Language: Left Hemisphere Style
Josef Pieper's Abuse of Language--Abuse of Power and the Hemisphere Hypothesis
Attempts to define the Tao are like a retard trying to stick his head out of a closed car window.
Sad, pitiful, and comical.
Until he gets so frustrated that he smashes the window with a hammer.
Fresh air rushes in but so do shards of glass. Bust up the Tao and a breeze of clarity hits the brain but so do shards of limitations.
The Tao is everything the left hemisphere can’t stomach. The Taoist cranks out paradoxes like G.K. Chesterton on Benzedrine. The left brain gags on paradox. The Taoist rides the flow. The left brain spits on flow, demanding straight lines and checklists. The Taoist’s first move is no-move—wu wei, the art of doin’ nothin’. The left brain sneers at sittin’ still. The Taoist chases truth, slippery as a trout in a stream. The left brain gets frustrated with anything it can’t clutch.
The left hemisphere despises paradox, flow, inactivity, and elusive truth.
Unless it can twist them to its own ends.
If it can use paradox to foil an opponent, it'll yield it like a sword stick. If it can use flow to get more work done, it'll channel its inner-Kahneman and focus like a movie director on a starlet. If no-action will recharge its batteries for more effective work later, it'll lounge like a hungover passenger on a cruise ship deck chair.
To a man with the hammer, everything looks like a nail.
To a man with an unbridled left hemisphere, everything looks like a lever.
Language? That’s the granddaddy of levers. Trouble is, it’s got limits. It can’t lasso the Tao, it can’t bolt truth to the floor, and its ultimate attempts at truth leave it in tongue-tied paradoxes.
But the left brain knows it needs words, flaws and all. So what’s it to do?
You smash those limitations.
Deny the Tao, scoff at truth, dismiss those paradoxes as mental masturbation.
And then yammer on: opinions, arguments, gossip.
It’s the rot of sophistry.
Words oughta carry reality from one soul to another. If reality is ultimately denied, what good is language?
It’s good for those things the left hemisphere values: success and manipulation.
Negotiation, debate, and persuasion.
And in a culture choked by frustration, hemmed in by limits it won’t face? Words morph into weapons. Flattery’s a dagger, marketing’s a bludgeon, machination’s the whole damn arsenal. Gaslighting’s fair game, as long as it gets results.
Here’s the real poison: those words haffta conceal themselves. Propaganda only sticks when folks don’t know it’s propaganda. And since reality keeps pokin’ through the cracks, the left brain heaps lie on lie, a teetering pile of bull to smother the truth, till public discourse is a stinking, tangled swamp of gibberish.
That smashed car window? Didn’t fix a daggone thing. Sure, you got your fresh air, but glass is everywhere, and a rainstorm’s coming.
Shoulda just rolled the window down.
But the retard doesn't understand that.
And neither does an unbridled left hemisphere.
