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.

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.”
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