Power and Voice

POWER AND VOICE

Laconic speech is a luxury of power. The spartans could speak as such because they mastered and made universal, martial epistemology. Most speech is either political or deceptive. The spartans needed neither. Seek power for the freedom to speak laconically.

Laconic speech requires deep knowledge of the subject, extraordinary honesty, extraordinary insight, and an audience of nearly equal ability, whose experience and sentiments mirror the speaker’s. It’s wisdom is lost on the idiots. Seek the wise, so you have others to speak to.

I think the modern version of laconic speech is the aphorism – which nietzsche mastered (and I try to). It allows us to speak of that which others may not yet comprehend, where the laconic merely cuts through dishonesty and posturing.

It is *extremely difficult* to speak in laconic voice or aphoristic prose and it is probably, other than poetic rhyme, and poetic song, our greatest intellectual art.