FORWARD: For those living on the surface of a sphere, ‘gathering’ is, at the same time, ‘scattering’.   If we ‘stand back from visually observing either of these, we understand, instead of EITHER one OR the other wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO, the process of TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE.   GATHERING and SCATTERING, CLUSTERING and DISPERSING are NOT TWO but ONE.  The mountain climber is intrigued by the exhilarating challenge of the climb to the summit and tends to dismiss his descent into valley-dwelling normality.  Experiencing highs and lows is transformative, yet the appreciation of transformation seems, by WESTERN CULTURE habit, to be overshadowed by continuous repetition of pictures of climbers clustering around the summits.  Transformation, which is nonlocal and implicit thus seems to be overshadowed by a focus on the local and explicit.  The abstraction of the local and explicit is capturable with great visual acuity while transformation is the effective reality that vision can only infer. Our WESTERN CULTURE cultivates a confusing habit of substituting the explicit for the implicit in language-based reality construction.

* * *

 

Capturing our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum lies beyond the capability of language and grammar.  The best we can do with language is to use it to construct mental representations that ALLUDE TO or INFER the fluid relational reality that lies intrinsically beyond the reach of language.   In other words, since our sensory experience of inclusion in the Wave-field aka the Tao is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT (that is the nature of the Wave-field aka ‘the Tao’), … are constrained, by the limitations of language, to use language based representations to INFER the fluid reality that lies beyond EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT basics of language.

This note reviews this challenge of using language to ‘effable-ize the ineffable sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka ‘the Tao’.

I am using language to share these thoughts, and our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT language-based mode of representation has its limits that ‘show up’ in shortfalls in our ability to share sensory experience via language-based representations.  Understanding the architecture associated with the reductions of sensory experience that we are forced to make in order to articulate even a REDUCED REPRESENTATION of such experience is non-trivial because the unabridged sensory experience is always out there beyond the reach of words.  We can only make INFERENCE to the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT by way our language being based on the EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT.  Sometimes we make very crude representational reductions of reality to share our experience and other times we make less crude representational reductions.

For example, we use very little experience grounded information in speaking in the visual imagery based terms of ‘the BIG DIPPER’, and use relatively more experiential grounding when we put words together to try to capture something as ‘connected’ and mobile as a CLUSTER of gnats or fruit-flies.  The following is a brief review and deconstruction of our tactics for visually representing, or rather, trying to visually represent, fluid reality.  The aim of this review is to point out the psychological confusion that can come with it.

* * *

There are three basic interfaces here which can to distinguished by the following class labels;

TITBAs: Things-in-themselves-by-APPEARANCE based on FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO: examples included ‘the Big Dipper’ which is a form based on OUR psychological ‘connecting of the dots’ that have very little to do with one another.

TITBOs: Things-in-themselves-by-ORGANIZATION based on FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO: examples include ‘the CLUSTERING’ of fruit flies or small insects forming ‘clouds’ which vary from smaller and more dense to larger and less dense while retaining their same population of constituents.

RAFs: Relational association FORMINGS which are NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE: examples include storming formings such as hurricaning and convecting currents which do NOT depend on the abstract (DOUBLE ERROR based) concept of LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES with their own (GRAMMAR-given) powers of SOURCING actions and developments that characterizes FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO conceptualization.

Explanation of the DOUBLE ERROR:  As Nietzsche points out, we construct the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR to CREATE in the INTELLECT the impression of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and development.   Nietzsche gives the example ‘Lightning flashes’ which seemingly reduces the purely relational and inherently NONLOCAL Wave-field phenomenon of TRANSFORMATION to something NOTIONALLY LOCAL in its SOURCING and DEVELOPMENT, all thanks to the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR that we use as a SUBSTITUTE for the ‘forming’ going on in the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka ‘the Tao’.

