The Right Hand Path (Ars Brevis, Vita Longa)
Firstly: This.
Last year I had the opportunity to be spoken at by a guy named Thomas, who'd spent several years recovering from severe frontal and generalized white matter injuries, sustained in a car accident. It was disturbingly illuminating because his cognitive defects were my defects magnified to the point of caricature -- distractability, poor working memory, disordered speech, etc. It forced me to acknowledge my inner Thomas.
There is *much* to be said for recognizing the realms over which you're selectively retarded and setting up powerful roadblocks across the primrose paths of dalliance that lead to nasty places. Any scheme that requires you to be clever is too fragile to survive extended contact with reality.
But . . .
A fairly rational (perhaps too much so) voice in me objects thusly: all behavior patterns have their roots in cognitive processes. The Code is a kludge for when you don't know how to fix the process, so you short-circuit it instead. Ideally you want it as a stopgap until you disrupt the process and replace it with another one. Ultimately that may never come, but I can't shake the optimism that there's a better solution.
In the mean time, and in lieu of an alternative, the Code is the only game in town.
Last year I had the opportunity to be spoken at by a guy named Thomas, who'd spent several years recovering from severe frontal and generalized white matter injuries, sustained in a car accident. It was disturbingly illuminating because his cognitive defects were my defects magnified to the point of caricature -- distractability, poor working memory, disordered speech, etc. It forced me to acknowledge my inner Thomas.
There is *much* to be said for recognizing the realms over which you're selectively retarded and setting up powerful roadblocks across the primrose paths of dalliance that lead to nasty places. Any scheme that requires you to be clever is too fragile to survive extended contact with reality.
But . . .
A fairly rational (perhaps too much so) voice in me objects thusly: all behavior patterns have their roots in cognitive processes. The Code is a kludge for when you don't know how to fix the process, so you short-circuit it instead. Ideally you want it as a stopgap until you disrupt the process and replace it with another one. Ultimately that may never come, but I can't shake the optimism that there's a better solution.
In the mean time, and in lieu of an alternative, the Code is the only game in town.