Sushi - A mini-essay

Note: This may be better suited to the Lounge by the rules of this forum. There is no direct question here as it is meant to spark a discussion rather than present a specific area for debate.

Sushi is a large western misconception. Too many people believe sushi means ‘fish’, but in reality the term refers to a specific type of rice. Sashimi is sliced fish, sliced fish is not sushi. The thing is, given that various terms are constantly plucked from other languages, for better or worse, sushi now means ‘fish’ in colloquial circles. This is something of a mistranslation, a wrong assumption; like Bangkok being coined the capital of Thailand when Bangkok is in actuality a district within the capital city of Krung Thep (which means “City of Angels”), or like Killer Whale being a misconception due to how words are ordered in English compared to Scandinavian tongues (the correct translation should be “Killer of Whales”).

Today in ‘philosophy’ there is no life left. We only see a sullen regard for the words of the dead hanging upon quaint and cloying aphorisms of ‘on the shoulders of giants’ and such blind grandiose drivel. The obscurantists have crowned themselves as ‘wise’ and the scholars now claim the title of ‘philosopher’ - simply for reading the words of opinions of others whose opinions are of the opinions of those professing a ‘better’ opinion. Finding a voice among the rabble that is free from the bindings of some select interpretation is a rarity; and when found they’re mocked for not sharing the same rigid views passed down from before - like the spread of a deadly disease set out to destroy individual thought and any chance of singular expression.

They call it “sushi” like they have authority over what that means because someone said somewhere to them what it meant? Really? Is that all that remains of discourse?

The sophists have stormed the castle and then declared the meaning of ‘castle’ to mean nothing. The double-edged sword of the previous monarch slits their own throat by assuming they held some pure form of ‘knowing’ where the laughing sophists (pure of heart) berated their arrogance - now we find ourselves under the rule of mad kings, the sophists have defected and claimed ‘knowing’ as the new ‘unknowing’. Such limbless fools are they that they’ve cut the legs from their predecessors bodies and called their armless and legless flailing ‘reaching for’ and ‘walking toward’ ... they are now the blind recipients of their own mockery!

There are those that tell us the ‘should’ and make use of what they deem ‘just’ as a ‘should’. As terms and ideas morph into a diverse set of forms - sometimes abandoning the original conception - people will cling longingly on to what has gone believing the ghost to possess more substance than the next generation ... such is the folly of conservatism and craving for some imagined golden age in the recesses of time. It is almost like some are unwilling to appreciate that sometimes good ideas die and sometimes bad ideas consume them. All in all if we have faith in humanity we believe the better ideas outweigh the worse, or life would be a moralistic exercise in masturbation: a nonsense unworthy of living!

What is lost is unknown, yet this doesn’t make what is lost impossible to rediscover only to be known as a ‘rediscovery’. All that is discovered is discovered for the first time - rediscovery is the realisation of a previously discovered item of human knowledge. The individual’s ‘discovery’ should never be mistaken for the community of human ‘discovery’.

Sushi means sushi!