Moderation
a l r e a d y : hatachi Archives
« "Second quarter" · "The Score" »
Moderation Friday November 11
Ben Franklin is credited with some very quotable quotes (isn't that from Reader's Digest, "quotable quotes"? I don't know, whatever). I say "is credited"; he may have simply just been the first to publish them. The most clever people I meet aren't the most clever people; they're the best at amalgamating the clever things they've heard elsewhere.
Anyway, as a result of the thirteen virtues he published in his late 20s, Ben Franklin is credited with the expression about practicing everything, including moderation, in moderation. Logically, this expression has no meaning, or rather, infinite meaning; expressions are only useful if they can be interpreted, applied, or understood.
As I type that, I start to think about music and art. Art isn't particularly applicable to every day life, for whatever life that may be. Interpretations are usually based on the personality of the observer, and to say we understand art is just outright pretentious. Yet, everywhere in the world, there is music, and there is some form of art. These things aren't "useful" as I have stated above. It seems that there are limitations to saying something is only "useful if it is applicable to life".
This last paragraph is only mentioned as a means to explain the greater issue I've been struggling with. Give me any topic (in this case, it was my desire to talk about moderation and absolutes), and I can find one or more loopholes that must first be discussed. I don't do this merely to prove that a loophole exists, but I am driven by the desire to nail down the "answer". I feel that if I chase the ends of each statement, very logically, I can pin down the assumptions to the extent where I can actually make some statement of value.
Yet, whenever I try this approach, I get lost in the process of tying down those ends. Luckily, this time, I stopped; I was merely exploring it for the sake of example. I've thought that possibly I just need to state my assumptions and traverse from there, but everything becomes the Mandlebrot set: the more you zoom in and look at it, the more complex it becomes. Conversely, the more one zooms out, the more it all comes together. Is this like a zen thing?
There are only two places left for me to go: one, to go mad, which I already slightly am, or two, to find some sort of line of thinking I can manipulate that, by definition, embodies this inability to ever accurately define reality. The latter really sounds appealing, and I really hope it includes my love of claiming that there is only one absolute, and that is that there are no absolutes. We can only take absolutes as such in moderation.
(Ed. note: I realize the logical disjunction that arises from saying "there are no absolutes", and if you post a comment about that, I will fly back and maim you.)
