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Cerebral Contents: Update for 05.13.08: Backsliding by Cynthia Ruth Lewis 05.05.08: Five Feet and Building by Joel Van Noord Grocery Aisle by Richard Lighthouse Cross the Road by Ashok Niyogi 04.29.08: The Modern Covenant by Daniel E. Wilcox Death by Onions by Michael Frissore 04.21.08: Future's Children by Kimberly Raiser Identity Theft by George Anderson A Great Deal of Money by Justin Hyde 04.14.08: Mr. Papaya and Dale by Eric Suhem California by Caroline Imreibe Aftermath of Vehement Argument #1,068 by Cynthia Ruth Lewis Trip-Hammer Vitality by Lisa Nickerson 04.07.08: The Florence of Basel, or Why Readers of Nietzsche Need to Read Burckhardt by Jeff Crouch Friends of the Poet by Sean C. Bowen Picture Perfect by Leah Baldwin 03.24.08: Staring Down a White-Tailed Doe by Aleathia Drehmer 03.17.08: The Hairbrush by Vernard Kennedy Dog Days of Winter by Niall Berkeley Poem From My Grave by Michael Lee Johnson Mashed Potatoes and Hamburgers by Matt Finney 03.10.08: Hard Work by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal Jetty Cake Pigs by J.D. Nelson |
Tree by G. David Schwartz
The logical tree achieves plausibility, credibility, and rigidity not because logicians speak about it but because human beings typically think in terms of the logical tree. Logicians speak about the logical tree because it is descriptive. The logic tree is not concerned with what is merely possible, but proceeds through various responses to what should be done (an imposed view; contradictions below to vision) until what ultimately is reached, after the 'oughts' have been removed, is the dictatorial 'is.' The logic tree, in practical affairs, begins at the base. The so-called root of the problem is the beginning. The problem is that there is a multiplicity, diverse otherness too much choice, which must epistemologically be narrowed down into manageable chores. One by one, step-by-step, throught a series of eliminative either we arrive as the top of the rung where we are compelled to engage in negative epistemology, appropriately or suffer. What is it to succumb to choice, to choose between only two terms — one obviously right, one wrong. Theoretically narrowing multiplicity has two terms to make the choice mere difficult. Practically we have been preparing for ease and solitary oneness: a monadic laziness! The logical tree has the possibility of ancestry or decent, forever narrowing or ever extending possibilities, but in typical parlance and practice, the series of "if/then" statements is assumed to culminate, i.e. narrow, in the exclusion of possibility. Hence, the logical tree works 'up' thought a series of exclusions until implicitly, or practically the only possibility, which remains is not a possibility, but a fact. In fact, it is the single fact deemed to be of interest, value, or practicality. All other facts compared with this ultimate fact, are deemed ineffectual, unhelpful, and the like. The logic tree, in this regard is the logical, and therefore the epistemological and perceptible, cumulative narrowing which is fascism. The logical tree is the heretical cultured commutated into totalitarianism. The one result rules over all series of the steps, which have been narrowed throught relative disability to be of no value. Hierchialization culminates in fascism when the multiplicity is not retained for any potential, which may result upon further investigation but is surrendered into a series of nullities. Further, insofar as the bottom branches are (considered) null, it is best to remove them from further consideration as long as they exist, though, will only become chattered and confused. Thus, the behavior, which is effected in practical hermeneutics, neglect, is analogous to the fascist's form of commutative neglect, which is murder. People and their activities cannot be schematized on the basis of a logical tree. To do so is to face human behavior as not only to act in a way which schematizes does not act, but also in a way no human being believes or behaves. The logical tree implies not only a series of reductions to obtain that, which is true, just, and good, – which may be the case when I decide which flavor of ice cream I prefer – but also implies a world were I need no help, where alternatives are simply careless patches if ice waiting to slip me up, where all flavors other than those I enjoy should be annihilated. In fact, moods determine that I will enjoy one flavor more and a different one tomorrow. In fact, my love for chocolate does not necessitate all the vanilla lovers is nullified. In fact, the logical tree is applicable only for deciding relatively minor issues and not for advancing toward the insights and multiplicity necessary for creating new values, new ways of life. Progressive narrowing down choice is necessary for acting in the present, but virtually negates the future. Surely acting on the analogue of the logical tree severity limits options for the future. Thus, in the proper perspective, choosing that which limits our choices are detrimental. Efficiency is necessary for making plans and achieving goals. But the consummate efficiency, the act of making of efficiency itself the goal annihilates the possibilities through which one attains and obtains goals. It is the goals, which give substance to efficiently, not the reverse. This is clear in examples of the most typical goals. To relax, for example, is a self- contradictor impossibly activity when it is supposed to be engaged in a systematic efficient manner. Likewise sports — whether engaged in or enjoyed by spectators — would cease to be pleasant diversity if the elements of shill working thorough chance were removed. A perfect pitch by one robot to another who bats perfectly to the perfect outfielder – efficiency on top of efficiency – would simply be boring. In fact, to sustain and enhance activities which are typically leisure time activities (the best kind if activities) requites an element of chance. Further, the example of leisure activities, frequently characterized as a, if not the, goal of the workday would merit further comparison with the working world. It is frequently said that the purpose of working is to obtain the monies with which to obtain a good