Between conceptual understandings that describe the same phenomena lies a gap of unintelligibility: an interliminal vacuum.

Within this space we do not know how to make sense of what we experience. We don’t know what is what, we don’t know what to make of things or how to respond, and our feelings are unstable and conflicted. Our sense of what, how and why is upturned and scrambled, and no definitions, methods or moral codes are available to guide us out. In fact, we do not even know if a way out exists, and intrinsic to this experience is the profoundly anxious immediate certainty that no way out does exist! Indispensable is a faith trained to refuse to accept  this certainty of impossibility at face value, and to rather accept it as one landmark of this interliminal vacuum.

As we come out — if we come out (many turn back) — we realize that each conceptual understanding reveals and conceals, clarifies and confuses, questions and suppresses different aspects of observed reality. We understand that tradeoffs must be made. Certainly, we have been pursuing truth, but it is not The Truth as it Really Is. We were after a finite truth better suited to our finite purposes. This truth must explain reality as we experience it — rigor is required — but this rigor is no longer a comprehensive objective truth capabable of answering every objection thrown at it. This notion of truth is a damaging fantasy — a misnorm that interferes with finding new truths. The only truth that is possible is a best-we-have-right-now-for-where-we-are truth, that emphasizes and deemphasizes different facts and knows the truth that this is what is required to have and share truth with other, finite human beings.

Success in this strange field (interconceptual navigation) requires at least three capabilities:

1. A tolerance for distress intrinsic to traversing the interliminal vacuum,
2. An understanding of what truth is, how truth works and why we need it,
3. A surefooted sense of when we ought to stay put in a truth and when we must leave the truth we know to puncture the horizon and into the vacuum to find another more suitable truth, and
4. Recognizing new truth when it is found, even though unsettled truth feels unsettlingly wild, swampy and soft and unsuited for settlement.

I prefer to use logocentrism to mean believing that thinking is essentially a matter of logos: words, logic and other explicit components. A corollary, that unless an idea is expressed in explicit word-logic terms it is not thinking and cannot be characterized in terms of truth, is a consequence of logocentrism.

I believe words are handly, lightweight and abundant objects through which thoughts can move, but thoughts can also act directly on other objects without involving words at all. These objects can exist in many forms both inside and outside the mind, physically or symbolically. A tacit understanding can be stimulated by wordless observation to produce visual images indicating possible actions in certain kinds of minds, bypassing words altogether. A mind in this stare might feel a potential image before it is glimpsed by the mind’s eye. Thought feels a need for an imaginary object and creates it as a vehicle for its action. Thought can also act directly on physical objects without the involvement of words, and sometimes it requires protection from words to think its actions out through the body.

To a logocentric perspective these mental events cannot be thought. Logocentrism wants to place symbols at the very center of thought, or even to reduce thoughts and meanings to symbols. Consequently, between a mind and what the mind tries to accomplish, it casually interposes words as if they are not in the way because they are nothing but the thought itself.

But I believe we think best when our thought act without intermediating objects, including words. To use a tool instinctively means to dispense with intermediating words.

The best designed tools are disintermediable (or disinterposable?). As a new user you might at first use words (as briefly as possible) to make sense of the tool, and then to train yourself how to use it (also using as briefly as possible, almost as a verbal apprenticeship), but eventually all intermediaries between your intentions and your actions through the tool are dissolved, and the tool is a seamless extension of your being. This ought to be the target user experience goal.

Do we use, or even have, methods for designing this way? I think UX and all UCD design (at least in the mainstream) remains radically logocentric.

To preserve the simple self-evident fact that the Earth was the center of the universe all kinds of complex mechanisms had to be devised, cranking the heavenly bodies in epicyclical orbits, around orbits of orbits.

Likewise, to preserve the simple self-evident fact that the principle active cause of inequality between categories of people is prejudice requires development and deployment of all kinds of ingenious critical, sociological and historiological mechanisms.

In both cases we do not wish to remove our minds from the standpoint of our eyeball, and we are willing to sacrifice intelligibility to preserve this one intellectual treasure.

In the last week I’ve heard two accounts of Heidegger’s ontology that are wrong in opposite ways. 1) the psychologized pop-Heideggerianism of Est/Landmark (at least as represented by its students) that understands ontology to refer to the state of one’s own being. And now there’s 2) Graham Harman’s attempt at a human-independent ontology, which so far (page 23 of Tool-Being) appears to be a brilliantly systematic mismapping of Heidegger’s methodological idealism to a metaphysical materialism that has very little to do with Heidegger at all except for providing inspiration and a handy vocabulary to appropriate. Harman is working on something important, but it has little to do with Heidegger, and much more to do with Latour.

