Ruminations - John Conrad

​In Gulliver's Travels, a book written by Jonathan Swift in 1726, talks of two Islands Lilliput and Blefuscu. These islands are inhabited by small people (1/12 the size of normal people) and are constantly at war with each other. Both islands are ruled by emperors and both subscribe to a prophet Lustrog whose teachings are detailed in their holy book the Blundecral.
In the teachings of the Blundecral it details that eggs should be broken on the convenient end. The Lilliputians believe that this means the smaller end as generations before a son of the emperor had cut his finger breaking an egg on the big end. He thus mandated that all eggs be broken on the small end. The Blefuscans, on the contrary, believe an egg must be broken on the big end.
This resulted in centuries of conflict with many people displaced from their homes and others slain in conflict through the strife between the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians. In the story Gulliver washes up on the shore of Lilliput and gains their good graces until he refuses to conquer Blefuscu and force them to adopt the practice of Little-Endians. Gulliver is subsequently charged with treason.
Shakespeare famously said, "A rose by any name would smell as sweet." I am a bit of a word-smith and I love the many wonderful ways words can be used. However, sometimes our debates are as silly and lacking in importance as the debate between the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians. A word never has the weight of its referent--as beautiful as the word "rose" is, it never can approach the beauty and fragrance of the flower itself. In our religious squabbles it pays to remember this.