THE LIGHT OF LITERALISM Abstract: I explain why literalism is a symbol for light, in this short article. ------------------------------------- Amongst harsh images, the image of brilliance and madness is perhaps the most stark image that is used in today’s articles and news stories. If there is something more extreme, it is the image of apocalyptic soldiers, an image that is toned down by romance, or associated instead with robots. As soon as nuclear weapons are involved, the image can be abbreviated as Einstein’s brain. Robot armies are sometimes seen as ‘deranged’ --- having more in common with crazy people than with someone like Einstein. So, extreme images seem to rest either upon an elemental idea, such as fire, melting glass, or robotics --- or else, upon qualities such as brilliance and madness which cut to the core of responsibility. A similar case is the case of beauty and the monster, or good versus evil. However, as it turns out, brilliance has an element as well: the element of light is frequently used, not as a racial symbol, but as a symbol of interior resourcefulness, ‘incandescence’, and inspiration. Someone who is brilliant is said to have ‘the light always on’. What I am bringing into question, however, is the image of light as something that can blind someone. In my view, the greatest intelligence is something which is at least half communicable. If there is something incommunicable about it, it is not its brilliance, but instead, its darkness. This is in keeping with the separation between the beauty of brilliance (what we can see, what is before our eyes), and the madness or bestiality of brilliance, which like Einstein’s bomb, might remain incommunicable. So, what is the new image, if brilliance is not represented by blinding light? I argue that what is brilliant is instead a profound LITERALISM. Literalism expresses a concept in which everything is on the surface. Therefore, there is no obfuscation about beasts or killer machines. And literalism is capable of beauty and brilliance, I have no doubt of that. Beauty is always something being observed, and if there is a darkness about it, it is the darkness of perception, a way in which someone is being non-literal. But, in my philosophy, the non-literal is not the opposite of the literal. Instead, it is a degree of qualification for the literal. The opposite of the literal would be something ugly or perhaps irrational: concepts like unsolvable problems and machines going haywire. Things that cannot be detected on the surface, with none of the virtues of literalism. So, in my view, literalism is not blinding----just as the surface is seen as being ‘enfolded in the eyes’. How, then, does the surface represent softer light? Well, I argue: the surface is the mechanical, and it is also the ambiguous. But the mechanical and the ambiguous are things that appeal to the mind. In appealing to the mind, these things are knowable to the mind. In being knowable to the mind, they represent things we can see, things which fall under ‘a softer light’. Perhaps the image of an obvious machine is not itself obvious. But it is not that the surface is incapable of contradiction. There could be a surface beneath the surface, or even an illusion about where the surface begins or ends. The important thing about literalism is that in most stretches of the word, something can be known about it: the color gray, roundness or flatness, texture or color: the properties of an object communicate directly, and thus, there IS something to communicate in the first place. If there is something which does not communicate about a machine of surfaces, it is perhaps the idea of the literal. But that is not to say that the literal does not communicate. We have already posited several descriptive words to get to the point of determining that the literal does not communicate. This quality of foreclosure is one strong reason to think of the literal as something that communicates. Instead of summing the world as a blind man in a cave, in the middle of a planet, trying to work on a computer --- oh so symbolic ---we instead favor another thing --- the light of the literal. Nathan Coppedge, SCSU 12/09/2014, p.