English term or phrase: boom! | Hello everyone, From the book Thank You for Being Late by Thomas Friedman. ELEVEN Is God in Cyberspace? There has never ever been a time when the human being was capable of doing something and yet, eventually, that something did not happen. That means one of three things: 1) the human psyche is going to change fundamentally (good luck with that!); 2) the worldwide social contract changes so that the “angry men” can no longer be “empowered” (good luck with that too!); or 3) ***boom!*** —Garrett Andrews, online comment on my October 21, 2015, column on NYTimes .com Love does not win unless we start loving each other enough to fix our [expletive] problems. —Comedian Samantha Bee, commenting on the Orlando massacre on her TBS show, Full Frontal, June 13, 2016 I have been on the road selling different books ever since I published From Beirut to Jerusalem in 1989. I’ve given several hundred book talks to different audiences. So what’s the best question I ever got from someone in the audience on any book? That’s easy to answer. It was at an event at the Portland Theater, in Portland, Oregon, in 1999, when I was promoting The Lexus and the Olive Tree. A young man stood up in the balcony and asked me this question: “Is God in cyberspace?” I confess, I didn’t know how to answer his question, which was asked with the utmost sincerity and demanded an answer. After all, mankind had created a vast new realm for human interaction. (If the supernova is somewhere between Heaven and Earth, who is in charge there? Amazon or God on high?) The question seized me. So I called one of my most cherished spiritual mentors, Rabbi Tzvi Marx, a great Talmudic scholar whom I had gotten to know at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and who now lives in Amsterdam. I hoped to enlist his advice on how I should respond. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/boom noun a deep, prolonged, resonant sound. the resonant cry of a bird or animal. a buzzing, humming, or droning, as of a bee or beetle. a rapid increase in price, development, numbers, etc.: a boom in housing construction. a period of rapid economic growth, prosperity, high wages and prices, and relatively full employment. a rise in popularity, as of a political candidate. What is the meaning of "boom" here? Does it imply something negative like a sound of explosion, sounds of war? Thank you. |
| |
That's it! /It's all over!/ Utter destruction!/ Apocalypse! | Explanation: not necessarily a war as such but complete destruction... (NB not "self-" destruction) life on earth will come to an end we're all done for (unless humankind changes...which seems unlikely to happen) And yes, the word is onomatopoeic https://www.thefreedictionary.com/boom 2. bang, report, shot, crash, clash, blast, burst, explosion, roar, thunder, rumble, clap, peal, detonation I'm also reminded of the ending of T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men" where the ending is much quieter but disastrous nevertheless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hollow_Men https://www.shmoop.com/hollow-men/poem-text.html This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 2 days 9 hrs (2019-01-26 14:07:18 GMT) Post-grading --------------------------------------------------
Glad to have helped. |
| Selected response from: Yvonne Gallagher Ireland Local time: 09:46
|