Watching Sam Harris ruminate on the nature of political lies (still believing, poor lamb, that reason might one day triumph) reminds me of something more sinister: lies today are not attempts at persuasion. They are shibboleths โ tribal passwords, loyalty oaths, secret handshakes performed in the broad light of day.
Video: Sam Harris tells us why Trump and his ilk lie.
Forget “alternative facts.” That charming euphemism was merely a decoy, a jangling set of keys to distract the infantile media. The real game was always deeper: strategic distortion, the deliberate blurring of perception not to deceive the outsider, but to identify the insider.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.
When Trump โ or any other post-truth demagogue โ proclaims that penguins are, in fact, highly trained alien operatives from the Andromeda galaxy, the objective is not persuasion. The point is to force a choice: will you, standing before this glistening absurdity, blink and retreat into reason, stammering something about ornithologyโฆ Or will you step forward, clasp the hand of madness, and mutter, ‘Yes, my liege, the penguins have been among us all along’?
Those who demur, those who scoff or gasp or say ‘Youโre an idiot,โ’have failed the loyalty test. They have outed themselves as enemy combatants in the epistemic war. Truth, in this brave new world, is not a destination; it is an allegiance. To speak honestly is to wage rebellion.
Orwell, who tried very hard to warn us, understood this dynamic well: the real triumph of Big Brother was not merely to compel you to lie but to compel you to believe the lie. Koestler, another battered prophet of the age, charted how political movements sink into ritualistic unreason, demanding not conviction but performance. Swift, for his part, knew it was all hilarious if you tilted your head just right.
The bigger the lie, the better the shibboleth. Claim that two and two make five, and you catch out the weak-willed rationalists. Claim that penguins are extraterrestrials, and you find the truly devoted, the ones willing to build altars from ice and sacrifice to their feathery overlords.
Itโs no accident that modern political theatre resembles a deranged initiation ritual. Each day brings a new absurdity, a fresh madness to affirm: ‘Men can become women by declaration alone!” “Billionaires are victims of systemic oppression!’ ‘The penguins are amongst us, plotting!’ Each claim a little more grotesque than the last, each compliance a little more degrading, a little more irreversible.
And oh, how eagerly the initiates rush forward! Clap for the penguins, or be cast out into the howling wilderness! Better to bend the knee to absurdity than be marked as an unbeliever. Better to humiliate yourself publicly than to admit that the Emperorโs penguin suit is just a costume.
Meanwhile, the opposition โ earnest, naive โ keeps trying to argue, to rebut, to point out that penguins are terrestrial flightless birds. How quaint. How pathetic. They do not understand that the moment they say, “You’re an idiot,” they’ve broken the spell, declared themselves apostates, and rendered themselves politically irrelevant.
The shibboleth, once uttered, divides the world cleanly: the believers, who will say anything, do anything, believe anything, provided it marks them safe from exile; and the infidels, who cling stupidly to reality.
The future belongs, not to the true, but to the loyal. Not to the rational, but to the ritualistic. The more extravagant the lie, the greater the proof of your faith.
So raise a glass to the penguins, ye of faint heart, and prepare your soul for abasement. Or stand firm, if you dare, and be prepared to be eaten alive by those who traded reason for the rapture of belonging.
After all, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is not king. He’s a heretic.
I don’t believe in the notions of ‘self’ or identities, but it makes for a nice thought experiment.
Imagine, just for a moment, that somewhere on this planet, there is someone who is your opposite in every conceivable way. They live as you do not. If you are kind, they are cruel. If you revel in the thrill of running through a rainstorm, they are the kind who sit comfortably by the fire, dreading the mere thought of a brisk step outdoors. If you drink to toast life’s joys, they abstain, unwilling to let a drop pass their lips. They are your anti-selfโan inversion of who you are, lacking everything that you have and yet possessing everything that you do not.
To truly grow, we must encounter the other
As strange as it seems, this image is more than idle speculation. According to the Romantic poet John Keats, holding such an image of your anti-self is an essential part of the process of creating your own identity. The elusive art of true self-creation lies, paradoxically, in our capacity to hold in our minds those lives and feelings that are utterly different from our own. To truly grow, we must encounter the otherโwhether that other is someone we know or a shadowy, imagined version of who we could have been if only we’d chosen differently. This exercise is more than an intellectual indulgence; it is at the core of what Keats called ‘soul-making.’
