My biggest mental shift recently is an appreciation for ambiguity in language. Three months ago, if someone would have asked me, "Can you gain important topical insights from the ambiguous use of language?" I'd have said, "No, of course not: if you aren't precise in what you discuss, that creates a barrier to communication and makes things more confusing rather than clarifying. Intelligence is, in a large part, the ability to make fine distinctions and precise language helps make those distinctions."
I still see the value in precise language, but I now see it far more as one more tool in my toolbox rather than "THE WAY THINGS MUST BE!" And I've also come to see that my near-totalitarian enforcement of precision was prohibiting me from using other tools.
By analogy: suppose you want to know more about butterflies. Certainly catching them and pinning them to a spreading board is one way to study them: you can measure them exactly, you can count their spots and identify their coloration precisely. But you don't capture all that it is to observe a butterfly that way--you don't comprehend its flight, its movement, its way of being in motion.
Now, clearly I understand that, in a sense, I've only become 'more precise' in my language, willing to 'evoke ambiguity' when precisely necessary. But I can only protest that this fails to understand what I've gained from a willingness to recognize the value of ambiguity.
"By analogy: suppose you want to know more about butterflies. Certainly catching them and pinning them to a spreading board is one way to study them: you can measure them exactly, you can count their spots and identify their coloration precisely. But you don't capture all that it is to observe a butterfly that way--you don't comprehend its flight, its movement, its way of being in motion."
I've long appreciated poetry for it's ability to 'get at' the world in ways that I would consider rather precise. Metaphors are not a tool of ambiguity, but rather precision.
Though I haven't read much poetry (nothing that doesn't appear in Harper's or New Yorker): I'll have to go back and re-read some things to see in what ways my interpretation has changed, if at all.
Could you please elaborate on what led you to change your mind? I'm probably not far from where you were, and would like to see what I may be missing. :)
For me, it's been part of a longer trajectory towards the appreciation of "the mess" in all of its dirty glory. I've always been an "algorithm" person: find the underlying pattern that gives beauty and stability (the two being synonyms, of course!) to the apparently chaotic world around us. Increasingly though, I've come to find that discrete difference has its own beauty and instability (the two being synonyms, or so I keep telling myself) that I had been blocked from appreciating.
Less philosophically and more pragmatically: during a time of reflection I was thinking about how my demand for precision was limiting my social interaction. I hadn't been as big a douche as some people I knew, but I could see more of myself in those people than I liked to admit, and realized I needed to change. But I can never change if I'm right, of course!
So I began to talk with people I knew were smart but didn't have the same penchant for demanding precision. On their testimony, I came to believe that there must be something good in ambiguity, though I couldn't comprehend what. I began to practice 'not objecting' when someone would use language or ideas ambiguously. This was immensely frustrating, but I vowed to let it be and try and find the value. Enough times of getting a glimmer of insight led me to finally admit that there was something worthwhile in ambiguity, and so I changed my mind.
I still see the value in precise language, but I now see it far more as one more tool in my toolbox rather than "THE WAY THINGS MUST BE!" And I've also come to see that my near-totalitarian enforcement of precision was prohibiting me from using other tools.
By analogy: suppose you want to know more about butterflies. Certainly catching them and pinning them to a spreading board is one way to study them: you can measure them exactly, you can count their spots and identify their coloration precisely. But you don't capture all that it is to observe a butterfly that way--you don't comprehend its flight, its movement, its way of being in motion.
Now, clearly I understand that, in a sense, I've only become 'more precise' in my language, willing to 'evoke ambiguity' when precisely necessary. But I can only protest that this fails to understand what I've gained from a willingness to recognize the value of ambiguity.