False Etymologies
Today's little ditty, which I promise to be somewhat brief, comes in two parts: part 1, a rant, and part 2, a poem. They need even less introduction than that.
I.
I realized last night, as I failed to drift off into sleepy land, that there is a gross difference between something being right and something making sense. For example, me quoting myself, "I'd like to consider the ignorant together with the innocent, as we tend to let them overlap. The innocent are, etymologically speaking, innocuous, they are innocens, which is to say they do no harm, innocent being an adjective derived from the present participle of the verb noceo ('to do harm') modified by the negative prefix in-. The funny thing about the prefix in- in die Lingua Latina is that it often serves as an intensifier as well, thus inflammo does not have the ridiculous meaning of 'not to set on fire' but rather 'to inflame.' Perhaps the innocent are not, in fact, innocuous. Perhaps the innocent, and as such the ignorant, do not 'do no harm' but rather 'do great harm.' They do great harm to us all with their stupidity." It is less important that in- and noceo as "do great harm" is etymologically incorrect as the fact it makes a kind of sense, i.e. it manufactures sense, is ultimately more useful than its truth value.
II.
letter to an anarchist
please don't kill me; I've only
just met you. it'd be a shame
if I were to bloody your suip.
suip, as you know, needs
broth, the kind you make of
meets simmering in a pot.
the vegetables and the meets
and the bundles of fresh verbs
and the well water fat puddles--
please don't kill my brother;
he's just a baby and wont to
babble as bibble babies do.
please spare him his life in
solitude wondering the halls
of dusty tome-pocked walls;
he won't forget you, as you
will have already forgotten him.
please don't leaf your life alone.
posted by Nicholas Theisen @ 12:21 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
nicholas, i see i need to situate my comments a little so you could get your sleep back. it's true there is a gross difference between being right and making sense, but there is a bigger difference between making sense and making no sense. for my muddled brain, the world is so full of things that don't make any sense at all that the sight of something making sense is an unarguable delight. in other words, i liked your piece though i didn't know enough to say it was right.
besides, for me, "you are right" equals "i agree with you" and nothing more. i have been listening to a chinese storyteller for months and got addicted to his voice. he said lots of things i disagreed with, but he said more things that made lei and me laugh. one day he said something that was against common sense at first but made lots of sense to me when i was just about to say, "this is wrong." he said, 没有好人坏人，都是各为其主。 in case mike wants to know, here is a rough translation: there is no good people or bad people. everyone just fights for his/her own master/cause. many things forced me not to think of things in terms of good or bad, right or wrong. what i thought was right was often wrong for somebody else. it used to drive me mad when this somebody was my good friend or someone closer.
yes, i totally agree with you. the innocent and the ignorant do great harm to people with their stupidity, often with their good intentions. my apologies if this time, the harm-doer has been me.
Are you turning into Heidegger? I'm not sure if that would be a great shame, but all the earmarks are there already.
Your rant about being right v. making sense reminds me of my relationship with Plato's Socrates: when he tries to be right (e.g. in the Republic or the Symposium, on a flat reading), he's never right; when he tries to make sense (i.e. in the early dialogues, the Phaedrus, or the Alcibiades), he always makes sense, and makes it over and over again.
The innocent continue to do great harm with their innocence. The question is whether there is such a thing as voluntary stupidity, or whether ignorance always exerts its force against a basic and unshakeable will to know - that is, whether like knowledge ignorance too can be willed. Even Freud would shy away from the conviction that repression is something consciously willed. When one wills ignorance, one is never quite sure what part of one is doing the job, but it couldn't possibly be the one that is aware of itself in the moment of ignoring. Our entire tradition would suggest that to will ignorance of X requires that one be conscious of X at the same time - and hence it's self-defeating.
As for making sense, your understanding is not only Heideggerian but also has shades of Marx, and verges on Deleuze too. You're getting dangerously close to the point of view that interpretation, by whatever standards, does not discover so much as create meaning in the matrix of a text. Which I might add is my own point of view.
My view of innocence can be summed up by something I scribbled in one of my tiny notebooks back in march:
innocent is merely another word
for stupid - the innocent play at life
for a time; though we adore them,
would never want to be them again.
we all once were innocent, which
is to say we all once were stupid,
and some still are: they've bartered
reality for a taste of sublime illusion
those of us the wise, the wizened,
the wrinkled, balding wizards are
busy conjuring planes of cynicism
to wallow in until we die.
I only just now realized my failure with that Regina Spektor post: I had this belief that it stood on its own but discovered, in fact, almost nothing I write stands on its own. It is all hopelessly contextualized. This is because I'm constantly contradicting myself. I've always been fascinated with turns of meaning over states of meaning, which probably explains my valorization of poets like Ono no Komachi, Yosano Akiko, Catullus, Emily Dickinson, Sappho, Regina Spektor, Wang Wei, and Shiina Ringo. All of them persistently twist meaning about in their work thereby forcing a cognizant reader to grapple with them antagonistically.
To answer Mike: I've always believed meaning is created; I'd thought that was obvious. I just take a perversely optimistic stand toward that endeavor and largely refuse the melancholia that so many allow to infiltrate their philosophical work. The difficulty one runs in choosing joy over melancholy is ultimately Nietzsche's, that the greatest struggle for Fröhlichkeit (gaiety) is riddled with intense bouts of melancholy.
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