Punctilious

I've been wondering why I've never learned this stuff at school proper: the more exotic members of punctuation marks, such as en and em dashes, semicolon, colon, etc. I suspect the philosophy here is like the lion cub being pushed off the cliff: we the fledgling young writers are to fend off  in the real word of writing and out of the jungle of words we would have gained the arcane secret that a cub on a rite of passage has to find out for itself.

And indeed it is best to let soak in the ocean of words to let the subtleties percolate into the deepest of your subconscious, rather than superficially reading the rules from the guidebooks (don't get me started with Strunk and White's Elements of Style, that some linguists love to hate). That said, I will attempt to write a guide of sorts, the purpose being: 1) to crystallise and organise my own knowledge, and 2) to soften the landing for a cub I'm about to push off. Here goes.

Frostian

Thanks to my overzealous notetaking as of late, I've found out that somehow I have inadvertently plagiarised Frost. See, I have had this fragmental verse written, unfinished, tentatively titled Saltsmith (though it really doesn't sit well with me), timestamped on March 15:

You are a salt statue

The undercurrent of the world is constantly eroding you

Step back, step back

Put the sign 'Under Construction'

And regain yourself

The passing sense of familiarity was tugging when I clipped from Robert Frost's Directive on May 7:

And if you’re lost enough to find yourself

By now, pull in your ladder road behind you

And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.

Then make yourself at home.

Now I would like to think that I have perhaps tapped to that great ocean of Jungian collective knowledge, though I'm sure there are less romantic explanations to it. Lesson #1: Some things are better left romanticised; Lesson #2: I should not leave such crumbs of verses and dilly-dally until they grow stale and nobody wants to eat them anymore.

Did You Know It's Christmas?

When I was on the way home from the Christmas Eve service, I heard this song again: 

Someone in the car then remarked that it makes him a little uncomfortable, asking Mary repeatedly did-you-know because she did know, albeit partially, about these things.

Well, I think that's a-little-too-matter-of-fact way of looking at it. The way I look at it:

First, I believe the questions are somewhat rhetorical -- indeed Mary knew; the angels told her some things, even though most likely she knew not the full implications of what was about to happen to her. Which brings me to the second: the tone of the question is not interrogative but jubilant. Like the chorus in a play, we are called to sing along the heavenly hosts, eager to share our own excitement, the generations down the line who have been blessed, saying Amen to Mary's Magnificat: I shall be called blessed (Luke 1:46-55). In effect, the lyricist also calls us to put ourselves in Mary's shoes, sharing her joys of being chosen as an instrument of God. In fact, moments into the song, the word that immediately occurred to me was vicarious -- in other words, we are called to take part in the Magnificat, transcending the timeline gap and experience what Mary experienced, particularly her joy, vicariously. This perspective (heavenly host singalong) is certainly unusual and as there is a dash of dramatic irony too, since we already know what is going to happen, Mary didn't. All in all, it makes you think. Literary spices are useless if the ingredients are stale in the first place. 

So ponder. Sing. Don't eat too much. Did you know you are going to have a blessed Christmas?

Caesius

Unfortunately I haven't had many chances to answer 'caesius' when asked what my favourite colour is. What I would like to tell foremost is the reason why it is my favourite. It's a soft colour and pairs quite well with any other, sure, but it is a little bit more than the mere visual quality -- it's rather synaesthetical. Caesius is foremost the colour of emission spectrum line of caesium, the alkali metal that is its namesake. It invokes the alchemist, the transformer of things. Secondly, well, it is the colour of the sky and the sea, the two great expanses that we are sandwiched between. There is a poetic quality to it -- it evokes Genesis' "the waters above and the waters under". One poet expressed this quality like this: "The dolphins that stitch the sky to the sea", and yet another. It reminds us that we are part of the firmament that stitches the sky to the sea. That we are the waters between, our hearts sky-blue expanses, transparent and vast. 

An Open Letter to A Friend Whose Friend Has Just Taken Her Own Dear Life

Dear J

I'm sorry your friend has just committed suicide. I know you had just talked to her a few months back and I know you blame yourself for not talking her out of her suicidal tendencies. I cannot claim to understand your sorrow, since it has never happened to me, though a loss, a death is something that plucks the same string in all of us, playing the same rueful tune, rippling to the very core of our souls, so let me try a few words.

The first time you told me, I referred you to an article where a father struggled with the death of his son. Let me repeat a particular sentence, as it has stubbornly repeated itself in my mind: 

It is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.

