Contamination

I’ve added a filter for the book reviews I’ve posted thus far.

And though I’ve read more in-between, none of the reads felt elevated enough to write about. If they did, it’s a wordless reflection. A convenient euphemism? I had nothing to add.

You are what you read to an extent. I’ve read a lot of nonsense and it ended up with, with whatever this is.

You can become a slave to what you read. Processing other people’s views until you’re cornered in another label. But on the contrary not reading at all makes it all the more likely to stumble into epistemic prisons through other mediums, or simple existence. Each era comes with its own restraints, thus reading can also liberate. In its own way. Older metal bars to break.

That’s the funniest thing you can do if you’re good enough talking authoritative. This is one of the secret essences of argumentation: make your opponent concede to your terms, even if the presentation seems initially favorable. As soon as either side agrees to what certain focal point words mean, the battle is already decided.

And you make up your own words, too, or you mutate the meaning by mere nuance. The more you can constrain someone else into your definitions, new or rebranded, the easier it is to bend the rest of the argument.

That’s why a lot of talking is talking past one another. I think deep down we all understand that it is the definition where the battle is won. To talk to each other means agreed definition and thus concession. My victory is contingent on not understanding your takes. If victory means subjugation, contamination.

There are silent arguments everywhere you go; all definitions are brewed through subtle influence. That’s why I always refer to “psychology” as high-priest literature technology. Because it is.

So upon such reflection, of all the books read and what impression they’ve left, or why I’ve not read as much but write as if I, an authority of nothing, could possibly have anything to add---I’ve not even entered the conversation!---so I think about that subtle influence.

Because one must be weary to accept the terms. The very frame by which an author writes, and you can feel it if you read close enough. It starts creeping in you.

This is all a convenient framing though. Could instead be simple laziness, perhaps, or dimwittedness, inability to entertain a larger picture. Why not try out their terms and see if you can salvage the rest of the retreat?

And again, it’s perhaps about how, the more you accept terms, the more infected you get. To disengage the default locks, smudge your form into another’s mapping of the world and let more foreign thoughts pour in: will your system sustain past the confusion and potential damage?

People today roam about surely infected. Surely you meet them. You know them. No description is required. But they can sure tell you a thing or two about how the world just needs this one neat trick, or if everyone would just…

Well, you’re going to adapt, aren’t you? You probably already have.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stranger.