Entry 194 — The Knowleplex
I’m still in my null zone but with enough zip to do the one thing I seem always ready and able to do: make up new Knowlecular Psychology terms. Not new is my term for any more or less interconnected body of knowledge, or inter-related group of knowlecules, the Knowleplex. The Knowlecule, in my theory, is the smallest datum, or bit of knowledge, in the context of whatever subject holds sway in a given mind: New York City, say, if the person is thinking about and/or discussing, the sociology of urban living (which would be a knowleplex); Broadway theatres if the knowleplex involved is The Culture of New York City.
Also not new is the term, Rigidniplex, for “irrational knowleplex formed and insanely or near-insanely adhered to by a rigidnik,” one of my temperament types. There are, so far, three other faulty knowleplexes in my system, each with a new name: the Indoctriplex, the Neurosiplex, and the Enthusiaplex. These are irrational fixation systems that act like rigidniplexes but have different causes.
The Rigidniplex comes about because of its owner’s charactration (mental energy) , which is too unalterably high for the flexibility required to recognize flaws and correct them. The Indoctriplex comes about because its owner’s charactration is too low for energy to revise flaws that the knowleplex contains due to intense, early indoctri- nation. It is the Milyoop’s equivalent of the Rigidnik’s knowleplex. The Neurosiplex can afflict anyone. It is an irrational knowleplex that comes about due to emotional trauma. A child who have never seen a dog, is nipped by one, and over-reacts, perhaps partly because the child’s mother over-reacts, and so much pain is attached to the event that the child develops a neurotic fear of dogs. “Neurosis” would be a good near-synonym for Neurosiplex. with Freud’s account of neuroses coming close to defining it, except for its neurophysiological basis.
Similar to the Neurosiplex but its etiological opposite is the Enthusiaplex. What forms its initial kernel is not emotional trauma but emotional ecstasy: the dog licks the child, the mother laughs, and the delighted child starts an irrational knowleplex concerning how wonderful dogs are. I found myself in need of such a knowleplex while trying to figure out how people who seemed reasonably sane could believe something as insane as the idea that Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him. That they were rigidniks forced to believe as they did by their rigidniplexes explained the dominant anti-Strat- fordians, as they are called, as far as I was concerned, but there were others who were as nuts as the rigidnikal anti-Strat- fordians, but who showed few or no evidence in real life of being rigidniks, such as an insane reverence for formal education, a lack of aesthetic sensitivity, an incapacity for accepting anomalies in the historic record as due to anything other than some kind of official cover-up, etc.
I come to the conclusion that such people were freewenders who had come up with a seemingly rational counter-argument to the belief that Shakespeare was Shakespeare that was so enchantingly clever, and seemingly likely to be accepted by others, which would have all kinds of wonderful pay-offs (the way I felt about my theory of knowlecular psychology, in fact) that too much pleasure got attached to the initial insight for the freewenders ever thereafter to retract it.
The last of the knowleplexes my theory so far recognizes is the Verosoplex, which is a rational knowleplex (like all mine, needless to say); one, that is, which is based on fundaceptual data only (what our senses tell us) and the use of logic.
What does all this have to do with poetry? Well, I would say that the Poetry Establishment is dominated by people who have formed very narrow rigidniplexes about what poetry is. Ideas contrary to their set beliefs bounce off their rigidniplexes. Etc. Many of their milyoopian followers go along with them because of their indoctriplexes.
Certain freewenders develop idiosyncratic enthusiaplexes for poets who really aren’t very good, because they personally connect to their work–as someone from the working class might connect to Bukowski (actually, I like Bukowski, but not as loonily as his craziest fans), or a feminist to Anne Sexton.
The person who developed a neurotic fear of dogs might irrationally loathe any dog poem. Some, exposed to the crap some schools force on them, might form a neuroiplex against poetry.
The luckiest will form a verosoplex that allows them to at least tolerate almost any kind of poetry, and admire a wide range of poetry–more than the Wilshberian end of the poetry continuum.
Needless to say, all the above is a sketch. In real life, all is much more complex.