The New Emotional Laws

[lhexa]

It's not often I have to maneuver my bike around a house stuck in an intersection.

Write, Lhexa.

I do not know any person less rational than myself. I never will. The errors I find in others' reasoning lack the subtlety and insidiousness of those in my own: they are lesser offenses against reason. There are the twists of meaning I recognize as mine, where my words fulfill my use but defy another's understanding; there are the thoughts that form a regard without coalescing into actual beliefs, thoughts thus standing apart from critique; there are the topics so singular that they exclude all other consideration from my mind, and lead me to ignore those needed aspects of my behavior which mark me as someone with whom one can reason. But do I have any mind but my own? Or any moods but these that govern my perspective? When can what I am extend beyond myself? You who would converse with me, acknowledge the limits I have discovered for myself, and acknowledge what I know of my own capacity for unreason. We do have much to offer each other.

I owe some loyalty to my perceptions. They often tug my mind toward something between a sensation and a theorem, something of the world and my being in it, something there to be brought within consciousness by thought and by mood; by luck, too, and by a peculiar eloquence that leaves what I write full, containing more than I can explain, a wonderful always more. But I go astray in following my perceptions, until life, with steady demands that can no longer be met, as it were keeps me from myself. Then home confines when it should rejuvenate, and conversations with friends do not break but only limn my silence: I despair. And my despair argues without eloquence. It argues so as to leave me without words. It brings forward the ideas that render me speechless (the same ideas that would, that have rendered me speechless when spoken by friends), the new emotional laws of a very small inner world. Ah, I am such a moody person. But there is a world outside. There is a forward.

I have my paths.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dw/]

Would not only the subtle remain when you avoid the obvious errors? Others, less rational, would not even avoid the obvious ones..

But I guess I'm not seeing the whole and entire here.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

*grins* To put it briefly, I was being tricky. The claim I made about rationality is about my knowledge, less than the actual rationality of people in the world. The emphasis is on the "know", and it's used in the sense of "to know someone to be" rather than "to be acquainted with". I know my own irrational aspects better than those of another, so I myself am my best standard of irrationality.

I'm judging the errors by their insidiousness... but part of that aspect is that I can't discern them in anyone but myself. I have indirect evidence of their existence outside myself, but they're too subtle to be apparent in behavior. I just don't have the required (internal) perspective. The worst I can conclude about someone would be that he is simply not rational, whereas I have, in the past, worked contrary to reason. (By the reshaping of language, for instance, or an obsession strong enough to overrule basic (nonrational?) habits.) I think of rationality as a value that's not bounded below (so it can be negative, less than nonexistent). And somewhere outside a middle range, (ir)rationality becomes inobservable in others. If the entry had required a different tone, I could have named myself as my own best standard of rationality, too.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Well, you can read my comment below for some explanation. While your intent's good, this entry (and those like it, no matter what their emotional tone) doesn't call for advice or support. The times when I lack introspection are the ones when I'm in a dire situation. Or, to put my reaction another way, all moods need expression, and it's easy to mistake such an expression for a call for help.

[shadowtxhorse.livejournal.com]

I removed the offending entry. My apologies.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Er... no offense taken. I do appreciate the intent.