Berthoff and Whitehead

I find that Berthoff and Whitehead’s “The Way We Live Now” are very similar in their way of thinking. Berthoff talks about concepts and how words and language can categorize objects and sort of group them together in ways, but by changing your wording or by adding or subtracting a word can then exclude an object from that category or may add to the category, or may even call for a whole other category to be created. Whitehead talks about New York, and he speaks about how one person’s New York, is not necessarily someone else’s New York. Someone may have lived in a part of the city where there was a pizza shop, or ice cream shop and they may still picture that ice cream shop and be nostalgic over it, although it may be replaced with a small travel agency, and that agency is then part of someone else’s New York, one who may never have known about that old Mom and Pop ice cream shop or pizza shop.

I found both of these excerpts to be very interesting because they both suggest that really ideas are all up to the individual. One person may remembers where they grew up, and another person who may have grown up next door to you or moved in ten years later will probably remember a different place than you. Well, not exactly a different place, but remember differently than the other person. I find this concept to be very interesting. It reminds me of a discussion I had with my friend. We had gone to the same high school, but she grew up in a more rural area than me, and I grew up in what’s known as “The Village”. Just recently we were talking about her younger sister, and she was complaining about the friends she was hanging out with, and my friend went on to expound on the fact that they were all from “The Village”. She ended up seeing “The Village” through a negative connotation, which I really didn’t understand too much, but then again I seemed to view the area where she grew up as a bunch of country bumpkins. Which I guess could be taken in a negative way.

The idea that you can categorize these places any way you want, but that someone can categorize as something completely different is sort of mind blowing for me. Because I’m sure, just reading Whitehead’s excerpt that he has a sort of fondness for New York, where I have heard other, more negative comments towards the city. The two ideas together are just extremely interesting to think about.