Rant

My postmodern mind: one thing that law school has helped me recognize is the fluidity of language as a whole and the complete centricity of symbols, even in seemingly universal contexts. What makes the law so dynamic is its ability to peel back the layers of language and look at the bare bones of human desires, beliefs, actions.... Wittgenstein said in effect that our reality is defined by language. Meaning, my universe is limited by what words and symbols I have to explain it. Our innermost desires and ideas about what is just, or true, or fair is irrelevant unless we have a way of communicating their respective meanings. You look into a dictionary to discover the meaning of truth and you’ll find words. Search those words and you’ll find more words…. You say truth is a feeling; it can’t be defined in words. How do you express that feeling in a functional way? Do you hold someone’s hand to your heart? Do you draw them a picture? Give them metaphors? 2 + 2 = 4: this is true. But truth...is this something more than an equation? What about Truth? Explain “belief” with numbers. Or “love.”

Some things seem inherent to us. We wake one day in our childhood and suddenly have consciousness. We define ourselves: I am a white, middle-class suburbanite subject to my genetic inheritance and environmental associations—the sum of my experience. I judge people based upon my locatedness. I am only truly aware of the universe as it revolves around me.

Back to language. From an artist’s standpoint I depend on the metaphor to communicate feelings and ideas. Take Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.” The metaphor is concise enough. From a modernist perspective, it’s unbreakable. But imagine I’m from rural Africa and I’ve never seen a metro station. To me the petals are black not the bough, the faces are gaunt. Put any sentence through Derrida’s machine of deconstruction and you’ll perceive that the things you say can be interpreted in a thousand ways.

Back to the law. We know “the law” will never be perfect. It’s always changing, which is good and bad. It’s good because we’re constantly attempting to encompass justice (a very nebulous concept). It’s a battle between establishing predictable and concise rules and rules that can be applied to every conflict that may arise in the infinite weirdness and diversity of humanity. And, of course, attempting to apply those rules with the knowledge that the people creating the rules are imperfect, corrupted, or biased (or possibly all three). There's the rub.

The end.

On a lighter note, my beautiful dozing wife has a peaceful smile on her face. She keeps laughing and humming in her sleep and rolling over to where I type. It is possibly—no, it is certainly the most endearing thing I have ever witnessed. Sweet dreams.