How to analyze text on a deeper level
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Summary
In this episode, we continue our analysis of the Holy text by looking at the words used and why they are used. In order to do so, you need to ask yourself two questions: 1) What is the author trying to tell me? 2) Why did they choose these words? 3) What are the reasons why they were chosen? 4) Why do they have a double meaning?
Transcript
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You know how to read, but today I want to share with you a little trick that I use to
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In order to do that, you're going to have to ask yourself two questions.
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First, what else is the author trying to tell me?
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And second, why would the author pick these particular words?
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In English, the average word has between two or three different synonyms, and many words
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So for example, the word ear could mean my ear, or it could mean an ear of corn.
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Now I learned this trick from reading the Bible.
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You see, if you're a believer and you're reading holy text, then you're often faced
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with the question, why are these particular words here?
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And so you have to read in a different way because you're basically trying to justify
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Now you can use the same method when you're reading almost any text, and today I want to
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talk a little bit about the charter, sort of continuing from where we left off in the previous
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two videos, and hopefully address some of the questions that you guys have below.
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This is from when God tells Abraham to leave his home, leave his family, and go to a land
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The words that he particularly chooses are Lech Lecha, which is basically a repeat of the
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And the question really is, why does God need to say go for yourself?
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So this is one example, and I don't really want to turn this into a Bible class, but
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this is one example of why you have to analyze the particular words, and there's a lot of
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meaning in the go for yourself as opposed to just go.
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The second example that I want to pull up is one that you're probably familiar with, and
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So if you have no idea about anything to do with mustard seeds, then the entire parable
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makes no sense, really the whole story hinges on understanding mustard seed because it's
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a very small seed, but it grows into a much, much larger plant, probably a two to three
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And so you're reading this text in a different way because you're looking at the particular
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words because the words are often very loaded and the choice was often deliberate.
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And that's really something you have to keep in mind.
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A lot of times people write and they don't necessarily feel it's deliberate, but even if it's not intentionally
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or consciously deliberate, there may be some sort of a hidden message or underlying bias
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that you can pick up from why they made these particular word choices.
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So what does this have to do with the Charter, the Constitution Act?
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So pulling this back up, I want to point you to section 4.2.
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This is again, this is the Constitution Act 1982.
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And so here, number four, for example, and it talks about the demand to hold elections every
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five years so that no legislature can sit for more than five years in the House of Commons.
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In time of real or apprehended war, invasion or insurrection, the House may be continued
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by Parliament and basically they can sit for longer than five because of these things.
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And so here you have two words that you really need to look at.
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There's the question, in a time of real or apprehended war.
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So you should stop and say, wait, why did they not just say war?
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And so we look at the two words, real is, I guess you can imagine a real war, a hot war
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But apprehended, well, the meaning apprehend right down here, to become aware of, to perceive
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So you say, well, how do you not understand that you're in a war?
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And the answer again, if real is a hot war, then perhaps apprehended could be used to say
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Now I don't really know if you could justify not having elections because of a cold war,
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or if there's some other sort of apprehended understanding of war that you could pull
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But there are definitely reasons why you may want to say, okay, there is, it's not necessarily
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a real war yet because we haven't entered into a hot war phase.
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You know, the British call it the Boer War, B-O-R, like the boring war.
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And the Germans called it the Sitzkrieg because no one was doing anything for the first part
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And so, you know, there may be some sort of perceived war where you don't understand and
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there's definitely wiggle room, but it's important to note the words.
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So again, a real or apprehended war, you should really ask the question, why does it not just
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Another place that you can look at is the LGBTQ rights that were read into the charter.
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Now if you go to section 15, it does not say anything about sexual orientation.
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So it talks about how everyone is equal before the law and it does list sex as one of the
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ways that you cannot be discriminated against, but it doesn't say explicitly sexual orientation.
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Now the courts decided in the Supreme Court case here, Egan versus Canada, they decided that
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section 15 should also include this because that's really what it meant.
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And so it's, um, the Supreme Court held that although sexual orientation is not listed as
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a ground for discrimination in section 15 of the charter, it constitutes an equivalent
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So it's basically, it's equivalent to all these other ones in there that a person shouldn't
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be discriminated because of their sexual orientation.
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And that is really a consequence of the fact that it was written in 1982.
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And so obviously you have maybe some other grounds on a text, especially as you're talking
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So you could talk about the Bible or you could talk about the declaration of independence in
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Um, you can talk about the charter again, even because it was the 80, it was 1982.
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And although it's not that long ago, it is, it was a very different world in 82.
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And so you have, um, sort of different words, different word choices, maybe words left out because
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the way that the thing is written and looking at the particular words are very, very important.
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Now there's two things that, two sort of competing ideas that people have when you're talking
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about, um, legalistic texts and specifically with the constitution, you guys may have heard
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So the first one is what is called the living tree doctrine.
