What came first the definition or the defined?

Things seem derived from definitions, but it’s usually the last thing a writer pins down when forming an argument. The writer sticks the definition in the beginning anyway to help the reader.

Definitions are breakthroughs.

Language is empty, abstract labels and signs.

Man is the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal, inventor of the negative (moralized by the negative), separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (moved by the sense of order), and rotten with perfection.

1. Man is the symbol using animal.

How much of our “reality” was constructed by our verbal and non-verbal?

Motives derived from man’s animality?

Physical stuff.

Motives derived from man’s symbolocity?

Condensation & displacement. Substitution. Transcendence.

symbol-using, symbol-making, symbol-misusing

• Bird bumps ceiling. It tries to escape the indoors. It won’t exit the open window below the ceiling. It struggles.
• There’s a noisy hungry baby bird in its nest. The momma bird shows up with a worm and sees how annoying the baby is being. She cranes her neck upwards to keep the worm. The youngster tries to steal it. He’s hungry. Baby bird tumbles out of the nest. Momma bird gets the worm.

1. Words make it possible for acts of wisdom like these to spread. If birds used words, all birds would be wise. They’d know how to exit windows and they’d know how to put annoying baby birds in their place.
2. Innovation requires attention. Unfortunately for birdies, they probably weren’t paying much attention to their mistakes or successes, so they’d never be able to repeat these acts by choice.
3. The above also implies that birds can’t gossip or spread hate because they don’t have words.

2. Inventor of the negative.

The inventor is the invented man.

This is important because it stresses man’s moral agent.

The positive is good, and the negative is bad. Yes or no. Do or don’t. This is about the unnatural idea of NO and the idea of DON’T.

Yes and No imply each other and limit each other, but limitation itself is negative.

metaphor= not literal

irony=not literal

And did you know man invented metaphors and irony?

“The Idea of Nothing”

(via Bergson’s Creative Evolution)

• Everything is what it is.
• There are no negatives in nature.
• Negatives are man made.

3. Separated from natural condition by instruments of his own making.

If we make our own tools, it’s not natural. It’s man made. Therefore, we are separated from our natural condition.

What do you call the stuff you use for hunting and husbandry?

“Second nature.”

Instrumentality is not the essence of language. Language is the “collective means of expression.”

Why make tools?

• technology
• needs
• appetites

Why are we not tool-using animals? What separates us from the primates?

— We don’t merely use tools. We make tools. We even make tools that make other tools.

4. Goaded by the spirit of hierarchy.

Moved by sense of order

• organization
• status
• mysteries
• order
• up
• down
• pride