In this world both light and dark exist, and human nature is filled with antinomies. It's just the nature that it is what it is. That'd be my answer. Even right and wrong are antinomies. What's wrong in one circumstance doesn't always apply to another. That's why war is sometimes necessary, and also capital punishment; sometimes it's necessary to forgive a heinous wrongdoer. A quadratic function--or even cubic--has multiple answers, and the answer fits to the circumstance, and only that circumstance. Therefore, each and every thing is fitted to its time and season.

The issue is postmodernism. If there's no truth, and only power, then you teach kids that instead of how to come to conclusions, or find truth in what other people are saying. It's basically antagonistic to reason, and kids are being taught that everything, from history, to math to science is part of a Western Patriarchy, that is oppressive and needs to be pulled down brick by brick. They also elevate things like the French Revolution and Mao's rise to power, and believe that people ought to live a minimal existence. They're kind of dull, actually. And pretentious. But generally, Gen Z was taught that there is no persuasive force to reason, and that all there is is power and exerting one's own force of authority on other people.

It is about Wokeness though. Avoiding it, is avoiding the whole factor that's causing the decline of our education system. Like, you have entire departments in the University that police speech and professor's conduct, searching for the least bit of offense in what they might have to say. I know, because I had a confrontation with one of those people, from the aspect of a student. It is entirely DEI and CRT and Queer Theory that's causing the academic system to fall apart. Because if you can't institute and pass down the tradition that has built our country and made it strong, you have another tradition, which is weak, but also top down authoritarian. And that's what the kids are being taught. How to obey power structures, not question it, and go with the mob of other students.

But it is an actual issue. That's like someone having pneumonia, and you say, "Well, the pneumococcal bacteria is not the issue, but rather the fever is, so we'll give them pain killers and Tylenol." Talking about structural issues in university and underpaid adjuncts it not the issue. It's the issue for underpaid adjuncts, but not the students. The students are being taught all the wrong things, and this problem goes way back to the 80s and sometimes even to the 60s, and there's enough of these kinds of professors now, that they're starting to catalyze the West's decline. And they're in Primary and Secondary schools, too, teaching kids this garbage. It is the complete issue. It is the whole entire thing. It is the pneumonia killing the person. And trying to avoid it, by doing the x-rays and saying, "Well it's the dead tumor causing the cough," will kill the patient.

An education is not about making money. It's about pursuing truth, and learning the tradition. Which, the colleges have done an abysmal job at doing, and turned Colleges into these paycheck factories. Basically, you go eyeball in debt, to get a degree and go work at an HR department, or in mid level management. Which, the Confucian angle, names need to be ordered, and those names are not being ordered. That's the first principle of anything, is to have your names ordered, and make sure Genius is being fulfilled in your population. Neither of those conditions are being met.

[People] need to study the humanities [too]. Having better language processing skills enables you to do all your work better. It helps root out myopias, and helps you understand the larger picture. Like, people are not getting that humanities education, so they're not understanding the point of Liberalism or Western Freedom. They're not being instilled that tradition--mostly because the professors think it's pretentious, and would rather result back to a thousand rabbit holes none of which gets you to a good destination--but you need to have the Humanities in order to make a balanced student. Like I said, it's about passing down the tradition. You need to have everyone on the same page, and not have everyone fractured and fighting against one another. And generally, that tradition has to be rooted in the truth, otherwise it just gets fractured anyway, or policed by the governing bodies.

The first foods that built society, were Dairy, Beer and Bread. That's simply dull, to think that Neolithic humans didn't realize a delicious substance came from their herds, and then transferred that to more complex civilization. Basically, leftists don't like people being in civilizations. They really hate that, and want people to be wandering around in tribes, still in hunter gatherer life. But these are the same morons who say Math is racist, and subjective, and defined by our wants and needs. Not quite... I've studied a bit on this subject for about five years, so can rightly say Math is defined by Geometry, not simply arbitrarily decided by a few peons.

Literally, to describe Dairy's impact on the world, there's entire primitive economies built around dairy in Africa, and in the parts of the continent that can breed livestock, there's always been dairy. And the same thing goes for China, there's actually a specific breed of dairy cow that is cultivated there, down into southern Asia, and into Mongolia, where in Mongolia they literally have developed so much food products from dairy, their entire diet consists of it. Let's not even get into the Ancient Canaanites who worshipped the Bull, and that remnant is still in India, where they heavily use Dairy Products. I mean, how else does a cow get sacred?

