Category Archives: antimetathesis

Antimetathesis

Antimetathesis (an-ti-me-ta’-the-sis): Inversion of the members of an antithesis.


Bad and good. Good and bad. What a waste of time making these determinations when the passage of time sheds new light and bad is made good and good is made bad. These reversals bear witness to the contingency of what matters—now it is good, then it is bad. Everything is subject to shifting sensibilities or the ongoing revelation of “truth” by the researches of science as it sweeps away folklore and banishes myth to life’s sidelines along with poetry and fiction. But people may freely believe what their communities, friends and families believe, even if it entails their rejection of life-saving medicines or procedures, resulting in death. We saw it over and over during the COVID epidemic and from time to time in communities that don’t permit blood transfusions or surgeries.

When we observe what we think is crazy, ignorant, destructive behavior we may call it tragic or stupid or evil. And we may condemn these people when their children die and we may just shake our heads when adults are put on respirators and die shortly thereafter. But where there is agency there is error, and error may go all the way around the circle of people constructing a community, and choosing, choosing, choosing. Right now there are former US military personnel filing lawsuits for cancer contracted from burn pits. Then there was Agent Orange . . .

Every choice we make is motivated by faith—there is no other way to obtain the fate that choosing projects—the future does not exist now: it exists in the throes of hope and fear and imagination—no matter how quickly we go from the present to the future: You put your key in your car’s ignition. You turn it. The car starts. Your faith is fulfilled. But, there’s always a chance it may not be—possibly in a deserted parking lot on a below-zero night.

When good and bad trade places we are reminded of their contingency: they are subject to change and can transform into each other. The clearest case I can think of right now is marijuana’s legalization. When I was in high school in the mid-sixties, a person I knew was sent to prison for a year for possession of one marijuana seed. Now, it is legal to buy it at a store in the mall. I guess it was always true that it was harmless, but that didn’t keep people from seeing it as harmful, and acting on that view. Anyway, most of the time when we act, we expect a given consequence to be brought into being by the action, but there is always a gap between what we do and what happens, however tiny. There also may be a constellation of conflicting assertions about our motivations for a given action: pulling the trigger on a handgun and killing somebody can result in the imputation of a variety of motives, from a tragic accident, to self-defense, to first degree murder. Depending on the circumstances, decisions are made about “what happened” in order to determine what to do next. All I know is we need to be aware of the contingency of deeply rooted cultural norms and their susceptibility to change or preservation. Permanence, without human assistance, is an illusion.


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Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Antimetathesis

Antimetathesis (an-ti-me-ta’-the-sis): Inversion of the members of an antithesis.


Big and little. Little and big. Big is often good. Big is often bad. Little isn’t often good, but it is often bad. I am big—6’ 5” and 340 lbs. I was football, all the way, all my life. My father put a helmet on my head when I turned 4 and my future was set. Football, football, football. I made it all the way to the pros, playing for the Hoboken Boxcars until finally my brain started rebelling. I became irritable, and eventually, enraged at everything. Road rage was my specialty. I would tailgate every car that got in front of me, even tapping rear bumpers with my car’s front bumper and beating up anybody who dared to pull over and confront me. One day I was driving behind some guy goin 50 in 55 speed zone, bumping his bumper with my bumper. He pulled over and so did I. I jumped out of my car and punched him in the face through his rolled up window. Glass flew everywhere. He was cut and bleeding. When I realized it was my dad, who I hadn’t seen in 20 years, I started crying and ran onto the freeway. I was clipped by a FEDEX truck and suffered multiple abrasions, a broken arm and a ruptured spleen. My Dad visited me in the hospital. He had cuts all over his face—one closed by stitches. He apologized for pushing me into football and contributing to my brain damage. We hugged and I haven’t seen him since.

I work as a bouncer now, and it fits my interests and capabilities. “The Litter Box Lounge” caters to a wild crowd—rogue actuaries, used car salespeople, hospital orderlies, techie coke heads, replica watch aficionados, Dollar Store shoppers, etc. I love the job because I get to beat up a couple of people every night. Tonight, I beat up a guy who was trying to pick up a woman who didn’t want to be picked up right then. She had given him her number but the guy insisted that “now” was the time. As I was escorting him to the door, he took a swing at me and I reduced him to a pile of laundry on the floor. I dragged him out the door by his shirt collar and pushed him into the gutter with my foot. When he hit the pavement his head rolled to the side. I recognized him! It was Clipper Limebutty! He had saved me from drowning when we were kids in high school. I owed him my life and now I was kicking him into the gutter. He woke up, pulled a gun and shot me twice in the stomach. As I lay there bleeding on the pavement, I thanked Clipper for saving my life for the second time. He thought I was making fun of him and he shot me two more times. I had read somewhere that non-fatal bullet wounds could make you a better person. I wasn’t trying to be funny.

I smiled at the big starry sky as they loaded me into the ambulance. Clipper stood there in handcuffs, bleeding from the nose with his face beginning to swell.


Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Antimetathesis

Antimetathesis (an-ti-me-ta’-the-sis): Inversion of the members of an antithesis.


Hope and fear: why do some people hope to fear and others fear to hope? With fear, I guess it is about anticipating excitement, which is itself exciting—the so-called adrenalin rush: sky diving, bungee jumping, observing sharks, roller coaster riding. You name it! It’s about taking risks—fear infuses a quality of excitement that is intense and very different from having a winning lotto ticket or watching your child be born. People crave excitement in all of its forms and hope and fear may work together to induce it. Hoping to fear spices the fear with anticipation.

On the other side, people fear to hope. This may be the result of previous hopes badly fulfilled and fearing the same hope as it may re-emerge. The pain induced by dashed hope can ruin your life, cause you to sell yourself short and build walls around yourself: you never want to hope again, and when you feel it you fear it, and you bury it away somewhere deep in your being so your reaction almost feels genetic—like some kind of survival mechanism that you’re wired to perform, when in fact it’s a habit, maybe based on a single bad experience. Hardly genetic, and probably surmountable—if you want to hope again.

Hope and fear. Both functional. Both not functional. Their proper play depends on a sort of practical wisdom, what the Greeks called phronesis: “wisdom in determining ends and the means of attaining them, practical understanding, sound judgment.” (Dictionary.com). As you can imagine, phronesis is one of freedom’s bulwarks. It’s cultivation should be one of the key aims of public education in a democratic society.

But I fear I’m going off point. I hope you don’t mind. Bye bye.


Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Antimetathesis

Antimetathesis (an-ti-me-ta’-the-sis): Inversion of the members of an antithesis.


The farther I climbed up, the farther things were down below, but nothing’s up that’s not below—the flowers, the trees upon the earth, below the sky.


Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Antimetathesis

Antimetathesis (an-ti-me-ta’-the-sis): Inversion of the members of an antithesis.

You’re so hot–everybody wants a piece of you.

You’re so cold–you could care less as you rest on your flimsy laurels.

You better start paying attention to your fans: fans are notoriously fickle. Their hot fires of admiration will turn into icebergs over night if you don’t warm up to their overtures.

Cold and Hot, hot and cold: you need to turn up the heat and fan your fans’ flames of love and wonder. They will think it’s cool!

Go for it!

Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Antimetathesis

Antimetathesis (an-ti-me-ta’-the-sis): Inversion of the members of an antithesis.

You are big.

You are small.

Big and small. Small and big.

Your belly hangs over your pants–so big!

Your conscience can dance on the head of pin–so small.

Big body. Tiny soul.

You need help. A good diet and exercise program will help your body. Maybe psychological counseling will help your soul.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help!

Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Antimetathesis

Antimetathesis (an-ti-me-ta’-the-sis): Inversion of the members of an antithesis.

Your eyes are ebony.

Your soul is bright light.

Dark and light, light and dark.

Your dark eyes shine with the liquid glow of your soul’s bright light.

One person, within and without. One person to see and believe.

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Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

 

Antimetathesis

Antimetathesis (an-ti-me-ta’-the-sis): Inversion of the members of an antithesis.

At the border of hope and fear, fear hopes and hope fears.

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Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Antimetathesis

Antimetathesis (an-ti-me-ta’-the-sis): Inversion of the members of an antithesis.

The limit of joy is sorrow’s boundary and sorrow’s limit is the boundary of joy.

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Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).