life. This may be a distinctive contemporary phenomena for, in the old days at least some of the activities we regarded as leisure activities were either incorporated with labor (for example, story telling, singing songs, dancing) or were forms of work (bread making, sewing), and the like. I find it interesting that the ones incorporated with work were, in fact, work. It was as if society claimed that if you called something fun it world be entertaining. (Re: Marx Twain). What we use leisure time for today is as a get away tactic from work in order to make a distinction between labor and those activities which we value. By and large we do not value work. And yet it is not invaluable. It is just something we would rather not do. We would certainly be better minded if labor saving devises were used more often. The work is precisely the realm where we are tailored into various forms of, or attempts at, efficiency. The boss, the manager, and from our own reasoning, the laborer, wants the system to run efficiently. The third shift wants skids to be stacked efficiently because, unlike that which occurs in the first shift, where eight hours work takes eight hours, third shift can perform eighth hours of work in four hours and thereby have four hours to do what really matters them: read books, play checkers, and the like. We value, in short, relaxation and comforting activities. This relaxation and comfort may be promoted, ensconced, as those activities, which enable us to perform in an atmosphere of security and interest, which at the same time promotes an atmosphere of interest and security. In other words, we value activities, which occur in, reflect, and duplicate our environment of security and interest. We do, of course, require our activities not be illusory, our reflections of security and interests not be inappropriate so that our duplication not be fanciful. This suggests the context in which leisure activities do occur when they are satisfying: as resembling that which is not work, even if it is both harder and more difficult, as, for example the clerk whose most difficult job is filing paper, goes in for an aggressive game of tennis. The resemblance of leisure activity to work is not satisfying when the activity replicates substantiates and extends the tedium, dull, reparation, and goal defectiveness of labor. Leisure activities are satisfying when they replicate and extend the possibility, of satisfaction, even if throught imprecision and chance, of that which is only ironic in language as the work of leisure or anxiety (of a football drive) of revelation purposively accidental, or goalless direction. In fact, the irony is assumed and sublimed in an open-ended effort, which add to the atmospheric desire. Merely sitting in front of the television set does not add to the atmosphere we desire in leisure activity. Such laziness does not even replicate a true vision of the type of life we would prefer. In fact, sitting in front of the television not only does not promote advancement toward the desired result but also simply enforces a double non-praxis effacement of work. On the one hand, laziness does not affect activity, which would change the circumstances in which leisure occurs, and therefore change work relationships. If so, the negation of the negation does not affect an advance, but simply a return to work. Thus, the reason the person who is "overworked" and underpaid" between specific hours and seeks only possibilities, blow his or her wad when not working is the very same person who will simply return to the realm of over work tomorrow, and return again after work to laziness. The person who works by not working at leisure activity is the person who utilizes different skills than those used on a day-to-day basis. The painter, for example, works with specific motions of the arm, redundantly excavating a project, which has been unearthed day after day after day. The persons for true leisure is not simply not to paint, but to exercise skills not typically exercised, to escalate the realm of security and satisfaction. Thus leisure is genuine not when it substantiates a rotary bi-polar universe between work and that which is not work, but when it sculpts the person concerned to attain progressively more and better satisfaction. The most pleasurable leisure time activities imaginable would become boring, trite, and just dull if repeated; if that is, the same skills were exercised over and over again. Rare is the person who is able to work at an activity which he or she enjoys. When this occurs, something very good results. First, it turns out that enjoyment is a form of work, but work without the query for efficiency. To be good is desired in most activities, but if you are not the best in a game, it does not mean that you must die, or whatever. It is, in fact, a matter of developing skill thought traits which are in and of themselves ambiguous. So, for example, reading or writing are both means of earning a living as well as a means of recognizing replication and development a sphere where more and better reading becomes possible. If so, this kind of activity were genuine leisure as compared with that so-called leisure activity which does not so much replicate the atmosphere we would prefer to exist and grow. Reading, writing, exercising, artistic and musical ability and the like are that which proceeds through ambiguities to hypothetical improvements (self and society). One may be challenged to play chopsticks on the way toward possibly playing Chopin. The ambiguity is based on tenacity, mental and physical, impingements (to go to the zoo, which is also worthwhile as watching television). If so, genuine leisure activities are those which effect and replicate, expand and seek ones abilities they precede throught security and satisfaction. I will not play Chopin on a stage until I have achieved some successes in front of friends and I will not perform in front of friends until I am secure in the knowledge that I am satisfied with the success I have had at home, in front of the family after being alone, practicing. This example has only a formal analogy to the otherwise metaphoric point, which seems empirically the in the case of those who advance an avocation to a vacation, viz, that security