"crisis" (cf. Tim's one-earlier post):
(1) A crisis (plural: crises) (from the Greek κρίσις) may occur
on a personal or societal level. It may be a traumatic or stressful
change in a person's life, or an unstable and dangerous social
situation, in political, social, economic, military affairs, or a
large-scale environmental event, especially one involving an
impending abrupt change.
(2) More loosely, it is a term meaning 'a testing time' or 'emergency
event'. [1]
I wonder if successive revisions to the definition or etymology
of a word might reflect a sort of *crisis of meaning*. In saying
this, I'm attempting to bring these two words (crisis = *selection*
and meaning := *selection process*) into a mutually-defining
relation.
My off-the-cuff notion can be expanded thusly:
"Meaning" is either personal or social; it is how we identify things
we call "dangerous" or "unstable" (by building models that tell
us how THIS implies THAT); it is, further, how we assimilate
('passively') or negotiate ('actively') the events that we're
party to; but more importantly,
*what we call 'crises' are (or precipitate) changes in the
selection process, in other words, changes in meanings.*
On the personal level, what this suggests is that "identity"
or "sense of self" is challenged in a crisis situation. For
example, if you think that "I'm not the kind of person who..."
but subsequently find yourself exhibiting the elided behavior,
this is a personal crisis. "I always thought I was such-and-such,
but *now I realize I'm the one who*..." -- from cases like this,
we see that identity can be changed or even created out of
crisis.
On the societal level, a crisis is (or precipitates) changes in
"the way we do things". It is thus inherently anti-conservative,
but it need not therefor be "progressive".
On these understandings of the word "crisis", it is neither
"healthy" nor "unheathy" but in point of fact essential.
The new science of crisisology might be of use in both
manufacturing and defusing crises, in selecting *useful*
crises over non-useful ones, or perhaps in smoothing
certain transitions (which does not eliminate the crisis
but *merely makes it continuous as opposed to discrete*).
The "radical" claim of this author is that crisis should be
embraced as not merely the touch-stone but in fact
the very engine or essence of meaning. Crises, which
simultaneously curtail an individual's decision-making
ability and yet force a decision, are the events that
define the boundary of "self".
"Choose or forfeit your choice" is the crisisologist's
paradoxical version of the Cartesian "cogito", along
with the alternate, equally viable and equally
paradoxical "Choose and forfeit".
On this view, crisisology is (cf. 1st paragraph above)
a sort of "quantum philology" and holistic detection
technique all rolled into one. I close this report with
a call for further study.
[1]: I'm reminded here of "The Test Drive" by
Avital Ronell which (ha ha) is available for trial
purposes at
(This essay seems to be on a very Ronellish theme.)
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