Today I overheard--oversaw, what is the proper term--ideath making a comment on the Chatterbox. She was talking about the Day Logs, and she didn’t say quite what I’ve called this node.

Thanks, and apologies, ideath!

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I have written before on this topic--my view is evolving. (Soon I hope to have a metanode indexing all these previous nodes; and the inevitable subsequent ones.) Recently, I haven’t been able to get the image of Ray Bradbury’s Illustrated Man out of my mind.

But its only a metaphor for what I’m thinking. Each node is the exposition of something, an explanation, or better, a kind of story. ideath was speaking about our lives, as recounted in the Day Logs, but to me there’s more than that here--obviously; not that ideath, or any other user doesn’t know that already.

We make expositions about our mental lives, even as we do about our physical ones. In so many ways these mental lives have more reality, are more vivid, than the other kind because of the very nature of the medium that is Everything. And the nature of those who come here--and those who stay.

I think of the firestorm I caused when I wrote a node on gun control--merely one storm among many, I think. Or the ones today on technology or on DSM-IV.

I can’t shake the image of expositioned men, and expositioned women. Men and women of imagination. How else could Everything be used?

And it is a true principle of psychology that leads us to tell stories. People have been telling stories to others and to themselves since there were people--we do both these things here. It is a defining characteristic of being human.

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