ICONOCLAST, n. A breaker of idols, the worshipers whereof are imperfectly gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest that he unbuildeth but doth not reedify, that he pulleth down but pileth not up. For the poor things would have other idols in place of those he thwacketh upon the mazzard and dispelleth. But the iconoclast saith: "Ye shall have none at all, for ye need them not; and if the rebuilder fooleth round hereabout, behold I will depress the head of him and sit thereon till he squawk it."
-- Ambrose Bierce

Saturday, August 3, 2013

The State of Reception

"Let us then acknowledge man a born poet. . . . Despite his utmost efforts, were he mad enough to employ them, he could not succeed in exhausting his language of the poetical element which is inherent in it, in stripping it of blossom, flower, and fruit, and leaving it nothing but a bare and naked stem. He may fancy for a moment that he has succeeded in doing this, but it will only need for him to become a little better philologer, to go a little deeper into the study of the words which he is using, and he will discover that he is as remote from this consummation as ever."
— Richard Chenivix Trench.

The demand for plain-speak, that is to say, precise, clear and distinct language, illustrates a classic example of Freud's defense mechanism he labeled "reaction formation" – where the chance to exercise muscles within the brainpan is viewed as an assault upon the ego. The outcome is a clamorous invocation just begging for some answers or a truth with easy-carry handles like self-rolling luggage at the airport.

If, on the other hand, flowery speech (or its writing) is generative of what we like to call "thinking" or "imagery" then the clear and precise or "given" exchanges the emitter-receptor dance flowing across synapses like slithering snakes living in sin (where the ambiguity, equivocation and/or inversion of simultaneously experienced multiple entendre may feel more like squirming maggots), exchanges all that for a monotonous state of reception and regurgitation on demand. In educational circles, this is known as the drill, on analogy with dentistry or a terrifying tonguing into unexplored orifices. The more (in both quantity and quality) reflective the vomitus, the higher the score and one is said to be an independent thinker and is graduated to the next level with or without ceremony but celebrated nonetheless – drilling is a chore but well worth the effort for would-be authorities as well as those out for revenge, those who are more likely to go on themselves to become teachers or members of the so-called "helping" professions. The result, of course, is that thinking has actually ceased in exchange for the accumulation and systemization of thoughts or more precisely, isolated criteria given independent status distinct from their matrix. The process is variably qualified "objectivity" or labeled "reification".

'Names,' as it has been excellently said, 'are impressions of sense, and as such take the strongest hold upon the mind, and of all other impressions can be most easily recalled and retained in view. They therefore serve to give a point of attachment to all the more volatile objects of thought and feeling. Impressions that when past might be dissipated for ever, are by their connexion with language always within reach. Thoughts, of themselves are perpetually slipping out of the field of immediate mental vision; but the name abides with us, and the utterance of it restores them in a moment.'
ibid

The word or name is an index or memory-as-hook in a metaphoric relation betwixt oral and/or aural cavities and sensual experience (in literature, the hook is visual, conflating that which "makes sense" with what is written). In nominalisation, the point of course, sets up the dialectic such that the criterion as a former inhabitant is removed, ghetto-wise, from its native habitat or territory subject to exploration transformed into a subject for exploitation.

It is forgotten that the former inhabitant was merely a criterion or perspective within (in- should be a clue, but who these days considers the words they use?) a field of perception which, if not static, is as well a field of communication which, without imposed constraints, can set up wakes and ripples undulating around the globe like radio waves hurling across the black we like to call outer space. Clear and precise boundaries limit the field of perception as distinct as a barbed wire fence would to a cow on its way to electro-shock therapy at the packing plant. The theory of barbed wire is like commercial fishing: the more hooks thrown out simultaneously, the greater likelihood something will be poked.

And they have the balls to suggest telling stories is fiction as opposed to the truths (or select paths toward them) revealed in the exclusive halls of education. It's a sacred place like a temple, obvious from the toll-booths facing every entrance. A certain ambiguity may be the only thing which wakes one up or invites a changed direction, like it was fuel for an amoral machine or food for beasts of transformation.

Might it be the urge to get our stories straight (in philosophy and religion it's called "a systematization" – whether scientific, philosophical or Thoretical) is just a sound defence in case we're caught transgressing by some cop-like authorities? "Explain yourself!" is rarely confused with an invitation for some mutual wordplay or other pleasant tonguing; it's more like when the dentist says "Open wide". That is also the point for drilling holes or minor extraction if one recalls a mine and all things mental are a cavity, and not always lingua-dental – we more often use the word, "abysmal".

Unless you can produce an appearance of infinity by your disorder, you will have disorder only without magnificence. – Edmund Burke