THE LATERAL AND VERTICAL MEANINGS OF LIFE

Over the years, I've hammered out a relatively simple (for me) definition of my terms "lateral meaning" and "vertical meaning." In my 2020 post PATTERNS AND POTENTIALITIES, I reviewed how I evolved the terms from my readings in both Schopenhauer and Northrop Frye. Heretofore, I've applied the conjoined terms only to literature. However, I recognize that Schopenhauer, unlike Frye, is not writing only about literature, and so it behooves me to see whether or not the terms apply in any way to the conditions of life on which the gloomy philosopher based his analyses.

In STRONG AND WEAK PROPOSITIONS PART 2, I noted, with reference to a couple of LI'L ABNER continuities:

To return to the two LI'L ABNER sequences referenced in Part 1, it's evident from the way Al Capp works that his cycles-- usually running from four to six months-- could be unified in terms of their action, like "D. Yokum Visits," or simply a motley group of episodes, like "General Bullmoose Debuts." 

The propositional strength of the lateral meaning in both is equally strong, for the lateral meaning is identical with "everything that happens in the stories." Disgustin' Yokum using his unearthly ugliness to turn Wild Bill Hickup into a stone statue and Li'l Abner letting the Slobbovians legally change him into a female are equally strong propositions, in terms of the reader's engagements with them-- though obviously, neither story-structure possesses any "truth-value" for reality as such.

Yet the abstract vertical meaning is even weaker than the assorted vicissitudes associated with "the stories." Many readers can read past the symbolic discourses in LI'L ABNER without noticing their existence, while others will read them purely in terms of their alliance to didactic discourse, as in "Capp is a great satirist, because he makes fun of rich people").

If "lateral meaning" in a fictional story can be fairly defined as "everything that happens in the stories," then that term's application to an individual actual life would be "everything that happens to that individual in his life."

In contrast, no one lives one's life with any instinctive understanding of what that life means. A subject's definition of his life's "vertical meaning" depends on whatever set of abstract propositions he chooses to favor, whether those propositions make him a Christian, a Buddhist, an atheist, etc. Just as abstract ideas provide something of a counterpoint to a given narrative in literature, a person's ideas about himself provide the same counterpoint, even though the relation between the individual and his self-definition may not be as stable over time.

Just as I've argued with respect to literature, daily life furnishes individuals with a "strong proposition." Events A, B, and C ineluctably take place within a fictional LI'L ABNER story and cannot be argued away (though in theory another story might contradict those events). Similarly, Events X, Y, and Z in an individual's life also cannot be argued away (however much the individual may re-define the meaning of said events).

By comparison, one's own "vertical meanings" have a weaker propositional strength, and are much easier to change over time. Up until roughly the age of twelve, I was a Christian. I doubt that I thought about any alternative up to that point; it was simply a part of my cultural landscape that I accepted, though I'm sure there were examples of Scripture that left me scratching my head over how much, if at all, it applied to me and my culture. "Believing Christian" would have been my "vertical meaning" at age twelve, but at some point after that, I began to investigate, as much as was possible in those pre-Internet days, the ideas behind other religions. I don't dismiss the possibility that events in my "lateral life" may have affected my drift away from the Christian religion. but whatever the reason, by the time I attended college I considered myself a "philosophical pagan." (It was pretty easy to be this sort of worshiper: I created my own idea of sacrality a la Blake and didn't have to put any offerings in any plates.)

It might be argued that some psychological continuity existed between "Christian Gene" and "Pagan Gene," and that such a continuity might be an overall "vertical meaning" that subsumed both. The same idea of an overall "theme" would also hold true for individuals who drift away from any form of religion to the philosophical outlook of, say, atheism, though it might be impossible for any individual to have enough distance to judge the matter.

Of course, the events of one's life are not, even in a metaphorical sense, propositions as such. They compare with the pseudo-propositions of a literary text only in terms of their relative strength when compared to "vertical meanings," which are propositional in nature.

More on this later.