An inclusional worldview
Archive for February, 2019
Why Western culture language-based Invented Reality ‘appears to work’ and how its psychosis inducing influence is concealed.
0February 19, 2019
by ted lumley
in APN
Author’s Prologue:
Ok, all I really need to say to capture the psychosis built into Western culture is to point to the ‘double error’ which sets up the abstract (aberrant) concept of ‘naming-instantiated being’ as the stem for notional powers of sourcing actions and developments’.
If one believes in this ‘double error’, one is a Western culture adherent, who believes in the ‘reality’ of name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’ (beings) with powers of sourcing actions and developments. This psychological ‘double error’ comes in the form of ‘humans’, ‘nations’, ‘corporations’.
I understand that most of the people I know and have ‘grown up with’, including most of my immediate and extended family, ‘buy into’ this Western culture psychosis inducing belief system, as I too, have formerly done. Ok, nothing new as far as the world social dynamic goes, other than I now find myself in the position of a Mahavit as the Advaita Vedanta adherents call it. What may be different in my case is that the psychosis-inducing influence of Western culture hits very close to home, and that makes me more sensitive to the overall damage being done and more in resonance with efforts such as those of ‘Mad in America’ to pick up where R. D. Laing left off in pointing out that what is called ‘normal’ in Western culture is the source of psychosis.
I personally believe that anyone who takes a serious experience-grounded look at the Western culture beliefs in name-instantiated ‘humans’, ‘nations’ and ‘corporations’ with the powers of sourcing actions and developments will have to call ‘bullshit’! Meanwhile, I can also see that the ‘lock-in’ due to ‘high switching costs’ is phenomenally large. The ‘big lie’ as written about by Hitler and used by him has nothing on the ‘humongous lie’ of Western culture’s being-based ‘sorcery’.
So, where did this ‘humongous lie’ giving us humans and our nations and our corporations the powers of sorcery come from?
Wherever it came from, it seems to me that Benjamin Whorf is correct in pointing out that Newton put it into physics and physics became the quasi-religious basis for understanding ‘reality’. That is, Newton, by way of (matter-sourced) gravity, invented ‘material bodies’ or ‘things-in-themselves’ with the powers of sourcing actions and developments. Modern physics ‘backs out of such beings-with-powers-of-sorcery’ ‘reality’, dissolving it within the larger understanding of ‘field’ as energy-based relational influence. The ‘field’ based reality with its relational forms in the flow, is a reality WITHOUT any binary ‘inhabitant’ – ‘habitat’ split which thus avoids the dichotomous ambiguity as to whether ‘the inhabitant dynamics are sourcing transformation of the habitat, … or whether the habitat dynamic is sourcing transformation of the inhabitants (or, whether the binary splitting into ‘inhabitant and habitat’ is the psychological artifact of language and grammar as associates with the ‘double error’).
Today, we remain hung up on the Western culture belief in ‘beings’ with the powers of sourcing actions and developments. This got ‘locked in’ via language and grammar that has us speaking in terms of name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’ with the powers of sorcery such as humans, nations, and corporations. As Nietzsche shows, we incorporated this concept into our intellectual conceptualizing of ‘reality’ by way of a ‘double error’, so now, when we speak and write in English and similar languages, we slip this ‘double error’ into our language-based conditioning of the intellect.
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
What we actually experience is relational transformation but we use language to articulate this in the abstract terms of ‘beings’ with powers of sourcing actions and developments. ‘Lightning flashes’ is a case in point as is ‘Katrina is growing larger and stronger, … Katrina is ravaging New Orleans, … Katrina is weakening and dissipating’…. This is a language based reduction of purely relational phenomena to depictions in terms of name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’, notionally with powers of sourcing actions and developments. This is the double error. The lightning and the hurricane are relational forms that are appearance/apparition as associates with the transforming relational continuum. In physical-experiential reality, there is no ‘thing-in-itself’ (a notional independent inhabitant that forces the intellect into a house-of-cards game-play of inventing a separate ‘habitat’ to give the ‘inhabitant’ a place to exist); i.e. there is no ‘thing-in-itself that ‘sources actions and developments’. The same applies to all such language-based abstractions of ‘independent things-in-themselves’ such as human, the nation, the corporation, but language and grammar facilitate our making a ‘double error’ (circular reasoning aka petitio principii) and that’s the basis of the ‘Invented Reality’ that we (Western culture adherents) build into our intellectual reality-inventing rhetoric. It is an ego-driven Invented Reality since ego is the psychological belief in locally incipient powers of sorcery.
In Western culture, there is no ‘mitakuye oyasin’ (relationall understanding) thus no matter how extreme the non-locally developing relational tensions may become, a violent elastic-band snapping rebalancing (as in Nietzsche’s lightning example), will be captured as Western language-and-grammar based ‘double error’ and brought into play to intellectualize purely relational phenomena in terms of name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’ notionally endowed with powers of sourcing actions and developments, thus giving rise to a sorcery oriented culture that celebrates and rewards ‘the sorcerers of good’ and punishes ‘the sorcerers of bad’ .
