The Three-Levels of Language-Based Understanding of ‘Reality’

* * * 4TH RESEND – REFLECTIONS ON THIS SERIES OF COMMENTS * * *

 

Public events such as the ‘trial of Omar Khadr’ bring out the divisions in Western society with respect to modes of cognition.  The three modes of cognition formulated by Erich Jantsch in ‘Design for Evolution’ are useful in exploring what is actually going on in the cognitive habits of Westernized society.   We can see how it is possible to socially divide into ‘three groups’ depending on ‘cognitive preference’ as to ‘what is ‘real’ in the process of ‘making sense of’ or ‘understanding’ the world we are included in.  In Western society, the split into the two cognitive ‘realities’ of ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ are the most popular.  Both of these impressions assume the ABSTRACT (non-experience-grounded) ‘existence’ of human BEINGS as associates with NAMING relational forms in the flow, and differ as follows;

Level 3 Cognition:  Nature:  ‘Naming’ a relational form, whether a hurricane or a human, imputed ‘existential BEING’ to that form, allowing ‘grammar’ to take over from there and ‘present’ the form as the subject with the magic powers of sourcing its own actions.  The understanding that draws directly from our experience as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum (level 1 cognition) is ‘eclipsed’ or ‘blacked out’ by this mode of cognition which is triggered by ‘naming’ that abstractly endows relational forms with notional ‘thing-in-itself BEING’.

 

Level 2 Cognition: Nurture: ‘Naming’ a relational form NOT ONLY endows it with notional ‘thing-in-itself existence’ aka ‘being’, it sets up a ‘distinction’ between the form understood as a ‘being’ thanks to our having ‘named’ it, … and the influential ‘environment’ that the ‘being’ is included in.  For example twins which are presumed to have identical thing-in-themselves (being-based) properties) develop differently in different ‘environments’; i.e. trees grow tall and straight in a grove where they protect one another from the wind and elements, while the same sort of trees may develop twisted and gnarly if developing ‘on their own’ on a windswept coast.

 

These two ways of understanding ‘beings’, which are nothing other than ‘named’ relational forms in the transforming relational continuum, from a modern physics mode of understanding, remain the source of contention in Western society.  The contention is over ‘which prevails over which?’  Does nature prevail over nurture or does nurture prevail over nature?  This is sometimes moderated by Western cultural convention which allows that a youth is not ‘fully responsible’ for his own ‘nature’ until the age of majority (16 years, or 18, or 21 or etc.).  Up until that point, his actions may be understood as being inductively shaped by ‘nurture’ by the environment he is situationally included in.

 

Both ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ start with the assumption of ‘being’, an abstraction cognitively triggered by ‘naming’, as in common with naming a hurricane ‘Katrina’, which permits us, linguistically (grammatically), to speak in terms of ‘her development’ and ‘her actions’ (destructive or transformative or etc.).

 

‘Being’ arises from ‘naming’ (abstraction) and invites creative explanations for ‘development’ of the ‘being’ and also the development of ‘more beings’ from ‘existing beings’.  Nevertheless, ‘being’ itself is an abstraction that derives from language and ‘naming’.  Level 1 cognition does not require the abstraction of ‘being’ that is created by ‘naming’.   Meanwhile, Western cognition, because it accepts ‘being’, runs into some very basic cognitive failures in using being-based cognition to deliver understanding re naturally experienced relational dynamics.  E.g. as in David Suzuki documentary ‘Smarty Plants’, there is no ‘scientific’ explanation for how plants, which have no brain, can make such intelligent decisions.  Likewise in the Nova presentation on slime mold;

 

The slime mold Physarum polycephalum is a single cell without a brain, yet it can make surprisingly complicated decisions. In this animated video short, watch as a slime mold navigates through a maze and solves a civil engineering problem.” — Nova, ‘Slime Mold Smarts’

 

The cognitive ‘problem’ here starts from the assumption of ‘being’ as given by the ‘naming’ power of ‘language’ which invites us to explain the behaviour of a notional ‘being’ in one of two ways; (nature) where the behaviour is inside-outward asserting behaviour, … or ‘nurture’ where the behaviour is environment-induced behaviour.  In the popular Western ‘scientific’ schema, the world (reality) is intellectually divided up, using names to impute local ‘being’,  into ‘animal beings’,  ‘vegetable beings’ and ‘inanimate’ or ‘mineral’ beings’ (rocks, water etc.).

 

The problems that arise with this names-that-impute-being based schema; e.g. the ‘nature or nurture’ question, are inherently non-resolvable, like the problem in Gulliver’s travels of which end one should open a boiled egg, the pointy end or the round end?  That is, should we attribute Omar Khadr’s violent act to ‘nature’ (inside-outward sourcing of action) or ‘nurture’ (outside-inward induced asserting)?

 

What is missing is level 1 cognition which ‘bypasses being’ and would have us understand a ‘person’ as a relational form in a transforming relational continuum.  However, without ‘being’ as given by ‘naming’, even though we understand our unfolding experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum, … there is no  way to ‘articulate’ and ‘share’ our (understanding) of our experience.

 

“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen” …  “that which we are unable to capture in language, we must pass over in silence.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein

 

Even though it is impossible to capture the flow-based reality we are included in, ‘literally’, with language, since language employs ‘names’ which impute ‘persisting being’ to relational forms, making them out to be ‘things-in-themselves’, it is nevertheless possible to use language to construct an impression of relational transformation through poetic use of language where ‘beings’, rather than being deconstructed into material parts that make up a ‘thing-in-itself’, are described in purely relational terms; e.g. ‘shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’, … thou art more lovely and more temperate’.

 

Naming of relational forms in the flow opens the way for language and thus for language-based communications and sharing of cognitive impressions.  In the indigenous aboriginal culture, as in modern physics, the assigning of ‘names’ that impute ‘being’ to relational forms in the flow allows us to ‘break the silence’ and to share language-based representations of our experience.  If this naming is done as a temporary expedient as in ‘poetic inference’ or ‘bootstrapping’, we can retain the understanding of the reality we are included in as a transforming relational continuum.  This ‘bootstrapping’ mode of linguistic communications has been described as the ‘surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’.

 

In this case, we are in ‘cognitive level 1’ which has no dependency on ‘being’ (there is only becoming in a relational reality).  From this level 1 cognitive ‘vantage point’ we can look back at our level 3 versus level 2 reality debates as the artefacts of our mistaken assumption of ‘being’ as the foundation of  ‘reality’.  Since ‘being’ is abstraction cognitively triggered by ‘naming’, we confuse our understanding where we interpret ‘being-based language’ ‘literally’, rather than poetically.

 

In Western society, ‘naming’ is a kind of ‘dark art’ that defines ‘being’, ignoring the understanding that comes from ‘relational experience’ that is beyond capture by language.  The determination of whether one is Shia or Sunni tends to over-ride what one understands by way of relational experience.  Whether one is regarded as a pauper or a prince depends more on one’s name than on relational dynamics.  As in the fable of Rumpelstiltskin, ‘naming’ imputes ‘being’ and can spin straw into gold.  If one discovers that one’s house-guest is a bona fide ‘princess’, the relational dynamics may alter dramatically, curtseying and bowing may ensue.  Likewise, if a Capulet discovers that one’s houseguest is a Montague, the Shakespearean ‘poetic’ understanding that ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’, is unlikely to prevail over the scientific/rational understanding that comes from name-defined being.

 

The language based capacity to ‘name’ and thus to impute ‘being’ can be used to distinguish between princes and paupers and then again between angels and devils.  The concept of ‘being’ as decreed by ‘naming’ is foundational to such ‘black art’ understanding which derives from ‘language’.  That is the point in the Shakespearean ‘tragedy’ of Romeo and Juliet.  This the point in the 4000 year old fable ‘Rumpelstiltskin’, … naming can spin straw into gold (or paupers into princes).

 

Meanwhile, ‘language’ is a poor conveyor of experience since our experience is of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum, as Wittgenstein’s cryptic final proposition in ‘Tractatus …’ reminds us, as well as the understandings of Taoism;

 

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things

 

 

Summary of Reflections on these comments;

 

Language is incapable of DIRECTLY capturing the relational dynamics of our experience, however, it is common in Western culture to regard as ‘reality’, the cognitive pseudo-reality crafted by ‘names’ that imply ‘being’ as cognitively animated by verbs and grammar in two ways, termed ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ where ‘nature’ is portrayed in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ (aka ‘beings’) and what things-in-themselves do’ as if animated by internally ‘generated’ (genetic) force, while ‘nurture’ alludes to ‘environment-induced development’ of the dynamics of ‘things-in-themselves’ aka ‘beings’.

 

Both ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ are language-based (being-based) modes of cognition and are the source of cultural division of the sort alluded to in Gulliver’s travels where people divided into opposing groups over which end of the egg should be opened to gain access to the contents; i.e. the notion of a ‘being’ that is animated either from inside-outward asserting forces or animated from outside-inward (environmental) inductive influence, is formulation that is inherently too small because it assumes that the active agent in question is a ‘being’ that ‘exists’ by virtue of our having endowed it with a name’ (with or without tapping it on the shoulder with the magic sword Excalibur’);

 

“As with many other magical or powerful swords in legend or mythology, it is identified with a single hero and should not be allowed to fall into the hands of an enemy owing to its inherent power. In the case of Excalibur, when Arthur is dying of his wounds following his battle with Mordred, it must be returned to its source, the Lady of the Lake, rather than being entrusted to whichever knight – no matter how noble – might succeed Arthur as king.”

 

It is the ‘name’ that has the magic power in it to transform a pauper into a prince, or an angel into a devil.  That is, ‘being’-based language has these ‘magic powers’ through ‘naming’ to ‘spin straw into gold’ (Rumpelsiltskin).

 

While the Western mythopoetic era understood that ‘names’ did not impute ‘real being’ but were a poetic device for cultivating cognitive impressions of a purely relational ‘reality’ (world of our experience), ‘scientific’ and ‘religious’ thinking became popular in the Western culture which imputed ‘reality’ (operative reality to guide our individual and collective behaviour) to name-created ‘beings’ or ‘material things-in-themselves’ as employed in grammatical constructions.  This shift from poetic usage of language to rational usage is the source of rampant ‘incoherent behaviour’ (Bohm) in modern Western culture permeated society.

 

‘Level 1 cognition’ as cultivated by ‘bootstrapping’ so as to go beyond ‘being-based cognition’ to purely relational cognition, while advocated as the path of return to social sanity by Wittgenstein, Bohm, Nietzsche, it will ‘have to wait’ since the popular debate that is consuming all of the activist energy and is dividing the population in two opposing camps, is in regard to whether ‘’nature’ should prevail over ‘nurture’ or vice versa (conservative view over liberal view), as in the divisive case of ‘Omar Khadr’.

 

A ‘stroke of insight’ restores reality level 1 (relational) cognition to its natural precedence and ‘lets go of’ the unnatural practice of using ‘being’ deriving from ‘naming’ in a foundational (rational) cognitive role as in reality levels 3 and 2 (nature and nurture).  Names are still used, but only to set up relations as in a web of name-based references and no longer in a ‘thing-in-itself-defining’ mode’.  This is consistent with level 1 cognition but the stroke experient also loses ‘cognitive facility’ in language based renderings of level 3 and level 2 cognition, and it takes time and effort to restore such facility, even if it constitutes a ‘dumbing down’ from level 1 cognitive capability.

 

This is the problem faced by the Mahavit and the Atmavit; i.e. does one really want to ‘walk-the-talk’  that one understands in level 1 reality if it alienates one from the culture/society that one has grown up mostly loving and ‘getting along with’?

 

David Bohm arrived at such a decision point towards the end of his life;

A few months before his death, Bohm met with a number of Algonkian speakers and was struck by the perfect bridge between their language and worldview and his own exploratory philosophy. What to Bohm had been major breakthroughs in human thought — quantum theory, relativity, his implicate order and rheomode – were part of the everyday life and speech of the Blackfoot, Mic Maq, Cree and Ojibwaj.” – F. David Peat, ‘Blackfoot Physics’

However one lives out the answer to this question of whether to ‘walk the talk’ or just ‘talk’, or opt for some combination thereof (e.g. as in ‘restorative justice’ indigenous aboriginal style), it is pretty much impossible to ‘reset’ one’s cognition ‘back to where one puts level 2 or level 3 into an unnatural primacy, when one has ‘gotten comfortable’ with restoring level 1 to its natural primacy.  Meanwhile, the former is the ostensible goal of most post-stoke therapies rather than redeveloping one’s cognitive dynamic on the new level 1 foundation wherein ‘being’ is exposed as abstraction and relations are everything, in spite of what language, taken literally, would have us ‘believe’.

 

 

 

* * * END OF 4TH RESEND – REFLECTIONS ON THIS SERIES OF COMMENTS * * *

 

 

 

 

 

* * * 3RD RESEND WITH SUM-UP COMMENT * * *

 

There is no such thing as ‘being’ as in ‘things-in-themselves’ such as ‘human beings’ in the real world of our natural experience, there are only relational forms in the transforming relational continuum.

 

‘Naming’ is part of the ‘bewitchment’ of our understanding by way of language.  Naming imparts ‘persisting being’ to relational forms in the transforming relational continuum (there is no ‘persisting being’ in the natural world of our experience).  ‘Naming’ is a kind of ‘magical spell casting’ that can turn a pauper into a prince (or spin straw into gold as in the fable ‘Rumpelstiltskin’).

 

‘Language’ is responsible for some crazy mind-bending distortion of the physical reality of our relational experience, particularly in regard to the abstract notion of ‘being’ as invoked by ‘naming’.

 

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language”– Wittgenstein

 

The notion of interpreting names as signifying ‘beings’ (independently existing things-in-themselves or ‘things-that-be’) dates back to a shift in Western culture from basing ‘reality’ on relational experience, to creating an intellectual ‘operative reality’ based on names (nouns) signifying ‘things-in-themselves’ and ‘verbs’ signifying ‘what things-in-themselves or ‘things-that-be’ are doing’.

 

“Heraclitus had declared ‘being’ a perpetual ‘becoming’ and had correlated the two concepts with his ‘hidden attunement.’ Now Parmenides declared the two to be mutually exclusive, and only ‘being’ to be real.” — ‘The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man’, — ‘Frankfort et al’

 

Therein lies the source of ‘incoherence’ that is rampant in modern Western civilization, because this civilization has accepted the ‘black magic’ or ‘dark art’ that has been ‘built into language’ and most particularly into the modern languages such as English when used ‘scientifically’ or ‘rationally’ as in ‘Newtonian science’, the science of our everyday modern ‘rational thinking’.  Insofar as we form rational (scientific) statements about ‘reality’ using words/names that impute ‘being’ to relational forms in the transforming relational continuum, we are dabbling in the ‘black art’ because there is no such thing as ‘being’ (whether implied by naming or not) in the transforming relational continuum of our actual relational experience.

 

Poetry is an ok use of names since the names are used as ‘throw-away expedients’ (‘Wittgenstein ladders’) to imply relational dynamics, and once we have a cognitive grasp in purely relational terms, the name triggered being-based concepts fall away as the ‘bootstrapping expedients’ that they are.  ‘Shall I compare thee to a summers day’ … is part of the bootstrapping cognition-inducing ploy to induce cognition of a relational form in the transforming relational continuum, in this case a ‘human’.  This bootstrapped ‘relational human’ is NOT a ‘human being’ but a relational form in the transforming relational continuum, akin to a hologram in an ‘energized field’ or a ‘hurricane’ in the relationally transforming atmospheric flow-field.

 

Newtonian physics, which influences modern Western understanding of ‘what is real’, is ‘being based’ and the belief in ‘being’ is abstraction that associates with the ‘dark arts’.  In other words, ‘Newtonian science’ employs a mode of cognition belonging to the ‘dark arts’.  There is no basic difference between ‘naming an object’ in science, and ‘naming a pauper’ so as to transform that ‘pauper’ into a ‘prince’ [spinning straw into gold].  In other words, ‘scientific naming’ aims to capture the essence of the ‘thing-in-itself’ rather than to bootstrap an understanding of it by way of its relations with other things so that relations ultimately become the cognitive informer, rather than the ‘thing-in-itself’ name.    The progressive shift from relational understanding via poetic (relational) inference to ‘rational understanding’ in terms of name-defined ‘things-in-themselves’ has been parodied by poetically inclined cultural observers such as Charles Dickens, but there has been ‘no stopping it’ in Western culture.

 

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”

 

‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind. ‘Your definition of a horse.’

 

 ‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer. — Charles Dickens, ‘Hard Times’

 

Dickens capture, in this statement by Gradgrind, the continuing expulsion of the relational mode of understanding ‘reality’ [as exemplified by ‘Sissy Jupe’s poetic view of a horse] by the encroachment of the scientific ‘being’-based mode of understanding ‘reality’ which ignores the matrix of relations as in modern physics ‘bootstrapping’ and instead homes in down and in ‘scientifically (analytically)’ on components and components of components that are all ‘thing-in-itself being’ based as decreed by the dark art of ‘naming’ the parts.

 

Yes, Newtonian (mainstream) scientific thinking is a ‘dark art’ in the sense that it uses ‘names’ to impute ‘being’ to relational forms in the transforming relational continuum.  It is not possible to cognitively ‘entrap’ a physical reality constituted by a transforming relational continuum in terms of ‘named objects’ or ‘named beings’ and ‘’what named beings do’.  But this is what language and grammar attempt to do and the cognitive ‘pseudo-reality’ that results is fundamentally ‘at odds’ with the relational reality of our actual physical (relational) experience.  Western ceremonies such as ‘knighting’ or ‘promoting’ aim to give the individual a new ‘being’ based identity that, in effect, transforms a pauper into a prince (spins straw into gold as in the fable Rumpelstiltskin).  It is a ‘dark art’ that is not found in cultures such as the indigenous aboriginal culture where the belief is that ‘mitakuye oyasin (mitakweeasay)’ — ‘we are all related’, man, woman, animals, plants, the lot, … in the sense of relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.

 

Western science is essentially a ‘dark art’ in that it supports the cultural belief in ‘spinning straw into gold’.  In other words, using names to connote persisting being in contradiction to our real-life relational experiencing where ‘everything is in flux’.  This ‘belief’ in ‘being’ that derives from ‘naming’ is behind the absurd (abstract) scientific concept of ‘justice’ in Western society which, unlike aboriginal justice, ignores the natural precedence of relational influence in shaping the transforming relational dynamic involving relational forms that are continually forming and reforming therein.  The Newtonian scientific belief in ‘independent beings’ with their own ‘internally sourced actions’ is part of the ‘black art’ whereby relations can be used to selectively ‘suffocate’ relational forms to the point of a relational ‘uprising’ that seeks to relieve the suffocation which is meanwhile ‘blamed’ on the inferior performance of ‘lower beings’.

 

Only in a ‘being-based worldview’ can there be such a notion of ‘inferior performance’ as deriving from an ‘inferior being’, and likewise, ‘superior performance’ deriving from a ‘superior being’.  But there are no ‘beings’ in the physically real world of our relational experience, there only relational forms.  Therefore, there are no ‘superior beings’ nor ‘inferior beings’ because there are no ‘beings’ period.  ‘Beings’ are abstractions cognitively triggered by ‘naming’ relational forms to impute ‘persisting being’ to them as in the case of ‘hurricane Katrina’ and as in the case of John Dunbar (aka ‘Dances with Wolves).  In Newtonian science, ‘beings’ are understood as material entities constituted by their internal parts (also notionally ‘being’-based);

 

“It seems probable to me that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that these primitive particles being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first creation.” —Newton, cited in ‘the Tao of Physics’.

 

Naming the parts gives the parts ‘being’ so that naming is the source of both the ‘macro-being’ and its ‘micro-component parts’.  This is the familiar ‘machine model’ of an ‘organism’ whose animated behaviour is understood as being sourced by ‘fuelling up’ on food and water to run ‘internal systems’ that animate the organism from the inside-outward (as in the ‘nature’ part of the ‘nature’ – ‘nurture’ dichotomy).  The world that the organism resides in is an ‘afterthought’ that has been retrofitted in ‘scientific thinking’ by the mathematical device of a Cartesian reference frame.  This provides a general ‘home’ or ‘dwelling place’ for any and all ‘name-based beings’ that we care to invent and describe in terms of their ‘internal components’.  Science also divides the world into ‘animate beings’ and ‘inanimate beings’ [‘beings aka ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves’]

 

“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.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

 

The picture of a world of ‘beings’ derives from our language which allows us to ‘name’ relational forms in the flow and thus to impute ‘persisting being’ to them as becomes the basis for articulating the dynamics of a being-based pseudo-reality that is cognitively employed as ‘the operative reality’, featuring ‘named things-in-themselves’ and ‘what these named-thing-in-themselves do’.  This linguistic, ‘being-based operative reality’ is nothing like the actual experiential reality of our relational experience in the transforming relational continuum.  In the being-based pseudo-reality, we credit ‘beings’ like ‘hurricane Katrina’ with her own incipient powers of growth, development and causal actions and results, … a ‘language-and-grammar based pseudo-reality that obscures/eclipses in our cognitive dynamic, the relational reality of our physical experience.

 

Note that the ‘Tao’ or relational flow based reality, while it is the ‘real reality’ of our actual relational experience, cannot be captured in noun-and-verb (being-based) language.  Nevertheless, language can be used to ‘bootstrap’ an impression of the relational reality of our actual experience, by employing named beings and their actions to ‘trigger cognitive understanding’ of the real, relational world of our actual experience.  This requires the poetic spinning of webs of relations among temporarily defined-for-such-purpose ‘named things-in-themselves’ so that once the relational understanding is stimulated, the expediently postulated and named ‘things-in-themselves’ (‘Wittgenstein ladders’) can withdraw from the cognitive scene, leaving only relational dynamics to continue to feed cognition/understanding.

 

‘Bootstrapping’ (poetic development of a purely relational reality) provides a way of using an apparently ‘being-based language’ without getting hung up on the abstract concept of ‘being’ which blocks cognition of our experiencing of reality as a transforming relational continuum.  Western ‘mythopoetic era peoples’ used language in the bootstrapping /poetic mode so as to cultivate cognition of self and world as a relational form in a transforming relational continuum, consistent with modern physics.  Newtonian concepts and the rise in popularity of being-based ‘scientific thinking’ have overwhelmed the poetic understanding essential to cognition of a relational reality.  It must also be pointed out that Western religions; Christianity, Judaism and Islam have also supported the concept of a ‘Supreme Being’ as ‘Creator’ rather than ‘the Creator’ understood as a ‘spiritual field of influence’ immanent in the transforming relational continuum.

 

Belief in the Western being-based language of science is thus a religious belief, as it was with Newton.  Nietzsche recognized the implications of using a ‘being’-based language ‘literally’; i.e.;

 

“I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar,” – Nietzsche

 

Experiencing a ‘stroke of insight’ demolishes level 3 thing-in-itself based (being-based) cognitive mode and allows relational understanding to re-assume its natural cognitive primacy [it also plays hell with the common level 3 based communications channels!].  Level 3 ‘rational thinking’ that is habitual in modern Western culture and that the cultural habit allows to ‘hijack’ the seat of primary cognitive influence, is once again dethroned by the ‘left-brain’ stroke-of-insight; i.e. the insight that comes with the stroke that shows up as the drop out of ‘names’.  ‘Naming’ is the device that brings in the cognitive impression of ‘persisting being’.  If we can ‘drop out’ names wherever they are used to bring on the cognitive impression of ‘thing-in-itself being’, then relational cognition (level 1) can resume its natural precedence over cognitive levels 3 and 2 which are both based on ‘being’; i.e. ‘nature’ is the level 3 notion of thing-in-itself being capable of internally/genetically jumpstarting incipient self-development, while ‘nurture’ is the level 2 notion of environment-induced developmental reforming/shaping of a thing-in-itself being.

 

It is not hard to see that the initial abstract assumption of ‘thing-in-itself’ ‘being’ cognitively created by ‘naming’ forces the rational mind to come up with some ‘rationale’ to explain ‘inside-outward asserting development’ aka ‘genesis’, … and also explain such ‘realities’ as trees that grow tall and straight within a grove and twisted and gnarly on a windswept coastal islet or highland.  These are ‘intellectual obligations’ deriving from ‘naming’ and thus imputing ‘separate being’ to relational forms in the transforming relational continuum; i.e. these ‘intellectual obligations’ are the source of the concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ both of which vanish in the level 1 assumption which understands ‘forms’ not as ‘beings’ as linguistically designated by ‘names’ but as relational features within the transforming relational continuum.

 

Once again, the left-brain stroke allows one to pass directly to reality level 1 relational cognition without stopping at the name/being based reality levels 3 and 2 which are the artefacts of being-based language and grammar.  While the stroke-experient does not need language to live in harmony with the natural world of our experience, he does need language to share his experiences with others, and to tap into the experiences of others and learn from them.  The first part of the challenge for the stroke experient is therefore to find a way to preserve the gains from ‘the stroke of insight’ having restoring level 1 cognition to its natural precedence over levels 3 and 2 cognition, while at the same time, reviving stroke induced lost facility in levels 2 and 3 cognition.  The second part of the challenge is to sustain valued relations within a culture that that co-manufactures and shares the sense of being included in a language-based pseudo-reality which assumes that level 3 and level 2 cognition aka the being-based nature or nurture dichotomy are ‘the way the world ‘really works’ [the ‘Mahavit or Atmavit dilemma].