The point is that there is some ‘psychological trickiness’ going on here in the realm of Visual Perception and Language-based Intellectual Conceptualization.  NOTA BENE: It is easy for us to ‘pass over’ the fact that, once we have the NAME, ‘the BIG DIPPER’, in mind, as if it were a thing in itself (due to our ability to ‘connect the dots’, we are creating a TITBA, a ‘thing-in-itself-by-appearance’ that we are then able to employ in our standard NAME and VERB (DOUBLE ERROR) constructs; e.g. ‘the BIG DIPPER is slowly changing as the celestial dynamic continues to unfold’.

WARNING!  BRAIN-FART!  There is no ‘BIG DIPPER’.   It is our fanciful MENTAL PICTURE based on connecting visual appearances in a manner that they are NOT connected in nature.  However, once we start talking about ‘the BIG DIPPER’ AS IF IT WERE A LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF, this opens the way to our employing of the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR so as to construct pseudo-reality wherein, so we say, ‘the BIG DIPPER IS SLOWING CHANGING IN SHAPE’.  MEANWHILE, THERE IS NO PHYSICAL “IT”, there is only an APPEARANCE or APPARITION forming in our mind by OUR connecting some dots which are NOT CONNECTED in physical reality.

MEANWHILE, nothing is stopping us from using the NAME, ‘BIG DIPPER’, in our DOUBLE ERROR constructions to as to develop ILLUSIONS wherein the ‘BIG DIPPER’, … now understood as a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF is understood to be ‘CHANGING IN SHAPE over TIME.   All of this is the abstract activity of our psyche which WE IMPOSE OF THE VISUAL IMAGES in our PSYCHOLOGICAL IMAGINING (aka PSYCHOLOGICAL IMAGING).  This raises the question; HOW MUCH OF OUR VISUAL IMAGING IS PSYCHOLOGICAL IMAGINING that makes it into our INTELLECTUAL CONCEPTUALIZING?

For example, how about the intellectual concept of GROWTH as in the context of the GROWTH of the cultivated land we call ‘the TOWN’.  Isn’t the TOWN something like the ‘THE BIG DIPPER’ in that we have imposed a NAME that imputes LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF status to something akin to a spot of mold on a loaf of bread; i.e. a local manifestation of NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION. In reality, nonlocal transformation is what is really going on, and we use language and grammar to enable reductive conceptualizations that are EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT (all of which is ABSTRACTION that is unaffirmable by sensory experience).

OKAY, THAT IS THE STORY ON TITBAs, ‘Things-in-themselves based on appearances such as the Big Dipper and the Town (which is really a ‘TOWNING’ in the transforming LANDSCAPE.)  Now let’s move on to the TITBO’s,  ‘Things-in-themselves based on organization’. Examples include ‘the CLUSTERING’ of fruit flies or small insects forming ‘clouds’ which vary from smaller and more dense to larger and less dense while retaining their same population of constituents.

In observing mountain climbers ascending the flanks of Mount Everest, there are many different ‘teams’ of climbers making the ascent at the same time.  What the distant observer sees is a mixture of these teams, particularly when bad weather at the summit serves as a kind of DIODE that ‘backs up the flow’ of climbers, so that we observe GROWTH of the basecamps until the DIODE flips to ‘fair weather’ and the GROWING backlog of climbers once again SHRINKS as the climbers move on their ascent and subsequent descent and departure.

In this case, the perceived GROWTH of base-camps IS NOT BECAUSE THE LOCAL BASE-CAMP IS SOURCING THE GROWING, it is BACKING UP OF THE FLOW do to the DIODE effect of FAIR WEATHER and INCLEMENT WEATHER at the SUMMIT.   GROWTH is a concept that implies LOCAL SOURCING however, what is going here is the APPEARANCE OF LOCAL GROWTH of the basecamp, which comes to mind when we use NAMING to impute LOCAL thing-in-itself BEING to the ‘base-camp’ by NAMING it ‘the BASE-CAMP’ when the greater reality is the continuing stream or ‘flow’ of climbers which intermittently POOLS when the diode like effect of fair versus inclement weather at the summit INDUCES either GROWTH or SHRINKAGE of the base camps.

In this case, we would be making the ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ of NAMING and GRAMMAR that imputes LOCAL SOURCING in saying that ‘the BASE CAMP is GROWING’, implying that the basecamp has within it the wherewithal for its own GROWTH and development.  This is not true since the BASE-CAMP is not a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF, but a property of the continuing flow of climbers and the diode-like GATING of their flow which manifests as the GROWTH and DECLINE of the base-camp.

