Enlightenment: Ilustrado vs. Liviano

With an acknowledged "unpolished style," Heath Synnestvedt playfully considers a range of topics. Violence on television, the human propensity to distraction and understanding the concept of enlightenment are all explored through anecdote and irony. In keeping with his message and manner, Heath intends the use of the lower case "i" for the personal pronoun. -Editor

Reading in this publication, New Church Perspective, i am struck by the unpolished nature of the majority of my own written work. The article that follows received a few taps from a ball-peen hammer, but not much.

Under “Ilustrado” on Wikipedia there's a definition of the adjective “ilustrado”: “Spanish for ‘erudite,’ ‘learned,’ or ‘enlightened ones’.” (There's also an interesting historical anecdote which you may wish to read instead.)

For my part, i prefer to employ the word “enlightened” in the sense of the word “light” as it relates to mass, rather than rays or particles. (I first heard this use of the word in a seminar run by Landmark Education)

If you look up “liviano” in a Spanish-English dictionary the primary usage is “light” (weight) as contrasted with “heavy”. Similarly as in English, this adjective can describe things that are frivolous. It can go even further and be applied to the lewdness of a comedian. Upon discovering this usage as i sat here in a cybercafe i nearly removed the word “liviano” from the title of my article with the desire to morph the piece into something acceptably familiar to my imagined audience.

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