On Ignorance as Bliss and Why We should not feel Recrimination For it.

On Ignorance as Bliss and Why We should not feel Recrimination For it.

 

Let me begin by making clear that the “Ignorance” that I am referring to, in this instance, is not the Ignorance that I had referred to previously as the Will to Ignorance. That use of the word Ignorance most precisely delineated a “will to perpetuate the Old”. This kind of Ignorance that I am about to discuss refers to a higher kind of Ignorance.

 

I was visiting the Rancho Bernardo High School Speech and Debate team as a volunteer, and I could not help noticing a bin full of newspapers in the classroom wherein the meeting was held. The newspapers were none other than the student newspaper, and I was drawn to an article in the “Opinions” section. Two students had written on one topic: Is Ignorance Really Bliss? The one writing in affirmation of this question wrote a very sentimental piece about the joys of being innocent and unaware of unpleasant facts that could create stress, et cetera. His opponent wrote, with harsh realism and even cynicism, about the necessity of coming to terms with the world maturely and responsibly, rather than staying on one end of a bridge, unable to cross over from naivete and childhood into the realisation of the grim “truths” of adulthood.

 

This had haunted me for some time, not because I did not know my opinion, but because I did not know how to answer. I was opposed to the latter boy, yet I could not explain precisely WHY I would ever be a proponent of Ignorance. I could not explain my sentiment in a way that was nearly as convincing as this gentleman had described it.

 

Yet now I can.

 

Clinging to an ideal is done, I think, not as a goal but as a symptom. The notion of Cognitive Dissonance would suggest to us that we perpetuate a dead or childish ideal for its own sake, or by virtue of a complex. In order to keep believing in something, one acts in such a way as to find corroboration for one’s belief. This is destructive fanaticism.

 

Yet this I do not believe to be the condition of the psyche at all.

 

In fact, I should say that acting with an ideal as a goal may be neurotic at any moment. I would like to postulate that ideals are not goals but symptoms. Ideals are also at once both truths and illusions.

 

When one is young, there is no such thing as a truth. There is only an experience. One has a number of impulses whose “reality” cannot be questioned, simply because they predate the socialisation which can call anything into question. When acted upon by an effort of will, certain impulses are Affirmed. They become Actions. The knowledge of having performed an action is retained as a memory. Repetition of such actions creates an increasingly complex system of memories. When one wishes to justify one’s present action according to these memories, either to oneself or to others, these memories become ideals.

 

When ideals are communicated, they are represented in language. If others which to express agreement with one’s self, regardless of the uniqueness of their circumstance, the ideals, which are now verbal instead of mental, become Truths.

 

Imagine the predicament of a Fascist state. The “Truth” therein is the ideology of the state. Anyone who is “ignorant” of this “truth” must thereby be “made aware of it”. In the process of being made aware of it, the possibility of living without this Absolute Truth is forgotten. Also is forgotten the fact that the Truth actually depends on people believing in it, or being aware of it, in order to function.

 

It is possible that all Truths are such constructs. No matter how civilised we become, however, there is always a reserve of the psyche which is free from the conditioning. Consider the problem of the Sinking House*, a situation I delineated previously. I may construct a Powerpoint with twenty slides. I may have slides 10 through 15 be blue. I could ask a person to count the number of blue slides. One would usually say “six”. Some people may err and say “five” by simply subtracting 10 from 15, ignoring that 10 itself was blue. Yet imagine that a person is an amnesiac. This person would be unable to discern, with the same sense of Certainty that the others employ, that there are six blue slides. This would be because the amnesiac, if he or she suffers from “severe” short-term memory loss, would be unable to know, by the end of counting the slides, where he or she started. This would be necessary to attain certainty, of course, that the count had not been a miscount.

 

This is not the case only with the amnesiac. People are daily capable of encountering this problem. One may suddenly find that one is not certain, but only dimly aware, of what one had been thinking of mere seconds before. We are so accustomed often to the notion of our world and of our minds as though these were fixed entities that we forget how fleeting thoughts are. If this happens several times within one moment whilst one is attempting a kind of computation, one is in the predicament of the Sinking House. One fears for one’s Sanity, when in fact a perfectly natural event is occuring.

