Reflections on Aphorisms #59
Cut back on caffeine today. Feeling a lot better (at least until the headaches start), but also really kinda drowsy and tired. Please forgive any silly spelling mistakes, because I'm typing with my eyes falling closed.
Upside: I'm not tempted to stay up late watching videos on YouTube.
I should just delete my YouTube account.
Aphorism 93
It is useless to close the gates against ideas; they overleap them.
Klemens von Metternich
Interpretation
One of the ideas of history is that there are times when certain ideas and expressions will be heard regardless of the individuals; a collective guides humanity in a certain direction and nobody can really claim to have enough control to stop changes or force things along a certain path.
I don't know that I agree with it wholesale, because it's a little too teleological for me to accept as a historical method, but it's also true in a sense.
There's a prevailing spirit of the times (not in the spiritual sense, but in the zeitgeist sense), and eventually it gets going along a certain path.
I was recently thinking about the movie V for Vendetta, and the notion that there's something very archetypal about a rogue rising readily repelling regression (or, that is, people rebelling against tyrants).
If we buy into Jung's notion of a collective unconscious, or the more traditional notion of a fundamental nature of humanity, it goes to follow that there are times when the conditions that people are exposed to will lead them to act in certain ways.
These expressions of human volition are not necessarily predictable, but they're nonetheless reproducible (in a scientific sense, though it is practically impossible to set up the same events twice).
This is one of the functions of the historian: they look into the past and see how people act in certain conditions.
Ideas are the most powerful expression of the zeitgeist. Actions may speak louder than words, but both flow from ideas. Without an idea, there is no action and no speech.
The great problem of ideas is that they're contagious. We are social animals, and we spend our time trying to figure out other peoples' ideas. At best, this is just a primal instinct, and at worst this can be deliberate sabotage or usurpation. In either case, it's a necessary process. If we don't look into the other, we will never fully know the self. The eye sees not its own reflection.
If you have an idea, a great idea, it cannot remain silent. There's a Christian children's song, familiar to me from my youth, that has the following song:
"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine!"
I'll spare the repetitive verses that have now come echoing back into my head, but the actual meaning here is quite sublime.
The way that cultures live and die is by ideas. The song I just mentioned carries a meme that encourages the spreading and sharing of ideas. Technically, it actually has a few separate memes in just the sentence above, but we won't worry about that.
Von Metternich's point is this:
An idea can penetrate anything when it's given the chance to do so.
Resolution
Give ideas the space to grow.
Look for the idea that is common and the one that is not.
Don't think you can control the hearts of others. That's hubris.
Aphorism 94
All rumors about a public figure are to be deemed untrue until he threatens to sue.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, from The Bed of Procrustes
Interpretation
I would like to think that even if I didn't understand anything Taleb has to say I could still appreciate his pithy style.
I probably understand very little of what Taleb is saying. That's never stopped me before and I won't let it stop me now.
One of the best things that any good thinker keeps at their disposal is Occam's Razor. It's a very simple rhetorical device, and it's been simplified to the following:
The simplest solution tends to be right.
Typically, when I look at anything said by or about public figures, the rule is: "They're saying it to get something."
The veracity is not significant. The truth of the matter, especially in politics, is that people say things specifically for the point of what the saying gets them.
Whether or not words have any bearing on truth is insignificant.
There's something that Jordan Peterson once said, and I'm too tired to look it up so I'm gonna just paraphrase it and butcher it:
If you say something that you know to be true, you're pitting your wit against the reality of a complex universe.
One of the outcomes of this is that a mature person won't give statements which are motivated lies (or at the very least motivated stretchings of the truth) more than a moment's notice.
So I almost fell asleep in front of the TV not too long ago, and I had the news on. I can guarantee that 80%, maybe 90% of what I heard was basically just bloviation, and about 1% of it will have any impact on my life. Not even my daily life, mind you, but my life in general.
One of the nice things about reality being so complex is that a lot of the moving pieces aren't really moving all that much in the grand scheme of things. This is untrue in the individual's life, but very true in the sphere of politics.
To get back to the point, look for the things you can't say, because those are the things people don't want you to say.
If those things are true, run.
Resolution
Say the uncomfortable truth.
The tongue is the weakest muscle. This isn't because of a lack of physical power. It's due to a lack of character.
Never open the mouth if the tongue tastes untruth.
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