19 May 2020

Platitudes

Platitude - a remark or statement, especially one with a moral content, that has been used too often to be interesting or thoughtful.
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I don't know about you but I very much dislike those motivational or inspirational posters that attempt to say something deep and meaningful in a small number of words - usually with a linked photo illustration. The messages tend to be trite and cliched, presumptuously implying that worthwhile truths can be conveyed to us in that bland, over-simplistic manner.
To prove the point I just made my own inspirational poster using a photo I took on nearby Fulwood Lane  in 2017. It took me two minutes to create this poster and about ten seconds to come up with the wording - "Wise People  - Look over walls and dream". What utter nonsense! As far as I am concerned, it  means nothing and yet I firmly believe that there are people out there who would display that poster on their walls and nod their heads sagaciously - as if it really meant something. It doesn't.  It's bullshit...though of course that's not a bull, it's a cow!

42 comments:

  1. They might be oversimplified but some of the more hopeful memes have helped me through some bad days. Sometimes we just grab what we can, without a whole lot of critical thinking :)

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    1. I wonder how people got by before these posters arrived in our cultures.

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  2. I'm completely with you on this. I hate those things.

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  3. So what you're saying is that here is no value in platitudes at all? I wouldn't through the baby out with the bathwater.

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    1. Platitudes are of course part of everyday communication but we don't need to see them on posters do we?

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  4. You know, you didn't do a bad job :D

    I don't know why they rub me the wrong way, because many of them are basically truths reduced to a sentence, but still . . . they do. I think it has something to do with being such black and white statements, when I find there is so much grey in life. So many things are not that clear cut.

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    1. You have put it well Jenny. These posters do ignore the "grey" areas, the appendices, the exceptions to the rules.

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    2. Thank you, jenny_o; I could copy & paste your comment 1:1.

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  5. Some of those bother me more than others, I suppose because there are some that are really overused and worn out.

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    1. In creating this blogpost I realised that some visitors' walls might be plastered with the things.

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  6. I used to have to grit my teeth every time one of those cropped up during my working life, usually associated with team-building or other motivational training efforts.
    There are people who do that for a living.

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    1. "STRONGER TOGETHER There's no "I" in teamwork" (Picture of some ants)

      "TO BAKE A CAKE - You need to break some eggs" (Picture of a birthday cake with lit candles)

      "BUSINESS AIN'T BUSINESS - If you're not busy" (Picture of mother and father peregrine falcon feeding hungry chicks)

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  7. Some are amusing and innocent:
    "Skegness is so bracing"
    Others are more sinister and created to back up other propaganda:
    "Take back control"
    "Get Brexit done"
    Goodness only knows what "Stay alert" is supposed to mean. "Stay apart" would have made more sense.

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    1. Ha-ha! I like "Stay apart". Very clever Jean.

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  8. ... and don't need to stay apart?

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  9. STAY APART/ CONTROL THE TASKER/ SAVE GREENSHIELD STAMPS

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    1. You should think about your platitude.

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    2. Mine is a duck-billed platitude

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  10. Horny the cow says: "The hills are alive with the sound of moosic". Another mighty fine drystone wall photo YP.

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    1. You know it's funny with drystone walls. They vary according to the geology and of course out in Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire it's mainly hedgerows. I have been in areas where you are between the two territories. Construction methods vary enormously too. In County Clare, Ireland the walls I saw were very rough and ready compared with walls in South Yorkshire and north Derbyshire.

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    2. Here in West Cork we have basket weave pattern drystone walls. They are stone autographs left by the Cornish miners.

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    3. Maybe someone should write a book on the subject. I would buy it and you probably would too.

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    4. Why don't you write it and include your photos in the book?

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    5. Very kind Northsider but though I am interested in stone walls I am not nerdy enough to research and write a full book on the subject. I would rather write a book about the sexy goings-on in the sheep shed on The Sheep Shed Peninsula in West Cork. Characters will include Father O'Brien and Molly Kelly - the buxom barmaid from Ma Murphy's pub in Bantry.

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    6. Ha,ha. Ma Murphy's is a Spirit Grocers pub in Bantry. It also had a Blacksmiths in the backyard. I remember going in there when I was little with my parents and my dad's parents and brother.

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    7. Right - I will put a small boy in the story too. He will have a snotty nose and a catapult.

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  11. "Stay calm and carry on" has been my adopted mantra ever since I set permanent foot onto these isles. I even have a poster of it stuck on some wall lest I forget.

    To chime in with one or two of your other commentators, and leaving the actual printing of a poster aside (yes, I know that was what your post was about), don't you think that a platitude just like a cliche becomes what it is because it's borne out of an acknowledged truth? Sure, I agree that constant repetition makes even the most universal truth "boring", doesn't make it less valid.

    U

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  12. PS "Wise people look over walls" is good. Inspirational. Though I'd have punched the line with "and jump them".

    U

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    1. Maybe wise people let fools jump first. Thanks for your thoughtful contributions to this topic.

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  13. The Greek philosophers were always spouting one-liners and I suspect they have been spouted since the written word gave philosophers a medium for their thought.

    My favourite is "Be alert. Your country needs lerts."

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    1. Is a lert a rare rodent found only on The Isle of Lewis?

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  14. Personally, I like your poster ... it made me go "huh" not as a question but merely a sound ... and smile! And, too, it might even cause one to dream of things to come!
    🥴

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    1. Dream of things to come? Yeah more motivational/inspirational posters.

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  15. We should seed social media with this poster and see how far it goes!

    My mom used to have posters like that on her office wall in the '70s. "Hang in There, Baby," with a photo of some kind of animal hanging from a tree, and things like that.

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    1. Seed it in social media and it would soon appear on the wall of The Oval Office and in the massage parlour at Mar a Lago. Before long His Royal Trumpness would be weaving it into his daily briefings. I don't want that.

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  16. Don't diss her.....she is so sweet! This week I will be 73 years in age. Well, 74 if you do it as the Asian countries do. I could come up with a damn book of platitudes! What with singing and writing songs and having children and moving hither and yon. But I will not because only a few are worth reading or remembering. But the cow is beautiful!!!
    !!!!!!!!!

    but

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    1. May I wish you a very happy seventy third birthday Donna. I guess the girl you once were could never have imagined reaching 73 but you made it and what is more - the girl inside never really went away - did she? HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

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    2. The body changes but I am still that 17 year old in mind and spirit and heart. Thank you, little brother, for being such a wonderful friend.

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