The Disease
Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine
Monday, June 2, 2003 (613/91)
ISSN 1482-0471
By REVSCRJ
The language of contractual law is a pox upon the exceptionally well-poxed human race--an absolute fucking disease that has created an ethic-less approach human relationships that is based PURELY on semantics and the viciously evil intended use thereof.
Contractual law [hereafter referred to as "The Disease"] has made it so that a misplaced quotation mark or the lack of capitalization can allow The Disease to spread a disease of interpretations. Right now all the lawyers and lawyer-lovers are likely saying, "Oh I see, it's another anti-lawyer diatribe. Yawn."
No--lawyers are just saps who've been lured by the respect and pay scale of the profession. I have nothing against them that I don't also have against anyone who aides, incidentally, in making the world a worse place to live. In any event, lawyers are just symptoms of The Disease like seizures are the symptoms of epilepsy. Ultimately, it is only a language of precision. NEEDLE TIP, HAIR SPLITTING, NIT COUNTING, ANAL RETENTIVE, COMPULSIVE precision. It is mind boggling how much description it would take if you wanted to borrow a bit of money from someone on a repayment plan with a little interest. We are talking pages upon pages of the stuff; a virtual tumor growth of language, a coagulation of possibilities! Reams of The Disease just to make certain that every facet and potential x-factor is covered, accounted for, and described in detail. Sick, stupid and detrimental to human interaction in a human manner. We use words to bind us instead of honor. We use law instead of respect. Foul.
Before I began writing out this public stock release memorandum I had no real idea of what the jargon of The Disease was. That is to say, I'd read fine print before on contest entries and legal warnings on software packages and the like, but I had no idea the net-like completeness that The Disease is capable of, if well executed. I had a resale sporting goods store's stock release to use as a template and it was my job to read through it, understand it, and then revise it so that it covered all the bases for the greeting card house. It was gruelling and distorting. It's why I still use bits like "hereof", "in so far as" and "thereof" in everyday speech. My mind became filled with it.
Imagine the driest piece of writing you have ever read, imagine it being recited in the clinical droning manner that a High School sex-ed teacher will speak, then extract all interesting content, add a truly obtuse jargon set that tries to make its content indecipherable to all but the well trained (read: elite), and lastly place it in a grammatical structure that makes the worst run-on sentence (Ed: like this one?) you've ever seen appear to be tight, succinct haiku. This is the face of The Disease. Its intention is to make intent invisible inside of immaculate structure... grotesque and deceptive.
What truly bothered me, aside from realizing the aforementioned, was how easy it became as I did it. My mind embraced it. It was a pure form. A tidy self-contained universe. I stopped thinking in terms of linear time, but instead in event-probability-clouds where I would follow potential time-streams simultaneously in my thought process. Nothing real was solid, only the contract was complete. To write The Disease, I realized, one must come to a state of mind where prediction, intuition, and foresight solidly merge into an insectoid alertness. A very quiet, tense place in the psyche that is patient and incredibly fast. Embracing the words of The Disease was truly delving into an entirely different language altogether, one similar to poetry or song, but where they seek out passion or expression, The Disease seeks out structure.
Like poetry and song are appreciated by their delivery of passion and expression, The disease is judged by the degree of its structure; the highest pinnacle of which is a form that is impermeable, one that is simultaneously so specific and so oblique that every possible event that might affect the course of The Disease is considered in excruciating detail.
I didn't really want to understand that shit, but I began to. The writing became quicker, the understanding and execution of it more efficient and the overall contract much better than the template. I began thinking in grotesquely convoluted streams of list sets and if-then statements that lasted for about 6 months after the beast was created. Some damage was permanent but hey, at least The Disease doesn't intimidate me anymore- I understand it... at least I can recognize when it's trying to hide something. It serves occasionally: once a friend of mine was buying out a cafe and I walked in to do some writing and he comes up to me and asks if I'll write up a "fast and easy" contract so he can lend the current owner a few thousand dollars. He wants it repaid in monthly instalments with an interest rate.
I say, "Yeah sure, when?"
"Uh, now."
I did it in about an hour and later he showed it to an attorney who said it was seamless.
Over and above all else: The Disease is destructive to the world, use it to the barest minimum possible, if at all, but most importantly UNDERSTAND IT as: the clearer the Devil's shape, the easier it is to kill it.
REVSCRJ is a writer/musician living in Monterey, California. Constantly on the verge of homelessness, he hopes that you enjoy his work or else his life has been in vain. Contact REVSCRJ at revscrj@cloudfactory.org to lodge complaints, notify of lawsuits, or receive spiritual advice.
Comments
7 comments found
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Your Disease highlights the weakness of language when it doesn't have it's most important bolster: good faith. Lawyers thrive on analysing language on it's own terms, which essentially makes it meaningless. Language itself is a pockmarked, fractal collection of ideas that are made coherent in the mind of the listener only with a big dose of good faith. If your listener is a lawyer (or even just someone who has no interest in what you're trying to say) then they can take your collection of ideas and rearrange them in any way they choose.
