A cursory news media analysis of positive stories versus negative ones makes it no wonder we consistently feel a sense of doom about the state of the world, even though telling metrics like air conditioning, disease control, and food and clean water availability have all improved dramatically over the last century.
And let’s not forget that, crazily, the average life expectancy in ancient Greece was under 30, and that infant mortality has loomed large for most of the human race’s stay on earth. For example, as late as the 1600s in England only one-third of children made it past the age of four. Only one-third!
So, it is true: got to admit it’s getting better, it’s getting better all the time.
As a more abstract but no less telling way of measuring prosperity, some analysts say that saved time is the new gold standard, and that the amount of time it takes to acquire something is the true measure of what it’s worth, not how much it costs.
And this is how we should measure the value of poetry: in time, not in money. Because “the time it takes to acquire” includes not just the cost of it in dollars and cents, but also the mental energy of its experience and comprehension. And if for no reason other than to measure it using money can be so damn depressing.
Consider “The Wasteland.” I can easily find a copy of Eliot’s poem online for free or in a used book for under a dollar. But is this what it’s worth? Not really. I’d say it’s worth much more, if you factor in the time it will take not just for its physical acquisition, but the eons it will take for its mental acquisition. So ripely complex and irritating can that brilliant poem be, that a fine argument could be made that, in truth, it is “priceless.”
As a practical analogy, though, of how time equals money, to have a light on for an hour today at an average wage will cost you about a half of a second of labor, whereas in the 1800s using a kerosene lantern, it’d take you about 15 hours of labor for 15 minutes of light. In ancient Babylon in 1750 BC using a sesame seed oil lamp, it’d take you hours and hours and hours of labor to light your tiny abode for long enough to read, say, “The Wasteland.”
And this past history and context shapes everything. “Parataxic Distortion” refers to how any individual’s view of everything is impossibly and inextricably affected by her or his own past experience. For example, whenever one person talks about “mothers,” he/she is bound to the experience with his/her own mother. This gives an air of never-to-overcome subjectivity to all things: every person is bound to his/her own set of experiential definitions, and the binding is impossible to wholly break, no matter how great the desire for objectivity.
In this sense, we all use a “private language,” and not quite in the way Wittgenstein envisioned and disputed—the private language of which I speak would be one in which we are all subject to our own internal dictionary, with that dictionary shaped by our own understandings and experience. When we communicate with each other, we are taking advantage of probabilities: even if my definition of “mother” cannot be 100% aligned with yours, we can find “understanding” in the 92% overlap we have.
Archetypes come to life in this overlap.
So it’s important to remember that, when anyone says the word “poetry,” he/she is being influenced by his/her upbringing’s use of the word, and however that word rattles around in his/her head. In this way, due to the individuality of personal experience and context, no two people use the word “poetry” in the same way. Perhaps this explains why we argue about it so much, and with such futility.
