The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality by William Egginton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lest We Forget

What does it mean to speak or write or think precisely or truthfully? Knowing a lot of words perhaps? But words on their own don’t help very much. Crossword puzzle addicts know well that any word has multiple, sometimes dozens, of meanings (‘run’ will have 645 in the next OED) , sometimes nouns (‘use’), sometimes verbs (‘use’), sometimes homographs (‘quail’) and homophones (‘to, two, too’), sometimes contradictory (‘oversight’).

In other words, words have no significance at all until they get absorbed into a context of other words. It is only through their connections with other words, that is the totality of language, that they mean anything at all. The linguistic ‘atoms’ of words (with their quark-like letters and punctuation marks acting as gluons) don’t really exist until they are used. It is only then that words become definite, and even then only in terms of other words. This is the quantum physics of everyday life.

One of the great traditions of Western religion is that of ‘negative theology’. This is the recognition that anything that is said about the divine is necessarily false. According to this tradition, to believe that it is possible to capture any aspect of God in language is not only incoherent it is blasphemous since it would turn God into an object, a mere word which is part of language created by human beings and which can only use other words to describe, analyse, and specify relations with it.

The greatest proponent of negative theology in the 20th century was the Swiss conservative theologian, Karl Barth. Barth thereby articulated a fundamental fault line in Christian thought, namely that there are irrecoverable flaws inherent in all human knowledge of the divine which cannot be overcome. As he put it succinctly, the word of Man is not the Word of God. And for Barth, the word of Man included the gospels and other sacred texts (see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)

Science, Literature, and Philosophy have their own Barths, all with similar messages. William Eggington picks three: the quantum scientist, Werner Heisenberg; the philosopher, Immanuel Kant; and the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The connection between these and Barth is apparent when it is remembered that traditionally God has been defined as Ultimate Reality. And the consistent message from all four is that the essence of this reality is not just elusive, it is unknowable.

That is to say, nothing about our knowledge of the world is stable much less true or correct. What Borges would call “eternal crevices”, Immanuel Kant “antinomies”, and scientists like Heisenberg “paradoxes”, and Barth “words” tout court, are crucial to an understanding of what it is to be human, namely the maintenance of a distance from reality in order to survive it.*

This distance is achieved through the use of language. And to the extent that language is necessary for reflective thought and therefore consciousness, it is consciousness itself which insulates us from reality for our own good (see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). That is to say, through consciousness we lose one world of possibly limitless materiality for an at least as infinite a world of words, their permutations, their ambiguities, and their utter alienation from that which is not words.

So reality can be found neither in religious texts and dogma nor the equations of physics. This principle has been perennially established and perennially forgotten. The tendency persists to put faith, trust, or commitment in language as if it could somehow contain the infinite depths it cannot express. This is called either fundamentalism or scientism. The terms are functionally equivalent and reflect a baseless faith in language rather than anything beyond language like God or reality..

The essential human virtue implied by folk like Barth, Heisenberg, Borges, and Kant is, interestingly, neither among the central virtues of religious teaching, nor is it mentioned in courses on mathematics, scientific method, or literary writing. This virtue is Intellectual Humility. Humility might be summed up as devotion to a single (linguistic) maxim: Whatever we think we know about God or reality, it is not that.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, was an implicit devotee of negative theology and professional humility when he noted “… what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about, we must pass over in silence” We can only speak with and therefore about words. Heisenberg was somewhat more expansive: “The ability of human beings to understand is without limit. About the ultimate things we cannot speak.” These are humbling remarks. And I think they reflect Eggington’s central thesis, evident in his use of the Borges quotation in his title: “There is indeed rigor in the world, but humanity has forgotten, and continues to forget, that it is the rigor of chess masters, not of angels.”

* This is explicit in the Jewish Kabbalistic concept of tzimtzum (withdrawal) in which Ein Sof, the originary substance of God, is made self-limiting because creation could not live within it.

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Sense without matter;: Or, Direct perception, by A.A. Luce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A Hidden Gem

This is a reinterpretation of the “immaterialist” philosophy of the 18th century Irish bishop, George Berkeley. Although published in 1954, the book has the style and vocabulary of 50 years earlier when theologians (of whom, Luce) and philosophers still had conversations in print. So the almost complete break between the two disciplines that occurred after the First World War has marooned Luce’s thought in a kind of intellectual Never Never Land, missing both the ‘linguistic turn’ in mid-century philosophy as well as the growing focus on consciousness as a central philosophical issue.

It is in this more recent discussion of consciousness that Luce’s ideas, and Berkeley’s, take on renewed relevance. Thinkers like Ian McGilchrist, Daniel Dennett, Bernardo Kastrop, and Donald Hoffmann point to consciousness as the progenitor of reality. Although they would use different terms, these philosophers and scientists would likely agree with Luce’s claim that “[T]here is no matter other than the sensible, and that by a frank, fearless, but accurate, acceptance of that position, speculative problems are simplified, mental efficiency is enhanced, and a long step towards truth is taken.”

It is easy to parody this old-fashioned claim of strict idealism. It is much more difficult to dismiss either the latest findings in neuro-science and evolutionary biology which confirm it. To say, as Luce does that “The geometry of the real world and the physics of the real world must clearly be the geometry and physics of the real world perceived.” is only a small step from the observation that the observed neural complexity of the brain is what consciousness itself creates.

Having no apparent familiarity with the work of Heidegger, Luce seems to channel his thought when he says, “For more positive and more definite teaching on matter we must leave the theory of being, and come to the theory of knowing” He is referring here not to the limited (and unsuccessful) epistemology of Kant that involves matching words to things, but a radical epistemology that starts with the primacy of consciousness as the source of even the Kantian categories of space and time.

So despite his relative obscurity in both philosophical and theological circles, Luce is an important intellectual link in the historical chain of both

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Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight by M.E. Thomas
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Alien Minds

This book is not so much a first-person description as it is a performative demonstration of the mind of a sociopath. Or it is a send-up of the gullibility of the softer parts of the public and political establishment. Either way it is an example of sociopathy hiding in plain sight, trying to manipulate its way to even greater dominance by feigning sincerity.

Sociopaths don’t have to equipment to recognise the need for fundamental ethical standards. The rest of us don’t have the equipment to recognise sociopaths. One to four of every hundred of us is likely sociopathic. The proportion in prisons is ten times this and account for perhaps half the crimes committed. And recidivism is two or three times higher among sociopaths. It’s probably incalculable though how much harm the ‘loose’ ones produce in society, particularly since their traits of ruthless pursuit of corporate goals and personal achievement are often highly valued in society. This creates an ethical dilemma.

We presume a common understanding of the basic rules of society. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is an almost universal ethical maxim across cultures and religions. Walking in a crowded street, we make way instinctively for the less-abled. Paying cash for a small purchase, we expect to receive the correct change without counting it. Agreements in daily life are made with no thought of legal action in case of default.

But while sociopaths may learn these norms by rote as it were, they never become instinctive. Adherence depends upon an entirely separate analysis of cost-benefit. Personal interests, standing, reputation, rather than courtesy, civility, or fellow-feeling are the deciding factors for the sociopath’s behaviour. Sociopaths lie without flinching, disregard any obligation on a whim, and cruelly manipulates others for personal enjoyment. When justified by his personal calculus of power, the sociopath will without remorse, guilt or regret, inflict harm, suffering or inconvenience on the rest of us. Functionally they are “replicants, organic androids,“ in the dialogue Thomas quotes from the film Blade Runner. In short, they are predators.

Therein lies the dilemma. How can sociopaths be prevented, or at least discouraged, from inflicting the great harm they are capable of. “… there is no known effective treatment for sociopaths…“, admits Thomas. Presuming them innocent allows them to commit a sort of societal arbitrage. The kindness they receive is only of transactional benefit, or ‘fuel’ to them. They give only when they get more in return, and even then only if the return exceeds a minimal threshold.

On the other hand. identifying sociopaths and constraining them from their typical behaviours is problematic - certainly from a criminal point of view, but more fundamentally from the perspective of moral reasonableness. They look like the rest of us - until they don’t. They are acutely aware of any deterrent that might be established, and are capable of cleverly evading the transgression of the letter of the law. And there are no reliable tests for diagnosing the condition even if the general population could be convinced or coerced into taking tests.

In any case isn’t sociopathy a form of mental incapacitation, like autism let’s say, that demands tolerance and social acceptance of neurodiversity not criminalisation? The sociopath is not responsible for the genetic inheritance which is the likely root of his condition. And almost everyone exhibits some sociopathic traits from time to time. Sociopathy can only be considered as a spectrum. At what point on the spectrum should the person not the behaviour be condemned? Perhaps sociopathy is simply the modern term for original sin. In the end, Thomas thinks it boils down to the question of “What do you do to people you simply don’t like?”

Ms Thomas has no real suggestions for addressing this issue. Everything in her book, bar the not very interesting details of her family background and private life, is already known and documented. And she knows it’s known. So why the book? Sociopaths don’t suffer oppression or discriminatory social practices. On the contrary, they have the rest of society at their mercy. Sociopaths don’t suffer mental torment because of their condition. They have no ill-feelings toward themselves and no regrets about who they are or what they’ve done to others. Sociopaths may be the most privileged and well-adjusted people on the planet.

In addition to her book, Ms Thomas has started a website and a discussion blog for the similarly-afflicted. She thinks that more research (and therefore government funding) is necessary to better understand the condition. And by simply writing the book, she clearly wants the rest of us to sympathise with the plight of the many, many secretly deformed individuals who exist among us. In short, Thomas wants us to see that sociopaths are victims, and as such deserve dignity, attention, and, who knows, compensation for their disability. This is a political tract masquerading as a memoir. And in today’s political environment I’m sure there are many who will respond to her call.

I will not be contributing to the cause

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Hiding in the Mirror: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions, from Plato to String Theory and Beyond by Lawrence M. Krauss
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Scientific Validity Is Not Truth or Reality

Within this brief summary of physics over the past two centuries Krauss has a great deal to say about truth and reality and the way the first is established by the second in science. He puts it this way: “[T]he central question becomes: To what extent do our imaginings reflect our own predilections, and to what extent might they actually mirror reality?” This metaphor of a ‘mirror’ is one that has been casually used for centuries. It has also be roundly critiqued as misleading and problematic for the concepts of both truth and reality (See: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...). Krauss’s book and particularly his criteria for determining the truth of recent scientific theories demonstrates the issues which he seems unaware of.

As background to my interpretation of the book, for example: the physical theory of gravity formulated by Isaac Newton allowed us to successfully land human beings on the Moon and bring them back safely. Does this mean that Newton’s theory is true? No, it is not. More recent theories in physics claim that gravity is not a force as Newton conceived it but rather a distortion in space-time caused by massive objects. Gravity as such is therefore not even a ‘thing’.

But we certainly experience something which we call gravity. Does this mean that we simply don’t have the natural sensory apparatus necessary to detect its real character. Also no, because we have been able to enhance our sensory faculties through technology. This allows us to confirm and precisely measure the distortions in space-time correlated with our experience of gravity.

With our newer relativistic theories we have been able to predict and confirm the movements of large galactic structures. Does this mean that we have been able to ‘approach reality’ more closely? No. Newtonian physics is not a ‘special case’ of relativity physics even if it gives the same suggestions for getting people to the moon. The two are contrary views of reality, with very different ontological concepts. The entire history of physics is one of successive ‘breakthroughs’ the effects of which are to rubbish everything previously thought to be taken for granted about reality. As some physicists put it therefore: Even space-time is ultimately doomed. It doesn’t exist except as a very useful fiction.