 

 

 

* * * END OF 3RD RESEND WITH SUM-UP COMMENT * * *

 

 

 

 

* * * 2ND RESEND WITH 2ND COMMENT * * *

 

language (understood literally) is the problem.  it is the problem of naming that implies ‘being’ (Rumpelstiltskin).  A stroke arises from conflict when rational being-based understanding tries to direct behaviour one way at the same time as relational (non-being based) experiential understanding is inducing contrary behaviour.

 

The ‘stroke of insight’ is where relational experience resumes its natural primacy over language-directed rational behaviour so that language-based ‘rational rhetoric’ that has risen up and ‘taken over’ as the unnatural dominator of behavioural direction ‘falls away’, allowing relational experience based intuition to resume its natural cognitive leadership role;

 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.  – Mary Oliver, ‘Wildgeese’

 

‘Language’ and its ‘black magic’ capability called ‘naming’ that  is the source of the cognitive notion of ‘being’ is what separates us from our ‘wild geese’ (relational-experiental intuitive) understanding.

 

‘Language’, understood ‘literally’, wherein ‘names’ designate ‘beings’ — ‘abstractions’ that are ‘taken to be real’, … sets up internal conflict with relational experience based understanding.  This conflict is the deeper source of ‘stroke’ [deeper than dietary influences] and what the stroke does is to ‘let go of’ the tensions arising from the unnatural elevating to cognitive primacy of ‘being’ over ‘becoming’.  This is experienced as ‘insight’ as in Jill Bolte Taylor’s experience documented in her book ‘My Stroke of Insight’.

 

I can reaffirm, as a stroke experient, that the drop out of ‘names’ (the stuff that the abstraction of ‘being’ is cognitively triggered by), in no way erases one’s relational experience based understanding.  That is why the ‘game of Twenty Questions’ ‘works’ with stroke experients; i.e. it is perfectly possible to ‘know things relationally’ without ‘knowing their names’.  Once we ‘name’ things, we impute ‘thing-in-itself-being’ to them even though all forms are relational forms within the transforming relational continuum.  So, the drop-out  of ‘names’, which is equivalent to the drop-out of ‘being’ in our abstract language-based conceptualizing of the world, does not impede our ability to understand the world experientially, in our natural animal mode alluded to in Mary Oliver’s ‘WIldgeese’, but it DOES impede our ability to ‘communicate’ with others whose cognition is culturally conditioned (as in Western culture) to employ ‘being’-based cognition (language-based cognition) to construct a synthetic ‘reality’ that Western culture puts into an unnatural primacy over the reality of our relational experience.

 

That is, the (‘left-brain’) stroke experient, discovers that his relational experience is restored to its natural primacy over ‘name-inspired’ being-based (abstract) cognition.  Relational experiencing of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum can only be captured in language ‘poetically’ since ‘everything is in flux’ (Heraclitus/Modern physics/Bohm/Wittgenstein) and there are no ‘things-that-be’ (‘beings’ with persisting ‘existence’) as implied by ‘names’ in the game of ‘language’.

 

The ‘stroke-experient’ thus experiences the rise to natural primacy of cognitive level 1 in Jantsch’s 3 levels of cognition model; i.e. the purely relational level 1 is restored to its natural primacy over cognitive level 3 (nature) and level 2 (nurture).  These cognitive levels are sometimes referred to as ‘levels of reality’.  Levels 3 (nature) and 2 (nurture) are both ‘being’ based; i.e. these levels of cognition depend on language since ‘being’ exists only as an abstraction triggered by language.  ‘Nature’ in this abstract usage that splits apart ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’, reduces the relational form in the flow [e.g. ‘hurricane Katrina’] to a local being or ‘thing-in-itself’ so that ‘grammar’ must be employed to flesh out ‘ITS’ notional development and cause-and-effect actions.  ‘Nurture’ backs off one step from the pure ‘being’ assumption of ‘nature’ and alludes to the inductive influence of the ‘environment’ in pulling forth the unfolding shape and behaviour of the ‘being’.

 

Both the ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’  cognitive constructions are ways of capturing relational forms in the flow as ‘beings’ connoted by ‘names’.  When we use language to construct ‘being’ by way of ‘naming’, the named being is imputed to have its own internal power of self-development (‘Katrina Is growing larger and stronger’).  That takes care of the ‘nature’ part of ‘nature and nurture’.  What is missing in the nature portion of this language-based cognitive construction is the influence of the ‘environment’ on the development of the ‘being’, so that ‘nurture’ is ‘added in’ as a second influence in the linguistic constructing of reality. This ‘softens’ the understanding of ‘being’ as developing in a purely inside-outward asserting manner as in the ‘nature’ part of the ‘nature-nurture’ duo.

 

So, first comes the ‘name’ which gives the cognitive impression of ‘persisting being’.  Then comes the concept of ‘nature’ wherein ‘beings’ develop (manifest ‘genesis’) from inside-outward asserting creative sourcing.  Then comes the concept of ‘nurture’ wherein outside-inward influences inductively shape the inside-outward (genetic) asserting ‘nature’ development.   Together, these two abstract concepts facilitate the construction of a ‘being-based cognitive reality’ that roughly matches the understanding coming from our relational experience [which has no hard dependency on language].  Western culture ‘stops here’ as far as the popular operative ‘reality construction’ goes.  Eastern and aboriginal cultures [along with modern physics], on the other hand, do not give ‘being’ [name-based abstraction] such an absolute foundational role in construing ‘reality’, and instead support the same sort of relational schema of the mythopoetic era, wherein there is no ‘being’ but only ‘relational becoming’ so that the ‘being’ based concepts that are fundamental to language are employed only as an expedient [‘Wittgenstein ladder’] to stimulate ‘relational cognition’ as in ‘The surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’.  Once the relational matrix is established through the use of ‘named things-that-be’, an impression of the relational reality of our experience is attained and the ‘things-that-be’ can be forgotten;  As Wittgenstein expresses this;

 

 

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly” — Wittgenstein

 

The non-literally intended use of names-that-connote-being; i.e. the poetic use which is merely for the purpose of conveying an inherently ‘relational’ reality, tends to ‘get lost’ in Western society where ‘literal’ interpretation of ‘being’ in language as in ‘Newtonian science’ has ‘taken over’ in the popular construing of ‘reality’.  We still have access to ‘poetic understanding’ as delivers level 1 cognition [relational cognition] however, in Western culture, ‘ego’ has become dominant and ‘ego’ is the underpinning (foundational support) for the belief in ‘being’ as the basis of ‘reality’.

 

”Do not forget that a poem, although it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information. “ … “Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry.”  — “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language”– Wittgenstein

 

For stroke experients such as myself, having level 1 cognition restored to its natural primacy, … the so-called ‘stroke of insight’, … is seen from the Western culture values based point of view, as a total negative without any ‘silver lining’ and the medical emphasis is on ‘restoring cognitive level 3’ (‘being’ based cognition) to its UNNATURAL PRIMACY over cognitive level 1 (relational cognition).  This puts me  in the same sort of quandary as the Mohavit in that I would like to ‘retain’ my level 1 gains from my ‘stroke of insight’ even as the scientific view of what I need is to restore my level 3 cognitive capability to its ‘unnatural’ primacy.  In this sense, I am in the same ‘boat’ as T.S. Eliot found himself in;

 

“T.S. Eliot studied Eastern religions in detail at Harvard, learning some Sanskrit and some Pali, and soon concluded that “their subtleties make most of the great European philosophers look like schoolboys.” For a young man disillusioned with his banal surroundings and desperate to break away from his family, there was something wonderfully aloof, impersonal and invulnerable about the Buddhist notion of the spirit, free of all attachments and desires. And by the time he was composing The Wasteland, which ends, of course, with the chant “Shantih shantih shantih,” he was genuinely considering a conversion to Buddhism. But the truth was, he wrote, “my only hope of really penetrating to the heart of that mystery would lie in forgetting how to think and feel as an American or European: which for practical as well as sentimental reasons, I did not wish to do.”

Schrodinger seems to have had the same problem. …” — Ned Beauman, ‘Great Mahavits’ January 4, 2010,

 

It is not easy to break away from the cultural belief system that puts level 3 being-based reality into an unnatural precedence over level 1 relational reality when the livelihoods of one’s friends and family depend on professing one’s belief in name-ordained ‘being’; e.g. by swearing allegiance to (and thus belief in) the notional ‘independent existence’ of the nation-state as a condition for ‘allowing’ one to ‘reside within it’.

 

Such belief in name-defined ‘being’ is on the same plane as the fable of Rumpelstiltskin wherein a name (Rumpelstiltskin) has a secret power, that of spinning straw into gold. In Western culture based belief, ‘a name’ has the power to transform a pauper into a prince, and/or a ‘worker’ into a ‘boss’, with or without a tap on the shoulder of a ‘magic sword’.

 

To put ‘being’ imputed by a ‘name’ into precedence over the understanding coming from relational experience is the distinctive (craziness) profile of Western post-poetic Newtonian science-worshipping society.   Would you ‘go down on your knees’ to signal respect for a just-ordained sovereign who you have known as a pauper before he was ‘named’ a prince?  How about if the thousands in the crowd you were in the middle of all did?  Or do you believe, with Wittgenstein and others, that the abstract concept of ‘being’ derives from human ego?

 

Having a ‘left-brain stroke’ undermines the role of ‘names’ and ‘being’ in ‘cognitive reality construction’, allowing relational understanding to resume its natural primacy in evoking experiential awareness that goes the name ‘reality’.  Nameless, beingless, language-less relational experiencing is the highest (level 1) form of cognition.  However, as Wittgenstein points out in his final proposition in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus;

 

7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

 

Poetic expression is the ‘least erroneous’ way of using language to share experience of inclusion in an ineffable relational dynamic, and poetry ‘works’ by developing a matrix-of-relations based ‘launching pad’ from which we can make a cognitive leap to the non-directly expressible transforming relational continuum of our actual experience.

 

The current ‘Donald Trump’ era is exposing the absence of solid foundations in being-based language.  That is, there has always been an ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ exposure when treating name-ordained ‘being’ as ‘real’ (i.e. as ‘real’ or ‘more real’ than our actual relational experience, so that we bow to the magically ordained prince who was a pauper a few seconds ago before the magic sword of Excalibur tapped on his shoulder.  The ‘celebrities’ in the pre-Trump era were ‘celebrities’ because of their ‘Emperor’s new clothes’, given them by ‘the social powers that be’, which may have included Archbishops and Kings, and Presidents and Prime Ministers, along with Corporate Bosses and other icons of power in the prevailing society.  This, of course, is all a ‘bullshit game’ that persists because there is a silent agreement to keep playing the game (it certainly does not conform to our relational experience based understanding of these people).  As R.D. Laing observed, poetically;

 

“They are playing a game.  They are playing at not playing a game.  If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.  I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.”  – R.D. Laing

 

All manner of riff-raff paupers have been declared ‘princes’ in the Western culture name-defined game of ‘being’ and it has been de rigeur in Western society to ‘go along with this game’ and pretend that paupers are princes.  As a US President once said of the foreign leaders that supported US leadership; ‘They may be bastards, but ther’re our bastards’.

 

Shakespeare’s poetic insight has sourced the opposite to the ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ observation in regard to princes; i.e. ‘Something’s rotten in the State of Denmark’ (meaning; ‘the fish is rotting from the head down – all is not well at the top of the political hierarchy’).

 

‘Names’ cognitively establish the abstract concept of ‘being’ and ‘beings’ and in Western culture (not in indigenous aboriginal culture), language-based ‘being’ is put into an unnatural precedence over relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.  This ‘naming game’ or ‘language game’ is only workable if it is supported by followers or ‘believers’.  It is susceptible to disruption since the masses can quickly reduce a prince to a pauper.  This game, which is foundational in Western culture, thus has an inherent exposure to frivolous treatment by a leader such as Donald Trump who has the power to strip away the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ from those who chooses to strip down and dress up others in emperor’s new clothes.  The protocols of the Western political tradition have generally supported the ‘honouring’ of those who previous incumbents to power dressed up in ‘emperor’s new clothes’, but being as this is merely a ‘game’ that tradition has encouraged new incumbents to play along with, there is always an exposure to departures from the game by the rise to power of a ‘renegade’ who chooses to break from this tradition and thus ‘strip off’ the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ laid on by their predecessor in power.

 

Since ‘turning paupers into princes’ by naming them (appointing them to titled positions) is a make-believe game, … formerly underscored as magic by the laying on of a magic sword etc, … it has far more exposure to ‘manipulation’ than does a social system which puts relational experience into natural precedence over name-defined being that can transform a pauper into a prince (spin straw into gold).

