The Maker v. The Table

Rage went first. Its definition read "Anger at its most consuming," but the subscript already carries intensity. An₂ and Rage make the same claim twice. If the notation teaches weight and ignores it one cell later, the notation means nothing. The subscript grammar is set out in The Periodic Wall.

Ecstasy was defined as "Joy that overwhelms containment." That made it Joy with a longer name, and zero works carried it. The rule appeared to send it out with Rage.

The word survived when volume stopped being the measure. Rage only raised Anger along an axis already handled by the subscript. Ekstasis means standing outside yourself; the boundary of the self disappears. No other cell names that event. The old definition was wrong. Ecstasy stayed.

With the definition corrected, it moved from the rising states to the still ones. Ecstasy is quiet here: the moment you lose track of where you end.

The first case against Awe-Quiet called it "Awe after the overwhelm passes," carried by one work against Awe's twelve. On that reading it was a fading tail, only a phase of its parent.

Maslow's distinction between peak and plateau experience offered a useful parallel, not a scientific verdict on this table: acute and rare on one side, serene and trainable on the other. Awe-Quiet uses the plateau side of that distinction. The comparison gave the cell enough difference to remain.

Called: a fade-out of Awe  ·  Actually: its own room

The first G7 filing held Shame, Guilt, Pride and Envy. Tangney's quartet is shame, guilt, embarrassment, pride, and the distinction follows the direction of the eye. Those four turn back toward the self being seen. Envy crosses the room toward somebody else.

Envy moved to G6 Corrosive and sat beside Contempt, another feeling that eats what it looks at. Embarrassment took the empty chair. The mistake carries no moral weight. Somebody saw it happen, and the floor suddenly looks like an exit.

Across the two days, seven words reached the door and held under the law. Each names a state a work can cause, and each covers ground the existing table left bare. They took the numbers freed by deletions and the slots already waiting. The rest of the table stayed where it was.

Five of the seven are in no work yet. That is deliberate. A state can belong in the table before a piece arrives to carry it. These cells wait for that piece, beside the five spaces still held dark.

Gluttony describes conduct. The sensation beneath it is already sitting in the table under Craving. Lust reduces to Craving plus Longing. Sloth reduces to Weariness plus Resignation. Vices are conduct. The table holds experience.

Amusement and Awkwardness were harder. Research recognizes both, but they appeared here only in a handful of works named after tracks, where the evidence came from the song while the image stayed silent. Nothing else in the catalog asked for either word. They stayed outside. Borrowed evidence cannot finish this table.

Five reserved cells stay dark. The work has to arrive first. Then the symbol follows.

NoteTriumph never became a separate cell. In Cowen and Keltner's category map it did not separate cleanly from pride and joy. That does not settle every taxonomy; it explains why this table did not treat Triumph as a missing category.