Reading DU too often is the antithesis of the novel experience. [View all]

[Gravitycollapse]

Novel in the sense of a literal bound book with a story inside. I finish such a book and feel an immense sense of understanding even if the themes in their grandiosity partly elude my mind. There is a sense that I have taken part in the expansion of the world even if that may seem egotistical to refer to my own mind as world-like. I feel an interrelation to the characters and the tale as if I've lived their lives and done what they've done.

It is a holistic experience. I enjoy deconstructing and understanding the intentions of the author, mind you. I do like rendering visible the themes and subliminal tone of the book. But I find that it is a healing experience to grasp concepts as a part of life, rather than as explanations of what they are like in life. I hope that difference makes sense.

In this way, it is possible to subvert the ego, creating other identities to which you can place your trust. It is reassurance through doubt. You doubt the presence of your real self, in a sense, so that you can assume the identity of the characters. This is what I suppose is commonly referred to as "suspension of disbelief." You metaphorically escape this world in order to enter another. Not permanently in a fit of fantasy but because you're trying to both understand and better understand how to understand. All of this relates back to the actual world within which you exist.

I find that I can do this with non-fiction literature as well. You cannot read a text, even one which is academic, with a total sense of cynicism. You have to enter a world of doubt, where you run the risk of believing something which is false to be true, in order to learn. You can exit this realm and once again subject the experience to certain "realist" modalities. What you briefly had to assume was true, in order to maintain the suspension of disbelief, can be collapsed and ordered back into your understanding. The novel experience once again becomes fantasy, unreal, and you can take what you want from it.

This relates to how language is contextually based. The meaning of a logical thought is located in the surrounding thoughts. This isn't to say that everything is meaningless. It means that meaning is derived from relation rather than from tautology (ie circular reasoning).

The sky is blue because it is blue.

That is a tautology; a statement of meaninglessness which masks non-answer as answer. Because it does not seek to gain meaning through relation, it is destructive toward discussion. People use tautology to end discussions, not start or further them.

What am I driving at? Well, I come to this board and read posts about issues like the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict and I'm left in awe at how what we very often participate in isn't actually discussion at all. It's two or more sides yelling tautologies at each other for hundreds of posts at a time.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in some sort of first-person absurdist comedy. I'm interacting with elements which make no sense and, by interacting with them, I myself become the absurd. I say something which is valid but not necessarily true because it is precisely the response demanded by the absurdism. So, if I'm in an OP which claims to "stand with Israel" or "stand with Gaza," I find myself unable to articulate meaningful responses. It's as if we've ripped hundreds of pages out of a dictionary and thus drastically reduced our vocabulary.

That's the wonder of the tautology. It destroys discussion; if we dive deeper, it destroys thought itself. You read a meaningless post, which may even be emotionally persuasive because it uses pregnant terminology, and your brain sort of short circuits because it cannot grasp what is trying to be said. That short circuit happens because what's being said is nothing and your brain cannot grasp nothing.

Is this a problem of the current state of political debate? Is it an issue inherent to all political debate, regardless of period? Is there something inherent to politics which promotes idiocy? If so, why are we here?

Why are we on a discussion board not discussing subjects? Do we come here to simply restate beliefs? Is political debate nothing more than an echo chamber or can we escape this?

I wonder, I really do. I wonder why it is so difficult to maintain the novel experience within political debate. I wonder why it's so difficult to doubt one's beliefs for the sake of discussion. This isn't to say you can't hold beliefs. But it is to say that these subjects, in the context of a true discussion, demand that you temporarily abandon your ideological post and consider, if only momentarily, ideas which run contrary to your beliefs.

I hope this resonates with someone other than myself.