Removing Things From Abstraction/The Trouble With Totems
I didn’t know how to start this. I think that speaks to the point. And even now this feels like the wrong way to introduce the things that I want to say because it’s not especially clever, nor does it make enough clear-cut sense for it to be ok that it’s not clever. But for the past week I’ve foraged bits and pieces of this thought, picking them from a tree and trying to put them in an order that I can feel good about. One that explains what I’m getting at here. This section remains only because it is reflective of that foraging process.
And abstraction is like the biggest tree you could ever imagine. One where the leaves above create this feeling of being underwater, looking up at a surface. The fruit that hang from the branches are the ideas confined to the abstract, just out of reach. They may be infant concepts or knowledge structures started but unfinished or the loose turns of phrase we perform to make people believe we know what we’re talking about when we (usually) don’t. The strange thing is that they’re functionally invisible, hiding from view until looked at directly. Only after looking directly may we give ourselves the ability to pick the fruit for our own use.
When an idea has yet to be picked, it is imprisoned by the tree of abstraction. In this state, it cannot be used as a foundation for greater insights. Because it is not fully understood, anything built upon it, whether it be at layer two or layer two hundred, is liable to be unsound. It may also be weaponized against those who are unprepared to differentiate between picked fruit and unpicked fruit.
This is not to say that everything abstract may be removed from abstraction. Some ideas will be abstract forever. They are integral to the tree and will not be removed while it still lives, such as a network of underground roots. The appeal of art exists within this notion; in the presentation of concepts and thoughts that may not be removed from abstraction by anyone but the artist. Sometimes they aren’t even capable of picking their own fruit. What are museums but windows below the soil, showing connection of a different kind? Like that exhibit with the bugs, if you’ve ever been to the Field Museum.
Idea exploration is charged with the responsibility of this direct gaze; this picking. The beauty in this process lives in the way that it can be made congruent with personal preferences in learning. I’d like here to present several examples.
Sight: Looking at the fruit directly doesn’t always involve sight, but in this case it does. Looking is looking. We’ve all been on the way to a place we’ve never been. We know that anticipation and mental imagery are neighbors and eventually we learn that Google Images doesn’t get everything. Some sights are both seen with the eyes and felt due to presence. We learn that seeing is believing and picking the fruit that removes the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls or the first time seeing your lover naked from the tree of abstraction happens at the point when it is seen with the true eye, not the mind’s eye.
Rabbit Hole Diving Team: More generally, this method refers to a subscription to the ideology that there is always more to know. I’m going to represent this with reading because that’s what I personally like to do, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be reading. Unpicked fruit is to picked fruit as reading the title is to reading the entire article. I used to love analogies when I was little. Reading removes the more dense fruits from the branches. It is nothing but another form of looking directly at the fruit so it may become visible. Knowing the title is something, but because titles are often manipulated to say a certain something, knowing the title may be knowing nothing at all (Think about the way that Complex titles their articles). In a perfect world, reading an article is coming to an understanding of how the title was arrived upon and in turn coming up with your own title that will vary in how close or far it is from the original. Reading is also a viable way to earn membership to the rabbit hole diving team because it’s scalable. Reading the article is better than reading the title. Reading the chapter is better than reading the article. Reading the book is better than reading the chapter. And so on and so forth
Make It Real: Kanye has been on about nonsense recently but he’s said one or two valuable things. One of those things was a method to remove things from abstraction. On the album with the mountains (I know you know which one) he ends his introduction/rant about suicide: “just say it out loud to see how it feels.” And although it sounds like an excuse to say outlandish things, it’s actually a way to look directly at the fruit. Saying something out loud, whatever it may be, is like picking the fruit by shaking the branches. It can be construed to be rude, abrasive, and in poor taste, but by saying that he thought about killing himself out loud, he grounds an abstract idea in reality. Remember that the idea may only be understood, built upon, and used when it is removed from abstraction, and in this case Kanye has done so by giving it a real sound, by letting it join a world where it may be heard and not just thought. It is because of this removal from abstraction that he is granted power over the idea, that he may begin to understand it for the sake of defeating it. He has removed it (albeit forcefully) from the tree.
On that note, I’d like to says some things out loud.
Happy MLK day. I hope you’re off work. I hope you’re off school. The same government that has given you the permission to bathe in complacency today probably killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. Forced standstill takes on many forms. I worry that the totemic status of MLK the man and MLK the day is actually bad for black people. His work is to be celebrated, his impact to be heralded, but I worry about the presentation of the man to his people as a figure that may never be experienced again. One who stood apart in history with an impact on a scale that hasn’t been seen since. What about the Black man who sees Martin and sees insurmountable distance from his own character? What is his Tuesday like? What about the Black person who counts the 51 years since ’68 and wonders why there was no second coming? What about the Black people programmed to believe that they need to wait for a leader and not become their own? And the Black people who think Martin the minister would want them to put their last dollar in the collection bucket on Sunday so they do and continue to do and continue to do. There are racists who are happy to give us this day because it means distraction and silence for a while. The same folks give us 28 more to share histories they wouldn’t listen to regardless. They’re interested in our pacification; our complacency in the name of recognition of the past. They do this by trapping our totems in the abstract, by neglecting to say the things of the nature of what I’ve just said, which are only but a small fraction among the many looks I could aim towards the fruit that tell stories about Dr. King. Even in writing this I’ve worried a great deal because I don’t wish to say that Dr. King is not one of the most important people ever to live. Nor do I wish to disrespect his legacy. The issue is that often times, he and others are only celebrated with ideas that haven’t been picked from the tree yet, and I believe that happens by design. And to know that wholly and truthfully is the first step. The fruit must be picked before it rots.
