Are the liberal-spirited people who support a rational public policy—a social safety net, consistency and efficiency in foreign affairs, steps to reverse global warming—reluctant to embrace art’s celebration of unfettered metaphor and mystery and magic?
But it is the failure to embrace metaphor and mystery and magic that prevents such people from discerning the flaws in those things that they support. A rational public policy is a menu of abstractions. The validity of an abstraction derives from the degree to which it apprehends reality, but the rough-and-tumble of reality does not derive its validity from any abstraction. An abstraction is like an index card, to be referred to, perhaps, from time to time.
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