Keats believed in the concept of the ‘chameleon poet’โthe idea that writers, and indeed all human beings, must cultivate the ability to lose themselves in the perspectives of others. It is not enough to gaze upon the world through the singular lens of our own experience; to truly create, we must dissolve our egos and embrace a kaleidoscope of possibilities. A woman might explore the life of a soldier, writing deeply about a battle she’s never fought. A contented parent might dare to delve into the unimaginable grief of losing a child. Fiction writers, poets, artistsโthey all do this: they shed their own skin, assume another’s, and, in doing so, broaden the horizons of their own soul.
But Keats’ lesson here isn’t limited to the domain of poets and storytellers; it’s a practice that should extend to all of us. In what he evocatively called ‘the vale of soul-making,’ Keats posited that life offers each of us the raw materials to forge a soul, but we must engage imaginatively with all the lives we might lead, all the people we could be. We must dare to envision every possible road before us, not as a commitment but as an act of creationโenriching ourselves with the essence of each path before deciding which one we wish to tread.
We must set ablaze all our imagined lives just to make room for the one we decide to live.
And therein lies the heartbreak of it all. When we choose one possible life, we necessarily burn the others. In the very act of committing, we close other doors. We must set ablaze all our imagined lives just to make room for the one we decide to live. This thought is thrilling but also terrifying. Unlike a poet, who can glide into and out of fictional worlds, we must choose where we stand and stay there. We are not chameleons. We cannot flit endlessly between possibilities. We cannot write a library of books. We must write the one, and we must write it well.
Keats understood that the art of imagining one’s anti-self wasn’t about living vicariously forever in a land of could-have-beens. The exercise is in acknowledging these spectres of other lives, learning from them, and then committing, knowing full well what is lost in the process. Self-creation means being both the builder of one’s house and the one who tears down all the others, brick by potential brick. It means knowing who you could have been and yet, resolutely stepping into who you choose to be.
Embrace the anti-self
In a world obsessed with keeping every option open, Keats offers us the wisdom of finality. Burn off your possible lives and focus on writing the best version of the one that remains. Embrace the anti-self, learn from it, and commit once you have glimpsed all the possible worlds you might inhabit.
That is the paradoxical art of soul-makingโof becoming whole while knowing you could have been anyone else. The beauty lies in the commitment, not in the drifting dream of endless potentiality. There is a deep satisfaction in choosing, in writing your own story, in saying, ‘This is who I am,’ even though you could have been another. And for that, we have John Keats to thank, the poet who understood that our anti-selves are not merely an idle game of imagination but the fuel for becoming fully humanโthe forge in which the soul is made.
Iโm edging ever closer to finishing my book on the Language Insufficiency Hypothesis. Itโs now in its third passโa mostly subtractive process of streamlining, consolidating, and hacking away at redundancies. The front matter, of course, demands just as much attention, starting with the Preface.
The opening anecdoteโa true yet apocryphal gemโdates back to 2018, which is evidence of just how long Iโve been chewing on this idea. It involves a divorce court judge, a dose of linguistic ambiguity, and my ongoing scepticism about the utility of language in complex, interpretative domains.
At the time, my ex-wifeโs lawyer was petitioning the court to restrict me from spending any money outside our marriage. This included a demand for recompense for any funds already spent. I was asked, point-blank: Had I given another woman a gift?
Seeking clarity, I asked the judge to define gift. The response was less than amusedโa glare, a sneer, but no definition. Left to my own devices, I answered no, relying on my personal definition: something given with no expectation of return or favour. My reasoning, then as now, stemmed from a deep mistrust of altruism.
The court, however, didnโt share my philosophical detours. The injunction came down: I was not to spend any money outside the marital arrangement. Straightforward? Hardly. At the time, I was also in a rock band and often brought meals for the group. Was buying Chipotle for the band now prohibited?
The judgeโs response dripped with disdain. Of course, that wasnโt the intent, they said, but the language of the injunction was deliberately broadโambiguous enough to cover whatever they deemed inappropriate. The phraseย donโt spend money on romantic interestsย would have sufficed, but clarity seemed to be a liability. Instead, the court opted for what I call the Justice Stewart Doctrine of Legal Ambiguity:ย I know it when I see it.
Unsurprisingly, the marriage ended. My ex-wife and I, however, remain close; our separation in 2018 was final, but our friendship persists. Discussing my book recently, I mentioned this story, and she told me something new: her lawyer had confided that the judge disliked me, finding me smug.
This little revelation cemented something Iโd already suspected: power relations, in the Foucauldian sense, pervade even our most banal disputes. Itโs why Foucault makes a cameo in the book alongside Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Saussure, Derrida, Borges, and even Gรถdel.