Great article Rev, I think Leandro loves this kind of stuff, but too often CoN seems innundated with the "what the fuck is wrong with you bitchs" AOL crowd... I guess in those cases you don't need too much intelligence let alone good faith to figure out their simple, little thoughts.
Thanks for the brain workout...
>the weakness of language when it doesn't...bolster
>: good faith.
When a people rely on institutions to a) teach their children, b) cure their ills, c) provide their sustinece, d) protect their soil, and e) settle their disputes instead of doing those things themselves or in conjunction, it is a sure sign that the people are in the decline of their empire. The language-of-law is merely a glaringly obvious symptom of a GODDAMN ENORMOUS problem.
"LOOK- I DONT CARE WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS WE'LL JUST LET THE POLICE SETTLE THIS."
"YEAH? WE'LL I'LL SEE YOU IN COURT! MY LAWYER WILL RIP YOU APART!"
Come to think of it, its very similar to the behavior patterns that inspire "road rage"... stupid apes.
>Lawyers...[are] analysing language
>on it's own terms...[making]it meaningless.
...and then altering the course of peoples lives w/ that silly-putty maeleable structure. See: its not so much that the concept of contractual arrangement bothers me: hell, it a damn necsessity if you do biz w/ friends and want to remain such w/ them. A simple misinterpetation can be blown up into a betrayal, therefor contracts and leagalise DO have their place as a device for assurance when conflict arises. Unfortunately we now base our worlds on that device and thus this handbasket we seem to be in.
>Language itself is...made coherent...with...good faith.
My primary art is poetry. My focus is to convey as opposed to flourish and so my style tends to be pretty direct AND STILL the incredible array of interpetations that can arise from a piece in the mind of the audience is virtually psychotic! This from someone who is TRYING VERY HARD to say something clearly... Leagalise is like the incatations of Cabalistic Monks by comparison and IT is what determines if oooooh say whether rigging an election is "technicaly" treason and thus deserving of the death penalty or not (hypotheticly speaking of course ;-).
>"what the fuck is wrong with you bitchs" AOL crowd...
They have their uses...
Begin "hippy" interlude
(sitar plays, incense burns, pot freakin' everywhere)
>I guess in those cases you don't need too much >intelligence let alone good faith
>to figure out their simple, little thoughts.
Man, everyone has a piece of the puzzle that you dont coz, like they have a y'know unique perspective and like you shouldnt be so hot on bummin their scene. Cool?
End hippy interlude.
Yeah, but how much goddamn time should one waste trying to extract that needle of a puzzlepiece from that haystack of a dipshit?
That
is the question.
<3 REVSCRJ
Thanks for the brain workout...
>...makes the worst run-on sentence (Ed: like this one?)
By the way, Leandro,
who is this Edward bastard that keeps heckling my aticles?
:)
<3
REVSCRJ
hehehe, sorry rev, that was me.
Heh- no problem Mel, it was funny, please continue.
<3 REVSCRJ
The Rev so eloquently said:
"Man, everyone has a piece of the puzzle that you dont coz, like they have a y'know unique perspective and like you shouldnt be so hot on bummin their scene. Cool?"
And therein lies the enigma that is Tim. A large part of me says, "absolutely! do what ever the hell you want!"
Another large part of me (I am very big after all) says, "there are too many fucking people and too little space, if we're all going to survive pressed in together like this then get your head out of your ass and act for the greater good rather than your pathetic little wants!"
To point! I just got the cutest little Dachshund in the world (http://www.kingdomta.com/imaging/newpicsfreya10wks/index.htm). I'm out back in the park playing with her and discover broken bottles scattered through the grass and over a kid's playground. The Spartan in me wants to flay the offenders and hang their stinking corpses in a tree to rot in the sun. I don't give a fuck if you're a moody, middle class, wealthy, well-fed, first world adolescent with a heap of invented agony who wants drink in a public park to prove your I don't know the fuck what. Little kids play in that park and my dog almost stood on your bullshit.
On the other hand, sure, go drink in the park, smash bottles, express your angst and not having an even easier life, what do I care?
I guess at the end of it all it's depressing watching the end of an empire...
The Rev also spaketh! "My primary art is poetry. My focus is to convey as opposed to flourish and so my style tends to be pretty direct AND STILL the incredible array of interpetations that can arise from a piece in the mind of the audience is virtually psychotic!"
Being a smart ass I selected the shortest poem I could find to do a one hour seminar on in a forth year English class. It was five words long. Everyone else was doing one or two pagers because they were terrified of running out of material. I exhausted raw interpretation of the words in the first fifteen minutes, but went on for another hour talking about the implications based on history, class, social forces and the dozens other subconscious things a reader brings to the act of understanding words. I thought I was very smart (and got a good mark on it), until the last guy to go did a one word poem, easily exceeded his minimum time and dug into it even more. Language and literature are so fragile that I'm constantly amazed that they work even as well as they do.
Even in this exchange, we share a kind of mutual respect based on history and having read each other's work that supports a direct exchange and makes it more meaningful. That two strangers can understand each other at all is a wonderous thing.