;; When we diminish a mode, we are saying we
;; want it to continue doing its work for us,
;; but we no longer want to be reminded of it.
;; It becomes a night worker, like a janitor; it
;; becomes an invisible man; it remains a
;; component, perhaps an important one,
;; sometimes an indispensable one, of the
;; mechanism that maintains the day-people's
;; world, but its place in their thoughts is
;; diminished, usually to nothing.  As we grow
;; old we diminish more and more such thoughts,
;; such people, usually to nothing.

;; "The wise man knows that to keep under is to
;; endure."  The diminished often come to value
;; their invisibility.  We speak--speak--of "the
;; strong silent type", but only as a
;; superficiality; a stereotype in a movie,
;; perhaps, but even if an acquaintance,
;; necessarily, by hypothesis, a distant one.
;; The strong silent type is actually a process.
;; It begins with introspection, continues with
;; judgment, and is shaped by the discovery that
;; these judgments are impractical to share;
;; there is no appetite for the wisdom of the
;; self-critical among the creatures of material
;; appetite who dominate our world.  Their
;; dominance's Darwinian implications reinforce
;; the self-doubt that is the germ of higher
;; wisdom.  The thoughtful contemplate the
;; evolutionary triumph of the predator.
;; Gnostics deny the cosmos could be so evil;
;; this must all be a prank; the thoughtful
;; remain silent, invisible, self-diminished,
;; and discover, perhaps at first in surprise,
;; the freedom they thus gain, and grow strong.

(defun diminish (mode &optional to-what))

;; But an image comes to me, vivid in its
;; unreality, of a loon alone on his forest
;; lake, shrieking his soul out into a canopy of
;; stars.  Alone this afternoon in my warm city
;; apartment, I can feel the bite of his night
;; air, and smell his conifers.  In him there is
;; no acceptance of diminishment.

;; "I have a benevolent habit of pouring out
;;  myself to everybody, and would even pay for
;;  a listener, and I am afraid that the
;;  Athenians may think me too talkative."
;;  --Socrates, in the /Euthyphro/

;; I remember a news story about a retired
;; plumber who had somehow managed to steal a
;; military tank.  He rode it down city streets,
;; rode over a parked car--no one was hurt--rode
;; onto a freeway, that concrete symbol of the
;; American spirit, or so we fancy it, shouting
;; "Plumber Bob!  Plumber Bob!".  He was shot
;; dead by police.

(defun diminish-undo (mode))

;; Plumber Bob was not from Seattle, my grey
;; city, for rainy Seattle is a city of
;; interiors, a city of the self-diminished.
;; When I moved here one sunny June I was
;; delighted to find that ducks and geese were
;; common in the streets.  But I hoped to find a
;; loon or two, and all I found were ducks and
;; geese.  I wondered about this; I wondered why
;; there were no loons in Seattle; but my
;; confusion resulted from my ignorance of the
;; psychology of rain, which is to say my
;; ignorance of diminished modes.  What I
;; needed, and lacked, was a way to discover
;; they were there.

(defun diminished-modes ())

;; A human mind is a Black Forest of diminished
;; modes.  Some are dangerous; most of the mind
;; of an intimate is a secret stranger, and
;; these diminished modes are rendered more
;; unpredictable by their long isolation from
;; the corrective influence of interaction with
;; reality.  The student of history learns that
;; this description applies to whole societies
;; as well.  In some ways the self-diminished
;; are better able to discern the night worker.
;; They are rendered safer by their heightened
;; awareness of others' diminished modes, and
;; more congenial by the spare blandness of
;; their own mode lines.  To some people rain is
;; truly depressing, but others it just makes
;; pensive, and, forcing them indoors where they
;; may not have the luxury of solitude, teaches
;; them to self-diminish.  That was what I had
;; not understood when I was searching for loons
;; among the ducks and geese.  Loons come to
;; Seattle all the time, but the ones that like
;; it learn to be silent, learn to
;; self-diminish, and take on the colors of
;; ducks and geese.  Now, here a dozen years, I
;; can recognize them everywhere, standing
;; quietly in line with the ducks and geese at
;; the espresso counter, gazing placidly out on
;; the world through loon-red eyes, thinking
;; secret thoughts.

(provide 'diminish)

(use-package diminish)
(provide 'cce/diminish)

(mapcar (lambda (it) (list (prin1-to-string (car it))))
diminished-mode-alist)