I know you are sick of people telling you to get over it, so I'm not going to tell you to. But you must. However long it will take, you must. And do not lash at those people. If they bothered to tell you, they care for you. Listen, J, as I have told you before, it takes a strong character like yours to be able to wear one's heart on one's sleeve, but an exposed heart gets cut more. Victor Frankl said that the sun needs to endure burning to give out light. You have a big, healthy heart, J, that's why you are bothered about this in the first place.

Channelling your grief into something else might work. I see that you have started running again after recovering from your injury. I swim, or write silly letters like this. The obliterated place is literally 'against the letter', so I would use words to construct the obliterated back. Remember the ankle injury that cripples you, forcing you to wear ankle guard like a clumsy Robocop? It has healed, hasn't it? The big gash in your heart will someday close, too, and you will be able to run again, be it on the field-track or the life-track.

I believe in a proper closure. That's why we have funerals, to mark the closing of a life. We have New Year's Eve celebration, to mark the closing of the year. I don't know what is your version of closure, but I hope you will find it. Attend her funeral, talk to her parents, write her a letter, write her family a letter, let go of a helium balloon to the vast sky, take a night walk in remembrance of her; do what you can do. Mark it as a closure to a chapter in your life -- a bitter chapter indeed -- and start a new chapter. Take your time, but do not dwell so long -- grief is like quagmire, the longer you stay, the longer you will get stuck.

Remember your big heart, J, the one with gashing wound and has to endure nuclear fusion to shine?
Glow for all to see.

Yours

Revisitation

I've come to realise that a part of growing up is to revisit childhood memories. You see, as a child we tend to be fascinated by every little thing, and our memories are glossed over, filtered through the rose-tinted spectacles. When you have grown up then, to those fond memories do revisitations, or as Kierkegaard put it, Repetition.
I'll give you an example. My mother makes really mean croquettes, and as far the child me was concerned, Mom's croquette was the damnedest thing ever to touch his palate. My father used to work out of town and occasionally brought a durian or two home. Again to the child me it was the most delectable thing ever. And I can tell you, the croquettes or durians I have since devoured can never compare to those I had, simply because I have associated Mom's croquette as the mark of a happy ocassion and Dad's durian as a sign of his coming home.

What I'm saying is you may need to peel off the extraneous layers of gloss on your memories, but then again maybe not -- why bother with that which has become the ideal, the unattainable? Maybe if factual information is important to glean, then you need to. But at least you need to recognise them as they are, and when you revisit the memories again, no need to suffer unnecessarily because the scenery isn't as magnificent as you remembered, the food isn't as delicious, the people aren't as kind, and so on; and chase after that which have become etched shadows in your mind. Because growing up includes an acknowledgement that you will never catch them.

Little Words

A little while ago, someone asked me to retract a comment I have made. I did what I was told, but behind my one-word compliance and the act of deleting that comment, was a torrent of daggers. Of pejoratives, of expletives. Like a cartoonish scene where it is calm and warm by the fireplace, but by the window the droplets incessantly knock the glass like bullets from a submachine gun. Up to this moment I still wonder why I am so bitter -- understatement -- about the little incident; after all it was just one sentence, one line. A dim, flickering light in the midst of high-flux spotlights, making no difference in or out of existence.

If I want to be brief about it though, perhaps the reason goes something like this: As someone who aspires to use words to make a living, I produce every line with careful consideration, and this one was no exception. Wordsmiths take pride in their creations, and when those flickering children die, the wordsmith die a little. The issue was what I said can be interpreted as libellous, somewhat. But exactly that was what I took pride in in that statement -- it can be interpreted as praise or scorn. For those in the know, the interpretation can mean that the person in consideration is lenient, lenient to a fault perhaps, but nothing scornful. For those not in the know, this nuance would be absent. Thus I was playing the classical ambiguous statement -- crusing along the fence -- here. It explains the situation quite nicely with a veiled nuance, without giving too much away. "Witty enough," said the self-editor in me.

Let me digress. Words and mouth are quite intertwined. The mouth, being the producer of the spoken language, is subject to a lot of metaphors. Needless to say, they are related to speaking and eating. But: speaking produces, eating consumes; isn't that antonymic? But there is an excellent example which manages to unite the above ostensible opposites:

Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
-- Matthew 4:4

And how interesting indeed that the one who spoke of these things is also known as the Word, or Logos in the original Greek. The mouth is then a point of reconciliation. Words are bread. Words nourish us. Indeed these are true for the words from the Scripture. But we bear semblances to the Word, after all we are in his image. Thus the words we produce indeed nourish sometimes, though at most other times they destroy.

In this way our words are powerful, our tongues are tongues of fire dancing a dance of destruction. And I'm reminded of this everytime I recall that little incident.

It doesn't help to abate the internal pouring torrent of expletives, though.

How Zeus Unites All There Is

[Ms. Freedman / Sophomore English / Period 5 / Journaling prompt: Write a one-page story in which your favourite mystical creature resolves the greatest sociopolitical problem of our time.]

I can't exactly say what the greatest sociopolitical problem of our time is. And that's befitting of the title 'the greatest', it refuses to be captured in a few words. But I will try to explain it as I understand it. It probably can be summed up in one word: fragmentation, but give me the luxury to elaborate, if you please.

I would start with countries. Countries are strange -- people need to be segregated, given different identities, possessing different cultures. Ms. Freedman, I came from a third-world country. My great-grandmother travelled the rough seas to settle down there. Wars had been fought, blood had been spilled, our land had been occupied, our people had been slaves, because -- because of our exotic spices? Mr. Duma, our economic teacher, said that countries specialise and trade is beneficial. Tell that to our plundered land, to our raped women, to our children forced into labour. Tell them! Just because you happen to be born on one side and we on the other; no, it doesn't give right to you or I to treat the other side like trash. Countries need not be separated like this.

The very fabric of our economy is in shambles. I don't know about stocks and forex, probably you do, Ms. Freedman, because it seems like nowadays everybody's uncle is dabbling in stocks and forex. I am always bewildered at how people can make money based on changes in stock price and currency exchange rate. Where does it come from? Someone's gotta pay for it all: a man's fortune is another's misery. The feeling is somewhat like when how I sweat at the thought of air-conditioning -- where would the heat go? The law of equivalent exchange -- we will pay for our cool air somehow, maybe we are. Is this thing called economic structure a big Ponzi's scheme like the one cooked up by that Madoff guy? Would our children or theirs pay for the price eventually? Seriously, Ms. Freedman, how does one sleep with these thoughts? 

My mystical creature would be able solve this. I choose Zeus. Alright, Ms. Freedman I know it's cheating -- 'mythical' is not exactly 'mystical' but fussing over minor differences may be someone else's greatest sociopolitical problem ever, you know. Anyway, Zeus. As in Zeus the ruler of the gods. The one in the presence of whom all heads, mortals and gods alike, must bow. The one who wield the thunder bolts. The one causing static tingling in the electronics section... OK, that must be a different god, but I digress.

Having reigned over naughty immortals (who acted suspiciously similar to adolescents, mortal ones), he should know how to reign over us mortals. He would establish good governance, unified every country into a federation, set up a sensible economic system, etc., etc. No, he won't be a communist leader, nor will he be a fully democratic one. Before Aristotle was, he is; so I would presume he knows something about moderation.

Having said that, I would advise not to rely on him completely. After all, we are mortals and he isn't. The word devil may have its root in the Greek word diábolos, slanderer, but I am more persuaded to believe that it goes back to the Sanskrit word deva, god. It reminds us that the angels can fall, the Morning Star banished to the depths of Hades. Which fits wonderfully to Milton's Paradise Lost, where the Greek gods are cast as the fallen angels. See? I did my summer reading, Ms. Freedman.
Alright, Ms. Freedman, can we drop this farce already? I've told you how my favourite mystical creature resolves the problem. Well, the problem is still there, and it's not going to mystically resolve itself. So we've got you and me and a bunch of other people. Not mystical in any way, but that's the point.

Wordsmith

One of the tasks of a writer is: to give forms to the formless, perhaps even primal, instincts, urges, train of thought, notion, that lurk behind the curtain of the unconscious, at the back of one's mind. Good writers make you go: "Wow, my thoughts exactly." Deep inside, the reader already knows and the writer simply crystallises the knowledge into cluster of words. It sounds Jungian, but I do believe the collective unconscious exists, in one form or another.

Unfortunately, this talent to crystallise comes at a cost. Almost all writers are afflicted with some sort of mental problem; think of poets and their associated tragedies. This is not suprising: literature verily reflects humanity, and the curator of the knowledge of humanity, the writer, stands in the midst of it all, the vortex of which may corrode the soul. I said 'may', because there is another possibility which is the very opposite: it may temper the soul. Wilfred Owen drank from his bitter cup -- his experience of war -- that's the source of his art. There were other writers who got drunk from their own tragedies and took their own lives. But there are also those who swallowed the poison and rose up stronger. To the writer, the act of writing may be itself therapeutic, redemptive even. Their darkness precipitated from the hearts to the pages. The grief percolating between the lines.