I am not primarily suggesting this has anything essential to do with our natural perceptual limits (although there is a good argument that this is the case). I am claiming that it is a consequence of ideas and concepts that are derived from reflection on this experience, not from experience itself. These ideas and concepts are literally imagined. Krauss points to imagination as the essentially human attribute: “[I]magination almost defines what it means to be human.” And he’s correct. But imagination requires language in order to formulate and communicate, even to communicate the concept of imagination. And there’s the rub.

Krauss goes off the rails when he claims that through science, as a disciplined form of imagination, “… we gain new
insights into our own standing in the universe.” This we certainly do not do, unless it is to recognise that “our standing” is entirely uncertain. That is, we know nothing more about the reality of the universe, including our place in it, than we as a species have ever known before, which is precisely nothing.

Surely we are able to do things we have never done before because of the knowledge we have accumulated and shared about ‘how the world works.’ But we can only use that phrase in the strictly pragmatic sense that our knowledge has permitted us to achieve a result. And part of that knowledge is that we have produced innumerable desirable results - like travel to the Moon - using knowledge which we have subsequently learned to be wrong. Our ideas and theoretical concepts may useful whether they are true or not and whether or not they conform with something called reality.

Krauss feels that “If we couldn’t imagine the world as it might be, it is possible that the world of our experience would become intolerable.” This seems dangerously close to the religious belief that we need the concept of God to make the world bearable. In either case, the epistemological value of that sentiment is zero. It is a kind of whistling in the ontological dark. By ignoring our own incapacity to definitively match our scientific ideas and concepts, indeed any kind of language, with what is not-language, we repress the knowledge that we cannot control the universe, not even by naming it (See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... And https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... And https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ).

Krauss makes frequent reference to religion as a sort of parallel inquiry into reality. But what he doesn’t seem to realise is that theologians have long recognised the basic principle that fundamental reality, that is, what they call God, is beyond any description, that no theory of God’s existence is even remotely correct. So unless scientists wish to call their findings some sort of divine revelation which is fixed in dogmatic formulae that can’t be challenged, they are forced to accept this basic principle. Reality is beyond language. No matter what we are able to accomplish through language, we get no closer to the world it purports to represent.

In fact it seems as if the more we know, for example about quantum physics and general relativity, the less coherent our language about the world becomes. Reality is probably something beyond our experience given our perceptual limitations. But is certainly beyond our capability to express. Krauss’s suggestion that there are “hidden realities” to be discovered through science is therefore highly misleading. There may be many more theories of the world in our future, but none of these will correspond to a reality. Like God, whatever we think reality is, He/It is not that.

Krauss is correct in one specific observation. Science, like art, discloses new ways of viewing the world. But to claim that these new ways are about reality or even an approximation of reality is unsustainable by the standards of science itself. What science creates may be useful, exciting, inspiring. But ultimately it is another form of poetry. Like the best of poetry, science is useful, exciting, or inspiring when it points to something beyond itself that cannot be described by science. Like the best of theology, science is most robust when it recognises that truth, like God, is a fictional ideal which motivates inquiry but can never be reached.

Krauss’s potted history of scientific achievements is really a story about overcoming the prejudices and false presumptions developed largely by previous science. Science, although it is empirical, is never about experience; it is about coherence of the scientific, especially the mathematical, language du jour. It is through incoherence that science progresses. And there will always be such incoherence.

This is one implication of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem in mathematics, perhaps the most significant scientific finding of the 20th century. But this scientific finding, because it implies an infinity of future ‘horizons’ for inquiry, is, it seems to me, far from “intolerable.” It is as inspiring as the knowledge that there are infinite number of poems to be penned or paintings created. Krauss implicitly recognises this himself when he writes, “ultimately the driving force behind all human inquiry is the satisfaction of the quest itself.”