What I am getting from this error flanking is a renewed sense of indebtedness to Heidegger. I best feel how he thought from my indignation at hearing him misused. These visions of ontology are not the ones I want to challenge.

At least five factors are drawing software design into a dark age:

1. The death of Steve Jobs.
2. The emergence of Lean Startup and the latest startup bubble/hype.
3. The ready availability of UI frameworks that enable engineers to produce nice-looking UIs without help from designers.
4. The entry of a young generation of software professionals, the exit of an older generation, and promotion to management of the middle-aged generation between.
5. Apparent hesitance of platforms to impose consistency on developers.

I cannot shake the feeling that whatever I end up doing or making, the real purpose of it all is to feed me opportunities for hammering out a philosophy. I’ve noticed this assumption in the background of my plans and choices. I think it is always there.

*

In everything anyone produces, I feel a philosophy.

When we make things, including sentences, we place them within a sense of everything that is uniquely one’s own. This silent and pregant sense of everything* is philosophy, which even the most articulate philosophizing can only indicate. Any earnest attempt to pursue this indicated thing is bound to change the pursuer’s own philosophy, and this is the point of life as I know it. Philosophy cannot possess sophia — so it learns to want something better and more fitting for a bit of infinity.

In art, where apprehension succeeds in comprehension’s failure, I look through locked gates toward transcendent homes I will never inhabit, and being a mystic at heart, I love that. Where others attend to home life, I like looking out, as far as I can, past blue into black distance felt by my eyes like my feet feel the ocean’s floor when the water is unfathomably deep. Should I feel a philosophy out there or down beneath? Whether or not I should, I do, and this helps me feel who is behind who I am.

(* Note: This silent and pregnant sense of everything, which is one’s philosophy (or is it sophia? or that strange third being love produces that we call marriage?) — I will indicate it the best I can as a whatness behind every what, a howness behind every how, and a whyness behind every why. We do not know these beings directly, even in ourselves. We know by them, through them, and we are them.)

If you believe as I do that vices are virtues in excess, any tendency to essentialize vices and attack them in at their faintest sign in weakest form is, in fact, 1) an attack on an embryonic virtue and 2) is itself a vicious excess.

Example: to be excessively egoic at the expense of empathy is sociopathic. But to be excessively “empathic” at the expense of ego is to be borderline.

*

I imagine slippery slopes as teflon see-saws, with vicious abysses on either side.

Nothing in excess.

From Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

“O Deep Thought Computer,” he said, “the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us …” he paused, “…the Answer!”

“The answer?” said Deep Thought. “The answer to what?”

“Life!” urged Fook.

“The Universe!” said Lunkwill.

“Everything!” they said in chorus.

Deep Thought paused for a moment’s reflection.

“Tricky,” he said finally.

“But can you do it?”

Again, a significant pause.

“Yes,” said Deep Thought, “I can do it.”

“There is an answer?” said Fook with breathless excitement.”

“A simple answer?” added Lunkwill.

“Yes,” said Deep Thought. “Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But,” he added, “I’ll have to think about it.”

…

The hum level in the room suddenly increased as several ancillary bass driver units, mounted in sedately carved and varnished cabinet speakers around the room, cut in to give Deep Thought’s voice a little more power.

“All I wanted to say,” bellowed the computer, “is that my circuits are now irrevocably committed to calculating the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything –” he paused and satisfied himself that he now had everyone’s attention, before continuing more quietly, “but the programme will take me a little while to run.”

Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.

“How long?” he said.

“Seven and a half million years,” said Deep Thought.

Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other.

“Seven and a half million years…!” they cried in chorus.

[…7.5 million years later…]

A man standing on a brightly dressed dais before the building which clearly dominated the square was addressing the crowd over a Tannoy.

“O people waiting in the Shadow of Deep Thought!” he cried out. “Honoured Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the Greatest and Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe has ever known… The Time of Waiting is over!”

Wild cheers broke out amongst the crowd. Flags, streamers and wolf whistles sailed through the air. The narrower streets looked rather like centipedes rolled over on their backs and frantically waving their legs in the air.

“Seven and a half million years our race has waited for this Great and Hopefully Enlightening Day!” cried the cheer leader. “The Day of the Answer!”

Hurrahs burst from the ecstatic crowd.

“Never again,” cried the man, “never again will we wake up in the morning and think Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don’t get up and go to work? For today we will finally learn once and for all the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little problems of Life, the Universe and Everything!”