But they are they; and it remains to be seen what will become of the rest of us, each a writer of our own lives. Will we join the ranks of the tragic or otherwise? Yes, each of us should consider himself a wordsmith; it's not the matter of being a professional or a dilletante, but simply being one is part of being human. Your words will outlast you, outlive you, and I do mean 'outlive' you in terms of vivacity:

I asked the servant Leo why it was that artists sometimes appeared to be only half-alive, while their creations seemed so irrefutably alive. Leo looked at me, surprised at my question. Then he released the poodle he was holding in his arms and said: "It is just the same with mothers. When they have borne their children and given them their milk and beauty and strength, they themselves become invisible, and no one asks about them anymore."
-- Hermann Hesse, The Journey to The East

So, back to writing, shall we?

Uncountability

"I don't have much friends," a friend remarked sometime ago on Facebook. The grammar Nazi in me almost jumped at the incorrect quantifier, but I held back and pondered a little.

When you think about it, his quantifier there makes very much sense. Friends are uncountable. You value some like treasures; some are just plain bad company.  

And this is especially true in the context of social networking. It doesn't matter how many Facebook friends you have; it does matter how much.

Toxic

If you think the only people who care about metaphorical-to-literal transcendence are pedantic linguists like yours truly, then you are mistaken.

It is important to be aware that metaphors are woven to the very fabric of language itself, and affect its dynamism.

Take toxin, a relatively modern concept due to the advance in medicine. If you trace the etymology, it comes from Ancient Greek word toxikos (τοξικός), which "[pertains] to arrows or archery". The concept of toxin being deadly and fast-acting is then borrowed from arrows: toxin is a metaphor.

Consider how toxin now has transcended its metaphorical husk, flapping wings, gliding gracefully on the literal plane, landing on the minds unaware that it is a denizen of the otherworld.

Literally

There has been some commotion regarding the use 'literally' a general intensifier, basically just a substitute of 'very'. Language Log has a post with links to older posts and xkcd, here.

My initial reaction was, you guess it, lamenting of the disrepaired state of ignorance concerning semantics nowadays, and left it at that. 

Recently when I came across another usage, I reconsidered my stand. Perhaps 'literally' here could just be another case of metaphorical-to-literal transcendence. The purpose of this device is, I repeat, to confuse the literal and metaphorical planes; one is transcended to the other, so as to deliver impact. Very similar to the effect of hyperbole: we know it's just an exaggeration, yet the impact is still there.

Put in another way, 'literally' here is to be interpreted metaphorically, so that the act of transcending the metaphorical plane to the literal plane, the act itself exists on another metaphorical plane altogether.

So there you have it. You may employ 'literally' as a general intensifier. It's just, if you don't think about why you may, that is pure ignorance.

God and Personification (Addendum)

Just a bit of juxtaposition. Divine simplicity says that God is simple. On the other hand, Man is a composite, which is nicely captured in this excerpt:

The phenomenon called 'I'
Is a single green illumination
Of a presupposed organic
alternating current lamp
(a composite body of each
and every transparent spectre)
The single illumination
Of karma's alternating current lamp
Remains alight without fail
Flickering unceasingly, restlessly
Together with the sights of the land and all else
(the light is preserved... the lamp itself is lost)
(the totality flickers in time with me
sensing all that I sense coincidentally)
For these twenty-two months
Brought together in paper and mineral ink
Passage by passage of light and shade
They are truths as they are drawings of the spirit
-- Kenji Miyazawa, Spring and Asura

God and Personification

I used to wonder why we Christians say that 'God is love', not 'God is loving'. 'God is loving' is fine, because 'loving' is an adjective, so it is a modifier, explaining the attribute of God being full of love (it seems that the linguist has always been dormant in me). Well, now that I am a student of literature, I found that it is just a personification, a literary technique. A quick recapitulation, as I wrote before:

When the first letter of a word is capitalised, it is like a name of a person, so we say that the word is personified. Other notable examples would be 'Mother Nature' and 'Death'. Think of those two words carefully -- if you are imaginative maybe you will conjure images of benevolent mother and grim reaper. So you see, personification firstly changes the status of the intangible to the tangible. Fear, nature, death -- those are abstract concepts and are difficult to picture. What personification does is giving them bodies -- embodying them in real objects, bringing them from imaginary to real plane. What's more, they are not just tangible objects, but persons. With personalities, with emotions, with will, with mind; it's a Being.

