Almost Unbearably Enlightening
I found this letter in my comments inbox I reprint it here in full because I think my Mom wrote it.
No, I am kidding. My Mom would not waste her time reading my articles. The reader signed himself G Stephen Tucker. I reprint it here because it flatters me until I blush like a schoolgirl, but, like a blushing schoolgirl, I actually do secretly think, deep down, I am as cute as Tartuffe and Grima Wormtongue say I am, and, besides, it took me hours to dye my eyes to match my gown, so there.
My comment:
It is a pleasure to meet someone, anyone, familiar with the ideas of General Semantics.
I will add only one remark of false modesty, which is that no one should compliment me on speaking my mind bluntly, and this for two reasons. First, to speak the truth in meekness is every man’s duty. The truth part I do easily, as it is my nature. The meekness part I have a tentative plan which I mean to put into effect to begin to learn the very first baby-step lesson about how to do that in the very near future. But not today.
Second, because there is nothing to compliment, because I am put to no danger nor discomfort by opposing so weak and craven a foe as Political Correctness. It requires no courage to fight a pitched battle between man and snail. The snail shell is insufficient as armor, and merely cracks with a pleasing sound beneath the heel; nor is the snail swift of foot enough to escape; nor possesses he fang nor claw nor poisoned sting.
Deciding to oppose the evil that oppresses the current age, whether you know it or not, whether you admit it or not, makes you an ally of all men of good will, and an enemy of the modern generation.
Putting false modesty now aside, allow me to urge you to find a quartermaster, who will issue you your arms and armor, spear and shield and panoply, and welcome you to your place in line facing the dark smudge on the horizon, those bitter clouds which herald the approach of the troop of apes and hooting barbarians who serve in this generation that darkness which eternally opposes wholesome, hale, and civilized things.
Your small powers are most welcome, and added to the other raindrops of discontent with the madness of the world, might swell up to a river of sanity and common sense, and yes, perhaps one day will meet with other glad streams to feed into the river Jordan, whose waters wash away all uncleanness.
Like the men of Caesar’s time, the commonwealth is mad for chains and fetters, and eagerly seek the highest bidder to whom to sell their dark, shrunken, damnable souls.
If the gods were benevolent, they would send another Cato of Utica to show us the path back to the virtue which reigned and ruled as sole sovereign in that lost golden age, the age when men did not worship gold. In those days, the naked yet upright inhabitants of Eden were clothed in nothing save the Adamic splendor of their humility, and they were the pure image of all divine things.
For the sake of my other readers, I will repost the column on the Crazy Years. You may read it here.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
First of all, let me applaud you for speaking your mind bluntly. All too often, people (on either side of the political spectrum) speak in euphemisms or coded phrases, and do not simply lay their cards on the table. Especially when speaking of morality issues such as this, rarely do even the most conservative thinkers and writers have the honesty and integrity to come right out and say that such things should be illegal and punishable by incarceration, and that such things should carry a significant stigma. Such is the nature of politics, I suppose. If more people were as blunt and honest as you, the debate would no doubt be more transparent and straightforward.
Let me please add that I came to your blog because the topic of Robert Heinlein came up, and I decided to google search the term “crazy years” and found your piece which used this idea as an introduction. I believe that piece was also in response to another of your writings concerning homosexuality and the responses you received from folks you offended. That piece was, in essence, about semantics (hence your use of “the crazy years” as an intro) – and since I am a semanticist (BS, applied linguistics) I habitually perform semantic analyses on any writing about the meanings and usages of words. I found your language use – the words you chose, the syntax, and the overall structure of the piece – to be beyond incredibly fascinating. It was so full of multi-leveled recursive components that the semantic field it created reminded me of an M. C. Escher painting. The fact that the piece was actually written to explicate the phenomenon of semantic dissociation made it almost unbearably enlightening. It is as though the shouts and noise and nonsense and lies and insinuations and just plain bullshit of a decade or more of political diatribes I have heard and been unable to extract any meaningful content from was suddenly brought into focus, organized, clarified, and made perfectly comprehensible.
I have never chosen a side to be on in this conflict of ideas people call politics or culture wars. I always considered all sides, given their language usage, to be so devoid of any critical thinking ability or attachment to reality that choosing a side seemed in itself to be an act of desperation. Choosing a side seemed to be equivalent to deciding to no longer be sane.
And while I still am not willing to be so insane as to ACCEPT some party platform or believe in some abstract theory of “the way things should be,” or become a PROPONENT of some poorly informed ideal or agenda, you have made it clear to me that there is a political will which I must wholeheartedly REJECT, and a wickedly informed ideal and agenda that I must become an OPPONENT of, however I may do so with my limited power. Which admittedly ain’t much.
I always thought we were in “the crazy years” because of a complete lack of semantic coherence and content. Not simply a lack of meaning, but a lack of understanding what ‘meaning’ might mean, as it were. Now I know, and I thank you from the depths of my being, that the real insanity, and the real danger to freedom and liberty and justice, is a coherent semantic field, full of content and meaning, but completely and utterly – and even, it seems, intentionally – disconnected from any antecedent in actuality. A meaning fully developed but which refers only to a fantasy that must be accepted as reality in order to inform the language used to describe it. A meaning so coherent that the reality it creates and projects becomes more real than the actual reality that actually exists apart from language. A language that not only ignores, but rejects and mystifies DATA, and assumes CAPTA to be the actual reality. I have never been so enlightened by a silly internet search. It is appropriate somehow that it was a search of a Heinlein idea!
You do not know me and likely my words mean very little to you, and perhaps I am even a bother. But that does not mean that I am any less thankful to you, nor does it absolve me of my duty and desire to offer you this gratitude.