The ego possesses memories and can arrange them in terms of a style of logic. The Unconscious, however, is not motivated by logic but by Meaning. It also happens to be in control of which memories are available to the ego. This is why one can remember a dream with sterling detail upon awaking but forget it within hours. It is not that one is going mad; the unconscious simply sees no need for the ego to remember. In the absence of such a memory working as a bridge, we are all possible amnesiacs at one point or another.

The ego determines whether or not something is true or a calculation is accurate according to what “makes sense” or “works”. The Unconscious is concerned with Meaning. If a calculation is meaningless, the Unconscious will not lend the ego the necessary affirmation it needs in order to function. All memories of past thoughts become apparently equal, for no inner compulsion can set the one apart from another. A miscalculation becomes impossible, but so does a proper calculation.

 

We are so accustomed the notion of a “right answer” existing for everything that we are almost pathologically (and in some cases actually pathologically) resistant to the idea that a “proper calculation” cannot exist if there is no one in the right mind to complete it. Yet this is, looked at more broadly, irrefutably the case. Being in the “wrong mind” to think something through does not render one mad; it simply means that one’s mind is not in the right place to think of such things. The Unconscious would not allow us to fritter our lives away by obsession with minute and inconsequential matters. It is not so much that it interferes as that it simply wants no part in it.

 

*This is a metaphor.

 

Dm.A.A.

On the Tragedy of a Loss of Literature.

On the Tragedy of a Loss of Literature.

In olden times, people read more than they watched. Literature, as an art form, is dying even amongst those who perpetuate it. What little an individual reads is usually confined to the technical and the stringently rational. People forget that Rationalism itself may be, at best, an aesthetic movement. As I have pointed out, its algebraic logic, its tendency to equate things prematurely, ensnares the mind in a system of symbols held together like one of those plastic toys that start out as small balls of zigzagging connections and can be expanded by simply pulling the ball from two ends. If I devise a sphere that can be expanded not be pulling two ends but by exhaling air into it, is the one superior to the other? I can be more perplexed and amused by the inflation of the one, but I can play kick-ball with the other. It depends on my preference which ball I enjoy more, and at which moment. By the same token, it is entirely dependent on my preference whether I choose to represent my experience, symbolically, in the form of Rationalism or in some more vague form. What matters is that I find a new way to represent it once the one form has become either broken or terminally deflated.

 

Literature is peculiar in that it is at once an aesthetic mode of experience and a logical mode. The manipulation of symbols in literature are done, by a proficient writer, with as much if not greater regard for the sound and texture of the phrases as for the explicit meaning.

 

The trouble with a psyche that has no reserve of literary knowledge is that it will tend towards a stringent Rationalism where Rationalism is destructive. One can abuse the words that another uses simply by drawing “logical conclusions” between statements that the other had not intended at all. To assert that one did not intend for these equations and parallels to be made may attract accusations of sophistry and manipulation as quickly as a light attracts moths in our modern day and age. One is branded a kind of Wormtongue whose intent is only to cleverly weave intricate patterns of words aimed to deceive. One is met with the dogmatism of a class of people who claim that Logic has uncovered one’s true intentions. The fallacy therein is of course that one is only Wormtongue if what one is saying does not refer to a truth, but to a lie. Yet if the injustice of others plagues one’s self and yet no deep shame rests upon one’s heart after they have faded not only from sight but from consideration (which is unlikely to happen if the accusations had planted darts of unmerited guilt within one’s heart and mind), one can be assured, even in the midst of this madness, that one was not simply weaving a tangled web to ensnare others. The symbols referred to something REAL. As with most REAL things of tremendous import, the instrument of logic never suffices by itself. Logic, being abstract, obstructs. Verbal equations made between words are often done in a sphere of life totally removed from the concrete reality that one wishes to depict. They take place in the abstract realm of algebra and monetary concerns, a realm divorced from the material and the personally consequential (however one’s well-being may depend upon the consequences of the abstract and its effect upon the mind and the body).

