On Formality and the Legal System.

The Formal, which is defined as that which is confined to the relationship between Mind and Langage, irrespective of the actual Reality of Being, is akin by parallel to Nietzsche's Socratic Appeal and Heidegger's Standing Reserve; it is an inferior dimension of human existence utterly unrelated to Reality. This is the dimension that the post-modernists are eager to deconstruct.

Given this, it is the pinnacle of irony that, whilst testing for sanity or sobriety, police officers ask individuals for the formalities of Name, Day of the Week, and Address. None of these abstractions are physical forms. Our legal system with its Kafkaesque snares is also the product of sheer Formality.

The expression "grammar-Nazi" is not entirely an exaggeration.

dm.A.A.

On Consistency and Maturity.

To be consistent in external affairs and inconsistent in internal cirumstances is the mark of maturity.

dm.A.A.*

* Intentionally no alteration.

On Failure.

We must play to win and prepare to lose.

The only way to ascertain the outcome of a game is to throw it, as it were. One can never guarantee a Victory. It is a poor sport that makes the error of trying to prevent Error.

dm.A.A.

On the three criteria of Language and On Heidegger: F.A.P.

Heidegger's trichotomy -- his metaphysics -- refers to three loci in a triangle of human experience: Being Itself, Language, and Mind.

I should like to borrow his work to formulate three fundamental criteria for Life In General (Civilised Life) and Linguistics: The constitutions of a Good sentence (as opposed to a merely passing one.)

Where Heidegger addresses the corners of the triangle, I shall elucidate the sides.

The first side -- the relationship between Mind and Being -- I shall call the Practical.

In language, concision falls into this category.

The second -- the relationship between Words and Being, is the Artistic.

Coherence belongs to this.

The third and final rung is the Formal -- between Words and Mind.

Grammar abides here.

dm.A.A.

On the Sinking House, Heideggerian Error, and Statistical Truth.

Without the Sinking House phenomenon, in an age of statistical information made instantly available by technology, there would be a possibility of eliminating Error, which Heidegger describes as the essence of the Human Being.

This is why it is frustrating to encounter videos on youtube that are a locus of unified jeers at the most marginal of human errors. These are called "fail" videos, and they are dangerous memes, because they perpetuate the notion that an individual's fallibility is stupidity, that a sense of "Certainty" in numbers* is justified, and a set of personally superficial qualities such as statistics are to be regarded as important (whereas in fact it is the individual decision to regard them as important and to operate according to them, imitated on a large scale, that renders statistical truth of import, despite the total justifiability of human error when something as psychologically inconsequential as a misplaced "0" occurs).

There are more Planck seconds in an individual second than there have been seconds in the entire history** of the Universe. The more infinitesimal the space( of /-)time, the less we can be Certain that no error was made, and the more mysterious the leap we take each day when we take the input of our senses to be the contents of our minds and we say "I know".

dm.A.A.

* A double-meaning.

** "History" not in the sense of human history, but our projections as to the age of the Universe.

The Sinking House Problem as a Survivalistic Tendency.

Situations wherein stress, survival, or bodily self-preservation are concerned are all instances of the Sinking House. The civilised minde is unaccustomed to cooperating with the reptilian hind-brain in such a way as to say 'this is possible' in the absence of physical stimuli. If things like torture can appear 'possible' to one who has not experienced them, or even simply to one who is not presently experiencing them, then literally Everything is Possible.

dm.A.A.

The Sinking House as a Sociological Phenomenon.

The Sinking House problem is the result of an absence of Attention on the part of the Other.

The False House is a failed attempt to cope with this problem.

This will occur during a transitional period in one's Life.

dm.A.A.