Simply stupid people are making these claims, and nobody has enough sense to listen to why that's wrong. 

And then you have all the ancient cultures that used to herd goats and sheep, which also produce milk, which in Mexico to this day, a huge product is dairy from goats and sheep, and yes, even cattle. It's just stupidity. These multiculturalists are the white people. That's what they don't understand. They are indeed the white privilege. Not the other way around.

So, it may come to a surprise that Tolkien hated Allegory. And one may consider his Lord of the Rings is an Allegory, but it is not.

This gets to the subject of today's essay, of what is the significant difference between Symbol and Allegory? I will try to explain as best I can the difference, not in Tolkien's view, but in my own.

To me, Symbol is Symbol. It is not concrete, but rather abstract. It doesn't point to something in the literal world, where we can say, "This means this," but rather it strikes at an archetype and a form. A good example is that Tolkien's Orc Army is not literally the Raping Huns--though that's what he fought in World War I--but rather, a symbol, and aesthetic representation of evil. I almost said allegory--as I don't differentiate between the two, though maybe I ought.

But, should I cut between them, and read The Lord of the Rings, Sauron is not an allegorical representation of Hitler. Neither is the Ring an allegorical representation of power. Rather, Sauron is a symbol for Power-lust, and the ring a symbol of the instrument which coerces entire nations to go to war and destroy.

As, the Lord of the Rings the central conflict is Green versus Black. It is Lush versus Waste. It is Nature versus Industrialism. But even then... it becomes allegorical when it represents industrialism. Rather, the form nature ought to take, to shape our technologies around conforming them to be one with nature, that is what fights against the coercive powers of lust and greed and hate. 

No allegory. Tolkien's Orcs do not represent Asian or Black foes, coming across and destroying the Western World. Quite the opposite, it represents oppression coming across the valleys, making No Man's Land--which Tolkien witnessed first hand and scarred him deeply--and taking the might of industry, and stripping away entire landscapes for minerals, and destroying the Earth through combat.

Tolkien's work is a metaphor, but not an Allegory. Tolkien's themes are symbols, but not Allegorical representations of things in the world, but rather universal truths that reach across all time and space. It is not "Spice" in Dune, that we know it means oil. Rather, it is self contained within its own universe, and within its own tautological makeup, where it perfectly fits in the world, without reaching into this one. It is separate, but still, evil is understood to be evil, and good good. And in this separate existence, in the Lord of the Rings, we see human behavior, we see parallels to our own world, but not outright allegories. Symbols, but not Allegories.

A symbol is more rooted in the form, while an allegory is more rooted in the existential. A symbol exists in the imagination, an allegory exists in the real world. A symbol has no racial, cultural or ethnic specified, but transcends it, while the Allegory pokes at a thing which we can all say, "This is what it represents."

Nothing in Tolkien's world represents anything. It rather is what it is, and symbolizes the real power structures and struggles in the real world. Independent of the things in our world, but rather exist in his world unattached and unrelated. As they mimeses, but they do not mimic.

One who studies mathematics--even a cursory understanding--might see a bunch of numbers, and think that is doing math. Well, it is not. It is simply a system that gets you to a number, which you use to help put into something, that you took from different measurements.

However, there's linear math, exponentiated math, and even calculus math. And with a human being, they may wonder to themselves why a thing may seem to contradict. Well, the simple answer, is that there can sometimes be two answers. There's also things, that to find the right answer, it has to be assumed rather than touched--such as a limit with calculus.

So, if you do a quadratic equation, it may turn out that there are two answers--a length and width--where one is negative, and the other is positive. Certainly, this has a function in mathematics. It may also occur, that there's an imaginary number--something like fiction, where we alter the real world, and its laws, to produce what are also true answers. 

So, if you study calculus, you realize that every time you solve a calculus equation, you are making an assumption about the answer. It is a true answer--based on the proportions of how the ratios work--but it's assumed, because one cannot actually complete the ratios, and thereby touch the limit. Many things in life are like this, that they have to be assumed, and reached by systems of logic that take leaps out of the absurd and into the obvious.

So with that, not all things are linear. And our linear minds like to describe things, by thinking something only is so, if it goes one of two directions. Whereby, if logic is a system of principles applied to language, then the basis of that language is reality, which we piece together to form new and useful conclusions. This logic can be linear, quadratic or even calculative. It's a matter of necessity that we understand this.