Rectifications (28) – “…and more”

Rectifications (28) – "…and more"
Torrey Orton
January 17, 2013

After enough comes more

 

"…and more" the Subaru sales advert promised full stop after a series of small value adds which dear buyer prospect can get with your model year 2012 demonstrator currently on clearance – a Forester I think it was. You know, "leather" with an asterisk to a footnote so small and finely printed anyone who could afford to would have trouble reading it. Actually, it's leather trim sort of. After three more such gifts, all of which are standard issue "features", we are offered "and more". A clear case where more is not a lot.


This offer, which I've seen in so many places for so many products, makes me feel confident it's a reliable indicator the phrase has entered normal usage. So, what is "…and more"? Another receptacle for the unrequited phantasies of the potentially buying public…? A teaser, like prices ending in $.95 used to be, stopping which could allow us to retire the 5 cent piece? …but I egress to the productivity door rear left. It is what they (merchants) say when they've run out of things to say and can't admit it to themselves. My butcher doesn't say things like that, perhaps because a steak is a steak unless wagyu or grass-fed, in which cases it's still steak and there's nothing more. Imagine "two rib eyes, and more"? The least they can be is one (two ribs uncut).


Another thing the "…more" is: an afterword when the speaker / writer doesn't think they've offered enough of whatever (not whateva, which is already too much to think about); when they think unconsciously that everything is quantifiable and quantity is what every buyer is looking for (have a look at guided tour adverts in the fast emptying local broadsheets' weekend special sections for another take on this view); or, what happens when your favourite gustatory indulgence runs out after two rounds. More!!


And, there's the Nissan "MORE" I saw last nite (15/01/2013) on the tube as the adjunct to the new model's name and the maker. Just MORE. A culmination of a trajectory I had just barely noticed, carrying an implication of (much MORE) in its slipstream as Nissan struggles to sell the new Leaf which is supposed to produce less, not more.


Then there's the grammatical status of 'more' – started as an adjective, accepted as an adverb, now morphed to a noun and soon to transform into a verb? Like 'impact', 'grow'? What would it be to more something or someone? Perhaps, an undifferentiated swamping? A colourless overwhelm? A tasteless effluent?


Actually, anything would do that adds to the featureless expostulations of spin city, an all-purpose excess for the descriptively incompetent. It's, at the end of the day, another let out word: intends something and specifies nothing…like outcomes, put in place, going forward and so on ever after. Ever so moreish.

My 50th boarding school reunion bio

SINACCORD
                

11 Wertheim St., Richmond, Victoria, 3121, Australia

Tel. (+613) 9428-7462 FAX (+613) 9427-8174 Mobile +61 419 362 349 E Mail - torreyo@ozemail.com.au

 

June 29, 2011

This is what I submitted as background info in me for attendees at our 50^th reunion May 12-14, 2011. I thought I'd post it because it captures a certain present self-assessment and history that isn't covered by topical posts but probably affects them in more and less subliminal ways. The pic's a bit out of date, so I dropped it…

Taft School Class of '61 Bio for Torrey Orton

I am leading a life I have mostly chosen, missing some things on the way that being less devoted to choosing would have given me. Much of it has been composed of things I never thought of, nor knew of, at Taft - living in Melbourne (35yrs), Beijing (2yrs), Shanghai (1.5yrs) and Paris (1.5yrs) for starters. Some has been planned like becoming a psychotherapist and organisation consultant in my 50's. As a result of meeting Jane by chance on a hot July, 1970 NYC afternoon, I started learning deeply that there are other worlds than the American one(s), whence an eventual change of citizenship couched in the Melbourne body of my life.

 

Much of this life has been an exploration of different worlds, inner and outer, prefigured by a helping professions orientation which was emerging at Williams and confirmed in 5 years of HS teaching, and alternative school and commune building in New Haven, moderated by 2 years of a Yale philosophy Masters over 1965-72. In the following 40 years I only once slipped outside the helping life to run a bank IT systems project 1989-91 – but even then it was an HR system.

 

The bank was merged-over by a neighbour and I got an unexpected redundancy package jump start into consulting, which was where I meant to go next anyway. My consulting has always had an organisational focus and in intercultural flavour, with a personal development infrastructure (I started a small psychotherapy practice in tandem with consulting). This combination produced my second biggest adult learning experience – partnering and coaching a Chinese partner in a start-up in Shanghai from 1998 til now. The third was living in Beijing in 1981-83. The fourth is a toss-up between fulltime therapist and part-time blogger for the last two years...taking both seriously, but not enough to step up or out a quantum jump. Maybe it's time to go back to aikido.

 

Jane has been accompanying me and being accompanied by me since that July afternoon in International House at Columbia Univ. The commitment to things Chinese has always been her lead. My following there has acquired its own momentum and valences, while adding my therapeutic and organisational tones to hers. She stepped into the retiring time of life 2 years ago by launching a career-topping innovation in Chinese language teacher education, with about every complexity I can think of!

 

My first biggest learning will probably be what emerges from here on. One theme is rehabilitation of public life, which I have blogged for two years with special interest in ethics and public discourses about difficult issues – climate, science, thinking while in danger. Another is living in reach of mountains and water, which will be in 3 month French chunks since we both seem likely to work til we drop, more or less. If I could give up worrying about the world it would be simpler; I cannot.

 

The great unknown is resilience. I've just been reminded this month (January '11) that I'm as prone as any to surprise attacks on the body personal – this time acute pancreatitis. 8 years ago a slow heart beat dropped me in a street. The beat has been picked up by a pacemaker since then. Along the way I enjoy more aspects of life than ever – many only accessible through the windows of age!

 

January 30, 2011

www.diarybyamadman.blogspot.com

A Harvard state of mind??

A Harvard state of mind??

Torrey Orton

November 17, 2009

When Harvard surfaces back to back in HIGHER EDUCATION (The Australian Nov. 11, 2009 pg. 28-29) I take notice because I worry about any transfer of American 'solutions' to our very different context. Two academics extol the thinking of current Harvard President Dr. Faust as a model for Australian universities (Macquarie and Melbourne).

fantasyWhat they did not do was present the rest of what she said, nor show any awareness of former Dean of Harvard College Harry R. Lewis's Excellence Without a Soul – How a great university forgot education (2006). He says, "In this book I explain how Harvard and our other great universities lost sight of the essential purpose of undergraduate education." I commend it to your readers along with that of former Dean of Yale Law School Professor Anthony Kronman's Education's End – Why our colleges and universities have given up on the meaning of life (2007).

Between the two they give backgrounds to President Faust's call for renewed vision. They are stories of wounded institutions whose hearts have been victims of the great modern mendacities – the equation of education with technique at the service of present powers. Looking at them (Harvard and its peers) as lights on a hill is a fantasy. They are fighting a similar fight to Schwartz and Armstrong, coming off notionally stronger foundations, though perhaps more corrupted.