We would be WRONG to attribute GROWTH and DECLINE to the LOCAL BASECAMP dynamics and ignore the NONLOCAL DIODE-like influence of the weather at the summit.   Just because the GROWING and SHRINKING MANIFESTS LOCALLY in the BASECAMP does not mean that it ORIGINATES LOCALLY as our DOUBLE ERROR based NAMING and GRAMMAR implies.

Here we have the case of TITBO’s,  ‘Things-in-themselves based on organization’ where we LINGUISTICALLY/INTELLECTUALLY ‘give SOURCING CREDIT’ to notional THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES such as base-camps-that-(so-we-say)-GROW-and-DECLINE.

Here we have the ‘crossed dipoles’ as in an electrical circuit where one of positive-and-negative dipoles is sourcing the electrical flow, and another ‘crossed dipole’ of weather is alternatively opening up and shutting off the flow.

This is not purely imagination as in the BIG DIPPER TITBA, sense, but this TITBO example is nevertheless based on imagination when we contemplate it in the NEWTONIAN TWO-BODY FORMULATION (minus the diode effect of weather) such that we limit ourselves to explaining the movement of the climbers to their own internal SOURCING capacities so that the only possibility for explaining why they stopped climbing is because it was THEIR WILL to STOP CLIMBING.   However, an outside observer might well say; I’ve noticed that the periods where the flow of climbers stops and the basecamp for those making the ascent GROWS are ‘strongly correlated’ with periods of inclement weather at the summit.

PROBLEM: If one’s only tool is a hammer (BINARY LOGIC) everything looks like a nail.  If our tool were not BINARY LOGIC but instead a ‘CROSSED DIPOLE’ dynamic (e.g. like the TETRAD of McLuhan).

We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, with a lifetime of conditioning in using the BINARY logic of Newtonian physics everywhere, habitually fall back into THINKING in terms of BINARY LOGIC in which case there are just two states for our mountain climbers; i.e. ‘EITHER climbing OR not climbing’).  IN THIS BINARY LOGICAL UNDERSTANDING, EVERYTHING IS SEEN AS BEING SOURCED BY THE CLIMBERS, INCLUDING THE GROWTH AND OR SHRINKING OF THE BASE-CAMP DUE THEIR LOCAL BINARY LOGICAL DECISION-GOVERNED BEHAVIOUR.

In other words, the SOURCE of the DRIVE that propels the climbers to the summit is seen as residing within the climbers; i.e. in their internal WILL.  Nietzsche would disagree and point out that the concept of LOCAL SOURCING as is implied in ‘WILL’ derives from the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR (Note that ‘the WILL TO POWER’ does not imply LOCAL SOURCING as in the WESTERN common meaning given to ‘WILL’ but is more like INSPIRATION-THAT-FILLS-THE-HEART than EGO-based-WILL that SWELLS THE HEAD).

WE ARE FREE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN SIMPLE BINARY BIPOLAR LOGIC WHEREIN FIGURE AND GROUND ARE TWO, OR QUANTUM LOGIC WHICH IS A CROSSED POLE TETRADIC LOGIC WHEREIN FIGURE-AND-GROUND-ARE-ONE.   In the example of the mountain climbers we can stick with the ONE DIPOLE of the ascent from the valley to the summit (and back) in which case, the animating influence resides purely within the climber and it is either ON or OFF, … which explains whether the climber is hanging out in the base-camp or on the ascent.   We can thus rightfully speak of the GROWTH or DECLINE of the basecamp as being modulated by the WILL of the climbers.

On the other hand (in the crossed dipole understanding), the alternating of fair and foul weather at the summit is a second, compounding dipolar influence that, like a diode, turn the ascending flow of climbers ON or OFF, and when the ascent is turned off, the BASE-CAMP, SO WE SAY, ‘GROWS in size.  BUT WHY ATTRIBUTE THE SOURCING AGENCY TO THE BASE-CAMP by giving it, thanks to the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR, powers of GROWTH and DECLINE?   IS IT TOO HARD ON OUR BRAIN to open ourselves up to the notion that the the conditions of the space we are included in, can alternate between inspiring actions and development and suppressing actions and development?  Would we not ADMIT to the correlation between our behaviour of hunkering down in shelter during inclement weather and venturing out into the open in fair weather?  Or do we want to insist on KEEPING IT SIMPLE, STUPID, and imposing the SIMPLE BINARY LOGIC LIMITATION that constrains our understanding of our movements to our own internal MENTAL BINARY LOGIC?

Evidently, FIGURE AND GROUND AS TWO representation, even in the TITBO form is held back by is BINARY LOGIC based constraint and lacks the needed complexity to handle the crossed dipole reality where we ‘upgrade’ to a ‘reality’ that acknowledges FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE (as in the Wave-field reality).

Modern physics says that we are included in the transforming relational continuum, in which case, we are no longer constrained to view ourselves as binary logic driven LOCAL, INDEPENDENT BEINGS as in the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO abstraction.

This brings us to our RAF option for understanding ‘forms’;

TITBAs: Things-in-themselves-by-APPEARANCE based on FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO: examples included ‘the Big Dipper’ which is a form based on OUR psychological ‘connecting of the dots’ that have very little to do with one another.

TITBOs: Things-in-themselves-by-ORGANIZATION based on FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO: examples include ‘the CLUSTERING’ of fruit flies or small insects forming ‘clouds’ which vary from smaller and more dense to larger and less dense while retaining their same population of constituents.

RAFs: Relational association FORMINGS which are NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE: examples include storming formings such as hurricaning and convecting currents which do NOT depend on the abstract (DOUBLE ERROR based) concept of LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES with their own (GRAMMAR-given) powers of SOURCING actions and developments that characterizes FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO conceptualization.

To SUM UP, it is always possible to employ a LOWER LEVEL REALITY (MENTAL IMAGINING) such as the TITBA or TITBO representation where we say, for example, … I stayed in the Mount Everest base-camp for an extra couple of weeks prior to making the ascent ‘because I chose to’.  That is, “I am a logical person and I cam capable of making binary decisions as to whether to ‘launch the ascent’ or ‘not launch the ascent’.  Who can deny that I am fully capable of making such binary logic decisions to act or not to act?  This is entirely up to me as I have the power over myself to act as I feel it is appropriate to act.”

This even has WESTERN CULTURE religious backing; e.g;

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
LIFE IN CHRIST

SECTION ONE
MAN’S VOCATION LIFE IN THE SPIRIT

CHAPTER ONE
THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

ARTICLE 3
MAN’S FREEDOM

1730 God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. “God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him.”26

Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.

FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

Our WESTERN CULTURE ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ claim to be NAME-defined LOCAL, INDEPENDENT BEINGS (FIRST ERROR) with “our own powers” of SOURCING actions and developments (SECOND ERROR) is something we have built into our basic language structure which is continually informing us.   As Wuttgenstein observes in this regard;

 A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. –-Wittgenstein – Philosophical Investigations.

What the picture embodied in our DOUBLE ERROR language structure keeps repeating to us is that we are the ‘buck stops here’ SOURCES of our own actions and development.  In which case, the mountain climber can claim, as stated above;

“I am a logical person and I cam capable of making binary decisions as to whether to ‘launch the ascent’ or ‘not launch the ascent’.  Who can deny that I am fully capable of making such binary logic decisions to act or not to act?  This is entirely up to me as I have the power over myself to act as I feel it is appropriate to act.”

This is a proud and even ego-centric statement which meanwhile accords no influence at all to GROUND DYNAMICS that condition the DYNAMICS OF THE FIGURES (in real life), suggesting that FIGURE and GROUND are NOT TWO, but are instead ONE.  After all, our DOUBLE ERROR based NAMING and GRAMMAR allows us to present the hurricane and the atmosphere as TWO so that we can arrange, in our language, to have the hurricane stir up the atmosphere or the atmosphere to stir up the hurricane, confusing the hell out of everyone including ourselves.

We get rid of this confusion when we acknowledge the Wave-field dynamic of TRANSFORMATION as the primary reality, but of course, the problem is then that TRANSFORMATION is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT, and the best we can do is use a language build from NAMING and GRAMMAR (the “DOUBLE ERROR”) that gives the LOCAL and EXPLICIT, as INFERENCE of the REAL-but-INEFFABLE reality of relational TRANSFORMATION.

The current problem for us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS is that we are forgetting that our NAMING and GRAMMAR based pseudo-reality is only good for INFERENCE of the actual reality of our sensory experience and we are instead employing this DOUBLE ERROR pseudo-reality as a SUBSTITUTE REALITY as if we were actually living in that SUBSTITUTE REALITY.    This is a CRAZY-MAKER.

As mentioned in the introduction to; Exploring the Interface Between Visual Perception and Language-based Intellectual Conceptualization, the article is a brief review and deconstruction of multi-level tactics for visually representing, or rather, trying to visually represent, fluid reality, and the psychological confusion that can come with such necessarily incomplete representations.

The understanding of these tricks we play on ourselves with language is elusive, but as an entry door to such recall, we can remember that while there is CLUSTERING, there is no such thing as “A CLUSTER” since the word “CLUSTER” already implies the relational process.  As a SNAPSHOT, yes, we SEE a CLUSTER as if it were a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF (FIRST ERROR) and then we employ GRAMMAR to impute to the CLUSTER, its own powers of SOURCING GROWTH and DEVELOPMENT (the SECOND ERROR) as in ‘the CLUSTER is GROWING LARGER and more ROBUST.

THERE IS CLUSTERING BUT THERE IS NO CLUSTER IN THE SAME SENSE AS THERE IS NO ‘BIG DIPPER’ AND NO KANISZA TRIANGLE (see below).;

 

We are capable of FILLING IN THE BLANKS AND INFERRING that which is NOT THERE, in the case of the Big Dipper and the Kanisza Triangle AND AS IN THE CASE OF THE CLUSTER of mountain climbers that GROWS and then SHRINKS on the summit of Mount Everest. This CLUSTER persists for a duration that exceeds the length of time than any of its constituents, or should we say ‘participants’ since ‘constituents’ imply the components of a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF, whereas ‘participants’ is more appropriate for a continuing gathering-scattering dynamic.  In the case of the summit of Mount Everest where there is a persisting CLUSTERING of climbers, the CLUSTER is not an ONTOLOGICAL entity, it is instead an APPEARANCE or APPARITION based on SCATTER-GATHER RESONANCE.  The CLUSTER’s varying GROWTH and SHRINKING is APPEARANCE as there is NO THING at the summit which is ‘doing the GROWING and SHRINKING’, the GROWING and SHRINKING of the CLUSTER of climbers at the Summit is APPEARANCE or APPARITION deriving from continuing GATHERING-and-SCATTERING.   We must conclude that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “A CLUSTER” or “THE CLUSTER”, there is only CLUSTERING within the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.

The same is true in the case of ‘the TOWN’.   There is no such thing as a TOWN that GROWS and SHRINKS over time, there is only TOWING which is an APPEARANCE or APPARITION within the TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM. The “DOUBLE ERROR” of NAMING and GRAMMAR that SUBSTITUTES a notional LOCAL TOWN that GROWS larger and more populous IS A GOOD “TALKING PIECE” but if we get too distracted by it, as we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are wont to do, … we may lose touch with the reality of our, and our TOWN’s inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.   What if we became so obsessed with the thought that we are GROWING or RATIO-ing up the area of cultivated (improved) in the same one-sided sense as the GROWTH of the TOWN?  Is THINKING grounded in REALITY?

NO!  THE REALITY IS TRANSFORMATION and we are included in it.  Rationality aka REASON is deceptive over-simplistic abstraction.

“Reason” in language!—oh what a deceptive old witch it has been! I fear we shall never be rid of God, so long as we still believe in grammar.  – Nietzsche

This mesmerization by REASON is a WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT psycho-dysfunction.

* * *