Just to break the flow of what was started in the post below (although it is relatively in a parallel line of thought) I was inspired by the Paul Krugman op-ed piece on the NY Times website entitled "Failure to Rise," to post a piece from one of my famous poets.  Krugman, an economic pundit, should by all accounts stick to presenting the facts on the developments behind Geithner's bill--the topical bailout and how its travails less resemble tribulations of political processes than they do those of the literary hero cycle.  

So why then, in the last paragraph of the piece, when Krugman writes: 

And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach — a feeling that America just isn’t rising to the greatest economic challenge in 70 years. The best may not lack all conviction, but they seem alarmingly willing to settle for half-measures. And the worst are, as ever, full of passionate intensity, oblivious to the grotesque failure of their doctrine in practice.

...is it so startlingly effective?  For astute readers, the last two sentences will stick out like a pair of emotional thorns.  It is a quote from William Butler Yeats's "the Second Coming."  The prose is frighteningly conducive to the argument, even though it is outside of its formal construction.  

The poem that I chose is one by Dylan Thomas-my favorite poet.  Perhaps I should have taken more time in selecting one that is more conducive to another argument, but that will have to wait until another time.  Here is "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," as presented by poets.org: 

Do not go gentle into that good night, 

Old age should burn and rave at close of day; 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, 

Because their words had forked no lightning they 

Do not go gentle into that good night.  

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright 

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, 

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, 

Do not go gentle into that good night.  

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight 

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,  

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  

And you, my father, there on the sad height, 

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. 

Do not go gentle into that good night. 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The Moral Jigsaw in the Public Sphere

     I will preface this by apologizing for the rough causal logic and argumentative structure that will come into play here-- I am not at the point where I can distance myself experientially (and thus emotionally) from the events which inspired the subject matter at hand.  Perhaps this caveat should in turn serve as a lesson to the academic necrophagi: consider whence the break in emotion and interpretable stimuli (and subsequent stigmatizing of the former) began.  I would place it with the advent of the naming of the rational and empirical schools.  One can look at the old histories from Herodotus and still very much sense the "I" as a necessary element to what is historical narration.  It is with good reason.  If arguments concerning the standpoint of the narrator (both in spacetime and on a moral grid) are going to come into parley, the introduction of the self leaves little to doubt. 

     I make much mention of the double-standard between normative statements and aspirations to intellectual objectivity.  When writing on the nature of sciences, to paint a static picture of its elements so that its discursive parts do not swallow each other, the poetica of the narrative is sacrificed for the sake of the understanding of the reader.  This should preclude the necessity of prose entirely-- ideas can be communicated through annotated bullets then, with illustrations of the claims made in end notes in a flow chart.  

     To give you a heavy-handed view of the composition of the entire painting of the contradiction: the normative element of in the paradox dictates that the self should be absent, as should florid prose, illustrations of thought/introspection, etc.  This is defined as a "should" statement--things that are naturally happening are to be overcome, and the end-product is an piece that can be consumed by academics.  The actual element of the paradox is that the self necessarily exists within the process of thought and creation.  It is the crucible that smashes sensory data into neutrinos of abstract thought, and then synthesizes idea.  

     Excluding the self from the process at all is a lie; even alluding to it obscures the origins of the writing.  It is this attestment to objectivity that confuses the reader when it is present: Iris Chang's "the Rape of Nanjing" comes to mind, where the book reads like a historical fiction, but still relies on fuzzy math and fuzzy statistics, as well as makes use of very broad, racist statements.  

     The Pepys and Hachiya Diaries for the London Fire and the Hiroshima Bombing, respectively, serve as good examples for the self in the phenomenon.  The self is stated through both the diary format, the narrative structure, and the fact that the preface of both indicates that these are actual diaries, not just an adoption of the narrative to manipulate the reader's skepticism.  

Because I do not expect many readers--this blog being strictly to force myself to write-- I will return to this at another time.