I. Pre-Work and the Entrance into Work

Definition I: A work of art is one of a set := {a theatre experience, a painting, a written story, etc.} This set is finite (proof left as exercise; involves the definition of vocabulary). The work is the production of the art. The imprint is a work’s impact on the material world. Thus, in dead art, the work has passed, and the imprint remains. In live art, the work has passed up to the present, in which it continues to be done. After the live art is over, then the work takes on an imprint. 

Theorem I.a: All ideas exist before they are had by the mind. 

Commentary: An idea, if it is to be concretely experienced and expressable, has a formulation. This formulation, as a possibility of synthesis of discrete parts into a whole, has existed for all time. The materialization of the parts into a whole through the human mind (as in a thought) or the body (as in an action) reflects this permanent idea which exists. 

Commentary: Because of the massively indefinite realm of possibilities for the combination of words, thoughts, ideas, actions, feelings, etc., and because every materialization of a generic form is hyper-specific to its circumstance, it is impossible for an idea to be had twice, in the same way. To make use of Spinozan terminology, every single apparition of a formalistic possibility is absolutely unique through the unity taken of its affections and modes. One way to prove this is by considering that each thing which exists has a unique sequentialization in history. This attribute of singly inhabited continuous space and time (a.k.a “body”) is enough to differentiate the generic which gets materialized through the specific. 

Commentary: If what Bob writes is simply a combination of words that is theoretically possible (see David Ives’s Words, Words, Words, in which three monkeys type into infinity to reproduce Shakespeare’s Hamlet), then, Bob may ask, colloquially, “what is the point?” Perhaps, because in the world as it exists of tangible reality, these possibilities themselves are so transcendental that, without actualization, they are worthless and immemorable. What is more likely: that Bob remembers the exact formulation of a thought he had ten years ago (one which, he never wrote down or did anything about), or that, say, he took a plane for the first time to go see his family in Italy (i.e. took action in a discerned way with a goal and steps needed to be taken towards that goal)? 

Humanity has a wonderful, and perhaps daunting, ability to actualize with the body -- to birth, to create. I say to Bob, “you may think your mind has indefinite potential, and so it’s all pointless what you think anyways, because it’s all some sort of formula. But, the creation you have in this life is finite. Right before you die, you will have had X amount of kids, Y amount of things you wrote, Z amount of documents you signed, etc. And, try actualizing one thought or idea that you have, so that you have something tangible, worthy, admirable, and good to present to yourself, to others, and to the spirit of time which sees all. What does it even mean to do that? Good luck finding it out. And think of all the things that can go wrong! Think of how many times people think to themselves, ‘Oh, someone’s probably already done that.’ ‘I don’t have enough resources to do anything about that.’ ‘But who am I to think that?’ ‘It’s not the right moment to do that.’ ‘I have to do X, Y, Z, first.’ Etc. 

Look around, and compare the amount of things which people talk about, give praise to, complain about, gossip about, laud with criticism, and peddle to their friends, on a daily basis, even an hourly basis. Compare that to the number of ideas which I have put myself in order enough to actualize. The ratio is most likely enormous. Just today, how easy it was to say to my father, ‘well, the real issue with their place was…’ How powerful I must have been to recognize and say such a thing! ‘Well,’ my inner reason says, ‘you’ll be mighty proud in twenty years when you’re suffering from ten times the number of issues you spotted, and you were never able to fix those “real” issues without causing a maelstrom of new ones. Where is the might of your intellect then?’” 

That might be one of the primary functions of the human maturation process: to find out how to actualize ideas, and moreover, how to do so in such a way that refrains fron throwing all caution to the wind and destroying progress, but an action which completes a chapter at the same time as laying a foundation for new ones. “Good judgment seeks balance and progress,” as President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in his Farewell Address to the presidency. It takes a long time to figure out how to find an equilibrium. The time span for this, on average, if the American custom of adulthood beginning at 21 is to be regarded, is over twenty years long. 

Humorous readers may enjoy this conclusion to this introductory section: “Think of that, Bob. Most humans need at least twenty-years to go from stumbling baby to a mature body which can actualize thought cohesively. That’s like watching the entirety of Grey’s Anatomy 572 times (435 episodes x 42 minutes) before you’re able to get off the couch.”

I.i Infinity and Continuity

Definition I.i.a: A countable set is a set for which there exists a bijection from it to the natural numbers. Otherwise, a set is uncountable. 

Definition I.i.b: Infinity is the hypothetical iteration of a process over an initial element, where the performance of the Nth iteration implies the performance of the N+1th iteration. 

Example: I add one to one; I receive two. I add one to two; I receive three, to which I add one to receive four. And so on, and so on. 

Example: I draw a line. I draw another line, then another, and so on and so on.

Example: I start with the field of whole numbers 𝕎. I extend the field with the finite set of rational numbers between 0 and 1 with a denominator of 2, then with the finite set of rational numbers between 0 and 1 with a denominator of 3, and so on and so on. 

Commentary: While performing observation and analysis, I end up seizing hypothetical infinity back from itself. Infinity necessitates the idea of being able to continue doing something, as opposed to doing it. When I set out to denote an infinite idea, I look back to my notes, only to find either 1) a finite performance of iteration over time with a symbolic suggestion of a to-be-continued-ness (“...” or “etc.” or “and so on and so on”), or 2) a unitive symbol for infinity, ∞, which asks for an interpretation to be made, as opposed to a literal performance of an infinity itself.  

I compare this idea to Sartrean terminology. In an interaction between a self and an Other, the self can seize back (as in, reclaim or conquer) its possibles in the surpassing of the Other. This seizing requires a foregoing of an infinite for-each-Other complex which two beings have become, hooked together in a phenomenological standstill of seeing each other as things, one that may continue onto death. Alternatively, a self that is being can seize itself (as in, freeze) into an object-Being underneath the look of the Other. This seizing demonstrates a solidification of a self’s transcendence into a finite and predictable form before the existence of Other-objects in a world. 

Question: I sit here, on a couch, and I look out onto my room. I notice these statements: the guitar is propped onto the stand, shadows dance along the windows; a criss-cross pattern is stuck on the carpet, a dining room table sits in storage against the wall, and my sweater is maroon. Theoretically, I can keep performing this function as infinity. But, what is this function? (This work has a connection to a previous writing of mine on N-otomies.)

Attention Model of Infinite Observation:  In the infinity of observation-making, the initial term is the state of being attentive, and the iterative function is to continue the duration of such a state.

Commentary: Note that, with this model the function is a transcendental action. There has yet to be a symbolic representation for what it is for the body to continue doing something. Spinoza’s conatus may be a derivative of it. 

For dialectics’ sake, I can address one idea for a symbol which would encompass the function of continuing being in such a state. I can provide two responses as to how this idea is incomplete. 

The proposition: let us say that continuation can be expressed as the inductive step: P(N) implies P(N+1). I refute this on two grounds. 

Firstly, if the inductive step is true for attention, then I am attentive all the time, and this is inconsistent with personal experience. The function of continuation would have to be that which determines when the inductive step is applied. Since this pertains to human actions in a world, the function of continuation would have to be a discerning being which is transformed in the performance of the inductive step. 

Secondly, human experience through time is non-indexable. I can say that I had an era of greed in my life, and an era when I visited my friend, and an era when I went to school, etc. but when I zoom in enough, the glue holding individual moments together dissolves into incomprehension. I cannot understand why my being on this couch at 3:53:01 implies my being on the couch at 3:53:02. The best I can do is quote the theory from physics, “an object in action stays in action; an object at rest stays at rest” but, who is to say there are not miniscule forces at play between 3:53:01 and 3:53:02 which would move me? How can I prove that the sky’s existence in one moment implies its existence in the next infinitesimal moment? How can I reify an existent’s conatus into symbolic form? 

Besides, measurable time is a metric; it is imposed upon universal time, which exists outside of it. There was a time before humanity had clocks with numbers, and there are modes of being today in which people do not have at their disposal clocks with numbers for an interval of time. With this in mind, it seems inconsistent to posit the inductive step, which requires an indexed series, to a state of being which surpasses concrete time series. 

Motivation for the next theorem: There are two ideas which I find inconsistent with reality. 

The first is that the human being’s attention can cover its entirety ad infinitum within a day. This idea is that my attention exhausts itself completely over the course of a day, through its interdimensionality and transcendence. I refute this by referring to the singularity of my attention, and the limitations which are placed on it on a daily basis. I have a finite number of thoughts each day, I notice a finite number of things each day, and I have a finite number of realizations each day. What might make me feel that I have progressed infinite worlds through my thought is the fact that I have forgotten some of them. When I perceive a gap in what I remember, the nothingness I perceive has the illusion of infinity, so I may take on the attitude that my thoughts have progressed an infinite amount of time, because I do not remember them all. 

The second idea I am refuting is that attention bends perception of time, such that we literally exist within another timeframe. This idea implies that if I feel that work has passed by in five minutes, then it has passed by in five minutes, for me. This idea also holds that this is true for all peoples. Essentially, it is the idea of time’s relativity based on one’s experience of it. I refute. Even if it is true that ten people in a room for one hour can feel that time passed at different speeds for each of them, there is still a transcendent universal time which they all share while they are in the room together. I can forget about the word “hour,” which is just the symbolic name in an imposition of a metric onto the universal time. Even without the name “hour,” there is definitive and positive time that is shared together, and this time is universal. In this way, universal time transcends metric and relativity.  

Definition I.i.c: Universal time is the positivity of time that is. 

Commentary: Universal time transcends metric and relativity, and it can diffuse itself as appearing in either form. 

Theorem I.i.a: Our attention is rooted in universal time.

Commentary: The work only goes fast or slow if my attention is to the work for a duration of universal time. Suppose that one day at work, my attention is whirling through one-thousand pages of a book that I have been reading. Then, if I feel that the universal time has gone quickly, I feel that that story has been jammed into it. Work is a non-sequitor in this case where my attention is elsewhere; it has no time for me. 

Motivation: A nervous response to the precious statements might be: if my attention in a cognitive sense is finite, then am I not limited in a very pathetic way of being human? To this I say two things. Firstly, humanity is also equipped with powers of spirituality. Secondly, attention is only a particular function of our alignment; humanity also consists of understanding, behavior, character, etc., all of which are more nuanced. 

Hypothesis I.i: Through Divine Intervention, personal application, and action, our ability to understand might come to fruition beyond what our singular and positive attention has granted us. This allows for the idea that although our attention is singular and limited, there is a transcendental understanding which can be achieved through spiritual means. 

Definition I.i.d: Continuity is a quality which signifies that something is infinitely disseminable in relation to an axis. 

Commentary: Mathematically, one has said that over an interval, a function is continuous at a point if for all intervals surrounding the point in the range, there exists some interval, however small on the domain, which gets maps by the function to within the range interval. For example: If f(c) = .5, and f is continuous at c, then for an interval (.5-e, .5+e), there is some interval on the domain (c-d, c+d) for which, if x is in (c-d, c+d), then f(c) is in (.5-e, .5+e). This is often expressed formally as:

∀ε >0, ∃δ s.t. if |x-c|<δ, then |f(x)-f(c)| <ε.

This is the delta-epsilon definition of continuity, as taught to me in school. My Prof. DeStefano used the terminology “δ-neighborhood” and “ε-neighborhood” to refer to these intervals while studying dynamical systems, and these are handy rhetorical names for these intervals. 

My professor Levandosky especially stressed the idea of call-and-response in making proofs involving the definition of continuity. What proves that a function is continuous at a point, is to essentially say, “in response to whatever range on the domain you give me, no matter how small, it is possible that I could provide an interval on the domain.” 

A function is continuous over an interval if for all c within the interval, the function is continuous at c. In this manner, something which is continuous is infinitely disseminable in relation to an axis, since the game of call-and-response can be played ad infinitum with regards to that particular range and domain, and it can be done at every span of interval, from (f(c)-10000, f(c)+10000) to (f(c)-.000001, f(c)+.00001). 

Commentary: The idea of continuity can be intuitively described as drawing a line on a paper with lead. If the lead touches the paper, moves, then is lifted from the paper, and the paper remains constant, then the line is continuous. This can be manipulated, say, if the paper is bent into a shape, say a Mobius Strip, after which the line is drawn, after which the paper is unbent, thus separating the line into parts. So the conditions for the production of a continuous stroke include the constancy of the paper, and the constancy of the lead’s ability to make marks for a certain amount of time. From here, it makes sense to ask the question, what makes continuity exist? 

Theorem I.i.a: The continuity of a thing implies a source which is the cause of its existence.

Commentary: By definition, continuity arises as a verifiable quality when the call-and-response game is deemed infinite.

Commentary: The cause of its existence may be distinct from a summary of its existence. 

Commentary: If we think of continuity as an object-thing in-and-of itself, then it must come from something, as discrete things contain causes for existence, proof of which can be consulted through by Spinoza’s Ethics and Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy.

Commentary: If we think of continuity as a descriptive term which we use to describe an attribute of a thing (which aligns with the previous definition), then we have yet to show that continuity of an object implies a source of the object. 

So, let us assume that an object is infinitely disseminable across an axis. Then, there is an answer (or an unthinkably complex formula) to the call-and-response game which is used to determine its continuity. This answer, most likely in the form of a formula, is a thing in-and-of itself. Even if the formula is unbelievably complex, beyond human comprehension, for a thing to be continuous there must be the formula, at all. It is this formula which is ensures the continuance of things across an interval. If such a formula were not present, then the caller would “win” in the call-and-response by putting forth an interval to which there was no interval in the range which mapped to within it, and the object would not be continuous. Furthermore, by Theorem I.a, since all formulas (which are ideas) exist as formalistic possibilities, this formula pre-exists the materialized thing which has the attribute of continuity. 

Commentary: Why is continuity called continuity? Why was this attribute not called something else? Perhaps because, the ones who perceived this phenomena in the first place understood that the notion of “smoothness” implied a continuance of a thing (implying a source outside itself).

Lemma I.i.a.i: The fact that existing things have a conatus (see Spinoza, or Newton’s Laws of Physics), or the inherit striving to continue existing, implies that they have a source outside themselves.

Theorem I.i.c: Continuity of a thing implies an actor, a canvas, and an instrument which put that thing into existence. 

Commentary: Having understood that continuity has a source, I can then ask what is the source of its creation? In the earlier example of the line of lead on paper, we noted how there was a drawer, a canvas, and an instrument. But does this apply to all things which are continuous? Here we attempt to show that, yes. 

Continuity is infinite disseminability across an axis. The definition is related to the call-and-response game. If there exits a δ-neighborhood, which can be “tested,” then it is necessary that such a neighborhood can be seen. Thus, certainly, there is a canvas. 

And, there would have to be a contrast between the mark made on the canvas, otherwise all one would see would be a “blank canvas.” 

Even if the canvas consists of various markings (say, a printer with low ink), if one were to point out a continuity on the canvas (say, a smudged line of ink), then this necessitates viewing the line as grounded against the paper (see Gestalt theory). 

Now, if there is a mark on the canvas, the cause for the mark and the cause for the canvas are separate.

And, if the mark is on the canvas, it follows that the canvas must have existed before the mark. 

Then, the mark came into existence on the canvas after the canvas, thus it could not have arisen on the canvas from the canvas considered a thing in-and-of itself. (This vocabulary accounts for the fact that, say, if a patch of skin seems to be a canvas, and a smudge appearS on it one day, investigation can provide that it was not the “skin as an entity which I see” that produced the smudge, but “individual actors, which can be perceived distinctly from the skin, caused this to appear.”)

The physical thing which caused the mark to appear can be called the instrument (the body), and the thing which yielded that physical thing can be said to be the actor (the will). 

Thus, continuity of a thing (of a “mark”) implies the existence of an actor, a canvas, and an instrument. 

Lemma I.i.c.i: The fact that existing things have a conatus (see Spinoza, or Newton’s Laws of Physicss), or the inherit striving to continue existing, implies that they have a creator, an instrument used to make them, and a canvas on which they exist.

Theorem I.i.d: Perceived discreteness of a thing implies an actor, a canvas, and an instrument which put that thing into existence. 

Commentary: This would be if, say someone drew a dot on a piece of paper. The “point” is not continuous with regards to a Cartesian plane; however, it is infinitely disseminabile with regards to its existence through a time interval. Therefore, by Theorem I.i.c, the point has a source which is the nexus of an actor, a canvas, and an instrument.

Commentary: The phrase “perceived discreteness” of a thing is used here as to avoid confusion with “actual discreteness.” If a thing were such that it only existed as a point (a weightless, mass-less, unified entity), then it has yet to be shown whether human perception is capable of recognizing such entities. 

Theorem I.i.e: Discontinuity of a thing (as in, a thing which is seen as not continuous) arises from grouping together of disparate parts as summing to that whole “thing.”

Commentary: Continuity is always defined as at a point, or over an interval. The quality of being continuous depends on that. See definition.

Commentary: Say Bob draws a line on a paper, picks up his pen, does something else, then draws another line nearby. If Alice sees both lines as part of one thing does the thing seem to be discontinous. If she sees “two lines” the question of continuity has yet to enter her perception.

I.ii Models

According to mathematical tradition, a language of first-order logic consists of logical connectives, variables, equality symbol, quantifiers, constant symbols, function symbols, and relation symbols. This list is given in Definition (1.3.4) of Martin Goldstern’s and Haim Judah’s course on the Incompleteness Phenomenon. I boil this definition down to more abstract forms: objects, functions, and relations. To show briefly how this is done, I will do so now. Logical connectives can be expressed as functions from a matrix of formulas to a binary value; in this way, they are functions connected to a base value, T/F, which exist outside of and for all languages. Variables denote an equivalence class of objects (x is that which is defined by, or, x is that which yet to be defined as…). The equality symbols denotes relation or function. Quantifiers denote relation. Constant symbols denote objects. Function symbols denote functions. 

Definition I.ii.a: A language is a set of symbols, each of which denotes an object, a function, or a relation. In metaphysical terms, an object is an essence, a function is a performance, and a relation is a potentiality. 

Example: In the English language, the object class consists of nouns and non-possessive pronouns. The function class consists of active verbs. The relation class consists of adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, possessive pronouns, articles, and passive verbs. Thus, if O1 is Dale, O2 is leaves, and F1 (Subject, Object) is for a subject and object are subsumed under an action which transforms them both, and R1(N) is for a noun to be a specific instance of what could be otherwise generic, “Dale rakes the leaves” can be expressed as F1(O1, R1(O2)). And, if O1 is the pronoun I, O2 is the pronoun myself, and R1(N, N) is the formula “N = N,” then the sentence “I am myself” is R1(O1,O2).

A functional approach to the English language, or, colloquially, a literal approach, places a sentence’s meaning in the ordering of object, function, and relation. Its variability includes delineations of words and their definitions. What am I actively saying to you? 

Note: The word “literal” can be used by some people to denote that which exists in reality; as in, this book is literally on the couch before me. This is separate from my usage of it in this hermeneutical theory. I use the term “literal” here to refer specifically to that disambiguation of a sentence in English which portrays its functional make-up. 

A tonal approach to the English language places a sentence’s meaning in the tonal delivery of its issuer. Its variability includes performance. How am I saying it to you? 

An applicative approach to the English language places a sentence’s meaning in the issuer’s choice to apply the stated sentence at a given time. Its variability includes situation. Why (and where and when) am I saying it to you? 

An implicative approach to the English language places a sentence’s meaning in a unique essence which precedes the sentence, and which the speaker can only reflect. What is it, passively, that is actively what I am saying to you? 

Observation I.ii: Each of these approaches necessitate the functional approach. 

Extrapolation: Let us assume that the tonal approach comes before the literal approach. Then, why is this particular sentence uttered from this tone, as opposed to another sentence from the same tone? There must be something something which assembles the words “I hate you” as opposed to “wash your hair,” even if my tone in both of them is condescending. If the tonal approach existed without the functional approach, then I could say “cnalweiufoiugh” and it could mean the same thing as “Here, let me help you.” But, I have never said, “cnalweiufoiugh,” and it would be an unnatural imposition upon myself to begin doing so. 

Then, let us turn to the applicative approach. A level of understanding of the literal meaning of a sentence is required before being able to subvert it with an application to a situation. This is how irony, sarcasm, earnesty, double-entendre’s, and wit arise. I issue a word of caution with regards to the applicative approach and how important it is to understand the literal approach first. Suppose a friend of Bob were to say, “I’m only doing things for the present moment,” and in a later situation, Bob invokes the phrase, “I’m only doing things for the present moment,” but with an aire of mockery, because he is fed up with his friend’s hoity-toity attitude and he likes to make fun of the things he says. Then, Bob has not successfully exhibited irony, or wit, or sarcasm, or anything of that sort. Bob has only succeeded in mockery, because he does not actually mean the functional locution of the phrase. In order for Bob to have been witty with the phrase, he would have to mean the functional approach, even if at a minimal or lower level as to the meaning which he really intends to use it. In this way is an applicative approach to language dependent on the literal approach. 

Then, let us turn to the implicative approach. In the implicative approach, there exists a sort of Platonian form behind all sentences which only refracts itself when one utters the sentence. Thus, if Bob says, “I ate a carrot,” then he is only grasping at the true meaning of “I ate a carrot,” a higher meaning which he is briefly in communication with. But then I ask, suppose that Bob is in touch with the I ate a carrot-Being, which transcends words, then how does Bob learn to say “I ate a carrot” as opposed to “Jamaputalwif?” There must be a bottom-up connection between Bob’s words and the transcendental ideal I ate a carrot-Being. There must be a bottom-up construction, i.e. a functional one, which allows a speaker to connect the placeholder-sentence for the Divine to a from-reality idea built up of concrete parts. Now, Alice could argue instead, that we only know to say “I ate a carrot,” because someone else in our lives has said, “I ate a carrot,” but this does not explain how we are able to piece together sentences which we have never heard before, and how we are able to exhibit choice in terms of what we replicate. 

Definition I.ii.b: A model is a mapping of a language to a structure. 

Commentary: A model can yield equivalence classes which enhance a language. This can have the effect of pairing it down, and it can also have the effect of enriching it. 

If a model pairs down a language, it is metaphorically akin to taking a clutter of toys and putting them into a concrete number of boxes. 

If a model enriches a language, it is metaphorically akin to taking a clutter of toys on the floor and placing different colored strings between them, so as to receive a messy mult-colored network of how things relate to each other. 

A model can provide structure for a language in which multiple distinct symbols are mapped to the same symbol in the model. For example, the trichotomy of object, function, and relation is a model for the English language. Models preserve n-ary functions and relations. Models can map a language to itself. From this definition of model do I continue these reflections. 

“I can know what is said. 

I can know that I do not know what is said. 

I can know that I could know what is said.”

Definition I.ii.c: An identity model is the model of a language mapped to itself. So, every object exists in its own class, every relation symbol in its own class, and every function symbol in its own class. 

Corollary: The identity model is the minimal set of objects, functions, and relations contained in the work, each preserved in their own sense.  

Example: I perform the following demonstration on an excerpt from The Good Ones, where the language is the English language as deployed by the author (text-setting denotes repeated words): 

“Carrie stared at the scene, mouth agape and eyes darting from countertop to countertop. In the center of the back of her neck, she could feel her mother’s tired gaze boring into her skull.”

From this section, I can write:

(**): “R1(O1, R2(O2)) and R3(O11) and R4(R5(R6(O3), O4), O5). R7(R8(R8(F(O1, R9(R10(R11(R12(R13(O6))), R12(O7)), R2(O8), R2(O9), R12(O10)).”  

Anything that is isomorphic to (**) constitutes a segment of the identity model of the text. The written string of text is a humble attempt to thetically produce the functional meaning of the text. One can represent it using a graphical network, visual imagery, or other means. But, the functional performance is performed in a powerful way inside the human mind, where I can read those two sentences in less than two seconds and apprehend the functional meaning within that short time span.  

Thus, the complexity of a text is dependent on its identity model. A short work of one-hundred pages can have a model which is more expansive than a work of one-thousand pages. I leave the question of how so to the reader as an exercise. 

Theorem I.ii.a: The identity model of all work existed before the creator expressed it in symbolic form.  

Commentary: Ideas and technology exist before I encounter them. 

Definition I.ii.d: Given a language, an auxiliary model is any model other than the identity model of a language. 

Example: Suppose a model denotes that “F(O1, R9(R10(R11(R12(R13(O6))), R12(O7)),” which equates to “she could feel her mother’s tired gaze boring into her skull,” can be mapped to another sentence, “Carrie has a shame complex stemming from her parents.” In this auxiliary model, any parental figure who watches their kin admonishingly means that the character-in-question has a shame complex regarding their parents. This statement is not contained in the identity model of the text. Nowhere in the text of The Good Ones does it say that “Carrie has a shame complex stemming from her parents.” This is an example of an auxiliary model. 

Example: Let us consider One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Now, supposed that the word “McMurphy” on the page is denoted as saying a derogatory word or phrase. One auxiliary model might map this statement to a relation statement between the name “McMurphy” and an established archetype of bully or misogynist. 

Definition I.ii.e: A pre-subject to a work of art is an avatar of a personhood before witnessing a work of art. 

Definition I.ii.f: If a pre-subject equips an auxiliary model as part of their cognition upon their entrance into a work of art, then that auxiliary model becomes an imposed model on the identity model.

Commentary: The auxiliary model is like an abstract form, and the imposed model is the actualization of it through a pre-subject’s cognition. In the adoption of the model, the subject allows its mappings to direct its interpretation of certain objects, functions, and relations.

Example: Let me continue with the example of The Good Ones. A pre-subject may have certain rules set up for how to approach characters who have shame complexes with their parents, so that as he continues to read, whenever he comes across Carrie’s name, an object which he has mapped into this category of people who have shame complexes, he might extrapolate more than what is functionally said in the statements to come. As a virus multiplies itself in its host, a pre-existing auxiliary model hooks itself into a text and proliferates itself off of sentences-to-come which get mapped into categories within the imposing model, regardless of whether the identity model upholds such equalities or not. 

  Example: Let me continue with the example of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and let me take the pre-subject Bob who is about to read it. Bob may have instilled in himself a model that denotes character archetypes and value, such that if “McMurphy” is shown to say a derogatory word or phrase, then Bob maps “McMurphy” to an object in his imposed model. This relation would create a pattern of attention, which funnels his thought through certain pre-routed patterns involving words or phrases used. 

Definition I.ii.g: Analytical models are models for the purpose of analytics. 

Commentary: Identity and auxiliary models are defined by their relationship to their language. Analytical models are defined by the purpose for which a human being puts them. 

Theorem I.ii.b: If a pre-subject enters into an experience with an auxiliary model, thus exerting it as an imposed model, then they once had the abstract auxiliary model disseminated into them by a being that possessed it and transferred it. From the point of introduction, the auxiliary model obtained a passive existence in the pre-subject’s cognition until exertion on an identity model. 

Commentary: This is akin to a virus. Analytical models are transferred from mind-to-mind as an object, and they are either taken or left. Where it differs from a virus is that an analytical model which is auxiliary to a yet-to-be-encounter identity model can only be actualized once the pre-subject enters into the experience while imposing it on that other identity model. 

Hypothesis I.ii: Analytical models are disseminated into pre-subjects while they are in a passive state. Analytical models remain passively in the receptive individual until situation spurns the analytical model into an active state within the individual. In this way does this model contradict with the idea that impressionable people immediately take-on ideologies. This model posits something different: that impressionable people actually exhibit great restraint in taking up models, and it takes a while for the model to fester within a recipient until it rears itself, like an infection with a long-term period before manifestation. 

Theorem I.ii.c: A particular analytical model is generated at maximum once. 

Commentary: An analytical model that already exists cannot spontaneously create itself in a new mind. I provide personal experience for this theorem: sometimes when reading, I feel as though a writer putting forth an analytical model has posited something that I have thought; this would seem to indicate a spontaneous arising of the same idea between different minds. However, more often than not, upon considering further, it becomes apparant to me that the writer has posited the idea in a way which I would not have done, while communicating to peoples I have never known, while using a medium I would not have chosen, and while using vocabulary which differs from mine own. For example, in his tour-de-force Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sarte posits many statements which I felt that I had felt before. However, I have expressed the essence behind his thoughts in different ways and using different terminology (words) and equivalence classes of terms (different networks of how words are grouped together). So, according to this theorem, it is not the case that Sartre’s model of his theories and my model of his theories are the same. Moreso, my model is able to account for Sartre’s language, which was issued from a unique and unpredictable perspective rooted in a historical entity, that of a living person. The models which I equipped while reading had the space to allow for Sartre’s vocabulary and statements, so that they remained consistent with the rest of my model. I can imagine a time and place, where, if my understanding of the world was more limited, I may take issue with some of Sartre’s claims for seeming to contradict the way I think about something being-for-itself, but if I am able to separate Sartre’s application of the idea of being-for-itself from my previous idea of being-for-itself, then I have created a model which accounts for these different approaches to a similar idea. 

In short, through bracketing, i.e. rendering statements as contingent, my identity model can account for auxiliary models. 

This plays out historically, too. For example, there are common themes pertaining to virtue ethics in “the West” and “the East” (scare quotes indicate the elusivity of these terms) upon the arising of key philosophical figures. There are other examples as well. Some connections which I make here are the following: virtue ethics in ancient Greek and Chinese cultures; cleaving to the mean in Confucianism and the everyday-ness in Heideggerian phenomology; the mitote in Toltec wisdom (as laid out by don Miguel Ruiz in The Four Agreements), and the Tower of Babel in Judeo-Christian tradition, and in Heidegger’s atheistics “throwness”; hell being defined by Earthly existence as in some characters’ observations in Dostoesvky’s the Brothers Karamazov (nineteenth-century Russian literature), as in some characters’ observations in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (twentieth-century American literature), and in a quote which my music teacher once told me (modern parlance), etc.. Many of these themes and ideas are discovered elsewhere, too, in hearts and minds which arise from completely unique backgrounds and using location-specific vocabulary. With regards to practices wisdom and virtue ethics, there is an idiosyncratic and ahistorical quality about the way in which each thinker actualizes and understands this elusive theme. In Christian theology, these are the souls scattered throughout the Earth. 

The implications of this theorem are grand in relation to philosophical constructions that have gained traction in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. If it is true that existing analytical models are idiosyncratic, in that they are unable to spontaneously arise identically in separate human beings, then certain fixed analytical constructions, such as critical race theory, gender theory, and similar theories, are ideas generated in history only once, and from then on are only transferable. Furthermore, it follows that any human being who lives any life which develops its own model will necessarily differ from the already constructed models. 

Motivation: The language of a work consists of different types of communication for different artforms. In the previous examples, I used the English language as a means to show the identity and imposed models. But, what of other art forms? 

Theorem I.ii.d: Every work of art has vocabulary that consists of unified actions subdued into a larger structure, that of the identity model. 

Commentary: This is related to Theorem I.i.c.

Commentary: Writing an individual word takes place over time. As I write the word “phenomenological,” a duration has occurred. During this duration, I, who is writing, have aligned my body (my being), my potentiality (my having), and my action (my doing) to produce the word “phenomenological” on the page. Thus, a word is a product of a unity of action. 

In painting, the unity of action is the stroke. A composition of strokes synthesizes all the smaller strokes into larger unities. 

In music, the unity of action is a note. The composition of notes synthesize the singularites into larger unities. 

In theatre, musical and straight, the unity of action is action. While Katherine Sloper goes upstairs in the final moments of The Heiress, I, as the audience member, apprehend her to be going upstairs, and this is dissolved into smaller unities, including turning the lights off, picking up her candle, stepping towards the staircase, and climbing the stairs. There is a limit to how far down this goes, otherwise the action is messy and I would not be able to understand it. The actor could dissolve action by wondering, for example, “if I’m going to go up the stairs, I need to turn off the lights, but how am I going to turn off the lights? I must go directly there. But how must I place my feet while going there? I must take uneasy steps. But how am I to place my knees in these steps? I must keep them tight, etc.”  On a larger scale, the actor can say, “I need to win my love’s love, and in order to win my love’s love, I need to impress her, and in order to impress her, I need to achieve something great, and in order to achieve something great, I need to take risks, and in order to take risks, etc.” The ordering of actions and objectives can go on forever. What nips this hypothetical unending series is the body. 

The body is limited, and it can only do one thing at once. Even if I am hula-hooping with my hips and grilling hamburgers with my hands, if I could even manage such a feat, my body would be unified under the multi-task of doing hula-hoop-barbecuing. The differentness would become a thing in-and-of-itself. The body must be aligned in order to bring about action. If the body is unaligned, then hula-hoop-barbecuing fails to occur; the hoop falls, or I give up, or I forget about the burgers, or I never do it in the first place because my body is unaligned. Only if there is a unified alignment in the body can multi-tasking be accomplished. And, the body is limited in time and space. There is concrete action taken. This is the stroke; this is the actor’s stroke. The stroke is a part of the throughline of action, as Stanislasvki put forth. What I am typing in this paragraph is not new. It has been grasped before by theatre practitioners, perhaps using different language, but still so nonetheless. The actor’s stroke is his action, and it is concrete. 

If a writer is misaligned and confused about what to write, he will not make a stroke, and people cannot read what he has done, for he has not done anything. If an actor is misaligned and confused about what action to take, he will not make a concerted action, and people cannot read what he has done, for he has not acted. The difference between live art and dead art is that, all dead art is aligned. Meanwhile, live art can be misaligned or aligned. If a novel is written, then the writer was able to align himself to get there. In live art, it is possible for the actor to be misaligned, and for concerted action not be taking place. 

Corollary I.ii.e: The complexity of a work of live theatre lies in the network of action taking place over time and space on the stage. 

Definition I.ii.h: The constant of absence, or absence constant with regards to a particular work, CA, contains all that which is absent from a work. 

Commentary: If a word exists in the English language but is not in the novel, then the word is a part of this absence constant. If a k-ary relation or function with objects O1,...,Ok is not in a novel, then the statement is in this absence constant. 

Definition I.ii.i: A very technical creator might purposefully carve out a nothingness in his work to be, colloquially, “part of the point.” In this case, we can think of homologies that the writer constructs as purposeful and shaped constant of absences. 

Commentary: The layman’s term for homology is “hole,” but its mathematical definition has more nuances and applications. A homology’s existence is dependent on a larger model which shapes it. 

For example, in Camus’s L’E(/)tranger, the narrator rarely, if ever, makes any sort of analytical statement on other’s intentionality. His focus is often on observation of bodily states (e.g. being hungry, being tired, being hot) and accounts of happenings around him (e.g. his neighbors’ actions, the mysterious woman who sits across from him and walks off into the night). One thing absent is hypothesizing other people’s perspectives to understand why they do the things they do. For example, M. Mersault provides no analysis of the mysterious woman’s behavior, and he does not perform an analysis on Raymond’s motives. He demonstrates blind faith to he whom he deems a friend and questions little. 

This blind spot of M. Mersault’s perspective only is upheld if I posit that what is present in the novel is assembled in a metaphysical space to carve out something that is missing. The hollowed-out space contained by the positivities that exist in the text, can only be a homology if the language is strutcured by a model which upholds the homology. In my action of typing that Mersault’s focus is on bodily states and eye-witness accounts, I structure the language of the text into a model which creates a homology. However, the text itself does not say, “Mersault only observes bodily states and eye-witness accounts.” This is, in essence, a projection. 

Through a projection is a homology in the text formed. To be missing something is to have an ideal to compare it to, as Sartre has demonstrated effectively. It is possible for Camus to have purposefully written the book with this in mind, but then he would have to have the ideal model of what the homology filled-in would look like. 

It is also very possible that Camus wrote without the idea of making-the-text-miss-anything. The intentionality on behalf of the writer is only up for Camus himself to have reflected on and discover; but even in an idiosyncratic sense, intentionality may not be discoverable completely. What is true is the action of writing and what was undertaken. 

I.iii The Creator’s Role in the Work

Theorem I.iii: The creator’s fundamental decision is thus: to do or to refrain. If the creator does, then he turns his attention to see, and the identity model is filtered through him into material form. He has become a vessel. The choice of what to say, or what to write, or what to do, is an illusion which plagues a creator who places obstacles for himself. The content is contained in ideal forms which are brought through the person if allowed to be seen. In this sense, creation is free and unpredictable.

Commentary: Having posited the aforementioned statements, I ask myself, what is the work? What does it mean for the artist to do work? Thusly formulated, the previous question assumes the existence of a meaning for an artist to do work. But, how can what flows forth from seemingly nothing consist itself simultaneously with a retrospective meaning attributed to it by an interpretative being? Observe the most keen interpreters of art; they can struggle to produce the things which they critique from the other end. Observe the most kerfuffled, scatter-brained, and incommunicative people, some of them do art more effectively than most.

There are two approaches to negating the meaning of work which I would like to distance myself from. To say, “work has no meaning” is a misnomer. People may look upon things they struggle to understand and follow it up with “it has no meaning.” To say it has no meaning is condemning it on account of my personal experience with it. 

To say, “a work has a meaning which escapes me,” is defeatist. The meaning is always just within reach, given personal application and due reflection. Perhaps, there is more to work than meaning, and this is something which escapes a mind stuck in materialism. 

As I have been pieceing together across my writings thus far, it seems that the transcendental quality to a work of art is its truth of what has been seen. The Truth is a lofty ideal, but the truth of what has been seen is a vivacious energy which has the potential to be realized through us every single day. And, this is a separate idea from relative truth. 

With relative truth, there is some higher object which different people see through different perspectives, all grabbing onto different parts of the elephant, so to speak. In the reflection which I am undergoing, the truth of what has been seen is the ultimate truth. It is the truth that Bob sees what he sees. Perhaps this truth is more quintessential to the human condition than what is behind what Bob is seeing. For, any logical investigation is fundamentally limited in determining that the entity behind what Bob is seeing, which will forever remain a beyond-Object. For example, if Alice sees the whole elephant while Bob and his family grip tightly to each of its limbs, then what does Alice know of the elephant? She has yet to see its intestines; she has yet to look into its DNA, and she has yet to see the elephant’s cerebral cortex.  Even if she did see the cerebral cortex, her naked eyes would not perceive the neruons and networks making it up. She has yet to see what the elephant has been or will be. She is gripping to her own metaphysical limb of the elephant—the picturesque colored-in three-dimensional outline of the elephant’s figure which stands out against the open air. 

Thus, to summarize, this hermeneutic theory avoids the idea that my truth is what I have taken in, and it stands by the locution that it is the truth that I have taken in what I have taken in. A rose is a rose is a rose. 

Commentary: Here, I can reach a classification of states of being of men caught up in secular moralism and of scientific materialism. These states of being I’ve come across impressions in Richard Dawkins, friends, roommates, and co-workers. In this, they undergo these projects which aim to freeze the future into an analytical framework of the past only capable of being retrospectively affirmed. If the human endeavor has taught me anything, historically, it is that throughout centuries of individuals embarking on the quest to serve secular moralism and scientific materialism, being undermines their projects. From my understanding, scientific development has progressed not by proving that previous scientists were right, but that they were quasi-right, contingent upon certain factors.

Time (or, I suppose it is humanity’s continuation throughout time) undermines the scientific project in the way that death undermines the self-project, as Sartre discusses. Sartre at one point reflects that there is an idea that death is a culmination of a person’s life and that how a person dies communicates the story of their life. He then goes on to challenge this idea. From what I gathered, it is like this: in our life, as we go throughout our alignment of ourselves and our projects, we accumulate things we do things for, and things we do not do things for. Death interrupts it all, what we are for, and what we are not for; what we believe and what escapes our belief; and what we project and others’ projections which go through us. Death interrupts the flow of being to be something which has no more potentiality to be. Rather than solidifying a person into material existence, it renders a person’s vivacious torment of projects and anti-projects which they were swept up in during their life, to a defined time period. Until death, being might continue to be; after death, being was. The mystery of being (as a noun) being (as a verb) continues whether in the might-sense or in the was-sense. Death is the ultimate irony, the ultimate subversion of expectation by simultaneously rendering life bounded but infinitely undetermined. 

In a similar way, the passage of time subverts discovery. As time moves on, subversion naturally corrupts a person’s discovery into being contingent. Academically, I see this played out through science, where heralded discoveries like the Theory of Relativity are being grappled with and extrapolated on. Academically, I see this played out in the field of sociology, where people’s moral and ethical alignments are being rendered contingent upon their historical condition. Academically, I also see this played out in the field of literature, where people’s stories are being minimized into dependency on the perspective which they were granted by circumstance. This principle plays itself on an individual life basis, as well. On a micro-level, this is why I may have a great discovery one day, then find myself miserable next week one Tuesday at work, as if I was machine who never had a previous existence. On a macro-level, this is why great thinkers eventually find their discoveries rendered contingent, not because they were wrong, but because enough work was done after them to dismantle, appreciate, and render contingent their structure. The discoveries still stand, but the if that they stand on becomes increasingly particular and demanding as the field of study theoretically develops. This reflection leads to the critical role of the nature of children, whose contingency is pointed and who have little-to-no-material to be subverted. 

Commentary: A theme throughout the Bible is the critical role which children play in the continuation of the human spirit. In Matthew 18:1-3, Jesus says, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” 

I also see throughout art and literature the elusive nature of the child as an archetype. Most dramas are devoid of children, or have them as stock characters, and as for the ones which include children as characters with dramatic stake in the story, those child characters take on a mature quality which muddies their stance in the story as an archetypical “child character.” (It could be that a “grown” being is like Satan after the fall from heavin in which it was once a child. And, the being now, is supposed to rekindle the child, and to germinate his innocence in this fallen world where the soil is infertile. To live is to do the impossible). I think of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and the story which Prince Myshkin tells the Yepanchins about his growing relationship with the kids of the village. I think of my fascination with saying what has been for me, what I have seen, and what I have discovered, a fascination which is described as “childlike.” I think of my childlike fascination at witnessing the processes that others undergo when they listen to what has been or when they share what they have seen and what they have discovered. 

I see that, through accumulating more knowledge and perspective through educational institutions, it is not that I become a more learned being, but that I become a being with more responsibility to regard those dark and powerful arts, divulged to me in closed-off secondary locations (i.e. the classrooms, the lecture rooms), as contingent. The challenge in learning is in the call to surpass the learning towards living. This requires a practice over time of responsibility and dignity. This is Faust’s dilemma, as portrayed in Goethe’s Faust. After having learned enough of everything to his appetite, he is overcome with despair, because he thinks that all his knowledge equates to him being a more powerful being, only to find the opposite, that he is still plain human. He only becomes more powerful when he accepts the dark arts of Mephistopheles and puts them toward ends which seem to give his life an aire of importance. In Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, which predates Geothe’s version of the tale, the ends which Faustus puts his power towards are petty tricks and nonsense which he perceives to be as demonic. In Geothe’s Faust, Faust’s ends are more powerful, but he becomes a more dependent being, a being more dependent on Mephistopheles and spirits which take power over Faust, as opposed to the free and independent being which he was prior to his evolution. 

In this way, there is a being-ness about the child-ness of myself which is, in essence, true being. And, through the application of reason and moralistic squabbles, I only find tools capable of malleating my distance towards or away from that true being which escapes anything my for-itself project can set up. This sort of being is perhaps describable by the hyphenated phrase, being-in-the-midst-of-each-other-performing-projects-in-tandem. 

Thus, to do the work is to do the work. Work is creation. It is taking everything that I have now in my life and opening the valve for additions to be made. At this moment in time, there is the set of all the things that I have, books that I have read, people I have spoken to, and steps that I have taken. To create is to step out of the sea of these dimensions of analyses into a one-ness of Spirit. From this state, which begs not to be defined by rhetoric or logos, I can synthesize aspects of what already exists into a thing which exists. This is as a horticulturalist might snip off parts of a shrub to plant it as another thing to be grown. Thus is mimesis. Aspects into things goes the creative wheel, spinning under the push of souls spread throughout the Earth. 

Destruction, parody, cynicism, and other forms of nihilistic action are dark forces which turn things into aspects and lets them rot. This is akin to a passerby who pulls off parts of a shrub to let them fall and sit there, to be consumed. Thus is parody. 

II. The Work and the Experience of the Work’s Presentation

II.i: Theoretical Models which construct the frame for a subject’s reception

Definition II.i.a: A gathered model is a particular model of a subject, in relationship to the work, and it is the subset of the identity model which the subject cognitively apprehends. 

Commentary: A gathered model is finite. Once one has constructed the gathered model of a work-imprint, the imprint of the complete gathered model is with them from then on. Specific realizations can only be had once. Realizations may continue forth. To attain a gathered model is to exert energy and attention over time. 

Hypothesis: It is possible for a subject to reach past a work-imprint of dead art to achieve a non-thetic apprehension of its whole, if the reader builds up the gathered model over time, as the writer’s has once been. Even in this case, the subject will have missed the transformative experience which lent the create the ability to see from a once-removed entity to the subject. 

Commentary: The gathered model is one that explains the most about the vocabulary taken in thus far. An imposed model can explain the most, or could explain the most if extended, or if its terms are grouped into equivalence classes. 

Definition II.i.b: A gathered constant of absence is the acknowledgment on behalf of a subject of an otherness absent from the work. 

Commentary: In tandem with what is is what could have been. The intuitional and inspired writer may be unaware of what will have could-have-been about his work, and creates in a passionate flow state. The technical and pointed writer may incorporate what will have only been a could-have-been into the permanence of his work. 

Commentary: A gathered model of the text + constant of absence = A holistic Understanding on behalf of the subject = Doing the subject’s work of taking in

Commentary: Consider a town at the bottom of a hill. If I am to apprehend the town through a gathered model, what is it? Perhaps this requires that I stand at the top of the hill and overlook the town. However, from this perspective, I see not the electrical wires running through the walls of the house which sense power to the appliances inside homes which I can only see the roofs and walls and ledges of. The technician, who stands in the boiler room of a governmental building, has a different view of the town. Can he be said to be, in the moment of ascendence, to have a complete understanding of the town? Or he that sees from the depths, can he be said to have a complete understanding? With this line of questions, I arrive at a tentatively possible ideal, that a holistic understanding is the union of all sets of perspectives actualized by man. 

Now, such an understanding can be approached through the dispersion amongst time and space. The individual who explores the town, all its businesses, its families, its buildings, and its parks, will approach a holistic understanding of the town. In this case, the individual becomes a binding glue for the disparate perspectives to be joined into one unity operating through time and space. From the view of the Church from the park, the back room of the tavern may not be conceivable perceptively, but to the man who has traveled throughout, and who holds within him the place of it in relationship to everything else, the back room can be understood to be there. This is an individual model for approaching understanding. The threat to this is the individual’s mortality and body, which found and concentrate his essence through a form bounded by time and space. 

Another attempt to holistic understanding is social. If each person lives fully and faithfully in their own disparate perspective, and there is the most indifferent societal person who binds them together, then the understanding of the town can be cultivated through the indifferent person. Then, if this indifferent person is provided the proper space within the society, this understanding can spill out into the community in refracted ways so as to help uphold the parts in relation to each other. The threat to this goal is the human’s capacity for sin, which allows for the constant possibility that the once indifferent man can be tempted into desperation, all the while continuing to fulfill his station, which causes a corruption perceivable to those who have not integrated the man’s public image into their rationalization of the world around them to a critical extent. 

In both the individual microcosm and the communal macrocosm, one entity is required to be the glue. In the individual case, the glueing entity is the emptiness of a human soul. In the communal case, the glueing entity is the emptiness of a human’s worth. Achieving a holistic understanding of the town requires the synthesis of disparate perspectives into a vehicle able to pass through time and space. 

This metaphor applies to the interpretation of work-imprints, with the work-imprint being analogous to the town. 

The previous reflection allows for a path of a holistic interpretation of a work-imprint: to pay attention to its elements, over time, so as to uncover a gathered model of interconnectedness, while continuously maintaining a constant of absence. This is, in essence, attempting to describe the work that a subject can set out to perform to achieve a mimesis of the writer’s work, which is able to be apprehended non-thetically through the interconnectedness of its elements.

The previous reflections hold up nicely in the case of dead art, but how does a live audience member apply models in live art? 

The audience member is able to apply models during the experience of the work. Doing such is a pre-emptive project which directs their throughline into a particular direction. As such, I can say, “well, sometimes while watching the play, I had interpretations and ideas come to mind while I was witness to it.” These are distinct from the throughline, if they are non-thetic. If they are clear, vivid things that unify the body into a state of attention, then they are part of the throughline. In other words, if my attention is sent to the model which I am equipped with during the experience, then what I see of the model is part of the throughline of my experience. However, it is possible that the model I am equipped with functions like a pair of glasses I have put on beforehand to obstruct my view of what I am about to see. For example, if I attend a production of MacBeth with a certain model that relates every character to an archetype aligning with a third-wave feminist perspective, and every political force in the play as representations of the roles of men and women in power structures, and if I put on this model before going, like a pair of glasses, then what I am able to see and what I am able to pay attention to is guided by the highlights and the blindspots. And, if in the middle of the show, I think, “oh no, misogyny,” then that thing that I saw that I identified as misogyny is part of my throughline, as is my reaction to it, which I spent time and energy thinking, because I had prepped myself to be looking for such a manifestation. What I saw is synthesized into my throughline, and the fact that I had that thought is imprinted onto me. It follows that, for the time and energy spent thinking, “oh no, misogyny,” because of how I prepared myself to look into the production, there was something real happening on stage which was escaping my attention. Because, attention is singular and a positivity, as discussed in my reflections on N-otomies. 

Imposing a model on a live work is like bringing tinted sunglasses to a light show. It limits and informs what the subject can gather from the universal subjective, and, phenomenologically, it holds external ideas close so that the flow of attention may grasp them at any moment. This is more than purely theoretical. Since humans have mind-body duality, the chances are that, if I enter a theatre equipped with a model, ready to look for things within the play, I most likely have a physical object or grooming habit on me which is a physical reminder, for my sight and bodily sensation, to be on the lookout for such-and-such a thing. For example, if I put on feminism, then I might wear something which signals to me my project of feminism (not necessarily something with words, but something which I have previously decided would be an interactive symbol for my practice). Or, if I am equipping myself with cynicism mentally, then I most likely have a piece of clothing on me which represents my distate for things which take themselves too seriously; I may be wearing clothes whose origin I do not care enough to remember, or I may have hair which falls onto my face as a constant interactive symbol of my philosophy, so that I may remember. For, it is really easy to forget a philosophy without physical reminders. To complicate this matter further, the symbol only takes on that particular meaning for me, and since individuals have different models of operation, what means something to me can mean something different to someone else. If I have on a shirt which professes a generic love for beer, trucks, and women, then it may not be that I myself am saying what the shirt says at every moment. What that caption might mean to me is something uniquely idiosyncratic; I could have been discussing shirts with my wife and we both got a light-hearted kick out of the shirt, and so when I wear it I think of a moment when me and my wife laughed together. However, this shirt may appear to other eyes as a myriad of different meanings for me. 

Thus, an imposed model is a collection of constants, terms, formulas, variables, and relation symbols with which the subject can map their beheld representation of the work into. Regardless of whether the work is live, or the subject witnesses a work-imprint, the imposition of the model is a dynamic and unfolding process, which is reflected on the subject’s behalf. It is not the case that all physical manifestations of a subject indicate a subject’s imposition of a model. 

Definition II.i.c: A subject can forsake models which it knows in order to have a free, undirected experience with a work. 

Commentary: Without pre-formed models, the experiences of the work is free, and the throughline unfolds due to the most natural curiosity and state of being. However, when bringing models to the theatre, or to the couch to read a book, then the possibility of experience becomes funneled, and the gathered model of the work itself is constantly negated and mapped to a pre-formed model. Since most people with any involvement in adult society have been acquainted with analytical models, if any adult wants to be a free subject of a work, it is necessary to forsake the given models for the time of the experience to have a free experience. 

II.ii: The Subject’s Experience of the work

Definition II.ii.a: The subject of a given work is a real person that has undergone an experience of a work or its imprint. 

Example: Bob who reads Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, myself who attends a production of Oklahoma!, that woman over there with the sunglasses who observes a painting. 

Commentary: This is distinct from a person who undergoes an experience related to a work. For example, Bob’s friend constantly invokes Plato’s The Republic around Bob, but Bob has yet to enter into his own experience with the work-imprint. 

Definition II.ii.b: The subject’s experience of the work is the being in/with/witness to the work or its imprint. 

Definition II.ii.c: The universal subjective of the subject’s experience of the work is an infinite and uncountable set of objective qualities on which the subject’s interaction with the work is contingent. 

Commentary: the universal subjective can be communicated literally, but only partwise. For example, I can say that, “I was sitting in the front row, and my vision of the painting upstage right was blocked by this actor this many times, and etc.” but I will never exhaust the infinite set of observations which ar epart of the universal subjective experience. I may not be aware of all teh conditions that structured my experience of a work. 

Definition II.i.d: Inherit in a work are its possibles for universal subjectives. Say, a painting is colored with dark and maudlin colors, and say, it is shown in a glass case before it is destroyed weeks later, and say, the painter was focusing on a depiction of the tortoise and the hare, then the possibilities of a subject’s universal subjective of the painting is limited by these conditions. Within these limitations set by the creator, there are limitless possibilities. A possible is a particular universal subjective which has not been enacted but could be enacted. 

Theorem II.ii.a: When a particular universal subjective is formed in real-time, the subject affects its own experience through its own decision-making (to put the book down now, to revisit the painting tomorrow morning, etc.). Through this dialectic between the possible and the subject’s action makes a particular universal subjective. 

A Model of Deterministic Universal Subjective: A subject’s particular universal subjective is one possible universal subjective that is chosen by time to exist. 

A Model of Dynamic Universal Subjective: A subject’s particular universal subjective is formed in real-time in such a way that distinctifies itself from the possible universal subjectives. Thus, the possible universal subjectives and the undergone universal subjectives are disjointed sets. And, the subject’s universal subject is a resistance to the possible universal subjectives. 

Definition II.ii.e:  The possibles of a work are distinct from the external conditions, which are decided by forces outside the realm of the creators. For example, it is hypothetically possible that, at a performance of The Lion King Jr. in upstate New York, 50% of the audience enters with Luckin coffee, and 5% of this group causes spillages in the aisles. However, Luckin Coffee is a coffee company only operating in East Asia, and it is extremely unlikely that 50% of an American population in East Asia, and it is extremely unlikely that 50% of an American population in New York would show up to The Lion Kind Jr. with their products. This unlikelihood is not something consciously decided by the creators. The creators, most likely, did not at one point fix a condition of the work that would have prohibited 50% of their audience to bring in Luckin Coffee; they most likely never even thought of Luckin coffee until they read it in this paragraph. Thus, this hypothetical scenario is not a possible of the work. There is a separation between possibles of the work and external conditions. The possibles are what happens within the confines of the experiment, and the external conditions are the world around the experiment. 

Theorem II.ii.b: The creator’s will can only places limits on the possibles of his work through action. 

Example: If a creater imagines a large dining room table in the center of the stage for an upcoming production of The Wild Duck, then no possibles have been solidified yet. It is only when the large dining room table is placed in the center of the stage (and it is necessary that the table remains throughout the production) that the possibles are solidified. 

Theorem II.ii.c: At the point of an idea’s conception, the creator’s knowledge and the possibles of his work are two disjoint sets. 

Axiom: With dead art, the work-imprint remains constant through the subject’s experience with it. This follows from the fact that the text is always the text, and the paint is always the paint, no matter how one looks at it. And, if naturally the paint fades over time, then it is still true that the work left the imprint that it left, and the work has been finished, and the imprint can only decay. 

In the case of live art, there are two models: 

Subject-Participant Model: The audience and the creators mutually affect one another, and they all construct the live work as it occurs. Thus, the subject is a participant. 

Subject-Wintess Model: The subject is a witness, and the creators’ work continues on aside from their input. 

For the rest of this text, I will adhere to the second model as being more accurate to the truth of things. Consider Sleep No More, a show constructed to be interactive for the audience. Sleep No More wants the audience member to participate in the work, by letting them roam free and creating one-on-one experiences for the subject to interact with actors. However, even in Sleep No More, the workers set rules about what will happen in the story, every night, without fail. There will always be a hanging scene at the end of the show, no matter what the subject does. This is the work. Let us consider, as another example, a comedic play. After weeks of rehearsals, the workers have worked. The audience being present to the work imbues it with a new effervescence and truth, but the work remains the work. If the workers edit their performance to be in communication with the audience, then this sacrifices the work, as opposed to making it. Being in communication with the audience transforms a work of art into a social interaction between people on-stage and people off-stage (this would be more of a concert or a presentation than a work of art). Perhaps in this instance, the play coil then become a social communication between people on-stage and people off-stage about the work. 

Definition II.ii.f: The union of each universal subjective for every subject involved in the witnessing of the work is the total of the universal subjective. With dead art, the total is a running total. For every person that reads a book, or takes in a painting, there is an added universal subjective to the total set of universal subjectives. With live art, the total is a running total, until the phenomenon is ended, at which point the total is dead. 

Definition II.ii.g: The throughline is a subject’s continuous path of attention throughout the work. 

Commentary: It is a subset of the union of the universal subjective and external conditions. Thus, we can say, “Bob noticed the flag hiding behind the bannister in Act II, but Alice did not notice this detail, because she focused the entire time on the actress playing Marjorie.” The throughline may include those observations and perceptions which are outside the realm of the work of art. For example, if the theatre is unusually hot, and Bob thinks about this at routine points throughout the play, then the sensation of heat is part of Bob’s experience’s throughline. This heat, however, may be considered an external condition. Another example of an external condition for Bob would be what he ate before entering the theatre and how long before entering he ate it. 

So, the throughline is continuous and it is also instantaneous and positive. It being instantaneous means that, attention is only noticed in the moment. Bob notices how hot it is because he pays attention to a certain sensation, and once he pays attention to it, the moment passes. This point of attention also exists. It may be possible for Bob to forget an entry in his throughline (example: Bob forgets that it was hot in the theatre), but there is an Ultimate Truth which will always know the entirety of Bob’s throughline (example: Bob forgetting that it was hot does not change the fact that Bob at one point noticed how hot it was in the theatre). 

II.iii: Imagination, Predictions and Pattern Recognition

As a consequence of the definition of throughline, it holds that, under this theory, a subject’s potential vision into the future or past of a work which they are experiencing is a positive and discrete object of their attention which takes up their focus while things are happening real time. For example, assume that Bob is watching a romantic movie, and after twenty minutes, Bob knows exactly how the scene is going to happen when the lovers kiss. This theory posits that his prediction is a result of pattern recognition and application of previous experiences. So, if for the middle third of the movie, Bob constantly thinks about the scene that he is predicting over the scenes which are taking place, then that mental object of the prediction is part of Bob’s throughline. Similarly, if Bob spends the middle third of a movie replaying the initial scene in his head, then that vision is a part of Bob’s throughline over the course of the movie. He could be, say, constructing an idea of what the first scene meant. Thus, a subject’s previous understanding of patterns and his imagination have a part to play, among else, in his attention. 

III. Ipseic Action Following an Experience

The three internal actions listed here (remembering, reflecting on, and recalling) which can be performed in the privacy’s of one’s mindspace, or in the presence of other subjects. They can be performed out loud or in front of. 

Observation III.i.a: The throughline will forever exists as an entry in a causal chain which sums up to the subject’s history. 

Definition III.i.a: The subject-imprint is throughline’s continuance within the subject’s conscience faculties post-experience of the work. The subject-imprint is what connects the consciousness to the already passed-through (and impossible to be re-passed-through) throughline. Since the throughline is continuous, instantaneous, and positive, we can say that the subject-imprint is continuous, instantaneous, and positive. 

Definition III.i.b: To remember a work or a work-imprint of art is to pay one’s attention to the subject-imprint. 

Commentary: To remember something is an action, and it involves a laying out of the world around the thing. For example, before Bob can remember that he has a math assignment due before seven, he has to lay out an entirety of something. Perhaps, he lays out everything in his planner before him, or he lays out the names of each of his teachers in his mind and goes through them and their upcoming homework assignments. In this way, paying attention to the subject-imprint involves a laying out of the subject-imprint. 

Definition III.i.c: To reflect on is to subject oneself to being with an object, and foregrounding it against otherness, be it the conscience and the world. To reflect on one’s experience of a work is to make that object the subject-imprint, and consider the subject-imprint in relation to the subject’s conscience and/or the world. Consider: if Bob consciously decides to reflect, then he is ignorant as to what is going to happen within those reflections and to who he is going to become at the end of them. The experience of the reflection is outside of his control. Thus, he subjects himself to the reflection, by directing his attention towards an object which invokes reflection. 

Definition III.i.d: To recall a work is to refer to the representations of the work. For example, I may recall a book I read once called The Searcher, but the title is all that sticks out to me. To recall is literally to “call again.” One can also recall details about a work. For example, Bob recalled two green slippers in the painting. In this example, the recalling action ends with saying “two green slippers in the painting.” Bob is calling upon this entity without the possibility of extrapolating on it or the possibility re-experiencing it. The recall is informational and literal, like the title of a variable. This example would change to be remembering if Bob re-subjected himself to the experience of the two green slippers, and it would change to be reflecting if Bob placed the two green slippers as an object of reflection. 

Theorem III.i.a: For some interval of time after experiencing a work of art, the only thoughts which the subject are able to have about his experience of the work are contingent upon the subject-imprint (of his own throughline) and reflections upon the subject-imprint. 

Theorem III.i.b: It is impossible to remember what was not experienced. 

Definition III.i.c: There are two types of misremembering. A weak misremembrance is a recollection that the subject remembers in place of an element in, or in addition to their throughline. For example: Alice recalls the double-entendre on p.127, which Bob did not notice upon his engagement with the text. Now, if, in remembering the work, Bob remembers the double-entendre, then Bob is performing a weak misrememberance. If Bob remembers the fact that Alice recalled the double-entendre (thus connecting the double-entendre to the subject through which it was introduced to him), then this is not a misremembrance. A strong misremembering is a recollection that the subject remembers in place of an element in, or in addition to their throughline, and one that is contradictory to an entry in their throughline. For example: If Alice states that Chief Broom’s nightmare sequence in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was caused by him eating the pill, and according to Bob’s throuhline, the nightmare sequence was caused by him not eating the pill, then if Bob from then on remembers that it was caused by the pill, then this is a strong misremembrance. 

Definition III.i.d: A remembrance can go dormant if a misremembrance replaces it. Otherwise, the remembrance is active.

Definition III.i.e: The subject’s post-experience running memory of their experience the set of active remembrances and misrembrances at a time, t. This running memory may also be referred to as the noema, or the mental object of the work that the subject at a given time, t. 

The running memory is separate from the subject-imprint in this way: Immediately after the experience of a work, the subject has a subject-imprint (of their experienced throughline), but no running memory, yet. Once they begin to remember by listening to their subject-imprint, they accumulate remembrances which then go into their running memory. 

Definition III.i.f: The subject’s inherit memory of the work is set of the subject’s dormant and active remembrances. The inherit memory of the work is the ideal and complete remembering of the throughline on the conscious level.

Theorem III.i.c: From the time that the subject has engaged in a work to the first time that the subject encounters an external opinion/statement/recollection, their subject’s running memory and inherit memory are identical, and they will be consistent with the subject-imprint.

Definition III.i.g: The subject’s extended memory of the work is the set of the subject’s dormant and active misremembrances.

Definition III.i.h: The subject’s particular understanding of a work is the collection of their memory (of all types), and the result of their reflections performed inductively, on their subject-imprint and external recollections provided to them. 

Commentary: The section deals with certain types of memories and impressions. As shown previously in my study in N-otomies, a human's attention cannot subsume an entire set at once. I think of the set := {1, 2, 3, 4, ...}. I cannot see all of this set at once, I can only take in the singularities and then link them together in such a way that my attention moves in a pattern, and that my understanding of how the elements are related shapes the way I use the set or discuss it. The set itself transcends my seeing ability. This is how it is with the types of memories that are being theorized in this section. They are there, whether the subject sees them in their entirety or not, and the subject can make sense of them through ipseic actions. 

IV. Expulsive Action Following an Experience

Definition IV.i.a: A reaction to a work is an action taken after having engaged with the work or the work-imprint, and it is one that treats the text as a direct or indirect object. Let us note that if Bob watches the movie, The Hunger Games. If Bob says, “I liked it,” to his friend, in this model, Bob’s reaction is the action of saying that he “liked it,” which treats the work as the direct object being transformed and his friend as an indirect object. 

Definition IV.i.b: A response to a work is the imprint of a counter-work taking place after the witnessing of a work, one that is in communication with the noema of the work, and one that inflates the work into a ground, in which a new work can be foregrounded [“ground” is a technical term rooted in Gestaltdtheorie, which I have picked up from Sarah Richmond’s translation of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness]. Thus, an artist can write a “response” to the play All My Sons by Sam Shepard, and once the newly written response has been completed, the response has been issued. To respond to a work is to create a work of one’s own, treating the previous work as the ground against which the new work is perceived.

Theorem IV.i.a: A response to a work is contingent upon the work. Thus, all remembrances, reflections, and recollections on a response are contained within the universe of original work. 

Definition IV.i.c: A quality judgment (i.e. judgment of quality) is a symbolic phrase used on a scale or binary which is rendered by an individual party in thinking of certain modelic principles. 

Definition IV.i.c: Quality, as a generalized concept, is the set of all instances when qualitative judgment is invoked in a particular situation. The quality of a work can also be used pre-emptively (before rendering a judgment) to describe an element within the work that one senses to be integral to the judgment yet to be made (“This work has quality…”).

Commentary: The present definition of the term quality is iteratively formed over the course of witnessing and making these quality judgments. In Vonnegut’s Bluebeard, one character is asked how someone can recognize good art. The character says, “look at a million paintings, and then you can never be mistaken.” (Vonnegut, 165). In this case, this quote is not piquant because it bears truth, but it bears truth because it is piquant.

A qualitative judgment is holding a particularity up to a model that provides opportunity for comparison. It requires language and action. This is why, an individual is capable of making seemingly contradictory qualitative judgments. Since, as individuals, people’s minds are vast and contain many different models they can access to view the world and the things within it. So, in one moment, Bob may judge Into the Woods based on the time that he had in the theatre, and describe it as “cold.” In another moment, Bob may be speaking with Alice, who is looking for something playful or deep, and he may refer to Into the Woods as “stimulating” in regards to what she is looking for. These judgments are particular instances of an individual’s expulsive action, as opposed to indicators of their being’s interaction with all of art.

Definition IV.i.d: A comparative model provides a metric by which to compare things. 

Examples: Bechdel test, an essay rubric in an English class, a yard stick, etc. 

Theorem IV.i.b: A comparative model says, at most, only what it says. 

Demonstration (Not a formal proof; all statements are assumed to be consistent and true): A comparative model is made, or discovered, by man, as a mode of perception. We can understand as a “thing,” as it can be written down and described in finite, formalistic terms. Thus, it has substance. In the moment that it is perceived, it cannot be more than it is, for as long as a substance is entirely self-sufficient, the substance remains at most itself. Thus, the substance of the comparative model, or a judgement from a comparative model, if it is to imply anything else, it must consist of a model conceived separately from itself to give its meaning. 

Commentary:  It may be tempting for Bob to say, “these things are related in this way, and thus, we can reach this conclusion.” This is a snipped version of modus ponens. By logical principles, we can only deduce further principles by saying that:

1. A is true.

2. A → B is true.

3. Thus, B.

In the example previously provided, Bob takes proposition (2.) as an unstated assumption. A comparative model, by nature, cannot prove in essence an idea other than its own very limited ideas. A ruler can show that “the chair is 4.35 inches taller than the stool,” but that is the extent. Should someone say, “thus, the chair is evolutionary more adept than the stool,” this is to extend the comparative model past its natural limits, and to use a separate model that equates size to evolutionary supremacy. 

Commentary: A possible response to the previous example of the chair would be, “if the chair be 9 inches taller than the stool, which is 3 inches, can we not say that the chair is thrice the size of the stool?” The response is that, “if I were to reach this conclusion I would have to impose upon the simple observation of linear comparison a separate model of multiplicative comparison, which exists outside of the gathered measurement.” These are deemed equal in accordance with certain principles. It is akin to a game that we decide to play. Thus, it is not necessary for a carpenter to recognize that the chair is thrice the size of the stool; it may be sufficient to recognize the linear difference. 

Theorem IV.i.c: A comparative model is always iteratively conceived as a discrete ordering of points. 

Demonstration: Attention is singular, and must begin with unities at a time. One is introduced; then, another is introduced. Once two sequential objects are solidified as being seen, then a comparison can be undergone. A comparative model maps two objects to two entries in a metric system (most likely, numbers) which are then comparable. A comparative model is thus performed inductively as third, fourth, and so on objects are introduced. 

Theorem IV.i.d: Continuous scales function maximally as a rule-based system to direct the future ordering of such points.

By definition 1.i.b, infinity is hypothetical, and apparent patterns are products of performed action. And, in the previous paragraph it was shown that in using a comparative model, there is an element of sequentialization in order to create comparisons, since making a comparison requires a target of attention, and two unities cannot be perceived at once. Thus, an infinite continuous scale (continuity does imply infinity), is unrealizable through action, and can at best provide a system of reference for ordering objects which have yet to have the comparison performed on them. 

TheoremIV.i.e: All qualitative judgments, since they all exist on a binary or a scale, have a uniting principle that they can all be mapped to. A binary is most commonly translated to 0 and 1. A scale is commonly translated to a subset of the real number line.

Experiment: During this experiment, let us use the words “perfection” and “imperfection” like so: 

1. In a binary, perfection = 1, and imperfection = 0. 

2. In a scale, perfection = the higher bound, and imperfection = the lower bound.

Thus, in this case, I use perfection and imperfection to mean the extremes of qualitative judgment. 

Since this section deals with the extremes of qualitative judgment, it is worthy to note that such extremes rarely find themselves fruitful in the real world. However, in the cases of spiritual and divine consideration, extreme ideas are tossed around to no end. So, it is worthy to address them. 

Let us consider the claim, “God is perfect.” Such a claim, on its own, is perhaps no more than an idea. But, to actively claim this (using the human voice) is to judge him. Unless, that is, if I could leave room for the idea that, “in a way I do not understand.” 

Here is another claim, by no means newly constructed in this manifesto: “Why are there imperfect things? If God is perfect, as doctrine claims and as would make sense for a Being of His nature, then there is a contradiction, because imperfection exists.” In this argument, there are some logical assumptions being made which may not be true to life. 

One of those assumptions is that “imperfection exists,” which is being used as a sufficient clause in the implication “if imperfection exists, then there is a contradiction.” However, this statement alone is a product of perspective. Does imperfection exist? 

Another assumption being made is, “God’s perfection necesitates the perfection of all things, in all ways.” This is, before all else, a claim. Does God being perfect imply the perfection of all things that he created, and their consequent relations? When I made art, both heavy and light, much of it was like an experiment. With the characters in play, and with the given circumstance, I set out to create a story, or a product. And, in the formation of the story, there was the distillation of possibility for what those people could be (and paradoxically, an opening up of their depth). In setting limitations, I allowed for imperfection to arise, even though they were perfect in-and-of themselves in relation to the role that they served within the larger story. 

Another claim my be placed. “If there are things which God is not, then isn’t God not all things? Thus, is he not omnipresent?” The assumption in this claim is that in order to be present, one must be all of. This seems counter to a practical understanding of present. A teacher does not say, “Jonathan is present in the room, because he is all of us and everything in the classroom at once.” A teacher might say, “Jonathan is present in the room, because he constitutes a positive phenomena within it.” The three pillars of Christian Godhood are omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. This triad is distinct from the idea that God would be “omni-being.”

The ideas mentioned are blasphemied in that they take assumptions which overreach the essential essence of human understanding of God. A great cause for heresy in the early Church was not due to people saying “truths” that were not liked, or posing a “threat” to the Church, although these may have played a role within the unfolding events. The major cause for heresy was taking assumptions that were not essential to the human understanding of God. They were taking on more than what God had granted, and making assumptions which subverted the Divine Mystery, and the Divine Story of humanity’s relationship with God. (Thank Apeabu).

Let us consider the notion that “God is in all things, as a principle.” Or, “God is all things. Each thing may or may not be completely within God.” In fact, in Christian tradition, it may be that the only things which are completely within God are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Let us also consider the idea that “there are things that God could not be.” In response to this, one says, “then is not God not omnipotent?” The reality is that God has created things which he could not be, and is within them, and that is the Divine Mystery. He created imperfection to exist in tandem with the perfect, as only a creator filled with Divine Spirit could do. He, as Himself, made a multiplicity of things which were united in one image, and where imperfection could be perceived by the intellect. The only reason imperfection exists is because man compares to a model. 

In-and-of themselves, things are perfect, in so far as they are composed from God’s image. 

So, then, where does imperfection come from? 

Imperfection is perceived, and it is relational. This can be perceived as one of the many interpretations of the “fall of man.” In the garden, man and woman existed relationally in a state of equilibrium. But after receiving “knowledge” and ways to perceive “right” and “wrong” (i.e. ways to organize the world into a comparative model), they began seeing imperfection within themselves (thus putting on clothes to hide their nakedness, as something that needed to be corrected). The Bible portrays God as an external body which condemns Adam and Eve to their fall, but if we understand God to be things as they are, and that the voice of God in the Bible is the personification of that Being, then it is the very essence of Adam and Eve’s act itself which condemns them to a life of greater pain and responsibility. 

But after the fall, they are condemned to painful fates of childbirth and work. They are separated from one another by an imposition on their morality to fulfill their function. Their understanding of the world around them places them at odds with themselves and others. 

We are perfect, in and of ourselves.
We are perfect in God’s image. 

We enact judgments on ourselves and the world around us to make relational imperfections, and this is part of our perfection in the wholistic plan of God. 

V. Understanding, Interpretation, and Vessel Hermeneutics

To the simple nothings, render the complex everythings 

Which they birthed into being,

So that the emptiness may know of its fullness,

And the fullness may rest in paradise.

V.i Understanding

Definition V.i.a: The unity of the work is the work. Thus, under the witness-model of the subject’s role in art, the universal subjectives and their total exist apart from the work. 

Definition V.i.b: To understand the unity of a work is to participate in the work. 

Commentary: Consider a theatre production with a large cast and crew. If the production team commissions an artist to feature their work in the set design, and this artist only has the exposure to the project which is provided to them through their communications with the production, then can the commissioned artist, who does participate in the work, be said to understand the unity of the work? 

Under vessel hermeneutics, yes, the commissioned artist does understand the unity of the work. Consider that from the moment the artist learns about opportunity, to the completion and expulsion of their work, time occurs. And throughout this time, communications are had and actions taken. Suppose this takes places over three weeks. Then, there is a reason why the artist hears from the production team on day two of week two, and why the artist does not get a response until two days later. There is a reason why the artist has the impressions that he has of who he is working with. The artist can feel the timing of the production team and the quality of their communication. Even in the absence of their communication, there is the rest of the happenings between others involved in the work, and this will alter or strengthen the workers’ mindset in the time in between their individual meetings. There is a transposition of the totality of the work into the dynamic between the production team and the artist, like a fractal. The Mandelbrot set displays the same shapes as you zoom in infinitely on it. Such is the way with work in art. Zoom in on even the smallest element of the production, and what reveals itself is the kernel of the work itself. 

Thus, the next theorem follows…

Theorem V.i.a: A subject cannot understand the work. 

V.ii Interpretation

Commentary: Early practices of interpretation in human history come from the reading of natural phenomena as signs for the future. Many examples of this occur in Homer’s Odyssey, where prophets read symbols in reference to eagles and doves (see source material). Why would deliverer of said story include a prophecy, or an interpretation of bird interactions, when a listener may already know what is going to happen? The answer of foreshadowing seems insufficient in this case. For, the very fact that Odysseus leaves Calypso’s island is foreshadowing his attempt at return. The very fact that Odysseus makes it to the Phaecians is pointing towards his progress towards making it home. Why is an interpretation of natural phenomenon necessary? 

Through the listening or reading of the story, by coming into contact with a prophet’s interpretations, I am witnessing a character’s assertion of faith amongst chaos. Whether or not the prophet is correct, he is actively pursuing an expression of faith through his interpretation. Witnessing the assertion of this position whether it be amongst a sea of suitors, or whether it be amongst unseemingly wanderers tossed to fate, is a powerful depiction in-and-of-itself. So, arguing over the veritability of prophesizing seems to be a distraction; what is integral to the story is that a man had the gall to see and share, all in faith with a higher power. 

The deliverance of these interpretations advances character relationships and clarifies people’s decisions to align themselves. For example, when the suitors are warned by XXX, the decision is granted to them whether to honorably take into consideration Odysseus’s return. Later, when Odysseus ultimately does clear his house of them, they offer up false professions of ignorance. It as though saying, “if I would have known you were coming, I wouldn’t have done this. But we thought you were never coming!” Clearly, since interpretation commits the self, and even though there were many opportunities from the interpretations of Telemachus, Penelope, and the prophets which honored Odysseus’s lot, the suitors denied and committed themselves to the idea that he would never come. The offrance from the prophets that there is a world in which Odysseus comes home demonstrates a possibility which they decidedly scoff at and negate. Such is an example of interpretation. 

There are a whirlpool of thoughts, sensations, perceptions, etc. which come at us everyday. But, how many connections do we make per day? Connections require the application of the mind’s powers which is an active process that takes energy and commitment. Considering that these connections are produce of investment and sacrifice, the number of connections is much more limited than the number of objects to take in. Also, considering that the path of least resistance for human survival is passive dependency, and thus depreciation of the mind, the will may bring that number of connections down to zero. Note that the path of least resistance is also the path which leads to the greatest remonstration. For every individual will receive their trial; each will undergo their persecution, incommunicable. To properly share interpretation in communion with other people in situation -- this is what evolves our species and leads to the regeneration of beauty and progress of the good and true. 

Definition V.ii.a: An Interpretation refers to expulsive action, or a series of expulsive actions, as it is considered in relation to situation. 

Commentary: To write is to take time to write. To interpret is to take time to interpret; and this involves exerting forces on the unravelling events of one’s day. 

Definition V.ii.b: Interpretative Respiration (inspired by the cellular phenomenon, cellular respiration), is a name for the process by which, in performing an interpretation, one advances a particular situation or story amidst their life story. 

Commentary: Consider the imprint left on a performer and the mention of “fluid” bodies in Enlightenment philosophy. The body remembers the muscular movement which produced the performance of music. A similar principle is behind physical exercise. Through practice, there are folds and creases in our muscles which capture and retain the information from action. It is as though the action is a stream of water, and our musculature the ground which both guides it (in that it is the performer) and is carved out by it (in that it bears the mark of having done it).  Furthermore, ideas require muscular actualization in order to instantiate themselves. This is as water needs porousness in the soil to penetrate it and become nutrient to plants. 

Commentary: Essentially, there are two directions to go when interpreting: towards or away from self. I outline some directions away from self, here: 

Definition V.ii.c: Gossip is interpretative respiration in which the advancement of the interpreter consists of unearned social status. Furthermore, the interpretation offered in gossip fails to be truly offered, in the sense that the gossiper believes it.

Commentary: The personal danger of gossiping is that it dampens an individual’s reason. In gossiping, I might construct my behavior around unsound observation. This is to eat the microfiber threads that I spin, when I could save the consumption for the reapings from gardens. The societal threat in gossiping is that if I gossip, I become dependent on the material benefits I deceitfully receive from delivering interpretations under certain pretexts. This involves my connection to others and how I function amongst my fellow human beings. 

Thus considered, gossip always has to do with oneself before it has to do with object of gossip. 

Definition V.ii.d: Boasting is interpretative respiration in which the advancement of the interpreter consists of perceived ability, comparably to others, and which the object of discussion is the interpreter’s previous work. 

Commentary: Note that boasting, as the other forms of misdirected interpretation described, is defined here more so by the direction the speaker through the moment rather than the content of what is said. 

Definition V.ii.h: Elaborating can be used as a word to describe interpretative respiration in which the advancement of the interpreter consists of perceived intellectual ability, comparably to others.  

Definition V.ii.i: Self-erasure can be used as a word to describe interpretative respiration in which the advancement of the interpreter consists of less burden (and therefore, responsibility) placed on oneself. 

Commentary: In delivering an interpretation of a work, Bob can further a point amongst his colleagues that they should refrain from expectation on himself. Regardless of the content of the interpretation itself, this is defined by the aim of the desired effect of being excused. An example is that, in discussing a workday with colleagues, I could refer to yesterday’s events as if I was a non-committed actor within them -- expressing through my interpretation that I understand my station to be more impotent than not. The specific words I say may vary, but the position taken in relation to situation is what defines self-erasure. In this case, self-erasure would probably advance myself towards a state of hidden, incapable, and dependent being in relation to the workplace environment. 

Commentary: Other forms can be worked out; and are left as an exercise to the reader. The ones provided here -- gossip, boasting, elaborating, and self-erasure -- are performances of interpretation which are misdirected. They undermine the very being of the interpreters themselves. They sacrifice an experience’s veracity for present or future comfort. In sacrificing veracity, Dasein’s self-relation is undermined -- the one thing that can properly align a human being and unite spirits. This usually arises out of self-denial.

The aforementioned forms of interpretative respiration include advancement in relation to a metric as perceived by the eyes of their peers. Consider what it would be like to interpret with and for others, for the perception of God and to develop oneself along personal and communal adventures undertaken. 

Commentary: Toltec teacher Don Migeul Ruiz, in his instructional pamphlet, The Four Agreeements, indicates the importance of the word. He proposes four agreements to free one’s life, and he relates all four of them back to the central principle of wielding the power of one’s word with great care and courage. According to him, the world as I have been invested into it, generates a mitote of information which sweeps up my attention and dismantles it. The word commits myself to an order and establishes a thread of my being. 

This lesson is primarily relevant to many adolescent and young adult spaces, where things are said for the mere sake of it, as if there existed a modicum of the world where one had license to think nothing of what they did or said. If I take heed from Ruiz’s advice, the presumed “meaningless” things which I might say (or, in a virtual world, comment) are dangerously more than that. Word -- all word -- is self-actualization, especially that which exits under the most licentiousness. This is the danger in peripheral friends. For, oftentimes in relationships which are most removed from the other areas of life, there is great opportunity to say or do things. Ruiz demonstrates that it is perhaps in those moments of periphery in which our word carries the most potential to structure our being.  

This relates to the previous definitions in that, deliverance of interpretation commits the self to a surrounding world and advances self through a story pertaining that world. 

Theorem V.ii.a: A necessary element in interpretation is the expectation to interpret. This expectation may go beyond humanity and temporality. The expectation may be placed through the past, the future, the present, divine powers, groups, written communication, or remembrance of such things, etc.  

Commentary: Interpretation, as action, requires space in which to be done. This space must be granted upon the supposed interpreter. The granting and the interpreting are separate actions which can be dispersed into different times. Bob may have been gifted a notebook by his grandfather when he was in grade school. He might only use it years later to journal about his favorite paintings. Or, there may have been a park built by a certain person in the past near Alice’s house where she goes to collect her thoughts. Such gifts transcend time. 

Commentary: Notice that one of the key factors in abusive relationships is that one party actively snuffs out any offering from the other of any unique interpretation on anything, even the smallest opinion about a night out or breakfast. One reason for this is because, in interpreting, one progresses along stories which are rightfully theirs. This would indicate a realm of being separate from the suppressing party, and it would very much lead to a separation between the two parties. The suppressing party would interpret this to mean that he or she has lost power (power which, they never really had in the first place for human beings are naturally free). This would cause rage, and could incite violence or suppression, etc. 

TheoremV.ii.b: An alive person with potential is a stranger (when considered as individual instances of Dasein). 

Commentary: An alive person’s life story advances through the performance of interpretation. Thus, to know a person’s life story completely requires to know all their interpretative performances. However, such a thing requires an implausible amount of time to achieve. Since one day is limited to less than 24 hours, 16 if getting eight hours of sleep, and since many of those hours necessitate eating, drinking, working, resting, and tending to those projects that are of relevance, the possibility of sharing life stories is limited to a preposterous degree. Furthermore, in the deliverance of interpretation, whatever hypothetical mental object of indefinite understanding my interlocutor might receive is completely surpassed by the fact that the two of us are creating stories together, thus recontextualizing ourselves through the very action of contextualizing our pasts. Thus, alive persons with potential are strangers. 

Theorem V.ii.c: Formal “telling,” unaccompanied by Circumstance and the Spirit, is an inadequate means of sharing life stories. 

Commentary: This follows from the idea in the previous theorem, that telling is contextualized within an advancement of a person’s story. 

Commentary: This theorem results from another approach. Say I, at this time point, tell Bob my life story. Then, I go through changes for the next two years without speaking to Bob. Then, I meet Bob again. However, the life story that he understood is now of an avatar of myself which I have surpassed. Thus, my next option is twofold. One way is I update him (which would only happen in an intimate setting, for it would require the complete giving up of all mutual judgments). This is an unstable tactic to rely on, since every successive update would require a complete upheaval of everything we knew prior about one another, so as to allow for proper re-interpretation. For, the previous story was formed on unstable ground to account for the entirety of my life, and must completely be uprooted. The other way is that I go to someone else and begin a list of disparate people to confide in, all disconnected, all singular in their understanding. Thus, reliance on rhetorical “telling” necessitates either a snowballing relationship with Bob or a long series of temporary ‘non-strangers’ who know me not as lifelong friends, but as temporary witnesses. 

Theorem V.ii.d: Alive persons come to know each other through either A) true confession or B) long-term application of will, watchful observance, and incidental revelation as to unintentional interpretations. 

Commentary: In performing an interpretation, I am committing myself within a situation which I am acting into (see Definition V.ii.b). Thus, in my performance, there is myself and those alongside me. However, since a situation transcends any one person, none of me nor my colleagues could grasp the nature of the interpretation holistically. Factoring in intentionality, contradictory desires, and refraced perceptions of one another, which are bound to take place, the me who becomes myself in the performance is cut-off, by definition, from the colleagues engaging in the interpretation. 

The will is limited in so far as the intellect understands a situation. There is a realm of being perceived which allows for the perceiver to truly perceive myself in my performance, and in such a way in which I lose control over my self-representation. These such instances are mainly of two categories: confession and offhandedness.  It must be noted that if confession is a true confession, it is done once. Thus, in this way, the coming-to-know each other is progressed in a distinct unit, irreproducible and indefinite. This requires an exorbitant amount of courage, commitment, and trust which many people only come across a few times in their life. 

The other category of instances for true perception of interpretation is offhandedness. A post-subject’s ipseic and expulsive action occurs within a network of their ipseic and expulsive actions of other works. Oftentimes in human interaction, I may produce an interpretation directed towards that which isn’t there, in a way that disrupts a stream of dialogue or communion. This arises from the unique individuality of self and the understanding that there are things I am concerned with which transcend my immediate surroundings. Practically, these reflections are actually disruptive to the ongoing communion in the space. They do have their proper space to exist, particularly within the mind. The volume of an offhand interpretation most properly corresponds to the necessity by which it relates to the ongoing situation. In this way, it is possible to conclude that truth, which concerns all man, is worthy of the most volume; while refracted perception, which concerns few, is most deserving of quieter tones. By personal grooming (over many, many years), I have learnt how to quickly enter back into the particular situation after diverging attention onto unrelated things; but in such a way that allows me recognize why those things came up within me, and to be ready for when those unrelated things come up again. However, such divergences are often related to the primary things which occupy my mind at base level. The more offhand they are, the more integral the intellect has incorporated them. For, if my mind is able to connect a sea of situations to a particular thing, I must have done a lot of reflection to ground my life against this thing (this is well described by Spinoza in his Ethics… see XXX). 

Thus, in paying attention to a person’s attention in moments of their greatest divergence from situation, we come to know each other. This necessitates watchfulnesss in order to notice. It also requires long-term commitment; since, an offhandness may not imply circumspect concern. However, circumspective concern would imply offhandness. In order to differentiate what is temporary concern (distraction) and what is essential concern to a person’s life-being, long-term application of attention is required. 

Commentary: This is one reason why people fear confession. Consider what would happen if I go to confess something, and then find myself doing the same action again. Then, the confession clearly was not with my whole heart, mind, body, and soul. So, essentially, what I might fear before confessing is that the inclination to confess is not strong enough, or it is somehow misguided. It is a fear that the one thing which would deliver me out from a vast pit of impotent guilt -- the confession -- will not be strong enough -- for I am not ready enough. See confliction models in V.viii. This would be a confliction model, where my fear of communication is that what I say will be insufficient to sustain me. It would be as if I go into it treating it as true, then I am lying to myself. 

This is related to the understanding of suffering. In my life, the most essential confessions have arose from a completion of a cycle of understanding in regards to the particular suffering which gripped me. For, let us consider Spinoza’s Proposition: XXX (to know individual things is to know God). It so happened that the final leap of understanding was synthesized through the confession. Through this, the truth of particular happenings was demonstrated and subsumed into a larger story of being which is grounded against my essence. Imagine folding a straight line into a piece of paper. The initial fold (the true confession) leaves a mark which cannot be undone to the paper’s make-up. In order to perform the fold, there must be some understanding of the art of making folds which is demonstrated in a particular case and subsumed into a larger story of that specific paper. 

In short, a true confession concerns a person’s essence. A statement of grief concerns a person’s temporary existence. 

Corollary V.ii.c.i: Thus, alive persons who truly come to know each other are life partners.

Commentary: These life partners are attributable to two types. One is a partner which is joined to an alive person, one of whom is in a dependent state (i.e. family, caretakers), and the other is a partner which is joined to an alive person, both of whom are in an independent state (i.e. two mature and maturing adult partners, i.e. matrimony).

Corollary V.ii.c.i: Matrimony is the natural result of healthy, interpretative practices over time between two independent persons. 

Commentary: To truly come to know each other, there must be an understanding of a wide degree of a person’s interpretive performances. A lover only knows these performances as they result to “the night” or “the dream-state” and “reality,” or the “facade during day.” One issue with lovers is that, whenever they see each other, they switch into an alternate state of being for each-other, and thus what they perceive of each other fails to be themselves. A lover’s perspective is limited to fruits of the romantic endeavor, and it is especially limited to the objects of attraction. Before the romantic endeavor, there is private person, as is. This unedited being can only be truly known through true confessions or offhandedness. This necessitates a level of being-with at regular intervals and within various states of being. This requires a degree of unexpectedness on behalf of both parties, which suggests that potential communions between two persons is best achieved through similar schedule within a shared environment. 

For two people to truly come to know each other, there would have to be a point at which their mutual understanding is completed. Upon first meeting, most likely, their interpretations of works will serve the great complexity of their own life. Over time, however, there comes a point at which the interpretive respiration of each party becomes harmoinc, so that in the fusion of their two hermeneutic practices, a common story is constructed and shared in. This is the point when the diad is established, and the individual being is solidified, exists within, and then is committed to this diad. 

And, just as the individual hermeneutic exists within Mitsein, there must be a separate body to which the diad is committed to interpret. The magical secret of life is that this separate body is unpredictable, uniquely defined offspring, generated from the genetic material of the two who make up the diad. This is the importance of the diad being man-woman. 

And, if individuals are to be committed to a diad, and this is to be a natural result on behalf of a majority of humanity, then it would be conducive if a committed person’s commitment could be recognized and displayed through external means, such as sharing of names, rings, property, etc. A common misperception is that these things inscribe marriage onto those who posses them, but how else is union of spirit supposed to find actualization? Consider V.ii.b. 

To be continuous requires substantiation. And, we as physical beings have relations to the external world, so we must have relations to external things. By appropriately turning to external means, we can delve into the mass chaos that exists in the world and provide kindling for the union between persons to find space in the world. Think of how difficult it is to go into the world, and expect everyone to see me as anything other than what I immediately present myself as. Let’s say “flutist” is my primary entity-being. Am I to tell every single person who lays an eye on me, purposefully and incidentally, “no, you don’t understand, I am also a flute player!” Am I to wear a sign on my back that is capable of falling off and needing to be replenished? Am I to say the words “I am a flutist” over and over again wherever I go in hopes that passer-by’s hear me? The best solution is for human beings to have come together in mutual accordance to establish societal behaviors which indicate and foster understanding of these committed states of being. 

If the majority of men are to be a part of this diad, and if the majority of men are to be a parity of a whole, and if natural result of healthy interpretative practice is to be sustainable for the masses of people throughout the world, then it behooves human society to incorporate practices into daily living which honor these commitments and address matrimony beings as being matrimoned. 

Theorem V.iii.d: Art is better experienced in groups, or in communication with imprints of groups, not in that the experience itself is heightened, but that the post-experience is heightened (and thus, the incorporation of art into life is heightened). 

Commentary: This follows from the assumption that interpretation requires expectation; and expectation is to be heightened if multiple parties are involved with the same material. This may also include existing while interpreting oneself to be a part of a group which may not entirely be present. For even this is powerful enough to provide expectation. If faith is true, it lasts indefinitely. Thus, received faith which is true (faith qua expectation, in this case), allows individuals to then interpret while in communication with the imprint of that faith.

Theorem V.iii.e: Understanding of self as Mitsein is enzymatic to interpretation. 

Commentary: I refer to some propositions from Spinoza’s Ethics to assist in demonstrating this idea. Firstly, by XXX, if there is an idea of an image, then that image must be something which exists as a possibility. Thus, an understanding of self as Mitsein entails the notion that one has space to interpret. Secondly, by XXX, the mind is the idea of the body; and by XXX, the connection of ideas mirrors the reflection of body. Thus, an understanding of self as Mitsein entails muscular pratice and bodily retention. 

V.iii Projection 

Definition V.iii.a: A projection of the work is a formal collection of recollections which have been extracted from subjects and put into in an objective and viewable state. For example, if a journalist amasses a collection of observations about a work from different subjects and assembles them into a representation of the work, then what we have is a projection of the work into a closed set of these observations. A projection can also exist from one subject, if they assemble a set of their remembrances and misremembrances into an external form that can be presented to other people. 

Observation V.iii.a: The projection is not equal to the work. 

This is a simple concept, but in modern parlance, oftentimes people try to make others believe that the work and a projection are one and the same. In order to prove that a projection is the same as the work is an irrealizable task. You would have to show that every single thing within the work, which is infinite and uncountable, is also in the projection, which is finite and countable. The task is irrealizable, and it is a mathematicaly defined contradiction to construct an isomorphism between the infinitely uncountable and the finitely countable. 

Definition V.iii.e: Satire, using the aforementioned framework, is a projection of a work (or a melange of projections of different works), for which the recollections involved reside in unsaid places in many men’s heart, recollections which go unexpressed during a time’s zeitgeist. In this way, satire, like many genres of literature, provides perspective, not truth. 

Commentary: Satire can be surpassed by technical writers who, after assembling projections of things, turn their attention to form and style. For example, while Vonnegut’s Bluebeard contains element of satire, the playfulness of the writing and ingenuity of form demonstrate that the writer surpassed simple commentary on the times into genuine creativity and literary experimentalism. 

Definition V.iii.b: A reaction to a projection of a work may be called an incomplete reaction to a work. A response to a work itself may be referred to as a complete reaction to a work. 

Definition V.iii.c: Satire, using the aforementioned framework, is a projection of a work (or a melange of projections of different works), for which the recollections involved reside in unsaid places in many men’s heart, recollections which go unexpressed during a time’s zeitgeist. In this way, satire, like many genres of literature, provides perspective, not truth. 

Commentary: Satire can be surpassed by technical writers who, after assembling projections of things, turn their attention to form and style. For example, while Vonnegut’s Bluebeard contains element of satire, the playfulness of the writing and ingenuity of form demonstrate that the writer surpassed simple commentary on the times into genuine creativity and literary experimentalism.

Theorem V.iii.a: The subject can attain a projection through the comparison of his experience of a work with others’. Thus, experience of the work possibilizes an experience of a projection. In the reverse direction, we have that the person cannot reach an experience of the work through an experience of a projection.

There are multiple ways one can manage their memories. 

Definition V.iii.d: Nihilation is the act of rendering another’s statement about a work to dormant extended memory. 

Definition V.iii.e: Bracketing is the act of rendering another’s statement about a work as contingent upon their subjecthood. Thus, if Bob hears Alice say X about a work, Bob can maintain his inherit memory as his running memory if, he brackets X as an active remembrance in his memory of his interaction with Alice, instead of his memory of the work. [This idea is related to Husserl’s “bracketing,” or the Greek epochē in phenomenology, but there may be more particularities for the term in phenomenology than there is in this particular framework].

V.iv Vessel Hermeneutics and Hermeneutics

Introduction: I acknowledge the position that there is an all-encompassing hermeneutical theory which can a priori account for any and all interpretations of any and all work. However, the theory of vessel hermeneutics is a suggestive one. It grants that there is that which is not known by the terms of the theory itself. Imagine a set which says, “I know not what is not in me.” 

As Roger T. Ames and David Hall posit in the introduction of their translation of the text of Confucian tradition, the Zhongyong, one thematic difference between ideals that developed in the ancient Asian world and ones that developed in the European world is that the European tradition discusses objects that have a minimal level concreteness and their relations which are also discrete, whereas the Asian tradition philosophizes on processes, changes, harmonies, and movements around concepts that are synthetically metaphorical and real. Since I, as a person, am not a Being that can see the totality of either “the West” or “the East,” I fail to posit whether this dichotomy is true. It strikes me that some sections of Ancient Greek texts attempt to transcend the discrete to the continuous, and that some sections of Ancient Chienese texts attempt to transcend the continuous to the discrete. However, the distinction that Ames and Hall makes is useful in describing the applicability of this vessel hermeneutic

Vessel hermeneutic functions as a practice, as opposed to a prescription. Thus, it resembles a virtue that must be cultivated. To “understand” the definitions and terms set out in this theory is a misnomer; Bob can practice or observe them. In this way, the theory of vessel hermeneutics is a vessel itself for the anything-ness of a subject’s experience to pass through. 

Friedriech Schleiermacher’s theory of the diviniatory act holds that to understand a whole, a cycle of part-to-whole and whole-to-part reflections must be undergone, one which culminates in a divinatory act (this information is gleamed from my notes taken while reading Hanz-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method). Through this divinatory act, the cycle is completed and the whole is understood. Gadamer also proposes in his text the “history of effect” which posits that a hermeneutic adequate to the subject matter would have to demonstrate the reality and efficacy of the subject’s history itself, thus suggesting an interpreting of the object in tandem with the interpreting of the source of the interpretation (this information is also gleamed from my notes while reading Truth and Method). 

With these two aforementioned principles, where does the correctness of an hermeneutic lie? In the theory of a divinatory act, there is a dichotomy between incomplete and holistic understanding, and the instant of transition between the two marks one’s understanding. Vessel hermeneutics is inconsistent with a divinatory act that completes the part-whole evolution on behalf of the subject. Using the language set up thus far, the only way for the subject to escape from his “part” (his subject-imprint, and later, his running memory and other types of memory), is to engage in reflection, or to engage with others and develop an extended memory. Neither of these actions involve doing the work, which has already been done. 

In the theory of the history of effect, there is a level of achievement which an interpreter must undertake to his situation regarding the work itself in order to adequately interpret it. Both of these models imply the possibility of a state of “not-being-there-yet” which is reconcilable through action. With vessel hermeneutics, there is only “having-been there.” What is unique to the creator’s experience, the complete issuance of an overly powerful work of art, as if beholding the Arc of the Covenant, must be housed off (see Hausdorf spaces) at some minimal level from others. The attempt to subsume a work of art under a common, transmissible form which can be disseminated into different rational minds reflects a certain socialist, or totalitarian, twist on the hermeneutic endeavor. The kernel of what-is is in the what-is, and the act of beholding is enough to place a subject in a state of “having-had” understanding. Thus, where in the two aforemention theories, a post-subject of a work might be in a state of having work to do to achieve a higher understanding, in vessel hermeneutics, the post-subject has an equilibrium to maintain after an initial “having-ness” of their experience. 

Thus, I arrive at…

The Two Fundamental Principles of Vessel Hermeneutics: 

1. The subject lets the work pass through intact.

2. Projections clog the cyclical nature of interpretation and understanding.

There are different types of spaces one can inhabit regarding a work post-experience. 

1. The Lecture := One before many.

2. The Seminar := One amongst many.

3. The Reflective Space := One with oneself.

Guidelines are provided below. These are tentative, and they are moreso descriptions of what has usually worked than attempts to prescribe what will work. 

 Note that these spaces are defined by the conditions which they are made up of. These can apply to academic, quotidian, intimate, creative, business, etc. settings.

V.v The Lecture (One before many)

A proper lecture is held as part of a series of lectures. 

The subject of the lecture is the “topic.”

In a proper lecure, the lecturer speaks uninterrupted until a pre-decided external stimulus ends the event. 

A proper lecture is held when either all parties in the presence of a particular lecture are presenting a lecture of their own at some point in the series of lectures, or, when all parties involved in a particular lecture have the potential to perform a lecture of their own within the same series of lectures or a related one to come, defined by some pre-determined timed date. 

A proper lecture contains a period of question-and-answer. 

A proper lecture is held with the presupposition that every single attendee of the lecture can exit the lecture in a state of disagreement with the lecturer, and yet the lecture is still held. A proper lecture exposes before it teaches and demonstrates before it dictates.  

V.vi The Seminar (One amongst many)

A proper seminar is held in a formation (most likely circular) where all may see all. 

A proper seminar is moderated by an almost silent party who is disinterested in the conversation’s content, yet attentive to the actions taken by the participants. By narrowing their attention to participants’ action, the moderator can perceive tells and signs that the participants, focused on the content of the conversation, miss.

A proper seminar’s moderator uses his unique perspective on the conversation to remain silent, impartial, and encourage the participation of all through his action, whether passive or active.

If a proper seminar incorporates prompts to its participants, these prompts are issued to each participant prior to the seminar, at the same time, and to allow for appropriate time between the seeing of the prompt and the participation in the seminar.

If a proper seminar incorporates prompts, each participant may choose whether or not to use the prompts in the formation of their commentary. 

V.vii The Reflective Space (One with oneself)

A proper reflective space contains no spoken human speech. 

A proper reflective space prioritizes the nature in the space. 

A proper reflective space is devoid of manmade signs. Manmade signs differ from manmade symbols, from manmade artwork, and from Divine signs and symbols. 

A proper reflective space contains something external to the self which will mark the end of the reflective space. Example: a bell. 

A proper reflexive space contains a foreground and a background. 

A proper reflexive space harmonizes with a person’s bodily alignment. 

In a proper reflexive space, all persons present in the space must be reflecting. If some of them are not, then the non-reflectors must be ignorant to the presence of the reflecting persons, and the reflectors must be indifferent to the non-reflector’s status of being there. Otherwise, the space is improperly reflective.

V.viii Models of Confliction

One question that was proposed to me in my first lecture on this topic was “what does it mean when someone can’t get the words out right?” with regards to a post-subject’s experience trying to communicate with regards to said experience. This question is related to what I term here as models of confliction, or confliction models, for short. 

Definition V.viii.i: A communication model is an analytical model which one uses to interpret and guide their patterns of communication with people around them. It is inductively constructed, meaning that it is built up over time with regards to other characters in a person’s life. There may be different axioms and theorems for different characters or different types of characters in a person’s life. The more essential those axioms are (i.e. how many characters or types receive communication based on the same axiom) is correlated to how cohesive a person’s communication model is. The more applicable those axioms are (i.e. how easy or difficult it is to adhere to such axioms) is correlated to how practical a person’s communication model is. 

What can happen in a post-subject’s communications is that their experience and their promulgation within themselves of their subject-imprint (through ipseic and expulsive action) can be re-directed to a management of a communication model. In such a case, their thoughts cease to be about the work, and more so about speaking with people. Thus, the dialectic which ensues foregrounds the work against the subject’s communicative identity.

Definition V.viii.ii: A communication model is conflicted if it differs, to any degree, from what one has to say about the work if the work were the background against which particular instances of communication arose. 

Examples: 

The Confliction of Present-Perfect (has-is):

“If I say this about X, then it will be that I say this about X, and no more than that.”

“My words freeze me.”

“Do not take this to mean all that I could say!”

While being in a state of confliction of present-perfect, one fears that one’s ongoing memory will freeze if one instatiates a remembrance with certainty. Or, one assumes that expulsive actions freeze what the totality of their understanding sums to be; thus becoming “frozen into dead possibilities” to use Sartrean terms. 

The Confliction of Intonation

“If I say what I felt compelled to say about X, then the other might not get my point.”

“My words are different from yours.”

“You won’t get it.”

“I have to choose my words.”

While being in a state of confliction of intonation, one understands that different people may draw different implications from certain words. From this, one fears that the words which they use to express their own ideas may result in different ideas arising in other’s thought processes. In this state, the post-subject yearns to hit the sweet spot amongst the language models of all present Others’ to use vocabulary which is neutral enough to all parties. 

The Confliction of Self-Destruction

“What I have to say doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

While being in a state of confliction of self-destruction, a post-subject clogs all which they feel compelled to say. This is opposed to a person choosing to remain silent, or feeling comfortable in remaining silent. For a person in this state, there is active conflict between their proper alignment for sharing and a pre-existing model which they have internalized and which negates any idea which comes into their head as tangential, inconsequential, wrong, or misguided. 

Commentary:

Three examples of states of confliction are brought up here, and I note that there are other types as well. I also note that these states of confliction are usually rendered onto a pre-subject through the internalization of an externality. They are models of interpreting and guiding language which are assumed from observing others’ actions and statements which then place the post-subject into a state of confliction. 

Each of these states of confliction has a positive isotope (this term is used metaphorically). For example, a post-subject may determine, through reflection, that what they once had to say does not make sense to them, and from this they may move on in peace. This may all occur in a cohesive state of being. A post-subject may have a method of determining whether a communication will freeze them into a dead possibility, or whether a communication will decrease understandibility, or whether a communication is actually grounded in their own experience and observation. The element of free choosing and ability to do one or the other is the mark of a positive state of being. What determines these communicative states as conflictive is when they are maladaptive and applied hastily to too many circumstances for an individual, such that being in these states actually impedes a post-subject’s ability to manifest their understanding of the work. 

In other words, if in the participation in communication, a post-subject foregrounds their understanding of the work against a fixed model of communication, then this can lead to maladaptive conflictions. However, if a post-subject’s model of communication is foregrounded against their preservation of their veracity as a subject, then their communicative applications can exert an equilibrative force.

V.viii Commentary

Imagine a seminar setting where subjects are about to discuss a work that they all experienced in different ways. We have already shown that the conglomeration of their universal subjectives and their formation of projections are not sufficient to understand the work, and yet, this is mostly what they can do as people engaged in conversation. Such a framework implies the irrealizability of an ideal hermeneutic in the classroom, if to understand the work is to do the work, and one can only do work that is unique to themselves in their historicity (possibly inspired by the past or the future, but ultimately rooted in their own idiosyncracy).

In vessel hermeneutics, the goal of the seminar is to remember out loud. In the seminar as current American education knows it, imperfection is a necessary part of it. Some participants may not have engaged with the work fully (i.e. may not have finished the assigned reading, or watched the movie, or was awake for the entirety of the play). Some participants may have their mind on other things throughout the seminar, and thus their participation may be placed on uncaring or inattentive grounds. Some participants may be approaching the seminar politically in relation to people whom they have opinions of outside of the seminar. Etc. There are forces at work in every seminar that threaten to dismantle the seminar into a multiplicity of disconnected singularites (i.e. if everyone is speaking half-truths to themselves and no one else listens, thus creating a multitude of projections of the work), or an over-simplified singularity of distinct personhoods (if everyone accepts one projection of the work). 

The goal, then, would be to rely on the conditions of the seminar to foster remembrance. These conditions include the support of other personhood, the free ability to speak, the call to turn through into words, the microbehavioralisms, and more. It is a training ground for all subjects to practice their ability to remember their throughline of an experience. 

Thus, in vessel hermeneutics, the goal is to become a “vessel” for one’s experiences. The judge of this goal is the subject-imprint that one has which is baked into their history as a human being. The subject knows when the subject is not in communication with their subject-imprint. When the subject has taken on what it did not remember, the misremembrance continuously points the subject towards the source of the misremembrance.  The inherit memory may be forgotten within the conscience, but it lingers in patterns of behavior and the causality of one’s being. All misremembrances come from an external source, and it is in relation to that external source that the subject has the possibility of reconciling his inherit memory. 

Furthermore, in vessel hermeneutics, one condition is that any projection must be dissolved, either through nihiliation or bracketing, and that every remembrance out loud is understood as an idiosyncratic honing of one’s ability to remember. In vessel hermeneutics, when a subject projects on a work, the other subjects who have experienced the work, and thus are capable of recognizing the projection, bracket or nihilate the particular subject’s projection. Note that bracketing and nihiliation can take place at any volume, at any level of a human ability’s vocal communication, whether external or internal. 

The work must exist in clear sight, unblocked by projections. It is from this quality that vessel hermeneutics is called “vessel” hermeneutics, because the subjects are vessels for the work, already undertaken, to continue existing. The work is the source which allows the subject to be a subject in relation to the work; thus, a person’s state as a subject is contingent upon the work. Thus, due respect must be paid to the work to allow the subject to remember properly. For, any post-subject who exhibits any ipseic or expulsive actions on the work, is acting as a subject. Thus, even to denounce a work is to be a post-subject and to have come out from the source of the work. The utterances in a vessel hermeneutic seminar are neither reactions nor responses, they are remembrances capable of being observed by other subjects.   

With regards to a vessel hermeneutic seminar, reflection takes place outside of the seminar. Reflection is understood as an individual subjecting themselves to being-with an object in a physically composed, yet mentally free and unlimited space, of their temporal existence. To reflect is to be unwatched. To refer to the Sartrean “look,” once the person is aware of themselves being “watched,” then reflection is removed from the possibilities of what they can do, unless, they take on performance. If the person assumes the role of performer, it is possible, if they go about it properly, that they can reflect while being watched. This is an ideal which some actors actualize through their work -- to reflect through performance. 

Commentary: I note that, given the structure of vessel hermeneutics as provided thus far, it is possible for a subject of a work to undergo absolutely no ipseic or expulsive action following the work, while still being a vessel for the work post-experience. In a particular case, given certain circumstances, what may be an ideal vessel is someone whose only further involvement with the subject material presented to him is by chance. How unique is this—that a person who reads a book and never thinks or speaks of it again might be the closest to allowing for and/or appreciating its existence? To love nature involves setting it free… 

This is distinct from claiming that a retrospectively gathered analysis of a person’s behavior involving a work of art is what determines their vesselage. Rather, there is a flux of life which flows forth each day, and an individual’s role as a post-subject of a work of art can take on a unique nothingness of meaning. (I originally put the word “infinitude of meaning,” but given the analysis of infinity provided in Section I, the term “unique nothingness” seems more a propos de the relevant themes).