Still working on empowermental issues

Dear Humans,
 
commitment/ detachment
obsession/restraint
passion/control
play/work
useless/useful
specialized/well-rounded
focus/dabble
good-grammar/street word
symbolic/diabolic
clean/dirty
tidy/muddle
liberal art/instrumental utility 

Automatically: one side of the slash is
“better” than the other. These represent the
distinctions that cultural values are built
on and the web of convention that don’t
feel likeconvention because “transparent.”
 
It’s at these junctures, Hyde says, that
“trickster” works: works for his own
self-seeking benefit: he’s not trying to
save the whirl—not a soft-liberal,
not a rigorous conservative both fighting
to make the world a better place...
 
A pox on both houses Trickster might
say if he were even thinking about it;.
but as David says: he’s just optimizing
his Trickster career.
 
Now US:
sitting on our academic asses
and doing school work
(as opposed to  church and state work):
we can view Trickster as a self-serving
boundary hopper somehow somewhat
free of  the Culture traps and visceral
connotations Velcro-ed onto
commitment/detachment,
obsession/restraint,
passion/control,
play/work etc
using/abusing those terms to suit his own
projects (if not service projects) and we
might be able to perceive how his oblivion
ignore-ant transgressions serves to re-define
or recreate or re-calibrate and reform
conventions even as the  republicans  and
democrats, the bad the  good and the ugly
maintain their revolting  revolvingrevolutions
round and round and round.
 
I’m trying to indicate an  “evolutionary”
viewpoint—but it’s hard to see thru the
revolution always going on.  Need to
imagine for a moment I’m-Jane looking
at the monkeys and loving them all of course
(because I AM a monkey too) and also be
J&Monkey—on the fence, at the cocktail
party, the tea bag party, the Convention: no
passion for either side but finding it all
interesting
 
This isn’t working.
 
I’m trying to get a way to talk about being
 
           Beyond Good and Evil and yet
                            NOT:
         stuck between Good & Evil, damnit
        devils in the details and deep blue sees
                but of course stuck, too.
 
(Knowing how-stuck-I-am, I am, in a
liberal art sense. un-stuck even while being
stuck.  Get it? Is this just a play with words?’
Of course it is, or what’s a college for?)
 
Our WORDS are coated in the +/- connotations
that shape our gut-visceral affect in shared cultural
and conventional ways and reinforce our
homeland insecurity system (s) .
 
This is Good.
This is  Not Good. 
 
How do we wash words clean  (neutralizing for
descriptive purposes) and yet remember their
emotional resonance at the same time?
 
How to be apathetic and pathetic at once?
How to be dis-connected and fully  related
at once?
 
It’s a language problem, I say. It precedes politics
and social change and the best of times/worst of times

IT, I say.
Do I always have to spell IT out?
Neaten up my grammar? Correct my split infinitives
and dangling elements?
 
Punch reply or reply-to-all if you want this kind of
converse sustained.
 
Yrs in Courses w/o Borders
 
Sam