Well it is all together possible that there can be no clarity on this topic because, quite simply we don't know really what we are talking about in any real way. That is what I have always believed about the paradoxes of choice and movement as well as with logical paradoxes.
That is why I said at the end that actual statements of how the paradox is part of lived experience cannot be actually laid on in linear terms but are, in fact best illustrated through art such as "Sophocles Antigone" Most of human experience is not open to the kind of theoretical statements that Bateson tried, in all clarity, to propound. But for some reason they can be shown in art, and experienced, at one step removed, -- the experience of art as illustration of lived experience.
But again I must say that I think you confuse institutionally inspired or necessitated obscurity, from attempts at clarity aimed at the appropriate audience. Most of the obscurity of the intellectual star culture of Paris, was institutionally necessitated obscurity, not even reaching the heights of Scholastic philosophy in its attempt to reveal the basis for thought and argument. Most articles in publish and perish journals, necessitate a certain way of speaking that is meant to separate the "true" intellectual who deserves certain rewards from the poser who can just say what she means.
Bateson for all of his faults constantly attempted to communicate across academic lines, and if truth be told across, what we would call class lines.
Jerry
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