Dystopian note

Copyright William Heidbreder (c) 2019

Bad ideas exist in art, like good ones, not as the referents of names, but as the expression of style.

If in the language people use they always meant what they said or said what they meant, there would be no art, and no thought. There would just be the communication appropriate to command. In that case, morals, as what people ought to do in the instance, would with their certitudes replace ethics, which asks what the good life might be like, a question that cannot really be answered. No doubt in that world everyone would do, and get, what they need. People would have thoughts but would not think. A potential infinite reservoir of the sayable and said would be readily available as if it were the gracious gift of a provident God who knows everything there is to be known. The world would thus realize a grand desire for perfection, as it dies.