So Krauss’s unsupportable presumptions about reality and scientific validity lead him to curious conclusions. For example, he says “It is also simply disingenuous to claim that there is any definitive evidence that any of the ideas associated with string theory yet bear a clear connection to reality,” ‘Who cares?’ must be the only reasonable response. Newtonian gravity never had any connection with reality. Einsteinian space-time doesn’t either. Yet both were useful and, for their time, scientifically valid. In many ways string theory is the most coherent version of physical laws we have.

Perhaps scientists and their boosters might benefit from a slightly wider reading list. Just sayin’.

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What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Zen of Everyday Life

I think it’s easy to take this book as a YA self-help manual. It isn’t. One of its own characters sums it up accurately: “[It’s] easy to read and simple enough for a schoolchild to follow, but in language that is not in the least childish. ” There is a cumulative message that I think rightly can be called a philosophy, the central tenet of which is: Strive to understand a bigger purpose through the life and its circumstances you experience, and help others to do the same. Perhaps the modern, and slightly more precise and less sectarian version, of the perennial maxim of ‘Do unto others…’

Ms Aoyama’s suggestion for executing this philosophy is unexpected but straightforward: Read. Her rationale for this is far more subtle than reading for the accumulation of knowledge or power. As Ms Komachi, the librarian and central character, points out about the personal revelation of one of her clients: “You may say that it was the book, but it’s how you read a book that is most valuable, rather than any power it might have itself. It’s not what you read but how: ” The subject matter of the book, while not irrelevant in attracting the reader, is subservient to its power to promote practical meditation about one’s life. This may be through a single word, a phrase or by an idea not contained at all in the book but only inspired by it.

This power, according to Aoyama, is most significant at a point in life in which it is most difficult to access it, namely during personal or professional crises. Change, disappointments, frustrations provoke responses which, if yielded to, lead to more of the same. But action not thought appears most cathartic - shout at the spouse, quit the job, store up resentments, etc. etc. Nonetheless the magic of the book and its distractive, insinuating effect has its maximal potential at this moment to create new possibilities for action.

Aoyama is very concerned about finding new purpose through this kind of literary meditation (much in the manner of the American philosopher, Josiah Royce. See https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). But she also recognises something crucial that is not often said, namely that no purpose is stable. It changes because we learn about ourselves and others through the pursuit of purpose, and because the world itself changes around us. Hence Ms Komachi’s admonition: “… you can start again halfway through. Even after your project begins to take shape, you can easily change direction along the way if you feel that you want to make something different after all.”

In other words persistence, single-mindedness, stick-to-it-tiveness simply leads to the same issues from which one might have escaped. In fact it is the cause of the disappointment, frustration and unhappiness we experience. Obsessively pursuing goals, objectives, and narrow achievements can destroy us. As Ms Komachi gently advises one of her patrons: “Never swerving from a path is not necessarily a virtue”

This may seem outrageous in a Japanese society in which the culture of the salary-man and corporate loyalty prevails. And it is probably equally outrageous in a Western society in which one’s worth is assessed in terms of personal ambition and monetary reward. Getting off the career train in either culture is certainly a courageous act. In any case, whatever we are as human beings is always conditioned by our circumstances and never fixed. This is what we all share - flux, uncertainty, and mutual dependence.

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Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rage Against the Mirror World


While reading Doppelgänger I felt increasingly compelled to contrast it with Dylan Thomas’s most famous poem:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The rage in these first three verses of the poem is a result of old age and, in Philip Larkin’s words, ‘the only end of age’. They are addressed to Thomas’s dying father. But the poem to some extent has become a more generalised cultural admonition. Defiance, resistance, self-actualisation, the ‘I did it my way’ heroism of the lost cause seems to be what they represent now. Thomas’s sentiments are stirring, an encouragement to assert oneself definitively at a time of crisis. Indeed not just at the hour of death but by implication throughout one’s life as a mark of one’s principled daring.

