Pluralistic Meaning

-- By GregOrr - 12 Jun 2009

In my first paper, I discussed our reliance on precarious interpretations in communicating and making decisions. With the help of a chapter of Lawyerland called “All Great Problems Come from the Streets,” I’ll discuss the struggle over meaning within the legal profession.

Adjudicating Meaning

“This is a business in which everyone relies on representations,” Judge Day says. “Lawyers are the ones who invented spin.” She distinguishes this form of sometimes somewhat lying truth/perception management, however, from outright misrepresentation. Of the less objectionable variety, she says, “Lawyers know too much. If you know too much, how don’t you lie?”

There’s “too much meaning”—by which Judge Day means ‘too many interpretations’ as opposed to ‘too important.’ In the context of statutes, cases, facts, procedures, and various players, “everything you say has another meaning.” Since “a real lawyer has an ethical obligation to defend his or her client,” lawyers play with meaning opportunistically: possibly using multiple definitions, varying levels of specificity, feigning or feeding particular interpretations, inducing fallacious reasoning (e.g. ad hominem), changing the story, etc. On one hand, “the posturing, the playacting, arguing over the smallest things, the narcissism, the beyond-belief egomania—it’s all part of that.” But on the other hand, “it’s inherent in the process.”

In the end a judge or jury adjudicates meaning by “discerning,” but even this can be fallible or flawed resonance in subjective interpretation or otherwise sort of untrue or difficult for the judged.

The Winkers

This process can give rise to a sometimes powerful and annoying type, which I’ll call ‘the winker.’ Winkers are well-prepared, tenacious, and endowed with heightened situational awareness. Situational awareness is the knowledge of underlying factors combined with perception of others’ projection and reception of (un)intended meanings. It’s the capacity suggested by the poker saying, “If you can’t spot the mark, then you’re the mark.”

Situational awareness puts a grouping in relief, with people operating at different levels of the conversation. Winkers can manipulate various levels simultaneously, perhaps by goading one toward a dead-end while winking at another. The winker can then use the winked-at (who feels good for being winked at) to reinforce the misdirection while he talks with his secretary about travel plans.

People capable of this sort of behavior are proud to be in tune and perhaps believe in their superiority (“it’s those who don’t listen to what they’re saying who are the most insufferable people on earth”), but Judge Day gives examples to show why others dislike them. “He was looking straight at the girl with enormous confidence. You know, that look—and letting you know it—of knowing something you don’t. Of being above, somehow.” She is even disconcerted by someone she regards affectionately, “You never know about Paul. He sounds so sincere—the way he looks and talks—and he is, but sometimes you don’t know when he’s kidding you.” They may seem to have exclusive access to a higher/superior level of meaning/circumstance, or just their own in a way that may be unfavorable/tricky to you, that you may be subject to.

The Insolent and Scared

In contrast, Judge Day presents the “insolent and scared,” people who may have difficulty in content situations and possibly resent the systemic and interpersonal imposition of meaning. Under this heading, she includes a young counterfeiter: “You know you’re going to put them in prison, and they know you know it, and they try to look right through you … Insolent. Toward you, toward themselves, toward life itself.” And she includes a former clerk: “He says—he’s quite agitated about it—that there no longer is a nation. What is really going on is that we’re in a state of civil wars … A Generation X lawyer has thoughts like this? Well, I can tell you, just because they may be insolent, and they are scared, doesn’t mean there aren’t some very serious sorts in their twenties roaming around out there.”

They may have problems, may not believe in the system's assignment of meaning, may be difficultly subject, may be expressive or active or resigned with respect to that, and this may be observed or otherwise advocated in some extent. But they have doubts and fear for themselves— Kafka said, “In the struggle between you and the world, back the world.” Aside from more troubling contents/circumstances, some contents/dynamics in life can be observed or have characteristics in similar ways some, more or less good/right/true/understandable/coherent/graceful or this or that, often with humanism/perspective/facility/humor.

Deep Answers?

Joseph’s inscription for Lawyerland is a quote from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet: “Don’t be confused by surfaces; in the depths, everything becomes law.” Is he telling us that uncertainty or various perspective or contradiction are illusions and that there is law-like meaning in all cases? Accessible? Are the insolent and scared mired in an immature perception/reaction? (Mom's leg is a pretty safe base when you're a child. She wouldn't play a badly intended trick on you.) We commonly know/observe/assume specific nature of some things/causations, like leaves/flowers/etc, however much one perceives or knows about this, while some other things/perspectives may be less definedly natured or more variable or dynamically uncertain or more obscure/inaccessible, though there may be actual/real case of that. Speculating as to natural... I'm not a scientist as to all these things, aside from educated amateur/observer, and it's many-detailed, and not to get into wondering about quantum physics here... as well as conceivably the supernatural/unseen. One wonder example is that the content/reason of eyebrows or other features is apparently approximately the same whether as result of intelligent design or evolution. Which seems more likely/perceivable to you? But if it's in God's image, where did the chicken or egg of His case come from? Etc details. Natural and by conscious awareness/motive/effort. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Judge Day offers a related view to Rilke's quote: “Perhaps the finest lawyer I’ve ever known used to say—it was one of his cardinal rules—if you look hard enough for an answer, you’ll find it. Everything’s there, you just have to look for it.” But the lawyer later reappears to urge, “Do whatever you can to achieve your objective.” That statement or approach might sometimes recast the first to mean that there will always be an argument to make for your objective, whether that is otherwise true or not, and some lawyerly phenomena, real or just cliche, can be like that. Willfulness may determine reason/meaning from one point of view while perhaps another exists with difference and substance/reason/meaning, with some objective/intersubjective understanding/rapprochement. If one's objective is true/good/right/fair generally, then everything is actually there in the way that it is, possibly aside from how well you grasp it, how palatable/preferable it is, what it's actually like, content and sense reality as may be. There's a line in Samuel Beckett's Watt that says "no symbols where none intended" (is Watt probably a pun for what?). Willfulness and content/position cases may still exist, generally and possibly in spin-like ways, possibly with cases like the young counterfeiter, Bartleby, or the Underground Man acting or thinking in different ways. In some cases, if you don't like it you can go suck an egg may come into play with regard to content/rapprochement. Camus suggested, "There is no fate that cannot be overcome by scorn", though I'm not sure how you'd sassafras feel about being head down in the mud of Dante's Inferno or something, how about "no cruel and unusual punishment"? Or something like Harry Nilsson's "Who Done It?", the latter part's kind of funny/pertinent, not that murder situations are common or wanted/liked/done by people like the singer in the song.

A multiplicity of contents/meanings has seemed to me a positive fact of life, in some ways/extents at least, for instance I like music and have some personal taste/freedom, though there may be some issues. While favored contents/interpretations may be most advantageous for some people at some time and place, local truth can be mistaken for global truth to the detriment of freedom, creativity, and diversity and at the risk of overrelying on flawed or incomplete building blocks. William H. Simon suggested, "A society which treats all conflict as a threat sacrifices individual development to conformism and impoverishes both self-expression and social relations. In such a society, where officially sanctioned patterns of behavior are perceived as coercively imposed, they engender cynicism and frustration. Where they are spontaneously adopted, they narrow the individual's perception of the world and of his own possibilities." The freedom of content/interpretation/perspective/will keeps society in flux, content/sense/people, possibly with “no one in complete agreement with anyone else about any of it”, though there is substantial thoroughfare of reality/content/sense, which can be substantially actual/true/congenial/agreeable (good/right is a parallel for congenial/agreeable, though they are not synonyms, considerably), generally and/or individually/particularly/availably, etc. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life", and I'm presently reading Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth.