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Wise King Taken by the Foolish One
essay no. 21
Eggplant Traffic: Noting the Mineral Kingdom
Dan Plonsey
November, 2001
Keywords: eggplant, traffic, moose.
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Eggplant Traffic: Noting the Mineral Kingdom
Tap into honesty, writing. It's not something you can just do. All sorts of
self-serving, cutesy-poo phrases are there, jostling one another to get to be the one to
start the first sentence. To avoid using any of these, you fish for a line "at random"
- and learn what a small, limited set of words are really available at the tip of your
tongue. My random words are always "eggplant" and "traffic." I'm certain it has
something to do with how those words sound, and in traffic's case, something more, some
sense that "traffic" is a really cool thing, also for maybe no good reason (that is, it
really is cool - the word, if not that which it describes - it isn't just me thinking it
is). Eggplant comes from "egg," which also pops up fairly frequently in one form or
another. Also "moose," and once in a while, though not so much lately, "marooooon"
(thought of as plaintive).
Perhaps I need to look beyond the kingdoms of animals and plants to the most distant
kingdom, that of "minerals." Or, to be more modern, the kingdom of things.
Things are more evolved than animals and plants because they are always honest,
and true to their essential nature. A butter dish, for instance, is never more or less
than a butter dish: you can move it according to some elaboration upon F=MA and
D= 1/2 A(T**2). It wobbles and clatters, never as it shouldn't.
Now: we know that the mineral kingdom behaves as it ought when we exert force upon its
constituent elements - but is it capable of independent movement and transformation?
Well, ultimately, yes; there is only it acting upon itself: we're all no more than a
great big bunch of atoms... But we have a consciousness too. Still haven't figured
that part out! That is, how our consciousnesses got here, in among these things and
this stuff and those physical laws of nature. So: the grand total of Everything is:
- stuff
- physical rules
- consciousness(es)
- certain mathematical axioms
- a certain not-quite-knowing one's own limits - what is possible and what not, and
how much is under one's control, and how much to risk for how little, in the light of
that which is being risked and what the chances are of losing
- a certain capacity for estimating the above risk-factor - there's a big difference,
e.g., between 5% and 35%. (Maybe those of us apparently gifted at having the
ability to assess risk fairly accurately are thus "too smart" to take as many chances as
those who are less gifted - little-knowing that perhaps our methods are just as fallible
as all others, including those based upon a random apparatus, or those based
upon not understanding the questions, or those who didn't notice any misunderstanding,
or those that are plain wrong, or those who don't even admit of there being any risk
whatsoever!)
There are large parts of the universe, and indeed of any situation therein, no matter
how small, that no one can (yet) see! Everyone is blind to something, and some
things are invisible to us all. We may or may not have an indication of the holes in
our vision: we may know where there is a piece missing, or we may not: a puzzle piece
may be beyond the apparent borders of the puzzle, especially when the puzzle's shape is
un-bounded. When we don't know that something is missing, then we can't even
guess what it might be, because in some circumstances, that which is unknown is
outside the realm of description, and thus, outside of possibility. Sure, my
descriptive powers are feeling good today. But.
What this apparatus of ignorance does is to keep us from deliberately harming
ourselves: we have a chance (if not a genuine sense) of knowing where our thoughts
are headed. This means that
I can argue myself out of how I feel about myself, if not about anything else...
-- Dan Plonsey, November 2001,
El Cerrito, California
Go to:
Wise King essays: 1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21,
22,
23,
24,
25,
26,
or
Plonsey's "Kingdoms Diptych" home page, or
Dan Plonsey home page.
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