Leaves of Grass: A Self-Referential Manifesto

Recently I got myself interested in poetry. I am not a fan of Walt Whitman, and I haven’t acquired (or maybe never will?) the taste to read through his Leaves of Grass. I find the concept of this piece of work, instead of the work itself, interesting.

Though it was first published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and rewriting Leaves of Grass, revising it multiple times until his death.

“Know thyself”. I have been having this idea to uncover myself and to organise my results into a well-written statement for the use of myself as a reminder, at least, like how this blog got started. I wrote this following essay today, originally in a messier, less structured style. It then ocurred to me that it could be developed and refined into a manifesto.

The following essay I find it to be an equivalent statement to, and partly inspired by, what T. S. Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent says about poetry and the role of poet, in the way how the Axiom of Choice is equivalent to different statements in other areas of mathematics.

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

閒嘗竊取程子之意以補之曰：「所謂致知在格物者，言欲致吾之知，在即物而窮其理也。蓋人心之靈莫不有知，而天下之物莫不有理，惟於理有未窮，故其知有不盡也。是以大學始教，必使學者即凡天下之物，莫不因其已知之理而益窮之，以求至乎其極。至於用力之久，而一旦豁然貫通焉，則眾物之表裏精粗無不到，而吾心之全體大用無不明矣。此謂物格，此謂知之至也。」

Commentaries on the Four Books, Zhu Xi

The First Question

For the moments I am alive (i.e. before I die by suicide, by accident, or of natural causes), what do I want?

Context of the First Question: “I” am a part of this world/the universal order of time and space (physics) (from my earlier post). “I” have desires that are derived from the lower layers (e.g. biology and psychology, as they are also the product of the past) (from my other post). “Not dying” is one of them (albeit a negative one) (hence it excludes the possibility of death by suicide). Here I shall explore and document the other positive desires of my living.

The First Answer: Orderliness -> Clarity

Orderliness results in clarity. Orderliness is, to me, a necessary condition towards clarity. It may be thought of as the necessary mean to clarity. I find myself sensing disorder very strongly, e.g. in words. I dislike obscurity, opacity and blurriness. I cannot perform under these states.

Orderliness requires logic and structure.

Orderliness applies to all layers of references, i.e. from the concrete things we can perceive by direct senses to the abstract concepts we process in our mind.

Orderliness is not stability. Stability is often considered in terms of the first-/lower-order of things. When changes are inevitable, stability is impossible in the absolute sense. Hence, orderliness also is not equiavelent to any kind of ideal. Any form of ideal implies a picture of equilibrium and stability. Even if there is no change, there is still more unknown than known at any moment.

The Grand Mission: To Clarify Things; To Organise The Order

An important note: It is “to organise”, not the “to create” an order. The order already exists and it must come into existence naturally. However, there can be (my hypothesis: must be) disorder somewhere in it.

My biggest enemy is disorder. My biggest motivator is to clarify things. Often I find myself procrastinate on things because I don’t consider them important enough by the degree of orderliness. One way is, naturally, to remove the unnecessary. (I need to keep in mind that determining unnecessary of a thing must first identify the owner/target of this thing.)

The order, when considered holistically, consists of multiple layers and areas. Many people have the desire to be the best in one (or more) of them, but somehow I have a stronger interest to go meta to group things back into a framework. There is always a “broader context” when we talk about a thing we see in this world. The supremum is the dawn of everything, which is at this moment per my best knowledge, the existence of the universe. Between the supremum and anything else there is always a gap to be closed. It can always goes one layer deeper.

How can I put it into good use? Basically it is to find out if some places have problems, learn good practices from the best sources (persons or books) I can find, and copy it elsewhere and everywhere.

What I Need and What I Need to Do

I always feel that I need to work in some way except when I know myself to be tired, which then I rest in order to work with a better shape. I am still trying to learn the shape of work and how much I can put into it. We are finite beings. One can do a lot of things (in terms of capability), but one cannot do a lot of things (in terms of resources, in particular, time).

Sometimes I find it strange that I am not quite a fan of entertainment, instead I need some time and space to maintain the internal order my brain can hold together with those I can write out, to keep track of the higher-order thinking, and the re-organise and reset once in a while, like the filesystem defragmentation process. It also involves the regular/constant evaluation of prioritiy.

I must constantly observe, at any given moment, if there can be a better arrangement of things and people, especially to discover if someone else is in a better place to do anything that is currently a part of my responsibility. If practically this can be transferred, always prioritise this transfer. Then, to move on to something that no one else can do at this moment and to learn to be good at it (or at least decently operational).

The First Question is now organised and clarified, and I may proceed to the other questions I see.

Appendix: Before, After and On the Good Friday

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Inferno 1, Divine Comedy, Dante

Not long ago, on the night after the Good Friday, having some echo in the memory from the muse, I wrote some verses. Although it was me who wrote it at the very first place, I must admit the whole process was done somewhat subconsciously and unintentionally. The more I re-read it, the more I reconcile it with all other thoughts that run in my head. There is still an intended audience in my mind, but I found that I myself is also among the audience:

Time present is the convergence of everything that comes before;
Time present is the divergence of everything that comes after.
Every sentence is an echo from the past.
Every sentence brings us a new scar of living,
In time future for you and me.
Time present is time future in eternity.

[…]

Let’s not try to change the laws of physics,
Whether it is arrival or departure of an object.
There is a time
And there is a place
For everything and everyone,
For everyone and you and me.
After I ask you the overwhelming question,
        Let us go.

At last, I’d like to conclude and summarise this whole essay with some good verses:

And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

East Coker, T. S. Eliot