. ] US
informal
understand
(something) intuitively or by empathy: because of all the commercials,
children grok things immediately.
•
[ no obj. ] empathize or communicate sympathetically; establish a rapport.
ORIGIN
mid 20th cent.: a
word coined by Robert Heinlein (1907–88), American science fiction writer, in Stranger
in a Strange Land.
Selected
and edited from the Oxford/American software
**
**
Thesaurus: Merriam-Webster
grok – verb
Synonyms and Antonyms of GROK
to have a
clear idea of grok
Synonyms appreciate, apprehend, assimilate,
behold, catch, catch on (to), cognize, compass, conceive, cotton (to or on to), decipher,
decode, dig, discern, get, grasp, intuit, know, make, make out, perceive,
recognize, register, savvy, see, seize, sense, tumble (to), twig, understand
Related
Words absorb, digest, take in;
realize; fathom, penetrate, pierce
Near
Antonyms misapprehend, misconceive,
misconstrue, misinterpret, misperceive, misread, mistake, misunderstand
Antonyms miss
Selected and
edited from – merriam-websterDOTcom/thesaurus/grok
**
**
1318
hours. The above shows some problem with the (albeit by an earthling) alien word:
Grok. – I like the earlier definition for its simplicity: “Grok is a word meaning to know intimately” from Grok (disambiguation) [en.wikipediaDOTorg]
You are arrogant. Post. – Amorella
1328 hours. Dictionaries and the like can be more than
helpful when it comes to ‘word meaning’. We have trouble with earthly
languages, can anyone imagine the multitude of problems with an alien one. For
my own part I have taken to spelling God with G---D some time ago. Beyond this are the individual translators and lawyers. I cannot imagine any
intelligent being in herorhis or whatever right mind stopping by Earth to say, “Hello”.
It might be translated “O Hell.”
1542
hours. We had Potbelly’s to go and once home we sat on the front porch and each
ate half a chicken salad on multigrain for a late lunch. A stop at Target’s for
the heating pad, no luck; so a stop at Graeter’s for dessert. Carol had double
chocolate chip and I had a kid’s dip of key lime pie while it is still to be
had. We are at Kroger’s picking up a gallon of skim milk since it was forgot
yesterday, and some chips. Tonight is the ‘final’ of “CSI” which has been on
since 2000. Fifteen years of “CSI” and we still love the program. We will watch
it tomorrow scanning over the commercials as we go.
Do you think any government has an alien
body, or body part or DNA in the science labs someplace in the world, boy? –
Amorella
1553 hours. I don’t know, but wouldn’t be too
surprised. Since the 1950’s there have been changes in peoples’ thoughts on the
subject, religious people also. People are slow to accept the concept of some
things, like aliens, but it hasn’t taken much for people to accept iPhones,
tablets and the like. We readily eat them up.
Before your bath you posted on
your Facebook page: “The world is growing too small for small-minded people,”
as if it were a fact when it is an opinion. – Amorella
1907 hours. I don’t give a damn, Amorella.
How refreshing, I thought for a moment that
you did. Post. – Amorella
1909 hours. I love your humor, Amorella
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