 

A sort of elitism becomes necessary. One must shelter one’s self from the sophists and pseudointellectual Rationalists in an attempt to find clarity and acceptance with those who have a calm heart and a patient mind. One steadily finds that the justifications that one had required in the face of the prosecutors one does not need in the face of an understanding human being. The old red herrings are not slapped in one’s face, and an aethereal freedom emerges to express oneself without needing to make reference to a realm removed from one’s experiential reality. What had seemed mad now appears True in a way to surpass and predate mere brilliance of intellect. Steadily, one comes out into the upper half of the Sand-Clock, and the conversation, external and internal, is elevated like a feather in the wind to a place of blissful and heart-stopping sensitivity totally removed from the hostility and abuse of the earlier confrontations. Philosophy becomes artful and spiritual, and its responsibilities are now no longer towards the misguided whims of others but towards Truth. A new set of responsibilities which could not have probably thrived in the heated, intellectually arid climate, are now seen to be possible, and the old ways are obsolete in the presence of a new person free of pretense and prejudice. There is a receptivity which totally changes the quality of the secondary truth, and there emerges the possibility for both parties to more deeply understand the primary truth that the secondary truth sought to depict.

This depiction is seen to have been, from the outset, no mere technical depiction. Logic alone could not describe the primary truth. Logic could only refer to itself and its own rules and limitations. One cannot teach a computer how to write poetry, for however much it learns, poetry cannot be taught. The depiction was a literary depiction. One did not use words merely as direct, scientific references to obvious phenomena, but as paintings that employed both form AND COLOUR, both explicit meaning through the functionality of the words and implicit meaning through the aesthetics of their arrangement, to portray a condition that ultimately surpasses the reach of words and thoughts, if not consciousness entirely.

The allegations of the Rationalist are seen to have been merely cut corners and impatient shortcuts to understanding. They were equations made that had never been referred to either explicitly or implicitly in one’s original statements. Imagine that one had to walk every path in a labyrinthine neighbourhood to draw a map of the area, yet one chose instead to take shortcuts and only to arrive at the ultimate destination. If one had not known that, upon arrival at the ultimate destination, one would be asked to draw a map of one’s journey, one would see no reason not to cut these corners. And these are the corners that the Rationalist cuts. One fails to see, when one does this, that the equations that could so easily be made between different statements that one might think them obvious and self-evident paint an entirely different picture than the one that had been painted. They are a vandalism of the original mural, and it is no wonder that, after this vandalism had taken place, the true place that the mural was meant to depict was effaced from history.

 

Dm.A.A.

On Cedric and Harry: An Analysis.

On Cedric and Harry: An Analysis.

 

Recently, I had a falling-out with a close friend. This was met with near to no regret. He and I had “grown apart”, as the colloquialism suggests, yet really a more accurate description would be that the neuroses that had all ways served as dividers and stumbling blocks for us, since first meeting, had reached a fever pitch in our presence. Imagine a microphone put up next to an amplifier. Anyone who’s tried this will note the effect: Two instruments that had served a common purpose now create a disastrous sound that I would not even suggest that anyone try; it is a high-pitched squeal devoid of vibrato that may leave a noiseophile disappointed.

 

Having taken time to grow outside of his influence, I found a tremendous renewal of freedom and vigour which I might presume to be neutral. Yet in the wake of this came also an increased sensitivity to the degree to which I had been wronged. I texted him several days into our break and brought to his attention, with a level head, some gentle criticisms about the ways in which he had treated me. I drew parallels, very briefly, to other instances that I had felt myself wronged for the same reasons: A mutual acquaintance and a former romantic partner were two examples. Yet my at first eloquent and simple point, one that goes unnoticed and was predominantly drawn from the work of Jung, was met with what appeared to be sheer disorganized hostility. A squabble ensued wherein my intellectual rigour and existential passion fell on deaf ears (figuratively, since this was in text) and he allowed the exchange to degenerate into a totally unsubstantiated, neurotic denunciation of my character. All that I could discern from his insults, which met my valid arguments with blatant, explicit apathy and which twisted my words without any respect for their context, was the degree to which an extravert can cling to what appears “obvious” to him, however the introvert may try to delineate that irregularity which is the law of life. This fear that had so governed my earlier years of philosophical awareness, and even prior to my interest in philosophy in sixth grade, had now shown its source: Extraverted neurosis. I had lived in terror for years of this naive tendency that man has to again and again vilify the exception without any kind of sensible or merciful regard for the outcast and underdog. Oppressive obviousness, the illusion of a coherent world that could be taken to be Absolute, had been the work of innumerable years for me to defy, and this leitmotif of defiance was the leitmotif of my intellectual and personal life during these years.