This anecdote is just one straw on the poor camelโs back of my linguistic grievances, a life filled with moments where languageโs insufficiency has revealed itself. And yet, I found few others voicing my position. Hence, a book.
I aim to self-publish in early 2025โget it off my chest and into the world. Maybe then I can stop wittering on about it. Or, more likely, I wonโt.
I’ve written a lot on the insufficiency of language, and it’s not even an original idea. Language, our primary tool for sharing thoughts and ideas, harbours a fundamental flaw: it’s inherently insufficient for conveying precise meaning. While this observation isn’t novel, recent developments in artificial intelligence provide us with new ways to illuminate and examine this limitation. Through a progression from simple geometry to complex abstractions, we can explore how language both serves and fails us in different contexts.
The Simple Made Complex
Consider what appears to be a straightforward instruction: Draw a 1-millimetre square in the centre of an A4 sheet of paper using an HB pencil and a ruler. Despite the mathematical precision of these specifications, two people following these exact instructions would likely produce different results. The variables are numerous: ruler calibration, pencil sharpness, line thickness, paper texture, applied pressure, interpretation of “centre,” and even ambient conditions affecting the paper.
This example reveals a paradox: the more precisely we attempt to specify requirements, the more variables we introduce, creating additional points of potential divergence. Even in mathematics and formal logicโlanguages specifically designed to eliminate ambiguityโwe cannot escape this fundamental problem.
Precision vs Accuracy: A Useful Lens
The scientific distinction between precision and accuracy provides a valuable framework for understanding these limitations. In measurement, precision refers to the consistency of results (how close repeated measurements are to each other), while accuracy describes how close these measurements are to the true value.
Returning to our square example:
Precision: Two people might consistently reproduce their own squares with exact dimensions
Accuracy: Yet neither might capture the “true” square we intended to convey
As we move from geometric shapes to natural objects, this distinction becomes even more revealing. Consider a maple tree in autumn. We might precisely convey certain categorical aspects (“maple,” “autumn colours”), but accurately describing the exact arrangement of branches and leaves becomes increasingly difficult.
The Target of Meaning: Precision vs. Accuracy in Communication
To understand language’s limitations, we can borrow an illuminating concept from the world of measurement: the distinction between precision and accuracy. Imagine a target with a bullseye, where the bullseye represents perfect communication of meaning. Just as archers might hit different parts of a target, our attempts at communication can vary in both precision and accuracy.
Consider four scenarios:
Low Precision, Low Accuracy When describing our autumn maple tree, we might say “it’s a big tree with colourful leaves.” This description is neither precise (it could apply to many trees) nor accurate (it misses the specific characteristics that make our maple unique). The communication scatters widely and misses the mark entirely.
High Precision, Low Accuracy We might describe the tree as “a 47-foot tall maple with exactly 23,487 leaves displaying RGB color values of #FF4500.” This description is precisely specific but entirely misses the meaningful essence of the tree we’re trying to describe. Like arrows clustering tightly in the wrong spot, we’re consistently missing the point.
Low Precision, High Accuracy “It’s sort of spreading out, you know, with those typical maple leaves turning reddish-orange, kind of graceful looking.” While imprecise, this description might actually capture something true about the tree’s essence. The arrows scatter, but their centre mass hits the target.
High Precision, High Accuracy This ideal state is rarely achievable in complex communication. Even in our simple geometric example of drawing a 1mm square, achieving both precise specifications and accurate execution proves challenging. With natural objects and abstract concepts, this challenge compounds exponentially.
The Communication Paradox
This framework reveals a crucial paradox in language: often, our attempts to increase precision (by adding more specific details) can actually decrease accuracy (by moving us further from the essential meaning we’re trying to convey). Consider legal documents: their high precision often comes at the cost of accurately conveying meaning to most readers.
Implications for AI Communication
This precision-accuracy framework helps explain why AI systems like our Midjourney experiment show asymptotic behaviour. The system might achieve high precision (consistently generating similar images based on descriptions) while struggling with accuracy (matching the original intended image), or vice versa. The gap between human intention and machine interpretation often manifests as a trade-off between these two qualities.
Our challenge, both in human-to-human and human-to-AI communication, isn’t to achieve perfect precision and accuracyโa likely impossible goalโbut to find the optimal balance for each context. Sometimes, like in poetry, low precision might better serve accurate meaning. In other contexts, like technical specifications, high precision becomes crucial despite potential sacrifices in broader accuracy.