Then it makes sense. God is, then, not only loving, but the very embodiment of love. Seen in this light, John 1:1 also makes a lot of sense:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
-- Jn. 1:1

'The Word' is translated from the Greek word logos [λόγος], from which we derive logic and all our -logies; basically, knowledge. Here we can see also that God is also the embodiment of knowledge itself.
But it should be noted that this is not, and should not be regarded as, simple personification.
First, as the name suggests, personification seeks to make a person out of something, to the level that other persons, that is, we, can relate to. We borrow the attributes of 'Mother', for example, to describe Nature; something we can easily conjure images from. Sometimes, personification also borrows infallibility of humans, subject to passions and other things. This, of course, cannot be true for God, since an infallible God is not God.
Second, personification is a subset of metaphor, a literary technique. But when we say 'God is love', or 'the Word was God', we don't mean metaphorically, but literally: God is the very embodiment of all His attributes. In other words, the Being God is, is identical to His attributes, literally. When Moses asked God for His name, God replied: "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14). God just is.
For these two reasons, this concept is, to be sure, not just simple personification. This concept can be summed up as divine simplicity, originating from Thomas Aquinas, or, some may argue, the ancient Greek philosophers.
I will leave the more theological and philosophical discussions to the Wikipedia page and the references therein. Be warned that divine simplicity, despite its name, is not simple. Goes without saying.

Paradoxes of Omnipotence and Freedom II

...in serving be free.
-- Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, p.74

Freedom, then.

I held out writing this one to finish reading Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. One of their major themes is freedom, or more accurately, the paradox thereof.

Let's put aside free will aside for a moment. Let's deal with the more general concept of freedom first. The paradox, in Christian context, is this: We often speak of being liberated from the slavery of sin. But Paul called himself the slave (doulos) of Christ (Rom. 1:1). Certainly, no man can serve two masters (Mt. 6:24). Though the latter's context is about serving God or Mammon, we can see that we are under the slavery of sin or God, never neither. Some questions: Is there, then, true freedom? If the said true freedom means being free from sin and God, does that mean necessarily a good thing? Do we really want such true freedom?

What does freedom really mean? I find it necessary to quote at length (emphasis mine):

After the principal's address, while everyone was on the way to the bravely bedecked dining hall, Knecht approached the Master with a question, "The principal," he said, "told us how things are outside of Castalia, in the ordinary schools and colleges. He said that the students at the universities study for 'free' professions. If I understood him rightly, these are professions we do not even have here in Castalia. What is the meaning of that? Why are just those professions called 'free'? And why should we Castalians be excluded from them?"
The Magister Musicae drew the young man aside and stood with him under one of the giant trees. An almost sly smile puckered the skin around his eyes into little wrinkles as he replied: "Your name is Knecht, my friend, and perhaps for that reason the word 'free' is so alluring for you. But do not take it too seriously in this case. When the non-Castalians speak of the free professions, the word may sound very serious and even inspiring. But when we use it, we intend it ironically. Freedom exists in those professions only to the extent that the student chooses the profession himself. That produces an appearance of freedom, although in most cases the choice is made less by the student than by his family, and many a father would sooner bite off his tongue than really allow his son free choice. But perhaps that is a slander; let us drop this objection. Let us say that the freedom exists, but it is limited to the one unique act of choosing the profession. Afterward all freedom is over. When he begins his studies at the university, the doctor, lawyer, or engineer is forced into an extremely rigid curriculum which ends with a series of examinations. If he passes them, he receives his license and can thereafter pursue his profession in seeming freedom. But in doing so he becomes the slave of base powers; he is dependent on success, on money, on his ambition, his hunger for fame, on whether or not people like him. He must submit to elections, must earn money, must take part in the ruthless competition of castes, families, political parties, newspapers. In return he has the freedom to become successful and well-to-do, and to be hated by the unsuccessful, or vice versa. For the elite pupil and later member of the Order, everything is the other way around. He does not 'choose' any profession. He does not imagine that he is a better judge of his own talents than are his teachers. He accepts the place and the function within the hierarchy that his superiors choose for him–if, that is, the matter is not reversed and the qualities, gifts and faults of the pupil compel the teachers to send him to one place or another. In the midst of this seeming unfreedom every electus enjoys the greates imaginable freedom after his early courses. Whereas the man in the 'free' professions must submit to a narrow and rigid course of studies with rigid examinations in order to train for his future career, the electus, as soon as he begins studying independently, enjoys so much freedom that there are many who all their lives choose the most abstruse and frequently almost foolish studies, and may continue without hindrance as long as their conduct does not degenerate, The natural teacher is employed as teacher, the natural educator as educator, the natural translator as translator; each, as if of his own accord, finds his way to the place in which he can serve, and in serving be free. Moreover, for the rest of his life he is saved from that 'freedom' of career which means such terrible slavery. He knows nothing of the struggle for money, fame, rank; he recognizes no parties, no dichotomy, between the individual and the office, between what is private and what is public; he feels no dependence upon success. Now do you see, my son, that when we speak of the free professions, the word 'free' is meant rather humorously."
-- Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, pp.73-74

