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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4033709" data-attributes="member: 54707">Modern man far too often considers language to be reality. Not just his reality, but reality itself.He thinks that if he can describe it, or formulate it, in some form of language, be that linguistic or legal or mathematical or by whatever means language is most situationally potent, that he has in effect controlled reality. He views the world as his best and most accurate description of it, and the same thing with his games and his entertainments. Rules everywhere as a descriptive metaphor of reality, but far too often he cannot even grasp the idea, in words or without them, that reality is not a description of that which can be described. It is something he's rarely even thought of in most instances, because thought itself has convinced him by word and by unexamined belief that words shape worlds and men, and not the other way around. The man cogitates and the world agitates.Modern man, Master and Commander of many wordsExplorer of every thought that might lead to deedOf no deed so ensorcelled as the bright musingThat one day, within his mind, he will become great, So great that nothing will be beyond him, except, of course, The adventure and the enterprise that will risk anythingOther than the word he has long ago overmastered...The idea that the way things are, or should be, and the way he describes, formulates, and constructs a definition for the way things are, could in any way be misaligned, even slightly or obliquely towards the real world, is extremely confusing and often upsetting to him. Deep in his soul. Rebellion brews, unasked and unbidden. He does not know why, but he has many words to rule the feeling that if things were just a bit more predictable then reality would be infinitely more correct by calculation. So by being correct he becomes ordered, and by being ordered he is ruled by what he creates, and yet upon encountering the grimly waiting monster and the enigmatically approaching prodigy who has slipped the noose of his insistent assumptions he is both instinctively horrified, and intuitively enthralled. He has a rules mania, a sort of psychological fetish that cannot imagine the world operationally independent of preconceived circumstances of observational apparencies. If he can state in a formula or equate by verbal or scripted association of certainty some ungoverned truth, then he feels that he alone has imposed a reality upon the world which supercedes both actual function and observed phenomena. There is a voodoo of the mind in covert corners, a conspiracy against him, to spirit out the secret places of the world where his persuasions are of lesser effect than the letters by which he notes them. So he details every aspect of life and the world about him in a categorical imperative to prevent the impression that the story of the world, much less his own, has some intention, purpose, or outcome beyond himself. Without the structured familiarity of his insistent rules he is afraid, alone, adrift, at the mercy of forces he fears might one day make him the exception to the rule, in whatever way he is most afraid to be exceptional. And modern man is above almost all other things, that kind of man who fears most to be exceptional. He dreams of it, desires it, hopes for it, has a secret faith it is possible, if only the rules allowed such a thing. But then again if the rules allowed such a thing then words would be an unnecessary and superfluous achievement compared to his other and more concrete exploits, wouldn't they? So the map is not the territory, or the game is not the reality, or the word is not the thing, or at the very least the thing is not worth the considering when you've already conceived all of the other possibilities and the mechanics say it just makes no sense. And that as they say, is just about enough of that.Then again folks I could be wrong. Very, very wrong.If the rules say I am then it's probably safe to assume that I am.So on second thought just forget I mentioned it, and please, carry on.</blockquote>

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