 

What struck me was that everything that Kresten said was done with the simple underlying intent of denouncing me. He had no interest in intellectual examination or even consideration, so all of his arguments became aimed at an agenda whose goal was the perpetuation of his own neurosis: The inability to see beyond something that was “looking him straight in the face”. Extraverts are by no means the only people to suffer from this, though usually this problem occurs in insecure introverts who subordinate themselves to extraversion. In the absence of a well-integrated unconscious, one will be overwhelmingly tempted by the passions, and among those passions is the temptation towards an illusory promise of Certainty. At one point or another, the promises of our senses no longer suffice, and we see how what had seemed totally stable ground moments ago had turned out to be mere cloud.

 

Kresten is, at heart, motivated by popularity. His entire paradigm aims at context. He would probably be enraged to find that I had posted this to the internet, negligent of the fact that anyone could google for his name, and that people circulate stories about me with his permission amongst our old groups of acquaintences.

 

And I am reminded of Cedric Diggory from Harry Potter. Cedric’s death was the death of a popular man. He was also the apple of Cho’s eye, and Cho would ultimately prove to be more of a temptress to Harry than a Goddess. Yet there was more to his death and the time of his death than meets the casual eye. Cedric died at the hands of Lord Voldemort, or more specifically Wormtail. He died by the hands of the ego in service of the fear of death. It was Harry who bore witness to this. And it was because of the political unpopularity of Harry’s allegation, perpetuated by a tyrannical politician, that Harry was thought mad by the majority of the magical community, including, at one point, his best friend.

 

This story had never been unseeded from my heart. It is no mere coincidence or plot detail that Harry’s persecution began at the moment of Cedric’s death. Every character in Harry Potter is symbolic of an aspect of the individual psyche. When the possibility of popularity or its relevance dies in one’s life, one turns to the dark task of facing not only this tragic fate, looking back, but, looking forward, the looming terror of Voldemort: The Fear of Death. The popularity of the Harry Potter books in the popular culture may make this appear silly, yet it is only because Jo Rowling chose to write the books in a popular fashion; she knew the risks.

 

When one must confront the actual threat that the Fear of Death, resurrected by the sycophantic ego, portends, one must forsake the naivete of the past; it is outside of one’s control not to. One must recognize the absurdity of Cedric’s death, and one must see the absurdity of Cedric’s life. Popularity will not spare one. Popularity only dooms one’s self. Yet, with incredible luck and faith, the will to popularity is all that dies. Harry, because the series is a seven-part epic and not a four-part tragedy, survives the graveyard wherein Cedric is killed. The most important part of us – the true Hogwarts champion, one might say – goes on after the will to be liked and accepted is gone.

 

Dm.A.A.

On the Ethics of Presumption.

If we are to be civilised, one must presume that the other will not presume. If one presumes that the other will presume correctly, then the other is entitled to presuming incorrectly. If one presumes that the other will not presume, then the other is not entitled to presume incorrectly.

If I were to presume upon what others expect of me, I should limit them to those presumed expectations. This presumption creates a mold which is entirely personal and topical to me.

I cannot read their minds. The overwhelming illusion that I can would be mere participation mystique: Practical for tribal man, but wholly inappropriate for civilised man.

If I should presume upon these expectations consistently, affirming my own mold ten times out of ten, and even if I may be right nine times out of ten, I would be wrong the tenth time. If this tenth time were insubstantial, my presumption would be wholly justified. Yet if that one time out of ten that I am wrong I have missed the fleeting opportunity of a fate that dramatically surpasses the other nine fates and that would have laid memory of them to waste, it is understandable that a crippling depression should follow once I have inevitably failed to break my own mold at the moment of Exception.

Even if others expect something from me that I may identify, I could only have faith in such an expectation by tribal reasoning. I would know it not by immediate experience so much as by memory of past events, which would know nothing of the possibility of change.

Here, a single line of dichotomy may be drawn between two distinct attitudes: That of the Adolescent* and that of the Adult.