 

Trump is demonstrating the arbitrariness of name-based (being-based) cognitive manipulation aka ‘Western culture’ in its post-poetic (Newtonian scientific) incarnation.  It has only ‘held up’ this long due to the advantage to egotists in upholding an ego-exalting (being-based) mode of understanding and social organizing.    Trump is an ‘egotist bull’ in an ‘egotist china shop’.

 

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What is ubiquitous in modern Western culture is the acceptance of ‘being’-based ‘abstractions’ as ‘real’ when they are in no way ‘real’ in sense of our relational experience.

 

‘Beings’ are not ‘real’ but intellectual concepts that we create by the uttering of ‘names’, whether it is the name ‘Katrina’ (the hurricane) or the name ‘John Dunbar’ (the ‘Western’ name of ‘Dances with Wolves’) or the name ‘Rumpelstiltskin’.

 

Western science is built on naming relational forms in the transforming relational continuum as in the ‘Katrina’ example.  It derives from religious belief as Newton’s comment cited below points out.  Language employs many names that cognitively invoke the abstract concept of thing-in-itself being that we ‘pin’ to relational forms in the transforming relational continuum, obscuring the experiential reality wherein ‘everything is in flux’; i.e. the world we share inclusion in is a transforming relational continuum aka ‘the Tao’.

 

If the human is not a ‘being’ (‘thing-in-itself’) as Newton would have it, but a relational form in a transforming relational continuum, then the efficacy of acupuncture in healing would be understandable in the sense if ‘restoring harmonious balance’ of the relational form within the relational continuum, as with sustaining the resonance that is the storm-cell in the overall flow.

 

‘Medicine’ in the Heraclitean and indigenous aboriginal sense of the tuning or resonance associated with the relational form in the transforming relational continuum can explain all phenomena Western medicine ‘models’ in terms of chemical/medicinal and surgical interventions instituted so as to ‘fix faults’ that develop within the human ‘being’ seen as a ‘material being’ whose source of ‘life/living’ is said to reside within the being.  [A ‘being’ that enjoys ‘persisting existence’ is a psychological abstraction induced in our cognitive dynamic by language and animated by grammar; i.e. there are no ‘beings’ in the relational continuum of our actual experience.

 

And this was understood generally in the mythopoetic era that preceded the post-Parmenides shift towards ‘being’ based conceptualizing of ‘reality’.  That is, poetic use of language was needed to ‘bootstrap’ an impression of the ‘thingless’ (beingless) transforming relational continuum of modern physics.  Modern physicists like Geoffrey Chew and John Wheeler, and Bohm in his way (implicate order) and Wittgenstain in his way (Wittgenstein ladder) introduced ‘the surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ so as to preserve the purely relational [NON-BEING-DEPENDENT] understanding of the world of our actual relational experience.

 

Thanks to the influence of Newtonian scientific thinking, Western culture continues to believe in the abstraction of ‘being’ as if ‘reality’ were constructed by ‘the actions of beings’; i.e. language (names animated with grammar) furnishes us with the capability of being-based cognitive ‘reality’ construction.   Poetic cultures use names implying being/s only as expedient ‘bootstrapping’ devices to induce the leap to an understanding of the world in a purely relational sense.  Newton upstaged poetic usage with his explicit rational material beings (things-in-themselves) that interacted within an abstract ‘Cartesian reference frame’.  This mental model appeals strongly to the human ego as it gives full and sole attribution of actions and results to the individual ‘human being’, or individual nation or individual ‘company’ [all of these being seen as ‘independently existing things-in-themselves’ as is the psychological impression induced by ‘names’ that imply ‘persisting existence’ aka ‘being’.

 

The whole Western post-poetic materialist view is hung on the ego-based abstraction of ‘being’.

 

I have twice typed out Nietzsche’s quote that loudly and clearly expostulates on this, so perhaps a third time would give it the needed emphasis;

 

“In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’.

 

Finally, as Russell Ackoff pointed out; “every system is included in a relational suprasystem”.  The ‘exceptionally performing system (team) understands this and lets their team dynamics be inductively orchestrated in the service of sustaining harmony in the relational suprasystem in which the team is included [families, clients, service support groups, customers etc.]  The egoless because ‘beingless’ team is thus like the answer in the ‘surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’; i.e. it allows itself to be ‘bootstrapped’ by the needs of the suprasystem (supra-community) it is relationally included in.

 

Such ‘exceptionally performing teams’ give up their own explicit ‘identity’ aka ‘being’ and embrace instead the role of relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.  This option of ‘letting go of the abstraction of being’ is the way of the poet.  As Nicaraguan poet Claribel Alegria asserts; “My father was a famous engineer; my mother had no name”. Is it realistic to understand the achievements of the husband out of the context of the supporting wife?  The ego-based abstraction of ‘being’ supports the answer; ‘yes’, while our relational experience based understanding says ‘no’.

 

The abstraction of ‘being’ that is ‘brought-to-mind’ by ‘names’, where it is not used for poetic bootstrapping purposes, is leading us up a blind alley to social relational incoherence.  The use of abstract ‘name-based’ being/s as the purported jumpstart authors of ‘productive accomplishments’, opens the way for a ‘field day’ for those, like Donald Trump, who would play the game of attributing results to particular ‘beings’ (himself especially) like a whirling Dervish with a fiddle.  Being-based causal sourcing of productive accomplishments is the great ‘con’ of the modern Western era, supported by mainstream science [which has us ‘put on the blinders’ to eclipse the greater realty of the transforming relational continuum]

  

 

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Note to file?  (Musing out loud)

 

The post-stroke experience continues to take me (my understanding) deeper into the purely relational realm.  Like many stroke-experients, I have difficulty recalling ‘names’.  Why would this be?  I can tell myself (and/or you) after six months of experience and reflection on this, it is because ‘being’ as connoted by ‘names’ of ‘things-in-themselves’ is abstraction that ‘drops out’ in a ‘left brain’ stroke.

 

In other words, ‘being’ is the product of language and grammar and is not coming from our real-life experience, which is relational.   i.e. ‘the Tao that can be told (named) is not the true Tao.’.

 

Language is screwing up our cognition because in Western culture, we are interpreting it ‘literally’ and it is all ‘being-based’.  If I say ‘rocks are sliding down the mountainside’, this ‘what things do’ language formulation is the approach taken by Newton in his physics, but it is abstraction.  What is happening is ‘relational transformation’, … the only natural dynamic, as Heraclitus and Wittgenstein and Bohm would also point out.

 

If one as an individual ‘human being’ claims to have authored some action and result, it is abstraction since we are included in the transforming relational continuum.  In other words, ‘being’ and ‘beings’ are language-based abstractions that do not exist in the ‘real world of our experience’; i.e. in the transforming relational continuum.

 

It is not true (it is abstraction) to say; ‘the rock rolled down the mountain’.  What is going on there is relational transformation. ‘a ‘rock’ and ‘the mountain’ are just names we make up for the reason cited by Wittgenstein;

 

7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

(Wittgenstein’s final proposition in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus)

 

That is, the Tao that can be told is not the true Tao.  The flow (the transforming relational continuum) is everything (all including) as in the universe as ‘field’.

 

If we want to use language to try to capture what is going on, we can only use language poetically and not explicitly, the latter bing the current Western culturally dominant approach to ‘reality construction’.  This has been pointed out by Nietzsche, Bohm, Wittgenstein and others, but the popularity of ‘rationality’ in Western culture has taken (hijacked) control.  Shakespeare and others pointed out the problem with name-based definitions; e.g. ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’.  In other words, our experience is on a higher (relational) plane than our intellectual being-based linguistic talk.

 

The abstract concept of ‘being’ as cognitively secured by ‘naming’ is not to be taken ‘literally’.  In early languages and early cultures, ‘being’ and ‘naming’ were used to ‘bootstrap’ cognition of the relational reality of our actual experience, as in poetic allusion and as in the ‘surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ of modern physics (Geoffrey Chew and John Wheeler).

 

Western culture earlier on was a mythopoetic culture wherein ‘naming’ was used to bootstrap linguistic cognition of relational forms in the transforming relational continuum (the flow or the Tao); i.e. ‘rational cognition’ in which ‘being’ (as abstractedly ‘created’ via ‘naming’) was not taken ‘literally’ as depicting ‘real things-in-themselves’.  That is, naming was consistent with the understanding of modern physics wherein ‘everything is in flux’ (Heraclitus, Bohm) so that the ‘name’ signalled a ‘relational form in the flow’ in the same manner as a hurricane in the flow of the atmosphere.  To give a relational form in the flow a ‘name’ and impute ‘thing-in-itself being’ to it, leads to ‘incoherent’ understanding in Western culture; e.g. ‘Katrina is growing larger and stronger’, ‘Katrina is ravaging New Orleans’, … ‘Katrina is weakening and dissipating’.  ‘Flow is the source of Katrina, not the other way around.  The same error of grammar holds in the way language describes ‘the behaviour of human beings’.

 

Instead of understanding relational forms in the flow, names give us an understanding in terms of ‘beings’ and the names and verbs of language and grammar encourage us to reconstruct relational transformation in terms of ‘named things-in-themselves’ and ‘what these things-in-themselves do’, as if they are the authors of their own behaviour and ‘accomplishments’.  This is all Newtonian contrivance.  ‘The rock does not roll down the mountain’, … the reality is that the relational landform is undergoing transformation on an overall basis’.  The Tao that can be told is not the true Tao.

 

Ok, the fact that ‘being’ is an unreal abstraction psychologically hatched by ‘naming’ (i.e. language and grammar) makes the whole Western culture popular (scientific) belief system a bullshit game, and points to the very different reality alluded to by poetic expression as being consistent with our natural relational experience.

 

“In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’.

 

There is no ‘being’ in the real world of our relational experience.  If we use language poetically, it can allude to the world of our relational experience, as was the dominant mode of understanding in the mythopoetic era, which was overtaken by ‘rationalism’ in roughly 500 BCE, so that the dominant ‘operative philosophy’ in Western culture was put on the path of ‘rational’ understanding where one believed ‘literally’ in the ‘being’ of ‘named forms’ and developed cognitive understanding based on the assumed ‘reality’ of ‘being’ of named forms (e.g. human ‘beings’ and ‘hurricane Katrina’ beings etc.  The behaviour of ‘beings’ was explained as coming from internal sourcing within the ‘human being’, consistent with the concept of a ‘being’ as an ‘independently existing thing-in-itself’.

 

“Heraclitus had declared ‘being’ a perpetual ‘becoming’ and had correlated the two concepts with his ‘hidden attunement.’ Now Parmenides declared the two to be mutually exclusive, and only ‘being’ to be real.” — ‘The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man’, — ‘Frankfort et al’

 

Where we are today has arrived from the continuing build in the common belief in the ‘reality’ of ‘being’ as intellectually cultivated by common belief in the being-based reality popularized by Newtonian physics, which was already implicit in Western religions (Newton was a devout Christian).  The belief in the ‘reality’ of ‘beings’ (suggested by naming relational forms) such as ‘the human being’ is a core Western belief that came firstly in Christian belief and was picked up as a basic tenet of Newtonian scientific belief, and is the basis of Newton’s laws of motion.  These laws are ‘experimentally confirmed’ only because the premise of name-based beings is taken for granted a priori.  Science’s calculation of the behaviour of a rock in a gravitational field ‘works’ only because we accept the notional ‘being’ of the rock, and in the process deny that what is going on in the real world of our relational experience is ‘relational transformation’.  When the rock rolls down the mountain, the relational landscape is relationally transformed.  Newtonian physics does not get there because it assumes the ‘reality’ of ‘independently existing things-in-themselves’ aka ‘beings’, as if they live in an absolute Cartesian reference frame (mathematical abstraction).

 

As Newton said;

 

“It seems probable to me that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that these primitive particles being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first creation.” cited in ‘the Tao of Physics’.

 

Western forensic science based justice operates on the notion that humans are ‘independent beings’ with their own internal sourcing of behaviour, … whereas indigenous aboriginal justice operates on the assumption of ‘mitakuye oyasin’ (all my relations) wherein ‘it takes a whole community to raise a criminal’; i.e. crime is a relational dynamic and there are no ‘beings’ or ‘things-in-themselves’ that auto-source their own behaviours.  That is the error of grammar associated with the abstract assumption of ‘being’.

 

“I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar,” – Nietzsche

 

i.e. ‘God’ is the ‘creator of beings’ and ‘being’ derives from human ego;  i.e. to repeat the above Nietzsche quote for emphasis;

 

 

“In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’.

 

Ego is the God in the machine known as the ‘human being’ that is the source of its notional self-animation.

 

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