Your brain's mind's reality

The closer we observe, we find we cannot choose: artifice
or nature? Both are fused
inextricably together in us, in environment. Memory
or future? Both are imagined, from what we know
of impacts: craters of past hits, trajectories
of incoming fast-moving but plottable objects

- yet we know our ability to record and calculate
is to too large a degree impaired
to be considered reliable. Or we say we do. Or some say
we do. It isn't really so, though.

People who try to confuse you with reality
mistake rationality with meaningful complexity. To rationalize
is to take to pieces. One can cut ever finer, ever smaller, and
the distinctions drawn may be valid, without being valuable. Sometimes

your best course is to inform your interlocutor: hey
assface. Your brain's mind's reality sticks butts up its nose. Only then

can a sense of perspective and proportion be regained, or
in the case of half these clowns, installed
in the first place.

But while it will be easy
(with a touch of practice),
it won't be simple, necessarily. It will be
straightforward.

You will have to take time
to define with them even
the simplest words,
when they take opportunity to object,
and propose a different definition, you will get
your chance. Seize upon it (and them) instantly! Agreeing
to theirs. To what they propose,
and sticking to it. Making them
stick to it. Rigorously. It's fun! And if they insist
on switching to yours, instead, or to some third meaning
or one further forth, keep accepting and rigorously
holding them to it. At each switch, note
the change, and accept. Force
clarity. You will find

it inescapable, even when all they wish
is to escape. But they continue. They're
invested in it. They believe reality
is futile to even try
to grasp. They believe to escape
is simply to accept the truth.

Frustrate them in that goal. Their goal
is to get you to admit, too, that
reality is too complicated a thing
to grasp, understand or pronounce upon. Only
because they have found it so. Frustrated by ambiguity,
plurality, relativism, they have embraced the semantics
of mystification and become enemies of meaning - but
they have lost something in the exchange. Give
it back to them.

See, they no longer know how
to wield even their own chosen meaning,
they don't know what to do with it, except prove
you can keep shifting, dodging, redefining, changing it up - their conclusion
is that it's better to surrender, because they did, and they want
to help you give up, too. They pose

as if you hadn't considered that a word you use
has other senses, as if
that fact is in their favor,
against anyone with a definite sense.
They forget or pretend not to know: every sense of a term
is definite. And very easily can be. They pose

as trying to expand your understanding: "But wait!
That word also means" - and yes, it does. Once you catch
the trick - so easy, to accept each sense offered! - nail it
down to some one sense under discussion,
currently. Change with them, to the other sense
with clarity, as prompted. As easy
as they please. So easy
to accept each term they propose,
with a firm and definite grasp - and suddenly
we find, we can
yet
make definite
pronouncement. Easily, in fact. With every
word, every sense, every
thing they try.

There is only this starting point
at which you meet, where you must force the meeting.
Where you have created one point both admit they can see,
and can seize from there in a shared grasp. Reality
- not what you can see or what I can, but what
lies between us - it's worth the hike

to find yourselves in it.

From there, a fruitful and amusing traipse
along a path both can see, and both can share! And pretty much
have to, because it's there. Observable, demonstrable
is as close to inevitable
as you need to get. Each escape attempt is
frustrated by means of clarity: revealed
to be simply another shared starting point, with
another fruitful path from there through definite, observed
features, defined
in clear terms,

redefined jointly as the question arises. Easy!

For reality is not so complicated as it can be made. What language
can complicate, meaning can cut: simple and plain. Easy.
A grasp of semantics is all it takes
to cut through the usual fan-dance these enemies of meaning
undertake, so haughty in their smug confidence you
cannot possibly follow them,
if they themselves don't know
where they're going. They believe all markers
and signs can be redefined indefinitely, which they believe means
infinitely. With a grasp and a pronouncement, they will find

otherwise, and be forced to experience
the truth:

Their brain's mind's reality sticks butts up its nose. They will see
there's something better out there, for sure. The truth

is fun to grasp, and easy and simple to see and say. Complicating it
can also be fun, and easy and ultimately: simple, as long as we realize
we're only decking and festooning things in new ribbons and baubles.
The things remain
as they were, or are. Our layers of crepe and tinsel applied
don't change what's underneath, or improve our grasp upon it.
But they can add a fun sort of interest
and appreciation. They can help reveal
details or angles we'd have otherwise

missed.

Each of us
is only a being of sense.
We meet each other as best we can
in this shared material world, perceived and grasped
through the best conceptual frame we've embraced
so far, received from others, or constructed from
ourselves. The enemies of meaning can be imprisoned within it:

within meaning. For they have made one terrible mistake! As soon
as they've told you "no,
that's not what that word means!

It means this - !"

Why yes. Yes, it does. A valid sense
in wide and accepted use! Let us run
with your preferred truth! Let us stick
to that, and see where it oh so inevitably leads. And it will.

It leads on to more. Language offers no escape
from reality. The enjoyable part is watching them try

to wriggle out of this meaning, or that sense
(which they themselves offered and chose!), only to find themselves
equally trapped in the next. Because each time they try to change
the foundation, you mark it with clarity; each time, you
are quite glad

to seize upon their new preferred meaning. Each time they dare
to "clarify," you make them. And take it, and each time they do,
they are further hemmed in, their options for obfuscation reduced
- in panic they quit quibbling over that term, cede it to you
and try to wriggle another word loose, but all they can do

is worm further and further in - to shared clarity. To observable
reality. They are helpless, once having taken issue with meaning,
they must commit
themselves to it.

They should never have corrected you
on what a key word meant.

They have lost something,
from when they first decided ambiguity is greater
than meaning can resolve. Give it back
to them.