disconnected

[calimac]

Well, it's happened again: something that's been puzzling me intermittently for decades, whenever it comes up.

Somebody uses the phrase "Only connect," in some context suggesting that they take it as a deeply meaningful personal motto. In this case it occupied an LJ userpic.

And I ask, "What does that actually mean?" By itself it's meaningless (connect what to what? and what else besides connect are you not supposed to do?), and context has never enabled me to make sense of it.

And I get one of two replies. Either I'm referred to the original source of the phrase in E.M. Forster's Howards End, or else to an essay by P.L. Travers that focuses on the phrase.

Here's the Forster paragraph.

"It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."

Now, I do not consider myself a particularly stupid person. But I cannot make much sense out of that paragraph. If the thrust is, "Put passion in your prose," then "Only connect" seems a very peculiar and unexpressive way of putting it; nor does that seem to be the thrust of Travers' equally uncommunicative essay, whose theme seems to be an inchoate series of ideas weakly summarizable as "find meaning in life." Well, duh.

I'm missing something somewhere. Tell me in your own words, not Forster's or Travers's: what do you mean by it?

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Well, then, how about "merely connect"?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That doesn't help either. Merely, as opposed to what that would be more than that?

Again, advertising slogans: "our widget costs a mere $5." As opposed to what? As opposed to the competition's widget, which costs more.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book called Mere Christianity. "Mere", meaning what is common to all Christians, as opposed to what is specific to particular denominations. His whole thrust was the common heritage of his faith, to avoid doctrinal arguments. That was his "mere." He used two words, and they both had meaning.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Again, advertising slogans: "our widget costs a mere $5." As opposed to what? As opposed to the competition's widget, which costs more.

No, not necessarily. The ad might mean, "This remarkable product, which no one else in the world makes, costs just (only, merely) five dollars, as opposed to any other amount that any human being might imagine."

"Only connect," as opposed to any other thing that any other human might think of doing.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

OK, then. I had the same second thought. "As opposed to a larger amount of money." But you could say what that larger amount of money would be. In fact the ads often do that? "What would you expect to pay for this wonderful vegetable slicer? $30? $50? More? Well, it can be yours for merely $5!"

So what are those other things that Henry (and remember, he as an individual is the person being addressed here, although the thoughts could be applicable to others) might think that he'd have to do to integrate himself, that Margaret is at such pains to emphasize are not necessary? "That was the whole of her sermon," Forster says.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

The fact that one could say something does not mean that one must, or even that it is the best thing to say.

Why would Henry care what he didn't have to do, now that he knew what he did have to do? If I know that I can get $1 million by doing X, I don't give a damn about all the things I don't have to do. Apparently you do, but I am proof that not everyone does.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

If he cared about integrating himself at all, he would have cared about what these things were before he learned that he wouldn't have to care about them.

Of course if someone tells me "You only have to do this," I cease to care about the things I've now learned I don't need to worry about. But in that case, I already knew what they were. In this case, I'm listening in on other people's conversations: I don't know what they were.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Again, I see no point in continuing. I don't see why one cares about what one need not do, even if one doesn't know what that is, as long as one knows what one need do. You apparently do. We're just going in circles.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't care, in the sense of "care" that you mean. I just finished saying that I don't care.

But I want to know why Margaret (and by extension Forster) care enough to emphasize the lack of a need to care, and I want to know what Margaret is thinking of when she is assuring Henry that he need not care.

It is not possible, in this our language, to say only this or simply that or merely the other, without allowing the raising of the question of, what is being left out?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

What happens then, and what appears to be driving my entire bafflement, is that "only connect" has become a code phrase with no connection to what it's supposed to mean.