The Adolescent presumes upon the expectations of others, following them consistently with the inevitability of being wrong the tenth time.

The Adult defies this presumption and in fact pretension. He or she breaks out of his or her mold, taking full responsibility for his or her own presumptions and their probable fallacy.

The Adolescent perpetuates his or herself by pleasing others. The Adult daily reinvents his or herself by taking chances. When one defies the expectations of others, the Adult recognises, one may run the risk of disappointment, yet usually not only this risk but most importantly this fate is marginal. The risk of being "wrong" pales in comparison to the rewards of being "right", for one so surpasses the expectations of others that, should they be receptive, which may be a matter of their personal discipline, they would feel themselves to be a part of a Greater Good, enriched.

The task of the Adult is more difficult because it is much like a game of hot-potato. Once one has broken out of one's own mold, the responsibility is passed to the other. The other can then choose how to respond to the unexpected change. In some cases, it will, as I have aforementioned, be a matter of exercising the personal discipline necessary to adapt to an advantageous and progressive change. Yet in situations wherein, either by choice or by destiny, one is in disfavour of the unexpected outcome, the responsibility still rests in Expressing this dissatisfaction to the original Adult. This game of hot-potato, wherein at any instant someone is responsible and at any instant one may be faced with a responsibility, is the essence of the Adult life. It is absent in the relative comfort of the Adolescent Life, which is therefore markedly anti-social and conformist by that token.

The potato is thereby thrown back to the original Adult who broke out of his or her mold. One is confronted with the dissatisfaction of the Other. One can then decide, usually according to how much one cares for the Other, (although this is not always such a simple criterion for decision, and a just decision may be based on more subtle and complex criteria) whether or not to yield to the Other's preference. This preference is now an object of knowledge and not of presumption.

One is reminded of two quotes. One is the popular saying: "It is better to ask for forgiveness than for permission." Asking for permission is the essence of the Adolescent attitude. Asking for forgiveness is more usually the Adult fate.

The other quote is by Alan Wilson Watts: "You cannot have a free society that is at the same time a nursery." The free society, of course, is the life of the Adult. The nursery is an apt metaphor for the life of the Adolescent.

Jung and Woodman, amidst others, including Campbell, warn of the tremendous dangers of PERPETUAL ADOLESCENCE in contemporary society, whose trends have changed significantly but not substantially in the time since those mentors spoke to us.



* This has nearly nothing to do with age. One may be an Adult even at the age of fourteen. It is entirely a description of character in this instance.

dm.A.A.

On Complexes, Art, and Detail.

On Complexes, Art, and Detail.

 

When one is possessed of a mother- or father-complex, for instance, or any of a number of conventional psychic ailments of the modern man, the effects will be pronounced, but the majority of the problem will go unnoticed by not only oneself but those around one. They may appear, for the artist, however, in minute situations.

 

I have all ready delineated the incredible importance of subtlety and attention to detail for the Artist. Since this is an aesthetic consideration, and because aesthetics may lie outside of their own box in life, as they do for a man like Nietzsche, one can never merely marginalise attention to detail as neurotic. It is, on the contrary, symptomatic of a mind that is incredibly astute and in accord with an integrated unconscious. Besides, the process of Art may alleviate suffering for one who can take the opportunity to detect slight tendencies to submit to a complex.

 

Imagine a blade of grass sticking out from a crack in the cement. You tread on it, and your friend reproaches you for it. You see no reason for why he should suddenly pay particular heed to your minute infraction. All of a sudden, to your horror, the crack opens up, the ground inflates to the proportion of a hill, the cement ruptures, and what had appeared to have been a mere blade of grass had turned out to be one of a multitude of hairs on the back of a tremendous subterranean beast.