…

“Seventy-five thousand generations ago, our ancestors set this program in motion,” the second man said, “and in all that time we will be the first to hear the computer speak.”

“An awesome prospect, Phouchg,” agreed the first man…

“We are the ones who will hear,” said Phouchg, “the answer to the great question of Life…!”

“The Universe…!” said Loonquawl.

“And Everything…!”

“Shhh,” said Loonquawl with a slight gesture, “I think Deep Thought is preparing to speak!”

There was a moment’s expectant pause whilst panels slowly came to life on the front of the console. Lights flashed on and off experimentally and settled down into a businesslike pattern. A soft low hum came from the communication channel.

“Good morning,” said Deep Thought at last.

“Er… Good morning, O Deep Thought,” said Loonquawl nervously, “do you have …er, that is …”

“An answer for you?” interrupted Deep Thought majestically. “Yes. I have.”

The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in vain.

“There really is one?” breathed Phouchg.

“There really is one,” confirmed Deep Thought.

“To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything?”

“Yes.”

Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had been a preparation for it, they had been selected at birth as those who would witness the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and squirming like excited children.

“And you’re ready to give it to us?” urged Loonquawl. “I am.”

“Now?”

“Now,” said Deep Thought.

They both licked their dry lips.

“Though I don’t think,” added Deep Thought, “that you’re going to like it.”

“Doesn’t matter!” said Phouchg. “We must know it! Now!”

“Now?” inquired Deep Thought.

“Yes! Now …”

“All right,” said the computer and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable.

“You’re really not going to like it,” observed Deep Thought.

“Tell us!”

“All right,” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to the Great Question… ”

“Yes …!”

“Of Life, the Universe and Everything… ” said Deep Thought.

“Yes …!”

“Is… ” said Deep Thought, and paused.

“Yes …!”

“Is …”

“Yes …!!!…?”

“Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

It was a long time before anyone spoke.

Out of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea of tense expectant faces down in the square outside.

“We’re going to get lynched aren’t we?” he whispered.

“It was a tough assignment,” said Deep Thought mildly.

“Forty-two!” yelled Loonquawl. “Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?”

“I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”

“But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!” howled Loonquawl.

“Yes,” said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, “but what actually is it?”

A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other.

“Well, you know, it’s just Everything… Everything… ” offered Phouchg weakly.

“Exactly!” said Deep Thought. “So once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.”

“Oh terrific,” muttered Phouchg flinging aside his notebook and wiping away a tiny tear.

“Look, alright, alright,” said Loonquawl, “can you just please tell us the Question?”

“The Ultimate Question?”

“Yes!”

“Of Life, the Universe, and Everything?” “Yes!”

Deep Thought pondered this for a moment. “Tricky,” he said.

“But can you do it?” cried Loonquawl.

Deep Thought pondered this for another long moment.

Finally: “No,” he said firmly.

Both men collapsed on to their chairs in despair.

“But I’ll tell you who can,” said Deep Thought.

They both looked up sharply.

“Who?” “Tell us!”

…

“I speak of none other than the computer that is to come after me,” intoned Deep Thought, his voice regaining its accustomed declamatory tones. “A computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate – and yet I will design it for you. A computer which can calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form part of its operational matrix. And you yourselves shall take on new forms and go down into the computer to navigate its ten-million-year program! Yes! I shall design this computer for you. And I shall name it also unto you. And it shall be called …The Earth.”

Phouchg gaped at Deep Thought.

“What a dull name,” he said and great incisions appeared down the length of his body. Loonquawl too suddenly sustained horrific gashes from nowhere. The Computer console blotched and cracked, the walls flickered and crumbled and the room crashed upwards into its own ceiling…

A motto of responsibility: “Go first.”

People intent on abolishing privilege often privilege themselves with superior judgment on matters of privilege.

Reconciliation is where two people bring their reality back to one another and with honesty and hospitality allow their mutual reality to dissolve alienating images. Only a mutual participation can effect this essentially transcendent movement. 

One-sided imagining of the other is what alienated us and keeps us alienated. The one-sided reconciliation with imagined others advocated by new-age wisdom is the precise opposite of reconciliation. 

*

Thoughtless people protest malevolent dehumanization, while celebrating benevolent dehumanization in the guise of pity and worshipful dehumanization in the guise of exaltation or admiration. 

We think exclusively in sentimental terms — for or against, friendly or unfriendly, sweet or mean — and miss the one thing needful: embrace or avoidance of genuine human encounter.

*

It is possible to feel affection toward people in ways that protects us from love between people. These protections are valorized with the language of respect, individualism and most of all altruism. 

“I only want you to be happy, and if I must lose you forever, so you can pursue your own greatest happiness and fulfillment, that is what I must do.” From one perspective, this is an act of the deepest love. From another, it is an act of a shallow understanding of love.

*

Some things can only happen between real humans, but precisely there we desperately pretend they can happen within an individual. Love, understanding, forgiveness are three. We love images of people, we understand theories about people, we concoct stories of finding peace with the irredeemable. 

Analagous counterfeits are abundant in religion: idolatry, fundamentalism, religious sentimentality.

*

We whistle autobiographical ditties in the dark to displace the dread of who surrounds us. 

*

Other people exist independently of us. Yes, in a sense this is very true. 

To the degree that we love we join being that exists beyond us, partly beyond our control, where we can be hurt very badly. Any parent who loves a child will confirm this. An unloved child will also confirm it, but in a different way.

A point comes in a damaged relationship that it becomes a damaging relationship. 

Habits of (mis)perception and (mis)reaction become difficult to break, because they enter from both sides of the relationship. A feedback cycle of injustice leads to unjust emotional response, which leads to escalating mutual injustice, and the dysfunction takes over. Even the possibility of this occurring creates tension and hyperalertness and leads to strained unnatural behavior that arouses suspicion and anxiety.

And each time an attempted reconciliation fails, new evidence of futility accumulates — new symptoms and clues to watch out for if, god forbid, there is a next time. And each time next time is allowed to occur and it all goes wrong again like it always does we are forced to witness our selves as we were five, ten, twenty years ago — worst-selves we have invested years into outgrowing. We have gotten nowhere. It takes days, weeks, months to recover who we have worked to become. The stakes of trying again increase with every failure.

The effort required to overcome the damage is enormous. The emotional self-discipline needed to resist the compulsions of the worst perceptual and reactive habits is much higher than the level needed to function gracefully in healthy relationships. The retraining of trust, of interpretation, of communication is much harder and less pleasant than starting fresh with brand-new relationships. 

Why would anyone make such an effort? The other has become monstrous. The other makes us ugly to ourselves. Why would we do it? 

I can think of two reasons. The first is practical. These relationships, in some strange way, remain inside us as inaccessible wounds. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say parts of ourselves are stranded in the estranged relationship, in a no man’s land beyond the reach of our independence. The only way to regain access is to collaborate on mutual healing. We can divert attention, distract ourselves, try burying the offness in new interests and feelings, but the pain remains there as a pervasive existential ambience. Something urgently needs a hearing but it cannot be said or heard. To stop trying means to accept this ambience as permanent.

The second reason is religious. If the other has us so wrong, isn’t it possible that we have them wrong, too? Something belonging to their own imagination seems to obstruct their understanding of who we really are beyond their image of who we are, but they can’t see it. How could we know if we were doing the same? Why shouldn’t we assume this is the case? What imaginings are we superimposing over the reality of who they are that we can’t see because we have mistaken it for who they really are? What would happen if this image-imposition were arrested and both allowed the reality of other to shine through and be witnessed in its fullest value? Is it possible to not want this?

Isn’t this mutual shining and seeing what forgiveness really is? It is the opposite of the popular new age forgiveness of “working on myself” by deciding to think and feel more positively and charitably about some figure who has been reduced to a figment of memory and fiction and willing our brains into believing that we believe it? This is solipsism — the very thing religion transcends. Rather it is an active inviting of another to surprise us with the truth of who they really are, and why they are worth knowing and loving, despite all flaws? This is transcendence of the self into what lives beyond the self, by way of discovering real, tangibly felt love for one’s enemy, one’s neighbor and one’s self. It is for this reason forgiveness has religious importance.

But until that effort is made from both sides, friendship cannot exist. Not because the status of friendship has been revoked, but because friendship exists as a fact of life and death. If friendship is not mutually given life, it does not live and there is no friendship, no matter how peacefully it lies where it is laid. 

But fortunately, religion differs from biology. In religion death is reversible. All it requires is the self, and realities transcending self — the most important ones being the people around us — to commune and to ask together for life.

* 

At the beginning of writing this, I planned to conclude with a point that sometimes we must recognize that reconciliation will never happen. We must amputate, and lose some of who we are in a stranger who will never know us. From time to time we will notice the aches of a phantom limb, but this is better than hacking off new pieces in the attempt to reconcile with someone who is hardened against it. We need closure. 

I crave closure. I doubt I am allowed to have it. It might be unforgivable.