The Power and Limits of Distinction
This leads us to a crucial insight from Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiotics about the relationship between signifier (the word) and signified (the concept or object). Language proves remarkably effective when its primary task is distinction among a limited set. In a garden containing three treesโa pine, a maple, and a willowโasking someone to “point to the pine” will likely succeed. The shared understanding of these categorical distinctions allows for reliable communication.
However, this effectiveness dramatically diminishes when we move from distinction to description. In a forest of a thousand pines, describing one specific tree becomes nearly impossible. Each additional descriptive detail (“the tall one with a bent branch pointing east”) paradoxically makes precise identification both more specific and less likely to succeed.
An AI Experiment in Description
To explore this phenomenon systematically, I conducted an experiment using Midjourney 6.1, a state-of-the-art image generation AI. The methodology was simple:
Generate an initial image
Describe the generated image in words
Use that description to generate a new image
Repeat the process multiple times
Attempt to refine the description to close the gap
Continue iterations
The results support an asymptotic hypothesis: while subsequent iterations might approach the original image, they never fully converge. This isn’t merely a limitation of the AI system but rather a demonstration of language’s fundamental insufficiency.
A cute woman and her dog stand next to a tree
One can already analyse this for improvements, but let’s parse it together.
a cute woman
With this, we know we are referencing a woman, a female of the human species. There are billions of women in the world. What does she look like? What colour, height, ethnicity, and phenotypical attributes does she embody?
We also know she’s cute โ whatever that means to the sender and receiver of these instructions.
I used an indefinite article, a, so there is one cute woman. Is she alone, or is she one from a group?
It should be obvious that we could provide more adjectives (and perhaps adjectives) to better convey our subject. We’ll get there, but let’s move on.
and
We’ve got a conjunction here. Let’s see what it connects to.
her dog
She’s with a dog. In fact, it’s her dog. This possession may not be conveyable or differentiable from some arbitrary dog, but what type of dog is it? Is it large or small? What colour coat? Is it groomed? Is it on a leash? Let’s continue.
stand
It seems that the verb stand refers to the woman, but is the dog also standing, or is she holding it? More words could qualify this statement better.
next to a tree
A tree is referenced. Similar questions arise regarding this tree. At a minimum, there is one tree or some variety. She and her dog are next to it. Is she on the right or left of it?
We think we can refine our statements with precision and accuracy, but can we? Might we just settle for “close enough”?
Let’s see how AI interpreted this statement.
Image: Eight Midjourney renders from the prompt: A cute woman and her dog stand next to a tree. I’ll choose one of these as my source image.
Let’s deconstruct the eight renders above. Compositionally, we can see that each image contains a woman, a dog, and a tree. Do any of these match what you had in mind? First, let’s see how Midjourney describes the first image.
In a bout of hypocrisy, Midjourney refused to /DESCRIBE the image it just generated.
Last Midjourney description for now.
Let’s cycle through them in turn.
A woman is standing to the left of an old-growth tree โ twice identified as an oak tree. She’s wearing faded blue jeans and a loose light-coloured T-shirt. She’s got medium-length (maybe) red-brown hair in a small ponytail. A dog โ her black and white dog identified as a pitbull, an American Foxhound, and an American Bulldog โ is also standing on his hind legs. I won’t even discuss the implied intent projected on the animal โ happy, playful, wants attentionโฆ In two of the descriptions, she’s said to be training it. They appear to be in a somewhat residential area given the automobiles in the background. We see descriptions of season, time of day, lighting, angle, quality,
A woman is standing to the right of an old-growth tree. She’s wearing short summer attire. Her dog is perched on the tree.
An older woman and her dog closer up.
A read view of both a woman and her dog near an oak tree.
As it turned out, I wasn’t thrilled with any of these images, so I rendered a different one. Its description follows.
The consensus is that ‘a beautiful girl in a white dress and black boots stands next to a tree’ with a Jack Russell Terrier dog. I see birch trees and snow. It’s overcast. Let’s spend some time trying to reproduce it. To start, I’m consolidating the above descriptions. I notice some elements are missing, but we’ll add them as we try to triangulate to the original image.
A beautiful girl in a white dress and black boots stands next to a tree in a winter forest with birch trees. A Jack Russell Terrier dog is nearby, and the weather is cloudy. The photo has a cinematic style. --ar 128:71
This is pretty far off the mark. We need to account for the overall setting and composition, relative positioning, clothing, hair, camera, perspective โ even lighting and film emulsion.
Let’s see how we can refine it with some adjectives. Before this, I asked Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 to describe the image. Perhaps we’ll get more details.
An atmospheric winter photograph was taken in what appears to be a birch and pine forest. The ground is partially covered with snow, creating a patchy pattern of white snow and brown leaves or soil. In the image, there's a person wearing winter attire consisting of a white knit turtleneck sweater, a white skirt, dark knee-high socks, and grey lace-up boots. They're standing against a large tree trunk with their arms crossed. Next to them is a Jack Russell Terrier mix dog with distinctive brown and white colouring. The dog appears to be well-behaved, sitting attentively beside the tree. The composition is quite striking, with the massive dark tree trunk serving as a central focal point against the misty, winter forest background. The white clothing of the person creates a visual echo with the white bark of birch trees visible in the background, as well as with the patches of snow on the ground. The overall mood of the photo is somewhat moody and contemplative, enhanced by what appears to be overcast lighting and the misty quality of the forest in the background. The colour palette is largely monochromatic, dominated by whites, greys, and browns, which adds to the winter atmosphere of the scene.
We don’t seem to be moving in a good direction. Let’s modify the initial prompt.
A beautiful girl in a white dress and tall laced black boots stands facing the camera to the right of large oak tree centred in the foreground of a winter forest with birch trees in the background. To the left of the tree is a Jack Russell Terrier dog looking at the camera, and the weather is cloudy. The photo has a cinematic style. --ar 128:71
I’ll allow the results to speak for themselves. Let’s see if we can’t get her out of the wedding gown and into a white jumper and skirt. I’ll bold the amends.
A beautiful girl in a white jumper and skirt wearing black leggings and tall laced black boots stands facing the camera to the right of large oak tree centred in the foreground of a winter forest with birch trees in the background. To the left of the tree is a Jack Russell Terrier dog looking at the camera, and the weather is cloudy. The photo has a cinematic style. --ar 128:71
s
A beautiful young woman with long brown hair pulled to the side of her face in a white jumper and white skirt wearing black leggings under tall laced black boots stands facing the camera to the right of large oak tree centred in the foreground of a winter forest with birch trees in the background. Patchy snow is on the ground. To the left of the tree is a Jack Russell Terrier dog looking at the camera, and the weather is overcast. The photo has a cinematic style. --ar 128:71
What gives?
I think my point has been reinforced. I’m getting nowhere fast. Let’s give it one more go and see where we end up. I’ve not got a good feeling about this.
A single large oak tree centred in the foreground of a winter forest with birch trees in the background. Patches of snow is on the ground. To the right of the oak tree stands a beautiful young woman with long brown hair pulled to the side of her face in a white jumper and white skirt wearing black boots over tall laced black boots. She stands facing the camera. To the left of the tree is a Jack Russell Terrier dog looking at the camera, and the weather is overcast. The photo has a cinematic style. --ar 128:71
With this last one, I re-uploaded the original render along with this text prompt. Notice that the girl now looks the same and the scene (mostly) appears to be in the same location, but there are still challenges.
After several more divergent attempts, I decided to focus on one element โ the girl.
As I regard the image, I’m thinking of a police sketch artist. They get sort of close, don’t they? They’re experts. I’m not confident that I even have the vocabulary to convey accurately what I see. How do I describe her jumper? Is that a turtleneck or a high collar? It appears to be knit. Is is wool or some blend? does that matter for an image? Does this pleated skirt have a particular name or shade of white? It looks as though she’s wearing black leggings โ perhaps polyester. And those boots โ how to describe them. I’m rerunning just the image above through a describe function to see if I can get any closer.
These descriptions are particularly interesting and telling. First, I’ll point out that AI attempts to identify the subject. I couldn’t find Noa Levin by a Google search, so I’m not sure how prominent she might be if she even exists at all in this capacity. More interesting still, the AI has placed her in a scenario where the pose was taken after a match. Evidently, this image reflects the style of photographer Guy Bourdin. Perhaps the jumper mystery is solved. It identified a turtleneck. I’ll ignore the tree and see if I can capture her with an amalgamation of these descriptions. Let’s see where this goes.
A photo-realistic portrait of Israeli female soccer player Noa Levin wearing a white turtleneck sweater, arms crossed, black boots, and a short skirt, with long brown hair, standing near a tree in a winter park. The image captured a full-length shot taken in a studio setting, using a Canon EOS R5 camera with a Canon L-series 80mm f/2 lens. The image has been professionally color-graded, with soft shadows, low contrast, and a clean, sharp focus. --ar 9:16
Close-ish. Let’s zoom in to get better descriptions of various elements starting with her face and hair.
Now, she’s a sad and angry Russian woman with (very) pale skin; large, sad, grey eyes; long, straight brown hair. Filmed in the style of either David LaChapelle or Alini Aenami (apparently misspelt from Alena Aenami). One thinks it was a SnapChat post. I was focusing on her face and hair, but it notices her wearing a white (oversized yet form-fitting) jumper sweater and crossed arms .
I’ll drop the angry bit โ and then the sad.
Stick a fork in it. I’m done. Perhaps it’s not that language is insufficient; it that my language skills are insufficient. If you can get closer to the original image, please forward the image, the prompt, and the seed, so I can post it.
The Complexity Gradient
A clear pattern emerges when we examine how language performs across different levels of complexity:
Categorical Distinction (High Success)
Identifying shapes among limited options
Distinguishing between tree species
Basic color categorization
Simple Description (Moderate Success)
Basic geometric specifications
General object characteristics
Broad emotional states
Complex Description (Low Success)
Specific natural objects
Precise emotional experiences
Unique instances within categories
Abstract Concepts (Lowest Success)
Philosophical ideas
Personal experiences
Qualia
As we move up this complexity gradient, the gap between intended meaning and received understanding widens exponentially.
The Tolerance Problem
Understanding these limitations leads us to a practical question: what level of communicative tolerance is acceptable for different contexts? Just as engineering embraces acceptable tolerances rather than seeking perfect measurements, perhaps effective communication requires:
Acknowledging the gap between intended and received meaning
Establishing context-appropriate tolerance levels
Developing better frameworks for managing these tolerances
Recognizing when precision matters more than accuracy (or vice versa)
Implications for Human-AI Communication
These insights have particular relevance as we develop more sophisticated AI systems. The limitations we’ve explored suggest that:
Some communication problems might be fundamental rather than technical
AI systems may face similar boundaries as human communication
The gap between intended and received meaning might be unbridgeable
Future development should focus on managing rather than eliminating these limitations
Conclusion
Perhaps this is a simple exercise in mental masturbation. Language’s insufficiency isn’t a flaw to be fixed but a fundamental characteristic to be understood and accommodated. By definition, it can’t be fixed. The gap between intended and received meaning may be unbridgeable, but acknowledging this limitation is the first step toward more effective communication. As we continue to develop AI systems and push the boundaries of human-machine interaction, this understanding becomes increasingly critical.
Rather than seeking perfect precision in language, we might instead focus on:
Developing new forms of multimodal communication
Creating better frameworks for establishing shared context
Accepting and accounting for interpretative variance
Building systems that can operate effectively within these constraints
Understanding language’s limitations doesn’t diminish its value; rather, it helps us use it more effectively by working within its natural constraints.
When I was 17 years old, I shouted out into an empty room into a blank canvas that I would defeat the forces of evil. And for the next 10 years of my life, I suffered the consequences… with illness, autoimmunity, and psychosis.
As I got older, I realised that there were no real winners or no real losers in physiological warfare. But there were victims, and there were students.
It wasn’t David verses Goliath; it was a pendulum eternally awaying between the dark and the light. And the brighter the light shone, the darker the shadow it cast. It was never a battle for me to win. It was an eternal dance.
And like a dance, the more rigid I became, the harder it got. The more I cursed my clumsy footsteps, the more I suffered.
And so I got older and I learned to relax, and I learned to soften, and that dance got easier.
It is this eternal waltz that separates human beings from angels, from demons, from gods. And I must not forget, we must not forget that we are human beings.
Hi Ren provides personal insights into the struggle between one’s self and shadow self through performance art, music, and poetry.
I’m working on more serious content, I swear, Meantime, ChatGPT has me distracted with furious furries.
Write a poem about furious furries in iambic pentameter.
Furious furries, with their teeth all bared,
Their paws clenched tight with fury and with hate,
They snarl and growl and pace, not yet aware
Of the cold reason that might dissipate
Their rage. They are a force to be reckoned with,
These creatures of the wild, with primal might
And strength. They are a force to fear and fear
Again, a force that few would dare to fight.
But even furries, in their wildest rage,
Are still just animals, with hearts that beat
And minds that think and feel. And so, perhaps,
We ought to try to understand the heat
That drives their fury, and to seek to find
A way to calm the storm that rages in their minds.
Write a haiku about furious furries
Furiously they pace,
Fierce and wild, their eyes ablaze
Furries in a rage.
Write a postmodern poem about furious furries
Furries, oh furries,
Fierce and wild and in a rage,
They pace and snarl and growl.
But wait, what are these furries?
Are they real, or just a guise?
A mask to hide behind?
Perhaps they are a metaphor,
For something deeper, something true.
A way to express the rage
That lies within us all,
The primal, animalistic force
That drives us to lash out.
Or maybe they are just furries,
Fierce and wild and in a rage,
Pacing and snarling and growling,
Unapologetic in their fury,
Unwavering in their rage.
Furries, oh furries,
A mystery wrapped in fur,
A symbol of the fury
That lies within us all.
Ecrire un poรจme sur les furries furieux en conflit avec les fรฉes franรงaises
Furieux furries, aux dents dรฉcouvertes, Leurs pattes serrรฉes de colรจre et de haine, Ils grondent et rugissent et arpentent, pas encore conscients De la raison froide qui pourrait dissiper Leur rage. Ils sont une force ร ne pas sous-estimer, Ces crรฉatures de la nature, avec leur puissance primitive Et leur force. Ils sont une force ร craindre et ร redouter Encore une fois, une force que peu oseraient affronter.
Mais mรชme les furries, dans leur rage la plus sauvage, Ne sont encore que des animaux, avec des cลurs qui battent Et des esprits qui pensent et ressentent. Et donc, peut-รชtre, Devrions-nous essayer de comprendre la chaleur Qui alimente leur fureur, et chercher ร trouver Un moyen de calmer la tempรชte qui fait rage dans leurs esprits.
Fรฉeriques franรงaises, de grรขce et de beautรฉ, Leur magie scintillante et leurs ailes brillantes, Elles se tiennent face aux furries en colรจre, Un affrontement de deux mondes diamรฉtralement opposรฉs. La rage contre la grรขce, la sauvagerie contre la dรฉlicatesse, Un conflit sans fin, une guerre sans merci. Qui triomphera dans cette bataille รฉternelle? Seul le temps nous le dira.
Write a sonnet about furious furries in conflict with French fairies
The furious furries snarl and growl with rage,
Their paws clenched tight, their teeth bared and sharp.
They pace and seethe, a primal force engaged
In conflict with the French fairies, who hark
Back to a time of grace and chivalry.
But even in their wildest, most ferocious state,
The furries are still just animals, with hearts
That beat and minds that think and feel. It's late
To try to understand the heat that imparts
Their fury, but perhaps it's not too late
To find a way to calm the storm that rages
In their minds, and bring some measure of peace
To this eternal battle, this never-ending war.
The French fairies, with their delicate wings and charms,
Stand against the furries, a clash of two worlds,
Diametrically opposed. Who will emerge victorious?
Only time will tell.
Chapter 10 of The Master and His Emissary is titled The Enlightement, which is to say another chapter centred around a religious theme and paradigm shift. Only it isn’t. This chapter is focused mainly on metaphor and poetry, and that’s where I want to comment.
If you haven’t happened to have read the prior posts on The Master and His Emissary orThe Matter with Things, I’ll summarise the functions of the left and right cerebral hemispheres. If you have, feel free to skip this paragraph. The left hemisphere is closing and convergent whilst the right hemisphere is expansive and divergent, The left is about naming, categorising, and analysing; the right is about experiencing the world as presenced. Where the right hemisphere is about presentation, the left is about re-representation. A challenge occurs when the re-presented view of the left supersedes the experiential view of the right. This is what occurs in a left-dominant brain.
Metaphor is a function of the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere considers metaphor to be a figure of speech. It trivialises it in one of two ways. Either, it reduces it to components that map to some other conceptsโignoring the parts that can’t be mappedโ, or it assumes the metaphor to be whimsy and therefore without inherent value.
But metaphor is more than a figure of speech. It’s a figure of thought that can’t be reduced. Metaphor is like art or music and other residences of the right hemisphere. These things must be taken as whole entities and be considered in the manner of Gestalt.
Being analytical and representative, the left hemisphere can be educated. I could be wrong, but I don’t see how the right can be strengthened. It seems that its weakness is interference from the left, but the left is constantly wintering on that it’s always right, and all you need is to be more analytical. If you don’t have empathy, you can’t learn it. If you don’t understand metaphor, you’re pretty much out of luck. The same goes for anything in the experiential right hemisphere.
Might I be wrong? Sure, I’m no neuroscientist, but short of some external event, like a stroke, brain lesions, head trauma, or some such. I don’t see the vector. In a way, it’s like the advancement of technology. It’s difficult to stem the tide and reverse it. This is the challenge. In the West, we’ve been on a path to rationality and reasonโleft hemisphere fareโ, which has shifted it further and further left. We just need more systems and processes.
