Birthday Letter

On May 26, 2003 (my 63'd birthday) I wrote the following "Letter to Kate" (as now rewritten):

Your critical feedback provides a needed gauge of how intelligent Americans will likely react to the website. These days about anything one says is subject to "correction." Someone will usually appear to argue against whatever is proposed. This is how we sharpen our language skills, of course.

Yet such "left-brain" refinements are reminiscent of Plato's portrayal of ourselves as "student captives" (preoccupied with labeling shadows on the interior walls of a cave enclosure). All the chat dulls our natural ability to observe what Karl Llewellyn called a "neglected beauty of the obvious."

Indeed this is where I got those notions which you queried about human maturation: toward a biological metamorphosis setting our minds free like butterflies fluttering from a formative "cocoon" (a myopia engendered by too much talk). Sounds naïve, no? Yet we manage, with all sophistication, to talk ourselves "out" of the obvious.

Like Zorba the Greek told the young scholar: "You think too much."

I thus suggest that we humans can grow into an adult version of ourselves: having natural ability to think with a fuller deck and better control over the chattering left-brain now dominating consciousness . . .

(which incorporates some devilish "monkey" on our backs. Imparting impulse to torture ourselves constantly: both with accusations about past failings and temptation toward new ones. A "formidable opponent" always arguing against our best interest. A trickster of learning, as the Cheyennes have suggested? Conceivably challenging us to greater things—like that fallen angel in the ancient Book of Job—in cahoots with "God Himself.")

Human agony: ensnared by a talkative serpent

* * *

The "birthday" letter continued with an account of efforts to de-verbalize my thinking accordingly, in a quest for enhanced realism. A challenge then arose to describe concretely the biggest adventure of my life: a transcendental escape from Plato's Cave by scaling the abstraction ladder (which apparently profiles consciousness in all directions from here). Yes, it was difficult to make plausible in the soon-ensuing continuation of this letter. It contains an explicit account as implicitly promised throughout this website.

Conceptual Framework
(The rough ascent)

Note (December 28 '03): Conceivably Plato's scenario depicts—among other stories-within-stories—the interior of our own heads: with a flaming light at the back. The "raised way" in front of it features internally programmed (apriori) imagery—archetypal—which is shadowed onto the walls surrounding us captives. The way out is obvious though.