Leverkühn suffers from the excessive freedom of post-Romantic subjectivity, which paradoxically has at this stage in musical history itself become an oppressive convention; and from a hyper-intelligent technical grasp which allows him instantly to see through every musical trick used by other composers – or hinself. What he craves is a compelling new order that will lift the paradoxical burden of freedom, and a new primitive simplicity that will be a refuge from his own sophistication.
-- T. J. Reed, Introduction, Doctor Faustus, p.ix

Germany is free, in so far as one may apply to a land prostrate and proscribed.
-- Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus, p.518

You can't miss the unmistakably contemptuous and Aristotelian-golden-mean tone everytime freedom is mentioned. Too much freedom can't be good. Freedom may just be an illusion of it.

The first passage may sound socialistic. Let's not go into that, but you can watch this TEDTalk instead where the speaker talks, among other things, of freedom of choice in once-socialist countries.

I should just conclude this post in thoughtful tone with my opinion on free will and predestination:

Some might argue that predestination precludes free will; it is deteministic. This is not necessarily the case. It just happens that God has free will, too. You are free to choose, so is He. Men try all the time to turn the tides of history; if God chooses to dip His finger in the flow of Time, how would you argue that He can't? 

Paradoxes of Omnipotence and Freedom I

Listverse has just released a list of paradoxes. They are excellent sources of philosophical discussion, but alas, when it involves religion, the paradox in question has to be resolved, or at least has its illusory contradiction laid bare. 

There are two paradoxes which may confuse the Christian. The first being the paradox of omnipotence, which is the first item on Listverse's list. The other being the paradox of freedom, not on the list.

I shall try to touch on them at length.

Of omnipotence:

A classical problem:

Can God create a rock so heavy He can't lift it?

Answering yes or no would imply incapability of either creating or lifting the stone, and assuming omnipotence is the "capability to do all things", this is a paradox.

As Utahraptor said here, this can be generalised like thus:

If you can do anything, then you can do things that prevent you from doing other things, and therefore, you can't do anything.

In simpler terms: if you have the powers to do everything, you would have the power to strip yourself of all powers included, then you don't have any power. Clearly, this has to mean that there is a fundamental error in our notion of omnipotence, because if we follow the logic of the paradox, omnipotence itself may lead to impotence.

Omnipotence, then, has to be redefined so as the definition is such that it excludes contradictions to itself, unlike our definition above. In turn, we have to narrow down the list of the powers of the omnipotent. This may sound absurd if we relate back that the omnipotent Being is God. This has to mean that God has limitations of what He can do.

Fair enough, but it is even absurder if you don't limit on what God can do, for instance: God can sin. Well, no, of course not. Does that mean God is not all-powerful? Quite the opposite. 

God cannot sin. If we generalise this, we can say: God cannot contradict himself. That would solve the rock problem. The answer is a simple 'no', simply because God cannot contradict himself.

Thus, the source of the paradox is on the inherently contradictory definition of omnipotence itself. The definition cannot be all-encompassing, because some powers would contradict others.

Paradox of freedom, in due course.

Lexical Order

If you have shelved your thermodynamics at the back of your mind, go retrieve it. Done?

Δ_fH^O 

According to the order of appearance: change, formation, enthalpy, standard. 

But lo and behold, you are supposed to read that as: standard enthalpy change of formation. How can that be?

This is because English language adopts lexical order which does not really follow natural thinking process. First off, languages can be divided into two according to the lexical order: modifier-modified and modified-modifier. English belongs to the former, since the modifier precedes the modified. Consider the phrase:

beautiful girl

girl is the noun, the modified, while beautiful is an adjective, so it is an attribute, a modifier.

In Swahili, the same phrase would be (courtesy of Google Translate):

msichana mzuri (literally, girl beautiful, preserving the lexical order)

Note that now the modified precedes the modifier.

As English speakers we probably do not realise how unnatural is the English lexical order. If you think about it, the main idea must be the modified, while modifiers are just attributes. If we are talking about a 'beautiful girl', we are talking about a girl, not a beautiful.

