The Anti-Soapbox: Collected Essays Read online

think and act upon our illogical drives. For this perverse duality, we can thank the divide between our conscious and subconscious minds, that which allows us to carry out illogical urges and desires in direct contradiction to logical, stated intent, while still wholly believing in our sensibilities—an illusion in every sense, carried out by the mind’s ever-shifting perceptual voodoo. Yet, when few are aware of this phenomenon (or so much as the possibility of such a thing), illusions have a way of seeming quite real.

  What’s more, this type of illusionary thinking is amplified tenfold when other people share it. The result is a resonation of sorts, which can lend substance to our illusions, sometimes to startling degrees. Nothing exemplifies this effect better than a trial by jury, and the complex psychological interplay which occurs during the hearings and deliberations—a rife breeding ground for confusion and perceptual illusions, our modern court system. I once served as a juror for a moderately lengthy trial, and I can tell you from experience: for all the logic and facts presented in the trial and then deliberated upon, the verdict that jury produced was anything but logical and factual. Instead, my fellow jurors clearly based their judgments almost totally on emotion, appearance, personal bias, and majority rule (not to mention the desire to reach a verdict and be freed from jury duty). And what’s more, they probably did so without realizing it, so intoxicating were the illogical perceptual distortions circulating that deliberation room. So powerful was that psychological landscape, damned if I wasn’t one step from joining my fellow jurors in their weird make-believe.

  At this point, I must restate that “illogical” is not necessarily “bad,” lest you come away with the wrong idea. Yes, illogical thinking can give way to the confusion and distortion of the jury example above, but that’s only one manifestation of the illogical; that is, it could as easily go the other way, with the right application. For all its stigma, thinking illogically is, really, just another way of thinking, every bit as valid as logical thought. Rather than being a breed apart, logic and illogic are more like two sides of the same coin. Illogical thought has just gotten a bad wrap as of late, due to the linguistic attachments described earlier, where to be “illogical” is often equated with flat-out craziness. True as that may be in the colloquial sense, to be literally “illogical” is, simply, to act on illogical thought and reasoning in its various forms. That is to say, illogical thought can still bring about productive, sensible behavior, and if these are our metrics for validity, then illogical thinking can satisfy them completely (so long as done soundly and responsibility, caveats which apply just as much to logical thought). Here, we run into the concept of “many roads to the same destination,” where the same sound behavior can be reached illogically as much as logically (and sometimes even far easier, and more efficiently).

  As an example, consider analog versus digital, which could be likened to illogical versus logical. Music, video, computer data, and other media can all be stored in either analog or digital formats, which vary in the method by which the information is encoded and transmitted, among other specifics. And though each respective format has its advantages and disadvantages (sometimes significant ones), they both can, in the end, convey the music, images, or data in question—accomplishing the same thing by drastically different means, as it were. It’s the equivalent of communicating a message first with a high-tech digital cell phone, then by sending smoke signals, a thoroughly analog method. For better or worse, that message will still get across, despite arriving by fundamentally different means. In the end, the results often overlap to the point of being indistinguishable, and such is the difference between logical and illogical thought, where their disparate mechanics are sometimes so inconspicuous as to be evident only under a microscope.

  Logic and illogic are not incompatible, it would seem (though the latter is more popular on YouTube).

  All in all, this essay offers just a taste of what lies in Illogical Land, the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Spirituality, self-expression, causality, the abiding mystery of consciousness—these subjects lie in the territory of the illogical, and mammoth they are, unable to be faithfully addressed within the strictures of prose. And, let it be known: there are treasures to be found in that place, tangible and intangible alike. In exploring the illogical and the intriguing possibilities in its orbit, I have explored myself by consequence, and I consider this the greatest treasure to be had. Also, a bit of advice: beware reading logic into illogical art, for you will become frustrated, and frustrated people write Amazon reviews.

  Turn the telescope around, look through the big end, and then close your eyes entirely. There, understand?

  IX. SEMANTICS REVISITED

  We are not ruled by government, guns, or even the old villains, death and taxes. Rather, semantics rule our world.

  The study of semantics is a tricky one. Defined as a distinct symbol carried in the mind, the semantic sounds simple and one-dimensional; however, it would be off the mark to view “semantic” as a mere synonym for “symbol,” for there is much more to the concept. When we think of symbols, visual designs are typically brought to mind, such as the arrow on a road sign, or the face of a national flag; but semantics, though symbolic, surpass the bare simplicity of the traditional symbol. As it were, semantics are psychological, and therein lies their deep complexity, as psychology always brings to the table. Semantics could be considered the “blueprints” of all thought and action; or, if we want to be fancy, the semantic can be thought of as an “interpretive symbolic concept.”

  Psychologically, a semantic contains within it far more than the straightforward information conveyed by an ordinary visual symbol. A semantic consists not just of literal, logical information, but layers of information, textured with associations, perception, and all sorts of other mental goodies, as to be innately richer in substance. Most of all, semantics are set apart from symbols in that they influence the interpretation of information, lending an active, mechanical element lacking from the passive, inert symbol—a quality which defines the essence of the semantic. Semantically speaking, that road-sign arrow symbolizes not just the announcement of a turn, but the very act of turning, along with anything that might be loosely associated with a turn—all represented by the underlying semantic of a pointed arrow, like a great amount of cargo crammed into a small truck. Depending on the person and their perception, some folks might even see finer things in that road sign, such as the word “turn” itself (or, perhaps, a fear of turning, from some strange experience in the person’s childhood).

  Symbols say a little. Semantics say a lot.

  Furthermore, all this information jam-packed into a semantic is subjective, so that it changes from individual to individual. That is, one’s personal semantics are, more of less, unique, because everyone sees the world and its contents differently. Thus, people can hold vastly different semantics of even the very same ideas and concepts. For example, the semantic of the mother figure. One man’s “mother” might involve the traditional sentiment: an older, matronly woman offering protection and affection. But, as easily, another man’s “mother” semantic could be totally different, due to his own unique life experience and how it influenced his idea of what constitutes a mother—say, a skinny, young, distant woman instead of the loving matron, purely because that image describes the mother of the man in question. In a word, it’s all relative. Neither of those “mother” semantics are “wrong,” really, because each hinges on arbitrary psychological elements, one being no more valid than the other. When it comes to the “rightness” of semantics, they only qualify as right for the individual whom possesses them, rather than universally, for others.

  You say “po-tay-to,” I say “po-tah-to”—and, from a semantic standpoint, both pronunciations are correct.

  Semantics are, obviously, both highly personal and highly complicated. There are many implications of this complex nature, but the biggest is this: we are, for the most part, at the mercy of these fickle, subjective semantics. That is
, the mind operates on them, and we operate on our minds—hence, it’s not us in control, ultimately, but our semantics and their vagaries (if we let them be, at least; more on that later). Psychologically, we float on a sea of semantic images and concepts, so that they comprise the very fabric of our thoughts and feelings. Semantics could be likened to the currency of the mind, like the ingredients of a cake—or, better yet, the ingredients of the individual ingredients, the way atoms comprise the parts of a car. When someone asks to have the salt passed to them, the request is assembled from their semantics of “salt,” intermixed with that of table etiquette and why that salt should rightfully be passed, along with however many offshoots of that central “salt” semantic, right down to the very concept of food.

  Alter any one of those semantics, and that request to pass the salt might be radically changed.

  In this way, the mind can be thought of as a blender of semantics, mixing with other psychological minutiae to create the phenomenon of perception and consciousness, including the seemingly mundane mental processes of day-to-day life.