Chapter 24 - Editing for Nihilist French Philosophers as opposed to Jewish Rabbis

                   

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete

"Good morning, Del, while you were sleeping I prepared an outline."

"Good morning, Juula!"

"Are you ready?"

"Fire away!"

William Shakespeare highlights text and then hits Backspace

Then a monkey who's been sipping Chardonnay all day does the same thing

As we've seen, in both cases the value just beyond the tippy-tippy end of the highlighting (no matter what it is) gets connected to the cursor position.

Therefore we may say that highlighting to delete is connective in its blind mechanics.

Whether Shakespeare does it or a drunken monkey, or me or you, or a pigeon in Japan, the same thing always happens - and we instinctively know it.

The value beyond the tippy-tippy end of the highlighting gets connected to the cursor position.

But what is the difference between Shakespeare's act and the monkey's? What sets us humans apart from the apes and other animals vis-à-vis such editing operations?

A famous French philosopher

would assert that there is no difference, but 9 out of 10 rabbis would agree

that Shakespeare ends the highlighting where he does precisely because he WANTS to connect to the value just beyond the tippy-tippy end of the highlighting.

AHA!

So now we see that highlighting to delete is not only connective in its blind mechanics, but (at least for bearded men with hats) 

connective in its pondered purpose... 

and this is because sense itself is connective.

"Excuse me, Juula, may I interrupt?"

"Of course!"

"For an Existentialist, a pianist like Vladimir Horowitz playing Rachmaninov's Concerto N. 3 and a monkey messing around with a keyboard are the same: just meaningless sounds flying out into a meaningless universe. But unless you've been nurtured on nihilism, Absinthe, black tobacco and bored sex, the difference is obvious. And so too is the difference between a Shakespearean deletion and a simian one. C'est vrais?"

"Sure... whereas our monkey - God bless her - ends her selection any old place, a human highlights up to and excluding the value he or she WISHES to bring to the cursor."

"And this is because?"

"Because that value, will further the SENSE of what he or she is writing!"

"Little golden star on your forehead!"

"So what you're saying is that the real point of messing with a monkey was to show that editing is not only connective in its blind mechanics, but also in its pondered purpose. We humans end the selection where we do to CONNECT to the sense of what is being written."

"Yes! And Yes! But now comes the zinger! Like the saying goes, 'God and the devil are in the details,' so let's cancel something and take a close and comparative look at the process. Go ahead."