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And this is what we in Canada have as a charter.
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And so the doctrine basically states that the charter is like a living tree and it is constantly
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And because it's organic, it must be read in a progressive manner and adapted to changing
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So just like the LGBTQ rights that were read in, if you will, they weren't added into the
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So they didn't go in, add, um, sexual orientation as a protected, protected status or anything
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that you, you can't be discriminated against, but they basically read it in.
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And so they're understanding that section 15, again, if it were, you know, if it were written
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today, it would include such things as, um, sexual orientation.
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And so LGBTQ rights are obviously protected and defended.
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And that was really what the intent of the thing was to, to not allow discrimination.
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So that's one, that's the living tree document and the LGBT rights, uh, LGBTQ rights is just,
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I think the, the most, um, the most obvious example of where something is read in, where
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it was rightfully, you know, people, people were rightfully protected from being discriminated
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Um, but it simply wasn't in there because of the times, then you have the originalism.
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And this is often what you hear, um, people discussing the second amendment in the United
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States talking about the right to bear arms, the militia, the right to protect you from
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And this basically says that the, um, statements in the constitution or the document should be
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interpreted based on the original understanding of the authors, um, or the people present at
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At the time, maybe kind of like Shakespeare would use a particular sentence structure or
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particular form, then we should try and understand what did Shakespeare mean?
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What did the people writing the constitution mean?
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And that's what we need to understand because it's not just what we understand the words
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And really, although one is called originalism and one is the living tree, they're both basically
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sets of interpretation or a lens with which you interpret a document.
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Now, again, this is really important when you're talking about legal cases, because oftentimes
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it is the meaning of a word that really makes or breaks a case.
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And it's also important when you're reading a text.
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So I do want to look at perhaps on another video, some media stories, and we'll try and
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See if we can't pick up some of the biases or understand why a particular word was chosen.
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There's definitely a lot regarding the assault-style rifle ban.
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I mean, I'm sure just saying that is super loaded.
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I'm sure many of you are just as angry by that word choice as I am.
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But that's really important to analyze the legal text.
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And especially, again, now with COVID, there's many articles about COVID that have sort of
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They're trying to push one way or another, push a particular opinion one way or another.
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And so these tools don't necessarily just provide a useful analysis on legal text, but
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for any sort of media or really any document they're trying to read, because ultimately
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the author is choosing particular words for a particular reason.
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They may not be in trying to intentionally push anything, but this is what it is.
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Now, back to the Charter, the issue when you're talking about rights or when you're talking
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about a legalistic document between the two is that there has to be some sort of balance
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between the Living Tree Doctrine and the Originalism Doctrine.
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Now, if you go and look at the Charter, there might be something that you can change or that
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will get changed that will eventually cause the document to not stand for its original intent.
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So, for example, the Equality Rights, you can start picking apart different words, and
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you might say that some of these words actually don't mean this, and so suddenly, you know,
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They, you know, they're getting similar protection.
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It's not exactly the same, but it's but of equal benefit.
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And so therefore, because the equal protection and it's not really the exact same, but the
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benefit is the same, it's, you know, it's really actually the same.
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And so therefore, we can change anything we want.
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Whereas, again, the originalist point of view would say, no, you have to understand it as
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And so that's important, again, because these documents provide a shared frame of reference
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for us all to understand how these rights work or how these laws are supposed to work.
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And so you do have to have this sort of balance.
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Going back to the Bible, you have to understand what the original intent was.
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But because we're not riding donkeys, we're not all having fields in the way that maybe
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everyone did back at the time that the Bible was written, then you have to understand what
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So when it talks about, you know, people having to repay a neighbor, or when it talks about,
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you know, what to do if you injure someone else's donkey or someone's animal, things like
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You know, there's a particular line I'm thinking of, that if you see your enemy's donkey overburden,
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Now, the intent is that you should prevent animal cruelty, but it's not a suicidal document
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that you should then go and help your enemies in the middle of wartime, simply because of,
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Now, again, that's something that is up for debate.
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It's something that you need to read, something you need to understand the different points
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We really have to analyze the different word choices and think, why did the authors pick
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And that will really give us a way to understand the documents and the text that we're reading.
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I know some of you had a lot of thoughts about rights.
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I'm talking about the rights as they are both de facto and du jour, because they are both
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in reality and other countries perceive us and the charter to be the law of the land.
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So if you have any questions about the sort of extraneous stuff, if any of you have been
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reading the comments, then just please let me know and we can tackle that at another time.
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But other than that, let's think if we can find some texts, pull them apart, and see
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if we can reveal some biases maybe that's a little bit more hidden than average.
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There's a lot of great work being done by a lot of my fellow contributors.
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