84,207
edits
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Advanced mobile edit |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Advanced mobile edit |
||
Line 10: | Line 10: | ||
That make ingrateful man! <br> | That make ingrateful man! <br> | ||
:—''King Lear'', III, ii}} | :—''King Lear'', III, ii}} | ||
{{drop|F|rom our first}} law lectures, we imbibed the fundamental | {{drop|F|rom our first}} law lectures, we imbibed the fundamental objective of a liberal modern legal system, above all others: ''[[certainty]]''. | ||
This is a matter of basic [[jurisprudence]]: we hear it, we think, “oh, yes; well, of course,” and nod along as our professor continues on mellifluous way, as if certainty | This is a matter of basic [[jurisprudence]]: we hear it, we think, “oh, yes; well, of course,” and nod along as our professor continues on her mellifluous way, as if certainty were the only antidote for caprice. | ||
Thereafter, | Thereafter, with every breath we learned to ''strive'' for [[certainty]], smiting flat any scope for the random, ruling stray contingencies out of bounds, plunging as deep into the residual detail as our lungs would take before they burst; to explore it, to unpack it, wrestling with its fractal, scale-invariant ''[[tedium]]'': ''[[What is dull is never done]]''. | ||
There are stained-glass elegies to it in our temples and institutions. It is in the weave of the priestly garments. Learned counsel charge handsomely by the hour to descend these cracks and chimneys on their clients’ behalves to vouchsafe a future clear, expectable and as per, er, billing. [''Knock it off — Ed.''] We lawyers have carried this spirit like a holy flame, through our education and into professional practice. We are sworn, devout [[determinists]]. | |||
And when our energies subside, we have | {{Drop|B|ut certainty is}} unreachable. It is an ideal. There is no end to our quest: we can only box on, unravelling as many nefarious possibilities as we can find before our fingers bleed whereupon, for a fee, paid counsel will take up where we left off. We know we will always fall short of the perfect — we snatch at essences, but our worldly grapplings are but a shabby imitation of a crystalline [[Platonic form]]. | ||
And when our [[deal fatigue|energies subside]], we have aun unending stock little pitons that we can jam, ''[[without limitation]]'' into nearby fissures for yet further purchase on [[certainty]]. Is there one amongst us who never whispered “''[[for the avoidance of doubt]]''”, not once, even to break some [[tedious]] ''impasse''? “''[[For the avoidance of doubt|avoidance]]''” — as if doubt were so repulsive to our morality we should ''evacuate it'', [[ab initio]], from our bowels, and flush it away, and lie back into cosy, sterile ''certitude''. | |||
Such is our institutional hostility to ''doubt''. | Such is our institutional hostility to ''doubt''. | ||
{{Drop|Y|ou need be}} no great student of our halting course through the cosmos to notice that, however hard we have lunged at definitude, we have had a hard time ''finding'' it. | |||
{{Drop|Y|ou need be}} no great student of our halting course through the cosmos to notice that, however hard we have lunged at | |||
Unexpected shit still, resolutely, ''happens''. Were it not so deeply buried in the piles [''That’s your last warning — Ed''] of our founding mythology, we might even wonder whether this quest for [[certainty]] wasn’t, in itself, the problem. | Unexpected shit still, resolutely, ''happens''. Were it not so deeply buried in the piles [''That’s your last warning — Ed''] of our founding mythology, we might even wonder whether this quest for [[certainty]] wasn’t, in itself, the problem. |