Our mind is usually concerned with the bigger picture first, i.e. the modified; while details, the modifiers, can be filled later. Is there evidence that this is the natural way of thinking? We write symbols that way. Again, look at the same symbol of  'standard enthalpy of formation':

Δ_fH^O 

Note that the modified is change. The main modifier is enthalpy. Thus it is a change -- what kind of change? Enthalpy change. 

Other modifiers, formation and standard, appear as subscript or superscript. f subscript is appended after change because formation specifies the type of change. (Digressing a little bit: This is the new IUPAC convention. Last time, the f subscript used to be placed after the thermodynamic state function. This is not very accurate since, as mentioned, formation is the attribute of change rather than that of enthalpy. IUPAC actually pays attention to proper lexical order!). Nought superscript is more like the modifier to the whole thing, like thus: (Δ_fH)^O . 

Having said all that though, it languages do have ways to reverse lexical order. English uses 'of' to place modifier after the modified:

girl of unworldy beauty

While Japanese uses the familiar 'no' (の), which performs very similar functions to 'of'. This though, one must admit, is kind of unwieldy. The rendering of our symbol if the order of appearance is to be followed would be:

Change (of formation) of enthalpy, in standard conditions

There is an alternative argument to the 'unnatural' argument, which is to say that the modifier-modified languages put more importance, then, in the details rather than the big picture. Language and culture are intertwined, as I wrote quite lengthily before. Language is the frame on which thoughts are built upon, so its structure will influence the product of thoughts, i.e. culture, in some ways. We can extrapolate, say, that users of modified-modifier languages are more individualistic than they are socialistic, because they are more concerned with details. This conclusion is, of course, far-fetched. However, you may be surprised that there is actually correlation of sorts: A lot of Western languages are actually modifier-modified and the Western culture tends to be more individualistic. 

But then again, as I pointed out before, you have to be aware that indeed language influences culture, but the other way is also true; the two are intricately intertwined. Like nature and nurture. Ouroboros-like.

Metaphorical-to-Literal Transcendence

And what the heck is that, you might ask. It just sounds fancy but it is actually very simple.

To appreciate this literary technique fully, however, one needs to understand the technicalities of metaphor first.

So, what is a metaphor? A good start is the TEDTalk titled Metaphorically Speaking by James Geary:

I would like to modify a bit:

Geary talked about

X=Y (equal)

Let us change it to

X//Y (parallel)

instead.

So for "Juliet is the sun":

Instead of Juliet=sun, we have Juliet//sun. The importance of which will be clear later.

In my working definition here, a metaphor draws a parallel from the literal plane to the metaphorical plane.

"Juliet is the sun"

"The sun" is on the literal plane. Juliet is on the metaphorical plane, having all the sunny qualities Shakespeare intended for her to have. Maybe she is warm, but nothing to do with temperature. Maybe she is radiant, but nothing to with how many lux she emits.

When we draw parallels, it is important to recognise that nothing is ever equal to something except itself.

So X can never be equal to Y, but there are some aspects of Y that in X we can find similarities to. Juliet is warm, yes, radiant, yes, ball of nuclear fusion,... wait a minute. There are only so many that you can draw parallels, but never all aspects exhaustive.

On the other hand, how many parallels one can possibly draw attests to the genius of the metaphorist. Wikipedia offers Shakespeare's As You Like It passage as a fine example of extended metaphor. I couldn't agree more:

All the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. -- Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7

Breaking down:

World//stage, men and women//actors, birth//entrance, death//exit, profession//role, periods of life//acts

This is the power of extended metaphor, to amaze by the many parallels and somehow all of them are coherent, unified in a certain manner or theme.

Now, there is a reason to segregate the two planes and keep them separate. Simply because it can get quite confusing otherwise. But of course rules are meant to be broken right?

Don't judge a book by its cover. But a car is not a book.
-- Seen outside a car showroom

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx

These are what I call metaphorical-to-literal transcendence. It simply means that the metaphorical has been transcended to the literal. 

Let's dissect the first one first: car//book, outer appearance of a car//book cover

So far so good. The metaphor is implied through the cliché and the context that the writing is on a banner outside a car showroom. The second sentence then promptly destroys the parallel and transcends the car from metaphorical to literal plane. A car is not a book. Of course! They exist in different planes in the first place. The ruination of the metaphor is a clever ploy, since it forces one's mind to consider the literal car, not simply a generalised consumable that is not to be judged by its outer appearance alone.

