It seems that while I can easily produce unitonal speech, assimilating all the implications thereof will take some time. For example, the importance of maintaining a superficial appearance of credibility. Fortunately, unitonality in general still appears to require far less brainpower investment than ditonality – and for far greater return.
To illustrate this, let’s employ a few metaphors that have caught my wandering fancy:
(Ah crap, I must also reduce my writing to a 5th grade level. Revise and redact…)
** From Sindarin to Syndicated TV
When ditonals speak thusly:
To these:
The result is sometimes ugly:
Anderson defends the truth rightly, with a strength rarely seen in ditonals. Yet he also utterly fails to counter the rhetorical “disqualify” attack used against him. Thus he is pariah.
With practice, one can learn to imitate the wiles of unitonals, to good effect:
It seems there are three main rules:
1. Speak unitonally, not ditonally. Ditonal honesty is for friends.
2. Say nothing which cannot be proven to a fool, for you will have to.
3. Say nothing true which permits an easy “disqualify” to pariah status.
For purposes of charisma, it is furthermore highly recommended that one find some way to enjoy such soulless exchanges.
** Swordfighting
Here is what a ditonal speaker thinks he’s doing:
The dual sabres represent the dual tones, working in concert within the same message. One describes the topic, the other the speaker.
This transmission of extra information is much like how Latin is full of declensions and conjugations, all now forgotten, whereas Spanish is so straightforward a dog could speak it.
Dual-wield sabres sounds pretty cool, right? So armed, a ditonal should certainly win versus an opponent with only one sword.
And were the ditonal the only judge in the room, certainly he would be declared the winner. However, it is generally not his opinion that counts.
Ditonals are the minority. Thus, the ditonal sees his opponent’s blade with double-vision, imagining a second where none exists. His swings respond to air, and he misses the real strike.
This is fencing, not combat, so it is judges’ opinion on points, not haemorrhage and trauma, that determines the victor. Now here’s the crux: the audience and opponent being unitonal, they cannot see the ditonal’s second blade.
Instead, they see this:
Watch as the sabre-wielder completely dismantles the myth of katana supremacy. Who holds the katana? The ditonal. His two independent blades have merged into a single, clumsy, poorly-designed, one-dimensional two-handed weapon. The sabreman’s nimble rotations chop the ditonal’s guard-less exposed hands to bits, and land strikes elsewhere at will.
Thus by simply dropping his second blade, the ditonal can improve vastly, to this:
In actuality, of course, the best dueling armament is rapier and dagger. The rapier represents the surface tone – long reach to communicate in large-scale, low-context situations. Elegant, efficient thrusting design to achieve fatal wounds with minimal exposure. Light for rapid movement, hand well guarded for defense.
Meanwhile, the dagger is the deep tone. Use it defensively to ward off the blows of the unitonal – for they lack the ingenopathic geas, and are not of your soul or tribe. It is short, so its offensive use is limited to those closest to you, with whom small-scale, high-context communication is possible.
A ditonal’s skill with low-context communication may or may not surpass a unitonal’s, but that is like comparing a rapier to a longsword. The purpose of the rapier is to leave the off hand free to wield a dagger.
Likewise, the more armored your opponents, the less ingenopathic the milieu. The rapier and dagger is the premiere choice for cloth-armored civilian duels. In wartime, heavier weapons are required for the melee scrum. One may leave swords altogether in favor of warhammers and the like – the tools of pure rhetoric.
However, the rapier and dagger’s greatest strength is exhibited when the nucleus of small tribe is bonded, then nested and stacked, to form the Legion. Rapier is then traded for scutum, and dagger becomes gladius.
Thus ditonals may survive fairly well as atomized individuals in a high-trust, law-abiding society, but quickly become fodder when men in armor walk the streets, unless they form ranks. Then they cannot be stopped, for trust = cohesion.
(Skip to 7:20 for Roman infantry tactics)