2021.03.27
The Sky isn't black at night. It becomes transparent. Outer space is black.
I'm wrestling with an idea that is either one of the most striking summations I've come up with, or a half-baked sophomoric glob of just-so-story pseudo-science:
We are of two mind systems (probably correlated with the hemispheres, but that's not absolutely critical to this model): one mind (the right hemisphere - the non-linguistic, holistic side) accepts the world as it is. The other (the left hemisphere - reductionist and grasping/tool-manipulating - the most notable of those tools being language) considers the world as it wishes it to be.
(I'm about 1/3 of the way through "The Master and the Emissary" and it probably shows- but it's a book I take with a massive grain of salt.)
For me there's some weird contradictions implied by that, and my compulsion to subjugate subjective preferences and knowledge to the best guess about the objectively true and best - like it's the right hemisphere striving for the holistic view, but it has to do it with language, where the left holds more sway.
Heh, was thinking of the H.G. Wells quote "The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.'" except I thought he was talking about language not mind.