But it is just this rigid form of idealism that Naomi Klein is questioning in Doppelgänger. Instead of raging against the stupidity, venality, and danger to public life of her bête noire, Naomi Wolf, with whom she has been confused incessantly for at least fifteen years, Klein has written an essay worthy of Marcus Aurelius about how to be in the world. As she explains:

“… what drove me to write this book, sticking with it against all good judgment, is that the more I looked at her [Wolf] —her disastrous choices and the cruel ways she was often treated by others—the more I came to feel as if I were seeing not only undesirable parts of myself but a magnification of many undesirable aspects of our shared culture as well. The ambient and all-pervasive hunger for ever-more-fleeting relevance; the disposability with which we treat people who mess up; the trivialization of words and displacements of responsibility, and much else… helped me better see the dangerous systems and dynamics we are all trapped inside.”

Klein, therefore, doesn’t rage about the words, ideas and programmes promoted by Wolf and her right wing collaborators like Steve Bannon and innumerable other conspiracy-mongers. Rather she succumbs to them in a way that reveals to her (and the reader) the reasons why they are so popular. She finds she can disapprove without rage and therefore understand the motivations, if not of the other Klein, of the folk who fall into the rabbit hole of rejection of reality.

But as Klein says there is an even more important consequence for suspension of her own incipient rage: a transformative self-understanding of her own motivations and their origins in her personal experience. None of us, including Klein, wake up one morning and decide to identify and challenge the hidden presumptions and tenets of our existence. We need a reason to disengage from conflict (political, intellectual, or emotional) and its rage, some sort of crisis (which might indeed be death for some of us). For her it was the isolation precipitated by Covid, doubled by her recent family relocation to a relatively remote part of British Columbia.

Perhaps Klein’s most significant self-revelation is what she calls her (and that of many others) Mirror World. In narrow terms this is the ‘environment’ of the internet, its social apps and its constant flow of opinion, reputation, surmise, self-promotion and intentional mis-direction. This is a world of personal branding which is impossible to avoid except by participating in even more intense branding. Among other things Klein recognises that any attempt to establish a public distinction between herself and the other Naomi implies giving the Mirror World yet more power in her own life.

Klein’s description of the Mirror World reminded me of the philosopher Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror Nature which makes the more generalised case. In it Rorty pointed out that it is not the technology of perception like the internet that is the principle impediment to understanding ourselves or others. Rather it is our use of language itself as a reflection of reality which inhibits our ability to comprehend the situation we find ourselves in, to communicate with those who would claim to be engaged with a similar situation, and to make effective judgements about what to do about any differences. The medium may be the message but it is not about anything but itself. And this has been so long before modern technology made it obvious. This is the actual “dangerous systems and dynamics we are all trapped inside.”As Klein puts it, channeling Rorty:

“Artificial intelligence is, after all, a mirroring and mimicry machine: we feed in the cumulative words, ideas, and images that our species has managed to amass (and digitize) over its history and these programs mirror back to us something that feels uncannily lifelike. A golem world.”

We are all trapped in this golem world to the extent we confuse it with what actually exists outside the words we use. This is the world which deserves our rage, not the others who are similarly trapped within it. According to Klein such well-directed rage is the only way to sustain the light of human development, the dying of which is itself death.

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The Dimensions of a Cave: A Novel by Greg Jackson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Crimes of the Spirit

This is a novel about power. Professional power. Governmental power. Scientific power. The power of art. Power in relationships. Ultimately the accumulation of power to oneself. And how power works, especially when abused. The book, I think, offers something new, or at least a new interpretation of the perennial attempt to deal with power as a fundamental fact of human existence. It’s sci-fi but only just (see https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...).

The striving for power is our original sin. We want things that other people don’t want to give us. So we coerce them. We want to create things that require many other people to realise. So we persuade people to do what they otherwise wouldn’t do. Others want us to contribute to realising their desires in conflict with our own. So we resist and if necessary resist with violence. There is no escape from the striving for power and we are constantly inventing new forms of grabbing for it, many criminal but as the book’s protagonist points out “There are crimes we don’t even have words for yet. Crimes of the psyche, the spirit.” These crimes of power-seeking are what Jackson explores.

