Idiocy, Esoterica, & the Common Sense

Dear Dialecticians & Colleagues Across the Curriculum

IDIOCY, ESOTERICA,
& The Common Sense

Toward a Practice of Liberal Art
(not to be collapsed, conflated
or confused with the
liberalarts )

Much madness is divinist sense--
To a discerning eye—
Much sense—the starkest madness—
“Tis the majority
In this as All, prevail—
Assent, and you are sane—
Demure – you’re straightway dangerous
And handled with a chain.
( Emily. Dickinson).

Socrates referred to his idios daemon as
guide, mentor, regulator, muse: often more
in a cautionary sense than instructional. .

Fundamentalist and maybe even middle-
of-the-road if not liberal Christians talk
of, advocate, and even urge the need for
a “personal relationship with my savior,
Jesus Christ” – sounding similar in
spirit or at least somewhat like the
Socratic muse.

Jesus claims to send the Paraclete in his
place: comforter, counselor, advocate:
aka Holy Ghost—or, let’s say
“spirit of the whole.”

Imagine any part to WHOLE relationship;
and seeing as the part is always partial and
the whole more than the sum of parts: the
relationship is incommensurate & demands
mediation, translation, pontification, in the
same way Our Monkeys and Jane Goodall
could never make common sense of each
other without some 3^rd party go-between
preserving the differences while bridging
(but not collapsing) the gaps,
so to speak.

What I just wrote was pure idiocy
(idios: personal, private and idiosyncratic);
a embodied notion (metaphor, personifed
monkification) devised to carry the burden of
“the triad”—
................Y
X Z

an esoteric 3 in 1, 1 in 3 structure whereby the
whole-to-part dynamic is put in play; or call it
dialectic where opposites are turned up in order
to generate a “whole” relationship without
diminishing opposition and its appropriate
ongoing “hostile” conflict.

What I just wrote was pure idiocy.

No common sense to it.

You guys might have some clue, seeing as I’ve
been parading my idiocy from Day -1, hoping
to make it useful in building up a shared sense
of the dialectical process & hierarchical levels
(Bateson’s idiosyncratic use of Russell &
Whiteheads Theory of Logical Types) of
communication.

Esoteric: group “idiocy”—un-common knowledge
shared by an exclusive circumscribed bunch, practice,
cohort, discipline, tradition, conspiracy.

Esoteric might could describe us sitting in the cave,
generating a shared idiosyncratic sense of These Things
(Things, I said: do I have to be spelling THINGS out?)

If you tried talking JaneGoodall&Monkey Business
beyond this room, you’d be taken for idiots in the
common sense and not in the esoteric sense :
babblers, speaking in tongues of mire, non
sense if not no-sense-at-all. .

Inside the cave (esoteric), we practice our monkey
business, starting from old scratch again and again,
reinventing wheels, naming them—making some
common sense of our own.

Edification.

But outside (exoteria) and beyond:
be wary. Be wary. Pray for translation.
A mediator. Some Jane&Monkey hybrid,
Paraclete. Hermeneutical Mercurious
Trickster so to speak.

Watch your words.
Be patronizing.
Practice noblesse oblige.
Or else.

Much madness is divinist sense--
To a discerning eye—
Much sense—the starkest madness—
“Tis the majority
In this as All, prevail—
Assent, and you are sane—
Demure – you’re straightway dangerous
And handled with a chain.
( Emily. Dickinson).

xxxooo, Sam