Walter and Julia are examining a glass paperweight in George Orwell's 1984 without having context of what it is or for what it was used.

This is the same sort of context collapse caused by distance in time and memory that archaeologists face when examining found objects.

How does one pull out the meaning from such distant objects in an exegetical way? How can we more reliably rebuild or recreate lost contexts?

Link to: - Stonehenge is a mnemonic device - mnemonic devices in archaeological contexts (Neolithic carved stone balls

Some forms of orality-based methods and practices can be viewed as a method of "reading" physical objects.

Ideograms are an evolution on the spectrum from orality to literacy.

It seems odd to be pulling these sorts of insight out my prior experiences and reading while reading something so wholly "other". But isn't this just what "myths" in oral cultures actually accomplish? We link particular ideas to pieces of story, song, art, and dance so that they may be remembered. In this case Orwell's glass paperweight has now become a sort of "talking rock" for me. Certainly it isn't done in any sort of sense that Orwell would have expected, presumed, or even intended.

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/patrick-henry-virginia-ratifying-convention-va/

While gerrymandering isn't brought up explicitly here, the underlying principles are railed against heavily.

Some interesting things applicable to the rise of Donald J. Trump hiding in here.

Interesting to read this in its historical context versus our present context. So much can be read into his words from our current context, while others can extract dramatically different views--particularly by Constitutional originalists.

Could be interesting to look at this from the dual perspective of eisegesis vs. exegesis.

Historical note taking practices can tell us many things aside from just the ways in which textual information was managed. They can also tell us about how people lived, how they thought, how they used memory and writing and how these things were understood culturally.

We do however need to be careful in how we interpret these documents historically. We need to attempt to view them exegetically and not eisegetically. We also need to be careful to look at them from a "large world" perspective and not presume that small things had large and heavy influence on things to come in the future.

I seem to recall a book or two like this that were on the best seller list in the 1990s and early 2000s based on a best selling Christian self help book, but with an edition that had a journal like reflection space. Other than the old word rapiaria, is there a word for this broad genre besides self-help journal?

An example might be Rhonda Byrne's book The Secret (Atria Books, 2006) which had a gratitude journal version (Atria Books, 2007, 978-1582702087).

Another example includes Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life (Zondervan, 2002) with a journal version (Zondervan, 2002, 978-0310807186).

There's also a sub-genre of diaries and journals that have these sort of preprinted quotes/reflections for each day in addition to space for one to write their own reflections.

Has anyone created a daily blogging/reflection platform that includes these sorts of things? One might repurpose the Hello Dolly WordPress plugin to create journal prompts for everyday writing and reflection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisegesis