Our main tool of de-intensification is language. We use words to label, to generalise, to categorise, to tidy up the world and force it into a scheme, a scheme of things. And then, in the safety of our own boudoir, we attempt to re-intensify that scheme by writing poems, elegies and laments to the loss of grace posing as paeans to human insight. Intense utterances are only ever grunts and groans, with the occasional scream thrown in when things get really intense. Think of sex, not to become aroused, but to do things better.