and satisfaction must not only be substantiated replicated, developed in appropriate leisure time activities but must also announce themselves, show themselves, enhance themselves in an ever-increasing public display (of talent, of concern for security and satisfaction of leisure). The preceding argument has attempted to indicate that the narrowing down of possibilities and the evidential effacement of some possibilities on the basis of logic erroneous. The evisceration of logical possibilities, as opposed to a schema which might include shading of possibilities at least possibilities I would not act on but might be peripherally acceptable, is opposed to the ascending obliteration of the possible, the fringe, the borderlines. A tree, in fact, has no border — only roots, which the leaves do not know and do not show concern to know. Leaves, in fact, do not possess consciousness and so can neither know or not know anything at all. Leaves, then, resemble the beautiful, fluttering leafy things which sit in front of their television set, in a stance of evading the roots which no tree can be without. We require a different manner of thinking altogether. We require a means of preserving the entire tree; both the logical tree which would narrow itself in exists and the metaphorical root of daily life (that is work), and its extension (form of laziness). The manner of thought which would preserve the tree would be a perspective which stands back and encompasses the tree in its environment. This method of stating the problem suggests a metaphor which would be appropriate with which to proceed in our investigation. Preservation of the logical and metaphysical tree in its environment suggests we are seeking a form of ecology. We are indeed seeking to avert ecological disaster (real trees, real metaphors, i.e. thoughts and real relationships based on both thoughts and deeds, work as labor, and analogy). Ultimately, we are seeking the means which will end war and embitterment. Fundamentally, war is not the means of destroying relationships, forests, cities and thoughts (by committing thoughtful people to analyses which seek not to advance humanity but at best to end a particular current war, at worse commenting energies of thoughtful people to analyze how to win (end?) the war. To end a war as well as win a war — occasionally these are throught to be the same thing - is to be submerged in the same kind of bi-polarity which finds laziness as an (inappropriate) response to work. The energy committed to end all war, and all forms of war, and all means of labor which are eventually developed into war — even the labor of both firming up and submerging ideologies, the rotary bipolar commitment to advance so far 'above' the logic tree that all which results is the appeal to emotions and unthought-of i.e. uprooted, reaction — requires a commitment to security and satisfaction, i.e. genuine leisure work. Such a commitment cannot be based on the logic tree, cannot be based on any form of the narrowing of possibilities or 'growths' toward emotive, reactive behavior. Nor can arguments for the coherency of leisure beneficially be heard by those who think in terms of the logic trees narrowed possibilities or a substratum of thought and/or behaviors which is either favors which either favors or intends the elimination, disregard, or ignorance of trees, thoughts of people! Vision is not something given. Vision requires the substation, the perpetuation of existence of work. Yet that which is envisioned because it falls outside the pale of labor and laziness (is, in fact, the perspective which encompasses tress logically, trees metaphorically and trees real) is precisely the scope, which encompasses and develops the logical, the real and the metaphoric. To envision the real is to be both realistic yet promote a better reality. Such a logic of behavior must proceed throught a logic which is both realistic and extensive. In other words, the logic required should be one, which is capable of both minute scrutiny and grand generalization. It ought, to be effective be both analytic and speculative, narrow ad broad, work and leisure. The logic of development through human behavior, ought, in a word, be inclusive. A logic of inclusively would be a logic which not only develops possibilities out of its own inherent principles, but one which relies on principles other than its own, other than itself, in order to develop possibilities for itself. Speaking of a logic, which develops its own, or may think to include the good found separate from itself, suggests foolishness or forms of ideational fictionalization of scientific possibilities or both. In fact, precisely such a logic is the result of our behavior. We act to include or exclude, to advance possibilities or limit scopes. We perform and, with each performance, intend (and with each intending replicate, substantiate and extend) either advancements or declinations. If, as suggested above, each act of narrowness intends and is analogous to murder then each act of inclusive extension may be analogous to enlivening the self, the other as well as the environment which holds them both in (the real, the analogous, and the possible). It requires our intention to insure such enlivening be the case (or else abandon this ability to respond to others who do act to internal our environment either more narrow or more inclusive. Yet, as stated, the very act of neglecting responsibility is to intend to design the future), What are we left with is a choice, not between good and evil, where the good is the result if the most narrowed determination of possibility such that the good is beyond logic, between even motion. Rather, we are left with daily, minute, choices between more good or more evils. We are given the responsibility to scrap ourselves from choices between the better and the worse. The responsibility requires scrutinizing, sustained consciousness, commitment and good action, but the result is the exculpation toward a realm where scrutiny and satisfaction obtain as well as attain a meaning beyond requisite contrasts with war (the ultimate dissatisfaction) and loneliness.
______________________________________ posted 05.13.08. |
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