On paradox and knowing

I’ve been reading about the Sorites Paradox which relates to vagueness, and specifically to those things we think we can recognise without being able to say why – in other words things which lack specificity. For instance, there is no definition of a wood versus a forest or of a copse versus a wood, but we know if we’re in a forest or a wood, or a copse. Typically, the paradox is explained by looking at a heap of sand. If we take a grain of sand off the heap, it is still a heap. Another grain, still a heap and since we have no fixed point at which it ceases to be a heap, then one grain is a heap – except it clearly isn’t.

On this basis the trees I can see from my window are a forest, although there are too few to constitute even a copse – and I know this to be the case. So, the paradox is partly about lack of definition and partly about the difference between knowing something and being able to define it. If we apply this to people, it gets even more interesting since we pretend to clarity when really we’re vague. So, we may claim to be socialists but worry about the unions, or conservatives but worry about lack of controls over free markets. We may say we’re Christians but don’t believe all it says in the creed. I certainly don’t. It’s all a bit ill defined – and I think that’s a good thing. It opens us up to ‘unknowing’, a recognition that acceptance of what we can’t know is liberating and, in the theological sense, opens a pathway to God.

This has echoes in what Keats talked of as ‘negative capability’, the ability to be in a state of uncertainty, mystery, or doubt without feeling an “irritable reaching after fact and reason” – what I would think of as being able to embrace the messiness of life and thought, a prerequisite for creativity.

We’re too complex for definition, but we know what we mean. Political parties and religions need some kind of defining characteristic that people can relate to but we’re too complex as people to stick to it too closely, whatever it is. So, we subscribe to one bunch, while liking some of what the others say, or some of what some of the others say. We’re not designed for harder lines than that. Societies which try to make everyone toe a party line become repressive, inhuman.

And of course we change over time. Our ideas develop, our social attitudes mature, the firebrands of youth mellow, the apathetic start to take an interest. Even our ideas on identity change as we rub against the world. I’m not thinking specifically about sexuality or gender identity here, although that’s a big part of it for some people. It could be a realisation that our racial or cultural heritage is more mixed than we thought, it may be something that we always knew, but we’ve come to a place of realising that the mix is a strength, is something to be embraced. Nothing is as simple and straightforward as we thought. And thank goodness for that. We don’t need over precise definitions – we know a forest when we see one, and we need the leeway.

Long live vagueness, muddle, compromise – and liberation and inspiration.

Shapeshifters

we are all shapeshifters 
we may not know it but we are

firmly held beliefs mutate
when we’re not looking
so that when we notice

if we do
we find we contradict our younger selves
with conviction

and sometimes our beliefs rotate
like ingredients in the cooking
of an experimental chef

and our essential being
is it fixed, immutable
is there an impenetrable core

with boundaries, markers 
walls, ceiling, floor 
it seems unlikely

we are all shapeshifters 
we may not know it but we are