Second one -- easier to use equality model of metaphor here: outside of a dog=other than a dog, inside of a dog=dog innards

It is quite clear that the first sentence, 'outside' is meant metaphorically, but in the second 'inside', defying the logical pattern, is meant literally.

Bottom line, what does this literary technique serve?

It should be noted that the obfuscation of metaphorical and literal planes is, as I mentioned, exception rather than the rule, so it has the novelty, defiance-tinged kind of impact, but it has to be used sparingly.

Last thing. If you notice, I have explained metaphorical-to-literal transcendence using 'planes', which is itself a metaphor. That just means that the whole article itself is metaphorical-to-literal transcendence, no?

The first thing that dissolves in alcohol is dignity.
-- Anon

Morarity

Just pointing out:

             L                  R
   ---------------------------------------
L  |      MOLALITY     |     MOLARITY    | 
   --------------------------------------- 
R  |      MORALITY     |     MORARITY?   |
   ---------------------------------------

Why hasn't someone filled the gap? Quick, quick, someone define 'morarity'!

(On an interesting note, MORARITY is an anagram of MORIARTY, the archenemy of Sherlock Holmes. Also, I would reckon a Japanese speaker of English would have a hard time distinguishing the four since romanisation of all four would be the same.)

Utopia (again)

Utopia should be this place of impeccability, of manifested ideals. Based on previous argument, where I said that dystopias lack something, then utopia must be this place of completeness, all things in a harmonious gestalt. But what is 'complete', really? Gandhi said that "[t]here is enough for every man's need but not greed". We always desire for something more. And there's another question: after the state of completeness is attained, what next?

Let's answer the latter first. Atwood has this to say:

Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's now way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.
-- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Her view is a morbid one. After we are in paradisum, that's it. The story stops. This is difficult for me to imagine. After all, they always say that the only thing that is constant is change. Or maybe there is another kind of perfectness where it is more dynamic, changing from perfection to perfection? I imagine it to be so because by definition, there is no such thing as 'boring' in a utopia, isn't there? So are we doomed to never reach there?

Moving on: What is 'complete'?

My picture of 'completeness' would be the Oneness that the Hindus are trying to find paths of enlightenment to. And that wouldn't be too far-off -- we can relate spiritual enlightenment here to the utopian state of perfection. This idea of Oneness as the highest state has also pervaded sci-fi. I have encountered a few stories whereby there is a running thread: the highest state of evolution is where we would abandon our physical bodies and spiritually become one single consciousness.

Summing up: Will we ever reach 'completeness' then?

Let's reword 'completeness' as 'fullness' here. In Avatar, Mo'at, Neytiri's mother and the shaman of the Omaticaya, mentioned a metaphor about empty and full cups. I'm borrowing that metaphor here: a cup fully filled is our 'completeness'. To be full, then, the cup has to be emptied first. And you can see how this fits very nicely with what Khalil Gibran said:

The deeper that sorrow carves onto your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
 -- Khalil Gibran

And William Blake echoes:

And when this we rightly know
Thro' the World we safely go.
Joy & Woe are woven fine,
A Clothing for the Soul divine;
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
-- Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

I talked about this before under Dualism Paradox, so read the details there. So the first way to achieve utopia: suffer through dystopia first. Like Pandora's box, Hope tends to come the last, after the evils.

The second way -- and I have already dropped the hints -- is to follow the Hindus. Now, topos in Greek means 'place'. It doesn't mean that we've got to take it literally. Then we can interpret a utopia not as a place but a state instead. The Eastern spirituality seeks inward journey (compared to outward one in Western spirituality). So it's change-your-paradigm thing. Again I invoke William Blake, from the same poem no less:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
-- Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

The journey inward, besides exploring the Self, also includes exploring other Beings. To see the perfections in the imperfections.

Final thought: If you see the Wikipedia entry on utopia, you would find an uncited reference to the humorous coinage of the word 'utopia' (probably factual, albeit uncited, since one of TED speakers mentioned that, too). It goes something like this: the etymology of 'utopia' is from Greek, as I already mentioned. This presumably comes from eu (good) + topos (place). But there is another Greek prefix which in English transliterates to the same spelling: ou (no) + topos (place). It is said that the coiner intentionally keeps the ambiguity as a joke. Good place; no place.

In conclusion: I think it is really your choice to attain 'the good place' or 'the no place'. We can strive towards the 'goodness', not necessarily perfection, or at least not the idealised one, by looking inwards and getting up stronger every time we fall down. Or we can keep it as an ideal, intellectual projection that can never be.