A reporter once asked two men at the construction site where a church was being built what each did for a living. The first man replied: “I’m a bricklayer.” The second said: “I’m building a cathedral!” How we name an experience largely determines its meaning.
Thirty years ago, the American educator Allan Bloom wrote a book entitled The Closing of the American Mind. This was his thesis: our language today is becoming ever-more empirical, one-dimensional and devoid of depth. This, he submitted, was closing our minds by trivialising our experiences.
