Well, I’ve done it again. I (in my omnipresent, and sometimes damning, capacity as jester) have managed to take what should be a fairly simple task, a short (2-3 page) paper about a short story, and pushed it into the realm of the private metaphysics I am apparently compelled to write.

What is this metaphysics you ask? There is of course a reason why I call it a ‘private metaphysics’, it’s intrinsically tied to the reason the link above will take you directly to the ‘criticism’ portion of the wikipedia entry, where we can hear some hefty names weigh in on the impossibility of defining first principles. Of course -

A more nuanced view is that metaphysical statements are not meaningless statements, but rather that they are generally not fallible, testable or provable statements. That is to say, there is no valid set of empirical observations nor a valid set of logical arguments which could definitively prove metaphysical statements to be true or false. Hence, a metaphysical statement usually implies a belief about the world or about the universe which may seem reasonable but is ultimately not provable. That belief could be changed in a non-arbitrary way, based on experience or argument, yet there exists no evidence or argument so compelling that it could rationally force a change in that belief, in the sense of definitely proving it false

Thanks wikipedia!

Hopefully you see where this is going, (if you don’t, I’ve still got bells on my hat and am more than willing to dance) I can’t explain my metaphysics in a quick or concise manner, I’m still hoping that one of these days I will be able to explain my metaphysics at all! For now it exists as a set of partially processed idealistic idolatry, a good portion of which I know is overly trapped by what I can only call a kind of capitalistic imagery (the cognoscenti will know what I mean by ‘mother culture’s song’).

Yet it keeps demanding attention from me, just today my compulsion has caused me to type out, move about, and delete the better part of what must be at least seven pages of text. The paper has felt fairly solid since about draft two, and yet the jester in me has managed to sink my teeth into something far too large for me to chew, and tasting blood in the water, have set about doing everything I can to firmly tack down the beast of some core understanding.

And although I love stringing together words without ultimately saying anything - like this post . . . ahem - there is a point, and that is why I can’t stop editing this paper. I’ll even confess that the blood I taste in the water is my old prey, a concept of how humanity’s ability to tell stories is tied into their very sense of cognition; just don’t ask me how that ties into the metaphysics as a whole, I already said I couldn’t properly explain.

I can see the responses right now . . .
- yes, and the point was -
. . . alright . . .

You’ve got to have a thesis for the earth school.

(bells ringing, fool dancing)

I’ll even go as far to say that listening to that song will help you understand this, but the fact of the matter is that it will only help (and there’s a big perhaps that goes somewhere in all this) you understand some of the imagery I keep stealing to write my metaphysics with. Maybe it’ll just give you something else to do if you feel compelled to read this again to see if I’m actually making sense.

You’ve got to have a thesis for the earth school, and you’d better engaged in an endless process of refining it.

- finite (never one afraid to end on an egotistical note) jester

(musical enjoyment - should you have enjoyed it - was provided by Pavement, from their album Terror Twilight, and as such is not covered by the Lewd Cognoscenti Creative Commons license)

This entry was posted on Monday, February 6th, 2006 at 8:25 pm and is filed under indiscriminate, philosophy, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.