[Newspoetry] Found Newspoem

[Donald L Emerick]

The problem of seduction, in the academic setting, can be initiated by
either student or instructor.  The student may decide that a better grade is
easier to obtain by illicit methods than by honest ones.  The instructor may
vainly think that a student is responding to the innate personal charms of
the instructor, already self-admiringly well known to the instructor, and
probably never successfully encountered or overcome, self-deprecatingly.
Similarly, in the employment scene, the person who occupies a position of
relative power tends to ignore the inherent gravity of the position that is
occupied.  Determining what would fall to one naturally, as by personal
charm, can not be decided in favor of personal charm, as long as any
relationship of power can be easily seen and grasped, in the most cursory of
inspections.  The presumption would have to be that personal charm is never
present -- and a defendant against any later accusation of wrongful
seduction should have to prove, by the weight of testimony, to any alleged
jury of peers the defense of personal charm.  If this were the legal
standard that we tried to teach people, that they are presumed to be guilty,
in motive, of any demonstrable sexual contact, by having abused their
positions of power, we might have more success in eliminating such wrongful
sexual misconduct.

**

But is this speculation any better than the note of the CS grad student, as
"found art" -- or even as "lost art"?  I think we would have to go to the
category schema, to ask ourselves what is lost and what is found.  Clearly,
for instance, what is found differs from what is discovered, because the
latter includes the things that occur by accidents of nature, itself.  One
can discover a spring in the middle of a meadow where never water flowed
before.  No one ever lost that spring.  On the other hand, the very
terminology of "lost" implies some prior possession, by some awareness, if
by nothing else.  With respect, then, to the CS student's note, do we have
to admit to the possibility of the "art: quality of the note that the
student wrote before we can address the issue of whether, when encountered
by others, the note was a piece of "lost" art, just waiting to be "found"?
And, if so, do we not then find that it is quite hard to get to the idea
that the student actually lost this note, or lost any art in or on this
note?  The more I think of it, the more I must argue for discovery, at the
least, as in the case of the previously unknown, such as the meadow spring.
Indeed, as I roll down this inclination, I find I can even move as far in
belief as this: the note was not art until an imposed view created that
perspective.

My ancestors would say, by contrast, "Look, did you not know that you are
constantly surrounded by angels?"  (And, more darkly, ":Did you not know
that you are constantly surrounded by demons?")  Once we thoroughly believe
that man (being) creates his (its) world, mentally, as that place which he
(it) inhabits, we can understand the wrongful lure of yielding personal
responsibility to god/s, who would (always, if not already) occupy positions
of (ultimate) power.  Personal responsibility begins by recognizing its own
immense power, in all relations, to do harm or to do good, to ignore
possible harm or good.  And, having undertaken such self-recognition,
personal responsibility aims, as a moral issue, to establish truer, more
stable and trustworthy equalities with all others, to negate all
opportunities at exploiting any other being.

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick