I'll say straight out that much of the conversation in that is a bit over my head. Or a lot ;)

I've always thought of metaphor (say, poetry) and logic as complementary. Both are, to me, a game. Sometimes I enjoy one more, sometimes the other. They both work towards the same goal of understanding, but by engaging completely different attitudes/reasoning/intuition to get there.

I can't speak anywhere near as thoughtfully or eloquently as you have on the subject, so I'll tell a little story that seems related.

My mother is an eccentric and sometimes brilliant individual who often has incomprehensible (and yet oddly sensible) ideas of how the world works. Some time ago she came up with this statement: "Mad cow disease is caused by depression."

Now, on the face of it that's just absurd. She talked, though, for forty minutes about it. She talked in spiritual-mythical terms about our relationship with nature, our respect (or lack thereof) for other living creatures, and how we warp ourselves by the cruel and unnatural nature of factory farming. I can't begin to pretend I remember everything she said, but at the end of the forty minutes a little light blinked and suddenly the phrase "Mad cow disease is caused by depression" made complete logical sense, even though its explanation was only in metaphor -- or, if you like, story.

Much of the best philosophical rhetoric comes from a desire to find evidence for what we inherently know to be "right." All the arguments are based on logic, but if you take them all away you're left with intuition. Which leads to feeling. Which leads to stories and poetry. I recently read an article in which the author argued that our modern idea of "human rights" only took root with the growth of the novel. Stories allowed us to empathize with how other people felt, and then to think about how our own actions affected people around us.

As for infinity ... I'm not sure what to say on the subject, except that I think you find it both by drilling down to infinitesimal quantities, and by blowing your perception out to unimaginable hugeness. The number line itself is infinite in both directions, but every space between two points on it is also infinite, as you find with irrational numbers.

I shamefacedly admit I still haven't been able to finish Ulysses. Someday. I took Proust at the pace of ten pages a day, which seemed about right. Some purists insist you have to take a year to read it, but I think they're just silly. A novel's a novel, even if it is 3000 pages long.

To me, this is not so problematic. Metaphor springs full-grown from the brow of Zeus. :-) Where there was nothing, poof now there is something. Where was it packed before it was delivered? Well, that's your job, as a neuroscientist, to figure out, innit? As for how it's unpacked, well, as you say, decoding the logical steps as well as the culture-specific allusions might take any number of steps to replicate what is in fact communicated to the properly tuned in an instant. Human pattern recognition is an amazing thing, even if sometimes, as Goya put it El sueño de la razon produce monstruos.

There was a Star Trek episode in which an alien race spoke a language composed entirely of metaphors. Without any cultural references, the universal translator came a cropper, but Picard, with his human brain, was able to decipher enough to stave off the disaster du jour. One can only imagine how rich and how laconic such a language could be, yet how difficult it would be to reconcile it with any science worthy of the name.

Thanks for the link.

The discussions there re: "fascisms to fight" strikes me as a an example of why it is so easy for the Corporatist/Fascists (Neo-Colonialist-Imperalist) to have their opponents shot down in the streets (whether with lethal or non-leathal armaments) with nary a batted eyelash in response.

So long as The Left ("") is wrapped up in such sterile argument, there will be no Anti-Fascist triumph.

Corporatist-Fascism, Neo-Colonialism, Neo-Imperialism, wars of aggression, domestic authoritarianism and so forth are a response to what their advocates see as the failure of the Post Imperial World Order. According to their way of looking at things, if Anti-Imperalist Self Determination and so on had been worth anything at all we wouldn't have the problems we see today with Islamist and other separatist (often theocratic) movements. Indeed, with the collapse Communist ideology, which was feeding all this Self Determination clap-trap anyway, the whole point of opposing Re-Imperialization is lost.

Empire is the natural condition of proper governments, according to these believers, and America's reassertion of Imperial Might and Greatness is the appropriate -- indeed, the only appropriate -- way forward.

"The Left" can be as Anti-Imperialist as it wants to be, it doesn't matter, because there is no discussion of the isssue of Imperialism in the broader public square, and "The Left" appears to have no power to bring the issue into sharp and compelling focus. It is an issue solely confined to the outermost fringes of American politics. And yet the Corporatist-Fascist juggernaut lumbers on, badly to be sure, but absolutely intent on securing access and control of resources (starting with petroleum in the Middle East) and eliminating insofar as possible any Native resistance. We are just beginning to see the outlines of the new Imperium, starting to sense what is in store for broader and broader swaths of the globe.

Both of our current political parties have signed on.

We, the People, effectively have no voice in the matter at all.

Don't say we do through our "elected representatives." We do not. First of all, a sufficiency of the elected Democrats have made clear they have no intention of interfering in the March to Glory. None. But couldn't we elect OTHER Democrats to take their place? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Some of those elected in November to press for an end to the Iraq War have voted to keep it going, betraying their constituents. Surprise, surprise. But in a broader sense, our "elections" are so corrupt, and so vulnerable to manipulation, and so incapable of verification, that we cannot know with anything approaching certainty that qualified voters have been able to vote, and that the actual will of the voters has been reflected in the votes counted. Without that assurance (and neither party seems all that interested in reforms that would allow such assurance), our "elections" are little better than "elections" in the former Soviet Union. Public clamor about it is ignored. Rigorously.

Just as public sentiment regarding Iraq is ignored. Rigorously. The whole issue of the Corporate-Fascist State and its handmaidens, Neo-Colonialism and Neo-Imperialism, aren't ignored. They don't have to be, because they never come up at all, at least not in the broader context of public discussion. If they did come up, however, they would be ignored.

Ultimately in this context, consideration of the Fascist leanings of the Islamist Enemy is pretty much beside the point (and since they are not Corporatists, they aren't Real Fascists, anyway -- as if it mattered. It does not.) Israel is a problem, to be sure, certainly Zionist Israel is. But again, it is not the issue Americans should be focusing on. We need to be able to deal with our own domestic political situation more fully and knowledgeably.

We aren't anywhere near that point yet, and backsliding into the Abyss is all but guaranteed. We're well down into it already.