Relational Data-Based Logic & Meta-Physical Constraints

When I as author of a text choose a title for that text, then I become an author on a different level. The descriptors I choose describe other descriptions. On a gut level, we feel this by being aware that the choice of a title feels more significant than the choices of commas or similar punctuation throughout the subordinate text. When we get into the “flow” of writing, we are able to turn off that “meta-” mind more easily.

One thing that is truly mind-boggling is that there seems to be something like an unwritten rule that titles and subordinate texts need to be composed using the same language, the one we presumably share with our more-or-less fictional audience, which we assume also belongs to our own linguistic community.

To cut to the chase: What is all too easy to lose sight of is that it’s fiction all the way down (or up, or sideways or whatever). Every meta is just as fictional as the one above it, below it, next to it, in front, behind or whatever as we walk to wherever we are going. There is no there — neither here nor there nor everywhere nor anywhere for that matter. There is no truth, there is only opinions or at best educated guesses, which may very well be better or worse depending on whose opinion it is we happen to be relying on at the moment.

It can be very liberating to approach the more or less artistic work as merely up to the “whim” of the author, such as how George Orwell must have felt when he came up with “1984” (which, ironically, seems to be written in a way that transcends language).

When we thrust our attention towards such meta-physical aspirations of logic and truth into the realms of tagging systems such as “tags” and “categories” (and other such menus of “lions, tigers and bears”), we force ourselves to acknowledge that we all simply appear to be in the same boat, speaking the same language, when in fact we truly know nothing at all.

Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that we don’t tend to become dizzy or uneasy on our feet until we look down and realize that we are indeed afraid of heights.