Gotta admit, I’m disappointed. I was looking forward to today’s post because I had lots of thoughts on it, only to discover that the etymology I’d been using for my chosen word was … not exactly wrong, but sure missing a whole lot of nuance, which means the topic is going to be completely different.
And I really liked that take, too.
But it’s not totally wrong, so let’s crack on.
Today’s word is ‘discipline’. I, personally, like that word, in no small part because of that misunderstanding. See, I’d read somewhere that the Latin root was ‘learning’ — which is true! But where I’d read that (we’re talking some years ago now, when I wasn’t nearly so good at checking my sources) also neglected to mention the rest of the history.
Why did that excite me? Well, primarily because ‘learning’ is something the subject does, not something done to the subject. I really enjoyed the perspective that a word used in primarily punitive ways was, in fact, something that refused actions done to.
The part that aforementioned and long-forgotten source didn’t mention?
Forget about the long, long history (more than 800 years of it, in fact) of punitive use (from Old French). The original Latin also included ‘instruction given’ and ‘teaching’, which kiiiiiind of undercuts my use of it. A lot.
Like I said, disappointing.
That being said, there’s a few things I’m getting out of this reorientation.
In the first place, the original original Latin root was ‘pupil, student, follower’. Nothing about being a teacher in there at all. It only later developed the instructive part. So, at the root source my initial take had some degree of merit; but on the whole I find that intersection interesting because of how it bundles learning and teaching, and the reminder that they often are one and the same. There’s a lot of people who teach specifically to learn more — from their students as well as their peers. I enjoy that marriage, honestly. It’s cyclic, and it’s humble.
In the second place, that Old French root? It meant ‘physical punishment’, but it also meant just plain ‘suffering’ and ‘martyrdom’. That’s right, martyrdom. Now that’s an evocative word. How often have you heard about artists suffering for the craft, et cetera and so on?
I don’t subscribe to needless suffering. Sometimes things are hard, yes, but that’s far from the same thing. Looking at the etymological history of this word is like looking at a trainwreck of a traditional angsty hero — everything is about punishment and angst and suffering and sacrifice andandand
Which is something to which I also don’t subscribe.
The level of pain evoked in the history of this word is depressing, and the tacit association with learning being suffering or martyrdom is very nearly farcical, if it wasn’t so terrifying. Not only that, but the procession of changes progressively remove power from the subject.
Is learning hard? Yes. But it shouldn’t be punitive, even though it’s frequently made to be — which is a real shame. And, more to the point, no one learns unless they want to. The best a good teacher can do is show someone how to want to, and then show them the way. Enforced learning is a contradiction in terms — it cannot happen. All that’s learned is fear, resistance, and bitterness.
The original point to this post was going to be a musing on the act of self-discipline. On self-learning. On a dialogue between me, myself and I, and the power to choose how and when I restrain myself, because when all things are equal, one’s self is all that one truly has control over.
Instead I discovered a more-than-800-year-old history of attempts to beat the self-awareness out of people.
And I still refuse to subscribe to it.
So, when I use the world ‘discipline’, it’ll be in the original (original original) sense of the word: the one which retains a sense of wonder and glorious ignorance, the cyclic nature of giving and taking, and most of all the capability to enforce oneself instead of accepting the punishment of others.
Aurichalcum Publishing 