 

This is the predicament of the psyche. All that walks the surface of consciousness is naive in respect to what lies underneath. An artist may find his self confronted with the issue of whether or not to punctuate a given verse at the end of a poem, for instance. This seems entirely arbitrary, but yet it seems at the same time imperative that one change the punctuation. One seeks to conform to a pattern that is one’s preconceived notion of what “good structure” is. Yet this egoic attitude, whilst appearing entirely sensible, is completely at odds with one’s own artistic inclination. In the construction of a poem, a period at the end may be the defining point that entirely determines the character of the poem, yet this subtlety may be so surpassingly beautiful that the emotionally stunted neurotic may either neglect its beauty or presume it to be merely symptomatic of some unperishable “divine” beauty that was not the product of careful, meticulous practice in the stylistic manipulation of punctuation. What works against the heart of the artist is the mind of the scientist, who insists on stringent adherence to Order by nature; the scientific method is precisely this process of imposing order on conscious experience.

My father is a biochemist. My father-complex is at work, beneath the threshold of consciousness, when I choose to sacrifice the subtlety of this minute detail for the “clarity” of a kind of classicism. This would appear, again, arbitrary for an “objective” standpoint. Yet the temptation to impose a kind of “classical” order onto the poem is overwhelming, and this would suggest that, in fact, a beast does dwell beneath the surface, and this is no mere blade of grass I am treading on. I may try to convince myself that the period is inconsequential and symptomatic of some neurotic attention to detail, but then I should make such an absurd statement as: “It doesn’t matter at all, but it ABSOLUTELY MUST be this way and not that way.” The complex rears its head. If the ego wishes to perpetuate itself and get the Artistic to yield, it will inflate this to obsessive proportions. All sorts of allegations of injustice will follow, beginning with the relatively adolescent assertions of pretension, moving to accusations of one-sidedness, justifying the latter by first tempting me towards “trying something new” and then equating this temptation with the nobility of the scientific method, and with empiricism. By this process, the simple matter becomes not a question of what aesthetic form FEELS BEST, but it has been inflated to political proportions. Only after I have sufficiently resisted long enough to be able to negate all of the neurotic ego’s arguments can I return to the original, relatively sane consideration of what is at work: The question is simply a matter of whether or not I can break out of an existing pattern and try something new aesthetically. The ego tries to imitate this attitude by promising me something new as well, but this proves to be merely a subtle process by which the OLD is perpetuated. If I have sufficiently recognized the father-complex, however, I can immediately see it at work in the construction of the poem, and, if I have sufficiently assuaged it, I do not have to yield to it. My work becomes symptomatic of a healthy psyche and, in itself, as far as I can presume, in its prime.

 

Dm.A.A.

On the Three Principles of Good Grammar.

I will postulate three Principles (a word I prefer to "Rules") for what a grammatically correct sentence or phrase should have. They are, to paraphrase a pirate from Disney's "Pirates of the Carribean", more akin to guidelines than official rules.

As we know, from time to time someone we know will use a particular arrangement of words that, either owing to the speaker/writer's cleverness or his negligence, calls into question its meaning, because we are unaccustomed to the grammatical geometry of it. Sometimes, we even venture into a semantic discussion as to whether or not that particular grammatical form "makes sense".

The way that one usually makes the arbiting statement is by declaring that the phrase was grammatically incorrect. Yet this may not always be so. If the speaker/writer is from another culture, he/she may be trying to impress upon us a concept that can be understood only in the grammatical context of his/her native tongue. These nuances then appear necessary to examine.

If one wishes to assert that a certain phrase is grammatically incorrect when it is "in fact" only grammatically unusual, one typically posits a more conventional, familiar arrangement of more or less the same words, delineating the same intended meaning. This could be misleading if the original meaning was not sufficiently ascertained, out of negligence on the part of the prosecutor or a refusal to acknowledge the vagueness of the notion that the speaker tries to express.

Most often, one loses, in this process, the CONCISE quality of the original expression.

If we are to use formal reasoning to use this hypothetical scenario as the basis for our self-appointed "rules" for grammatical linguistic behaviour, we must conclude that "grammatically" correct speech is defined by three chief variables:

1. GRAMMAR. In the usual sense. The set of formal rules of grammar that we learn from books, in classrooms, and by virtue of our environment. Since these three contexts in which we learn grammar are innately disparate in almost every case, we must presume from the outset that no DEFINITELY "grammatically correct" way of saying something exists, as though as a Platonic form.

2. COHERENCE. This would have more or less been the prosecutor's argument. The "grammatically incorrect" form of the sentence would have been inferior to the "grammatically correct" form not so much because one of them "broke the rules", but because one was more familiar and therefore more COHERENT to the listener.

Again, a disparateness of circumstance challenges the possibility of any kind of dogmatic authority being leant to this criterion. What may be incoherent to a layperson, for instance, may be totally coherent to a man of letters, simply because the person of letters has read more text and been exposed a more exotic palate of language.

3. CONCISION. What is most concise is most applicable in the critical circumstances of emergency or any other situation wherein careful consideration for traditionally "well-constructed" grammar would be stifling, such as in the instance of tremendous emotional or otherwise physical involvement in a task.

If the prosecutor wishes to accuse the defendant of an absence of clarity, the defendant can assert that clarity is subjective. This would not be mere sophistry; in fact, it would reflect an attempt to appeal to the authority of an intellectually refined and perhaps rigorous class. It also shows a zeal to express a difficult or subtle concept which may at first appear alien to the conscious psyche.

If the prosecutor asserts, furthermore, that a phrase is "grammatically incorrect" simply because the prosecutor can call into consideration a "more coherent" permutation of the same phrase, the underlying logic rests in the presumption that "THAT is incorrect because THIS is better."

If the second statement has a surpassing coherence, however, what it usually lacks is concision.

Yet usually, as I have pointed out, coherence is subjective, and any serious evaluation of a given work, be it literary or otherwise, except perhaps in strictly technical matters that are not however suited for emergencies, will yield the conclusion that one way of saying things is no more or less coherent than the other. The first just seems to "appear" less coherent, AT FIRST.

This being the case, the defendant has a sudden advantage. If his phrase does not technically break the formal rules of grammar, which are of course vague and "iffy" often, then he actually meets all three criteria: Grammar, Coherence, and Concision. He is no worse than his opponent in respect to the first two criteria, and he actually SURPASSES the alternative in terms of the third; the speaker's way of saying things is more CONCISE.

If the grammatical correctness of a statement depends, as I have pointed out, upon the SUPERIORITY of one statement to another, then that actually renders, by the definitions implied by the prosecutor's allegations, that the original statement was and is actually MORE grammatically correct than the prosecutor's revision.

dm.A.A.

On Jung’s Thoughts Pertaining to the Relationship Between Introvert and Extravert: A metaphor.

On Jung’s Thoughts Pertaining to the Relationship Between Introvert and Extravert: A metaphor.

 

The Introvert stands upon a feeble string, one cast over a cobblestone city street fifty stories down between two office buildings. He arrives almost at his destination on the other building when he is met with the extravert. The extravert thinks the introvert mad, and he warns him not to fall, so loudly that the introvert remembers his own height.

The extravert too aspires to reach the opposite roof, yet his is a different path. He must descend one stairwell, navigate the busy street, and climb the other stairwell. To him, the introvert’s insanity is mere hubris in search of a shortcut.

What he fails to recognize is that both paths are equally dangerous. Each stairwell is abounding with doors that may yield to a security guard. The streets are populated with criminals, and traffic is only made more chaotic by the attempts made to regulate it.

The introvert has nearly arrived at his destination, but he wavers at the last moment and often falls in the face of the extravert. If by some miracle his fall should be softened by a roof of cloth and a cart of fruit, he may choose to never endeavour the tightrope again. What he forgets is that his path, however feeble, requires the greatest degree of personal discipline from him, where the extravert needs not subtlety but perseverance and cleverness.

What is most important amidst what he has forgotten upon impact is that he had nearly reached the very goal that the extravert himself aspired towards. What was the extravert doing standing in his path? However feeble the introvert may appear in the face of the extravert’s judgement, it is always his discipline and the natural charge of his task that lends him such a feebleness. Even a word of self-justification, prior to arrival at the coveted haven of the opposite roof, would be just enough breath to knock the introvert off balance and into oblivion. Yet what dweller upon the street can ever begin to understand the mind of the tightrope walker? They from the street call him mad, yet here they are like a crowd that runs up and down the angular stairwell trying to grab a delicate string that hangs from the ceiling and runs down the core of the stairwell. They cannot grab it without attempting the jump across the chasm at the core of the stairwell, and in so doing they would risk a fall that none of their peers could or would try to assuage or forestall.

 

Dm.A.A.