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there's no such thing as purple
2008-Sep-18, Thursday 06:20 amI've never had problems blending my religious and scientific worldviews together. Poetry and prose are just different approaches to describing the same experience, as I see it. I can easily use whichever method seems to offer the best insight for whatever issue I face at the moment. It's all metaphor, divorced from the actual sensation of living the moment, meant to offer a best approximation from a certain perspective.
Much like color. What we experience and what we talk about are two different things. I'm not certain there's a way to guarantee that what one person calls purple is exactly the same as what another person calls purple. A dictionary definition says it's a mixture of red (610-780 nm) and blue (450-500 nm) light. But there are variations in what kinds of cells people have in their eyes, there are variations even in the cells they do have that respond to light, and there are variations in each person's brain that mixes the nerve signal input. It's all very complicated, so it's a wonder that we can even talk about colors at all with any kind of regularity. The subjective experience is real, but we have to resort to metaphor to share it.
Even within a single person, though, there can be different metaphors to explain the same experience. Most people of scientific mindset agree that there's no such thing as lycanthropes (werewolves, usually). Except that there are, of a sort. In autistic circles, we sometimes talk about proprioception. It's the sense we have of our own body, its relative location and experience. Well, neuroimaging confirms that it's possible for some people to have unusual effects in their brains that affect this sense directly. Clinical lycanthropy is rare, but it does exist. Some people experience their bodies undergo transformations into different arrangements. Although the "classic" wolf form seems to be rare, people do experience it as well as the unlikely configuration of a bumblebee. These people can, for instance, look at their hands yet report about their paws.
Remember now, they're not lying. When these people speak of their transformation into a new body, they are not succumbing to delusion. They may be accurately portraying their sensory experience. In spite of the evidence that we see as they stand before us in human form, they can still be telling us something completely different about their own experience. Both descriptions can be real simultaneously. It's not really a matter of converging onto a single objective truth.
I wanted to make sure that readers here are capable of understanding that words strung together to describe an experience are always metaphor. Literary content can be simultaneously true and untrue without violating its own meaning. You just need to remember the fluidity of definitions themselves.
I'm considering the possibility of relating some unusual subjects of personal perspective, and (if I do it) I want it understood that I can move between metaphors fluidly. I can choose the "flighty/strange" interpretation one moment and the "grounded/reserved" interpretation the next moment. They're both real to me, as I experience life. I can listen to other people relate their personal experience without having to make them conform to my expectations of experience. I have a deep desire to experience directly what another person experiences, but until that happens then I have to allow instead that metaphor will suffice for the translation.
Perspectives matter. Priorities of communication matter. Science or religion. Poetry or prose.
Remember, there's no such thing as purple.
Much like color. What we experience and what we talk about are two different things. I'm not certain there's a way to guarantee that what one person calls purple is exactly the same as what another person calls purple. A dictionary definition says it's a mixture of red (610-780 nm) and blue (450-500 nm) light. But there are variations in what kinds of cells people have in their eyes, there are variations even in the cells they do have that respond to light, and there are variations in each person's brain that mixes the nerve signal input. It's all very complicated, so it's a wonder that we can even talk about colors at all with any kind of regularity. The subjective experience is real, but we have to resort to metaphor to share it.
Even within a single person, though, there can be different metaphors to explain the same experience. Most people of scientific mindset agree that there's no such thing as lycanthropes (werewolves, usually). Except that there are, of a sort. In autistic circles, we sometimes talk about proprioception. It's the sense we have of our own body, its relative location and experience. Well, neuroimaging confirms that it's possible for some people to have unusual effects in their brains that affect this sense directly. Clinical lycanthropy is rare, but it does exist. Some people experience their bodies undergo transformations into different arrangements. Although the "classic" wolf form seems to be rare, people do experience it as well as the unlikely configuration of a bumblebee. These people can, for instance, look at their hands yet report about their paws.
Remember now, they're not lying. When these people speak of their transformation into a new body, they are not succumbing to delusion. They may be accurately portraying their sensory experience. In spite of the evidence that we see as they stand before us in human form, they can still be telling us something completely different about their own experience. Both descriptions can be real simultaneously. It's not really a matter of converging onto a single objective truth.
I wanted to make sure that readers here are capable of understanding that words strung together to describe an experience are always metaphor. Literary content can be simultaneously true and untrue without violating its own meaning. You just need to remember the fluidity of definitions themselves.
1 + 1 = 3, for sufficiently large values of 1. *grin*
I'm considering the possibility of relating some unusual subjects of personal perspective, and (if I do it) I want it understood that I can move between metaphors fluidly. I can choose the "flighty/strange" interpretation one moment and the "grounded/reserved" interpretation the next moment. They're both real to me, as I experience life. I can listen to other people relate their personal experience without having to make them conform to my expectations of experience. I have a deep desire to experience directly what another person experiences, but until that happens then I have to allow instead that metaphor will suffice for the translation.
Perspectives matter. Priorities of communication matter. Science or religion. Poetry or prose.
Remember, there's no such thing as purple.