Traditionally, when reading a book, if I encounter a word for which I don't have a full grasp of its connotative spectrum I take a best guess and move on.

I'm in the midst of reading Edward Wilson's The Future of Life. At times Wilson writes with such grace that I've been driven to the dictionary (OED) when I've stumbled. I don't want to be a bad dance partner.

• Disguised briefly with the voice of an optimistic economist, Wilson speaks of humanity's evolution to a more "irenic international culture".

• Further in, the end of the battle between market and natural economies is a "Cadmean victory" unless changes are made.

• "Epiphytes" in chunks of Amazonian forests separated by clear cutting and burning suffer from the drying effects of winds once buffered by the trees. They themselves help manage moisture, locally.

I looked these up as they happened.

irenic

aiming or aimed at peace.

My first reaction to this was, "yeah, right, whatever": any pretensions the international economic community has toward peace create an unstable veneer maintained in the pursuit of profit, easily broken. Humans fight because it is good for breeding (Wilson goes on to suggest this, in a later chapter).

Cadmean victory

a prryhic victory (won at too great a cost to be of use to the victor).

My negativity blossomed at this stage. I thought of god-fearing politicians, burning away the present day in pursuit of greatness with nary a concern for the future, secure in their knowledge of the second coming and the termination of this time ("EschatonsRUs").

epiphyte

a plant growing but not parasitic on another.

And then this. The meaning of epiphyte was unknown to me. I read the definition and felt warm and fuzzy again: the network of connotations, moving with the metaphors of these three words had come into harmony.

To avoid the Cadmean victory and reach a greater good, to be irenic in our doings and our beings we can remember that we all can be epiphytes: growing on one another, present but not parasitic. Epiphytes the whole way down, but also the whole way up. I'm on you and you're on me. Somewhere in the cycle we connect with one another and we connect with everything else.

I've trackbacked this posting to Eric quoting me because this everybody's an epiphyte world view is the source of statements such as the one he quotes:

Transcluding is a good tool in the process of presenting thesis and antithesis, but at some point we want to crystallize out the synthesis.

Knowledge is the result of a collaborative dialectic dance. Sometimes we collaborate directly with others, sometimes we do it apparently alone, but always we do it in a network of many things: each thing presenting its own thesis, our many reactions a multitude of antitheses.

Just as we go to parks to see the epiphytes and other wonders of nature to be informed and enlivened, so too we go to people and their artifacts. And we protect, preserve and make accessible.