'Sanction.'

THOSE who cannot or will not accept or submit to realise the fallacy of particle truths must be presented with the paradoxes of their position. I have already written of the irony of the word 'egregious' in its meaning at one and the same time the opposite of itself, but another is even more common and even more humorous. The word 'sanction' is often used nowadays, and whenever I hear it I wonder whether the majority of people really think about concepts at all, so accustomed they seem to be with the mere forms of usage. If all guns were used henceforth solely to bore holes they would cease to be weapons in their becoming useful tools. Indeed, the very inverse occurred in the case of dynamite, whose poor inventor Alfred Nobel meant to be used in engineering but soon saw it used in war. Spinoza would certainly cite such examples in his case against the integrity of the notion of diabolical evil, as knives may be perceived either as the greatest aids to murder in human history, or as the greatest aids to invention and progress. Often it is written in the newspapers that such and such a nation or an individual has been 'sanctioned', which to my mind means permitted but to others means restricted. So strange is this word and its usages that it may be employed to bizarre effect in such a sentence as 'I sanctioned the sanctions which sanctioned the sanctions' which could be interpreted to mean, 'I restricted the permissions which permitted the restrictions' or, 'I permitted the restrictions which restricted the permissions' or, 'I permitted the permissions which permitted the restrictions, or, 'I restricted the restrictions which restricted the permissions', and so on.

   Why should such an oddity be of any relevance in the great search after truth or meaning in life and existence? Because it is so instructive in the problems concerned with confused thinking. Science for example is always assuming the effect of time in its deductions, from this cause came these effects, etc. The whole theory of evolution is made redundant without the concept of time, it is after all only a description of time in a certain area (namely the development of organisms). Relativity describes time in planetary bodies, evolution describes time in organic bodies. Well and good, estimable and proper, but what happens to the construction of truth when the entire notion of time is defeated by the simplest of reflections? 'Nothing comes of nothing.' 'Oh, but I have a theory of the origin of the universe!' 'But, professor, nothing comes of nothing.' 'A mere colloquialism my lad! Look, I have, with the great apparatus of mathematics, taking cause and effect, and naturally, therefore time, as the sole and entire basis of my reasoning, deduced that a Big Bang originated the universe and so existence!' 'But, professor, nothing comes of nothing.' 'Yes, yes, my boy, but look at this cosmic background radiation map! I can estimate the age of existence itself, from its earliest stages to its latest! There is no mystery to existence! It was caused!' 'By what?' 'By nothing! There was no time! No mass! Nothing!' 'But professor--' 'Yes, yes, I know, but is it not fascinating?'