Why the title, “Metaphor and Simile?” Metaphor resides in the province of the right hemisphere. Simile resides in the left. I remember listening to Joseph Campbell in the 1980s discussing the power of metaphor. Where metaphor is a mode of thought, simile is just a figure of speech. And it’s an analytical analogue. Love is like a rose. There’s a simple mapping. Love is a rose is more robust. John Lennon sings these lines in Mind Games.
Love is the answer and you know that for sure Love is a flower you got to let it grow
Love is a flower. You got to let it grow. Grammatical structure asideโonly an intractable problem for left-brainersโ, this is a relatively simple metaphor, flowers grow and bloom; love grows and blooms.
Follows are another few famous metaphors. These may feel more accessible than some others.
โAll the worldโs a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances.โ
William Shakespeare
โAll our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.โ
Khalil Gibran
This one is particularly interesting as it suggests how diminutive words are relative to that of the mindโmere crumbs.
โAnd your very flesh shall be a great poem.โ
Walt Whitman
How shall your flesh be a great poem? No like a great poem, but to be a great poem.
I’ve talked about Robert Frost’s The Road Less Travelled previously.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and Iโ I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
This poem is replete with metaphors.
The road itself is a metaphor for life, and the forks are the choices we make. Interpreted from a post-Modern perspective, and as Frost said himself, the trick is that it doesn’t matter which path is taken. In any case, irrespective of which paths you take, it will still make all the difference.
I’ve digressed.
McGilchrist says societies and people are moving too far into a left-dominant worldview, which only reinforces and accelerates this worldview. I don’t know how reversible it is. It’s swung both ways before, but that was prior to Scientism. This and hubris are not a great combination. In the end, the probability of teaching someone metaphor is on par with teaching someone to appreciate a work of art or a piece of music.
McGilchrist says we need to regain this capacity for metaphorโand empathy and so onโ, but this requires (in my mind) a paradigm shift. I don’t see it happening at an individual level. There would need to be a cultural shift, and that is unforeseeable from here at the moment.
Here’s the challenge as I see it. In saying that we need to regain the ability to understand metaphor without assuming it can be deconstructed without a loss of meaning, he doesn’t provide a pathโat least not yet. I’ve got two chapters remaining, so perhaps he’ll offer some guidance or conceptual framework in one of them. Otherwise, the future looks bleak. Of course, humans are adaptable. Evolution works that way, but you can also veer down an evolutionary dead end without knowing your journey has no viable future until you get there. And that will make all the difference.
I’ve decided to do something a bit different. In this, I read a selection from Polly Jean Harvey’s narrative poem, Orlam. The book offers a rather bilingual version of the poem, in both standard English and the Dorset dialect whence hails Ms Harvey.
Podcast: Audio rendition of this page content
The piece I’ve selected is titled Overwehelem. I’m going to recite the Dorset rendition.
Voul village in a hag-ridden hollow.
All ways to it winding, all roads to it narrow.
Auverlooked bog, veiled in vog,
thirtover, undercreepen, rank with seepings;
Jeyes Fluid, slurry, zweat and pus,
anus greaze, squitters, jizz and blood
Breeder of asthma, common warts, ringworm.
Ward of ancient occupations;
ploughshares rusting in the brembles,
half-walls, smuggler's runs and ditches,
blackened heth stones, lured lullabies;
Mummy's going to smack you if you don't . . .
The crossroads a red hanging-post
to GOAT HILL, RANSHAM, OVERWELEM.
Three hoar-stones, one Golden Fleece
connected by a single Riddle.
Gramf'er blackthorn bent by wind.
Shabby mothers trying to die.
A haunted wood in the realm of an Eye.
A farm of hooks with a rout of Rawles.
a mother of sorrow, a faterous fiend,
a runstick son and his inward friend,
and a not-gurrel born amongst them:
fouling her fig in the forest,
honking a conk-load of creosote,
downing a dram of diazinon,
flaying a fleece-full of maggots,
gorging a gutful of entrails,
scrounching the scabs o' engripement,
hoarding the horrible heissens,
bearing the burden of wordle.
So there you have it. Overwhelem from PJ Harvey’s Orlam.
As I mentioned, the book presents the English side-to-side with the Dorset. As Dorset in the south of Britain is an English dialect, most of the words and form should be familiar. There are a few that are less obvious than others. If you’d like a translation, pick up the book or ask in the comments.
Philosophics 