“True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.”
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711)
The relationship between rhyme and reason has echoed throughout the centuries and I think it is time they are married. One finds the natural sense piqued when the artificial activity of the soul and language cohere with the auditory arrangement of the physical world. This is a natural reduction of the sense-making capacity to indexically represent the object of its representation. Good poetry and songwriting does this, containing lines easily taken for their objects. When words are the things, there is not much need for explanation.
The one-to-one relationship between words and reality is the first step toward understanding the rhyme between the world and us. By describing the movement of a soft wind through the grass of a hillside as a “rushing, hushing flow,” I come very near to the sound of the phenomenon itself. This sort of description is onomatopoetic: the creation of a name representing the thing itself. Words and descriptions like these mark themselves in the mind and spirit of their wielders and listeners as naturally applicable to their topic. In a language purely composed of these terms, the logical syllogism of Gottlieb Frege that establishes direct reference as defining the meaning and identity of terms would have been impossible, as there would be no possibility for the confusion or construction of distinct terms. Hesperus and Phosphorus would be understood as the same thing through the same phonetic construction that would naturally refer to them.
The beginning of natural rhyme is here, but what about reason? Reason in its deductive and inductive forms is an artificial subjection of the human soul and spirit to self-contained rules. These rules, as constructions of human thought, even in mathematical form, are true in their self-constructed bubble. However, despite this applicability, it is not the case that their conclusions are general or true. There is always a counterfactual, there is always an exception and there is always a new creation. It is also the case that the rules we deem true have an internal consistency that is unverifiable. Then, all that one can do is use their reason according to what is true in practice, using heuristics, pragmatism and faith.
Take some time to remember your favorite syllogism, or maybe one that is useful. If you are in stocks and bonds, perhaps some relationship between finance variables indicates when you are to buy and sell. However, for most people, life is less arithmetic. The single syllogism that comes to mind, for me, is: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. So Socrates will die. Interestingly, this is not even a particularly useful syllogism, that is, it is not reasonable that I remember this one over other examples of logical reasoning. Despite this, because of its prevalence in university classes, for example, I recall it. It is then rhyme that makes me recall this syllogism, not reason. Its prevalence and repetition is the decisive factor for its reappearance, and nothing else. Nonetheless, this is an important side note: Socrates as a martyr for his way of life and this obliquely referenced by philosophy classes for centuries is too important of a coincidence. This is where faith is involved in life, where the progenitor of a manner of being who would have criticized the likes of the university professors who teach him as sophists is continually reminded of his mortality.
Reason in its strict sense has been taught to me to derive from the poem of Parmenides, the Apollinian priest and philosopher. Broadly speaking, the pre-Socratics, more than merely coming before Socrates, were sowers of deep cosmological, spiritual and philosophical worldviews, dearly valuing the importance of human awareness in their practice. Parmenides wrote that he entered the underworld and received his words from a goddess. When I was in my introduction to philosophy class, this was explained as grasping for authority. I suggest we take seriously that this pre-Socratic was communing with a being from the underworld.
Parmenides wrote that because what is cannot come from what is not, then there is no change, no motion, and no becoming. Everything already is. Essentially, this creates the image of the universal brick proposed by physicists as the block universe theory and inoculates this in the human being who meditates on this claim. Alas, we are only human beings, existing in time and space with limits, thank God. Philosophers, however, are attracted to this theory, with figures like Reza Negarestani proposing that the comprehension of the total universe at once is the fundamental end of intelligence, human or artificial. His comic, Chronosis, and work, Intelligence and Spirit, explores this idea pictorally and philosophically.
This is where reason is from and where it goes. Naturally, given that the human being only has access to a certain time and space, this eternal view becomes a bed of Procrustes, extending and reducing its object and demanding them both to be, at least in the spirit of the observer. To this, the nearest similarity I can think of is the surgeon from Irrational Games’ Bioshock who began to experiment with Picasso styles on his patients. What was proposed to create unity in our minds only creates fragmentation and unease. Reason, as such, is dead. Look! It itself says it.
Only look at contemporary medical, scientific and legal terminology to see that reason affixes from a certain time and space. The human body and brain, composed of fantastic complexity and simplicity, has been reduced to a series of terms that the most organized professional still must review in his encyclopedia. The series of Greek and Latinate forms even running through basic fundamentals of the legal process, like having a court hearing, reflect the conservatism of our reason, mollifying the senses of those who may otherwise be able to handle, understand and grapple with acute myocarditis or habeas corpus.
Reason, thus, is not our master, as the most reasonable way forward would be to simplify our terms toward a common sense, in the manner of sharing our sense commonly. This would then reduce the human labor involved in learning ancient terms for their understanding of the contemporary human body and our social processes. Further, this would reduce the reliance we have on specialized workers who capitalize on the exclusivity of their domains because of the technical jargon they paid thousands of dollars to learn. Streamlining our vocabulary in this manner would help not only our common sense, but also our common cents, as there is a great degree of economic inefficiency (where efficiency is the greatest good for the greatest number) by retaining terms that serve elite interests and alienate broad swathes of the population.
Reason then dissolves from observance of rules and history to a present pragmatism with each other and ourselves. Reason also frequently merely repeats the shared false beliefs of people. For example, for many people it is reasonable that they do not get what they want, that they are not paid as much as someone who paid thousands of dollars to attend an institution, and that they are not happy.
Friends, this is not reasonable. These are the arbitrary subjections of oneself and each other to gods of Mammon and division that ignore Christ. These are the whispers of a world at antinomy with Christ, at antagonism, at hatred with our Christ: who killed our Christ, but yet now the Christ lives in authority over each of them.
Where does Christ arise here, friends? After paragraphs of rhyme and reason, philosophers and gods–where is Christ’s place? This approaches the fundamental nature of rhyme: it is something that mirrors existence, something wherein existence is clearly reflected in the individual–which notably, is exactly what reason attempts. A clear example of rhyme is the reflection of trees on a lake. Here, we have nature’s poetry, rhyming itself. Christ is the type of redemptive, victorious suffering who succeeds, overcomes and masters those forces, those principalities, that attempted to deceive Him, to declare Him unworthy and to decry His truth. His presence is real in all those who follow him, flowing from their guts living water that nourish all those around them who drink (John 7:38, observe original Greek). His presence is redemptive victory, is positive conflict and construction. His victory overcomes the past and builds something consensual and together, where victors and conquerors normally destroy and abuse. His is the bleeding, victorious heart at the center of existence and who invites each of us to partake in His love, in His suffering and in His victory.
Following Christ and living like Him is to rhyme and reason consistent with the God of the universe. It is to marry our reason with the rhyme of God, to confess, that is, to agree with God’s word.
The source of the universe Himself calls us to follow Him. We are already made in His image. Let us live as He calls us to.
Veracity as Virtue 