informal coalitions: Leading is a "doing word"

informal coalitions: Leading is a "doing word": "Nominalizing verbs and using other abstract nouns is, of course, part of the way that we learn. We generalize patterns of meaning from disparate experiences and name these as a way of making sense of the world. This practice won’t disappear from language; and I’m not arguing that it should. This blog is peppered with such usage (including the phrase 'Informal Coalitions'!). What I am saying, though, is that we need to become more sharply aware of the ways in which describing our practice (there’s another one!) in abstract terms can:

* distort our own and others' perceptions and understanding of what’s going on,
* blind us to the part that we are playing in this ongoing process, and
* disempower us from acting in the only place, and at the only time, that we can – that is, in the here and now."