The Beauty of Ambiguity

The “human spirit” is like a campfire. You need to re-light it every single day. (Brian Johnson)

---

Fragments from imaginary dialogues

“What’s your process for making sense of this quote?”

“I employ a model which I call Deconstruction/Disambiguation.

I first break it down into relevant units of meaning. I scan it for concepts, metaphors, models, and metaphoric models, through the filter of the practical.

The main metaphoric model here is Fire, which is also a representational-model [<link; medium read].

The second metaphoric model is Spirit.

Then I disambiguate. ‘Human spirit’ here is ambiguous.”

“What do you think Brian is referring to?”

“You don’t need to know.

As we’ve talked before [<link; short read], you don’t decode the meaning; you project a meaning.

Ambiguity is beautiful.“

“What’s beautiful about it?”

“It’s an instance of Functional Beauty [<link; short read].

You’re undoubtedly familiar with the Rorschach test.”

“Yes.”

“Ambiguity is like a Rorschach blot.

A Rorschach blot

Or, to use a different model,

Ambiguity is like an Oracle [<link; medium read].

Ambiguity can be used as a creativity and problem-solving tool.“

“Does this make disambiguation a creative process?”

“It does.”