It’s politics today, where everything truly beneath a minority of astute listeners sends the listeners to more meaningful information sources, while everyone with no self-control responds in opposition and gets destroyed by massing inertial opinion, while everyone who observes, unintelligently, joins on as a follower, increasing the momentum, while those with better things to do begin to wonder whether their own values are changing, whether the situation is reaching a new level, or whether they are simply one of those who are unable to resist being baited into conduct beneath their higher goals. Will civilization be destroyed by calls for “decisive” action?
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It is predator and prey: moral rage requires blurring distinctions; ethics, drawing the conspicuous distinctions back in. What culture does, rational ethics must clean up. What reason cleans up, culture takes credit for. It all begins again, but sometimes, just sometimes, from a higher ledge. It all depends upon the accurate maintenance of ever-broadening historical accounting.
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In the mechanical view, one cannot overemphasize the importance of definition. Such phenomena depend upon a beneficial gap in language to relay an incentive across multiple mechanical stages – some cognitive, some muscular, most circumstantial – but all seamlessly uninterrupted for consciousness. To see this, one must doubt one’s own cognitive constructs. But then, to the illiterate too, one cannot overemphasize the importance of definition, but for a different reason. To the too literate, one can, for the same old conspicuous reasons.
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The Recidivist: Behind a majority of calculated crimes is the urge for literal freedom over figurative substitutes. But the successes do not eliminate necessity; they merely substitute another literal necessity, which could not be seen due to the lack of figurative vision.
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Sunk cost: When I’ve done my best and I just can’t dig anymore, I look up. The greater effort gives me pause.
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Humor depends upon the agony of others, and we are each other’s other. Laughter is the best medicine, half the time.
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The perception of time depends upon the relativity of memory.
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Past and future are abstract realities, not the perspective we need at any given point of navigation.
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Behind a number of calculated crimes is the urge for literal freedom over figurative substitutes. But the successes do not eliminate necessity; they merely substitute another literal necessity that could not be seen due to the lack of figurative vision.
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In my attempt to manipulate the elements of my life into balance, am I merely causing my own imbalance? Or are the bony fingers of circumstance kneading answers within me, both in spite of and because of my irrelevant aims? Two legs straddling cognitive contradiction, joined at the hip of behavioral use.
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