Good on you for considering it. Having something "concrete" to refer back to and to plagiarize from and riff off of would be convenient for all of us.
I think that your resistance to metaphors like compression and resolution due their being highjacked by Tech is interesting. In a way it is akin to Michael and my ongoing argument about evolution.
Science and technology are linguistic rapists. Consider physics for example. All math, all the time. Engineers just set up their solution space and then run the numbers and then build the damn thing and then have to explain it to the non-engineers. To do this they go trolling through the language, stealing what they will and twisting the meaning of the words to convey (in usually a spurious and unsatisfactory manner) of the realities of the mathematical world that they inhabit. They do this because most folks education doesn't give them the ability to understand the models and the methods of science and engineering.
This is where science and technology become our priesthood. Engineers are the Parish Priests, scientists are in the Vatican. Their income and their prestige are dependent on convincing the Hoi Polloi that they know what they are doing and that "they got this". That can only be done with word and the end-products of what they create. Bridges hold beauty, roads bring dreams. These are the beauty of form that is only described through mathematics. When someone starts trotting out words and poetry, and symbols and verbal and symbolic descriptions of an arch or the curve of a wing or a suspension bridge, these derivative symbols pale against the elegance and power of the mathematics and the almost platonic forms in the mind of the engineer.
We talk about trying to convey meaning and beauty through the flawed vessels that are words. We seem to get lost in the words that we create trying in vain to explain what we feel and what we understand, but words fail us. Maybe it is time to just look around us and see and appreciate the beauty of form that is everywhere. We can keep trying to tell others, but it is critical that we understand that we will nearly always fail. But the beauty is still there, and our minds can touch it. I think that might be the only way to oppose the ugliness that appears to be coming our way.
No comments:
Post a Comment