Two quotes for this one. First,
Curtis Almquist oversees the Society of St. John the Evangelist. He once wrote that monks are sometimes seen as eccentric, not merely in the sense that some may seem quirky or odd. He wrote, ‘Rather, I mean eccentric in an etymological sense, as in the Latin eccentricus, meaning “having a different center.”‘
And second,
Ultimately, we cannot rein in technology use with rules, limits, or fences. As Albert Borgmann says, ‘Technology will be appropriated…not when it is enclosed in boundaries but when it is related to a center.’ Elsewhere he notes, ‘The answer is not to find a line, but to remember and invigorate those centers in our lives that encourage our place, our time, and the people around us.’
-Arthur Boers, Living Into Focus, p. 188, 200
That’s another keeper.
Yeah, the more I think about this, the more I think society still carries the source meaning of “eccentric” in our daily use. When we call somebody eccentric, we are not usually referring to all the stuff they don’t do, but what they DO do. We don’t think somebody is eccentric because of all the lines they draw in the sand, but because of everything ELSE they are drawing in the sand. It is not in the refusal to march, that one is seen as eccentric, but in the marching to the beat of a different drummer entirely. We tend to use the label correctly, I think.