The principle weapon of power is language, the power of language embodied in communication, in technology and in law. Who controls this embodied language has the power to coerce, persuade and resist others in their striving for power. Language is “the immaterial machine, which writes itself out of perceptibility by suggesting it is only the transparent, ineffable medium of our lives.” We are in other words “flies caught in webs. We didn’t make the webs.”

And words can kill. They have ethical import. Words translated into code and algorithms can kill with exquisite subtlety. And like the inverse of a neutron bomb, they can kill the spirit - that which is not linguistic in human beings - while leaving the physical person unharmed.

…[W]hat the algorithms want, reward, and select for, and as our desire to rebel against this becomes yet another way to manipulate us, one more tactic to exploit while the policing function moves inward and installs itself, like the most potent software, in the alloy of our brains.”

As the journalist Quentin Jones, Jackson’s protagonist, knows, using language to confront power and undermine it is a paradoxical endeavour.

“‘We use abstractions to hold on to realities too big and messy to approach as they are’, Quentin said. ‘This was the root of human knowledge and power. But our abstractions ruled us and turned deadly precisely for what made them powerful in the first place: that they suggested we could encounter and subdue far more than we could.’”

Sin cannot overcome sin, even with good intentions. Idealism and power-seeking are necessarily linked. To desire an ideal implies the desire for the means to achieve that ideal whatever that ideal may be - science, peace, personal salvation, or even truth. Ideals inevitably become rationalisations for the most horrible human actions. Idealists are tolerated because “Realists have always slept better knowing that idealists are out there dying in the name of justice.”

So terrorists threaten atrocities in the name of justice. And their potential victims counter with atrocities in the name of protection. First with disinformation, then with propaganda, then with rationalisations and justifications, then physical violence, made extreme through the faculty of the scientific, sociological, and psychological plans, designs, and command-structures of language. Or alternatively, according to Jackson’s story, through the latest language-technology of Artificial Intelligence, an entirely linguistic reality which both shapes desires and fulfils them simultaneously - “the numerology of the soul.”

So who has power in such a safety-hungry world? According to Greg Jackson, and I think correctly, it is language itself. Of course it has to be. This is what Thomas Ligotti has called The Conspiracy Against The Human Race (see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). It is in the nature of language to induce us to hide what is not-language from us, including ourselves. We unwittingly allow language to become reality.

The only way to outsmart language is to recognise the seemingly divine power of language and to essentially do something it doesn’t expect. The ancient Egyptians recognised language as the product of divine creation and knew they couldn’t really comprehend it. By making it a god, Thoth, they saw its own subjectivity as a living entity. Medieval mystics - Christians like St. John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart, and Jewish Kabbalists like Nachmanides and Abulafia - undermined the power of language by divorcing it from all referents except itself. Poets of all ages from Homer and the biblical authors have twisted language to the point of incomprehension in order to make it say things it prefers not to.

The common historical strategy is clear. Language cannot be used anywhere or anytime without giving it more power, or overcome therefore by language. The only possibly effective approach available is to succumb to language totally, to give up, to recognise its invincibility, and hope to turn its power upon itself by allowing it to go wherever it wants. That is, by accepting language as reality and dealing with it as such. We can then consciously explore language and its effects from the inside as it were, within the belly of the beast (or the interactive simulation we’ve become part of) without being overcome by it. The search then becomes not one for power but for what might be called “the dark matter of the soul.”

It takes a clever journalist like Jackson’s Quentin Jones to undermine the latest technological ploy of language to give it yet more power. In essence his strategy is compatible with the Egyptians, the mystics and the poets - the recognition that everything he writes is fraudulent because language is in control. His mission is to create a “rigorous but rigorously incomplete story.” This is the “necessary, timeless fraud of the human endeavour.” Quentin is fully aware that, quite apart from any technological dominance of his experience, “The story had me; I didn’t have it. ”

And indeed, Jackson’s story had me, I didn’t have it.

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