Facta

One discussion of Prevost’s background mentioned a school whose motto is Facta non verba. Google doesn’t find the reference now, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t AI-hallucinate it.

The Endarkenment inverted the meaning of factum. In Latin a factum was simply a completed task, a got-r-done**. Now we think facts are authorized descriptions of the world. Authorized how? By the authorities of the Science religion. Mere words are unauthorized descriptions of the world, without the stamp of federal Science grants.

Prevost, like the earlier Leo, is focusing on the value of labor, not the value of authority. Natural Law agrees, and the medieval English law also agreed. A unit of value was defined as a certain amount of work, not an officially authorized abstract number.

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Most dictionaries mention the still-current phrase job of work but treat job as an onomatopoeic term for a small object, like glob or bob or buck. Olson fills in the correct origin. Work was measured by the piece or package, which could be treated fungibly as money or work or animals or grain. Each peasant was expected to perform certain tasks for the village as ways of paying his taxes and rent. The court documents (in Latin, which most peasants understood and read) enumerated the animals or units of work or money in each transaction. One unit of work was written as i opus since all numbers were lowercase roman form. i opus was generally abbreviated as i op, and j in those days was solely a word-final form of i. 3 was iij, 12 was xij and one was just j. So one work-coin was j op which eventually got pronounced as a word after j had hardened into a palatal voiced fricative. The old unit is also preserved in job lot, jobber, and the auto industry practice of counting each car on the assembly line as one job. In printing a job is one unique order (eg 1000 invoices or 200 engraved invitations) with unique specifications of text and font and paper. A job press is designed to handle small orders, and a job shop specializes in doing them. (A newspaper or book is not a job.)

The sweatshoppers, assisted in politics by the “rights” mongers, destroyed the two-way obligations and interactive negotiations of earlier times and languages, which were created by our own living brain. In the post-1700 world the owner has all the “rights” and no obligations.

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** Language footnote: The imperative form Git-R-Done! was Fac! in Latin. In English we say the same thing in response to the command.