Note: ‘Sorcery’ (abstraction) based concepts give rise to the ‘double error’ innate ambiguity as in the ‘nature’ – ‘nurture’ dichotomy; i.e. ‘attenuating ‘the sorcery of bad’ is equivalent to ‘amplifying ‘the sorcery of good’. (arguing over which approach is best makes no sense since ‘sorcery’ is an unreal artifact of the intellectualizing imagination) That is, what is ‘missed’ in both cases is the non-reality of ‘sorcery’ in the real (relational) world of our actual experience. (‘sorcery’ is the abstract product of language and grammar which is not found in our experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum).
* * * end of Prologue * * *
Why Western culture language-based Invented Reality ‘appears to work’ and how its psychosis inducing influence is concealed.
“English compared to Hopi is like a bludgeon compared to a rapier.” – Benjamin Whorf
Language seeks to capture and report on our experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum. However, its ability to do this constrains it to ‘voyeur’ views from the outside.
Our real-life experience is not constrained in this manner since we are relational forms within the transforming relational continuum. This constraint of logical language was formally affirmed in Goedel’s Theorem of Incompleteness (of systems of logic) in 1931.
In ‘topological terms’, this is a problem akin to not being able to bite one’s own nose. Nietzsche warns us of the ‘dodge’ that we use to ‘try to’ get around it which incurs a ‘double error’ which is what is infusing psychosis into the Western culture-adhering mind, since Western culture has put language-based intellection into an unnatural precedence over relational experience. An example of this is the public panic over Orson Wells radio dramatization (1949) of ‘War of the Worlds’ which listeners mistakenly took for ‘reality’. That is, the reality that was coming to people by way of language and intellect was over-riding their own natural relational experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum. This language-based ‘reality’ is ‘Invented’ as we put together our own impressions, based on our translating the language into ‘psycho-visual imagery’.
In other words, it is not only possible, but it has become ‘routine’ for Western culture adherents to put language-based ‘Invented Reality’ into an unnatural precedence over their natural relational experience. Of course, the ‘Imagined Reality’ of what it’s like to be in Bergen, Norway or etc, on the basis of film imagery etc. is no substitute for the experience of being there. The difference can be compared to the difference in giving one’s child ‘sex education’ and ‘sex lessons’ (sex experience). The film imagery, and visual imagery in generally, is understood by the intellect. It is ‘perspectival’ while experience is ‘inclusional’.
The psychosis-inducing Invented Reality of Western Society
0February 16, 2019
by ted lumley
in APN
Included contributors to this psychosis-inducing ‘Invented Reality’ are the Western systems of government, commerce, justice, education, medicine, and science (pre-modern physics) which, together, form a mutually supportive ‘house of cards’.
It has been said, for example by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, that the ‘big lie’ can be so big that the ordinary person lacks the audacity to ‘call it out’. The phenomenon has also been found, in nonlinear dynamics, where patterns of activity, once established, ‘dig themselves in’ so that they are ‘locked in’ by ‘high switching costs. Furthermore, in the Systems Sciences, investigators such as Martine Dodds-Taljaard, and György Jaros, co-authors of The Name of the Devil is Suboptimization’, draw our attention to this same ‘big lie’ phenomenon permeating Western socio‐economic, political, educational and managerial practices, in general.
The suggestion is that something went awry with Western society thinking, ‘bigtime’, roughly 300 years ago, in the form of an invasive new mindset’ which was termed, in the systems sciences ‘suboptimization’ which refers to the arbitrary declaring of ‘independence’ of a system simply by ‘naming it’ and dividing it into ‘components’ by ‘naming’ the components, and thus psychologically reducing purely relational dynamics to terms of named ‘things-in-themselves’ notionally with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments. Once this language-based psychological deconstruction of purely relational phenomena has been accomplished, the ‘split out pseudo-pieces’ are re-assembled with language and grammar and reconstituted as an ‘independent system’, notionally with its own powers of sourcing actions and developments. This humongous lie has become a foundational truth in Western Invented Reaity.
The Name of the Devil is Suboptimization’
“The above aphorism, attributed to Kenneth Boulding, points to the inherent weakness characterizing the mindset and socio‐economic, political, educational and managerial practices of Western Industrial society as it developed over the past 300 years. It has its basis in the analytic‐reductionistic scientific paradigm, which, despite the remarkable technological applications it spawned, is inappropriate, conflict‐generating and dysfunctional in a world characterized by global interconnectedness and mutual interdependence …” — György Jaros and Martine Dodds-Taljaard
The ’big lie’ is the cultivating of belief in an ‘Invented Reality’ created by ‘naming’ relational forms within the transforming relational continuum, to impute ‘thing-in-itself being’ to them, and then employing grammar to psychologically endow them with ‘their own powers of sourcing actions and developments.
This Invented Reality’ is the ‘big lie’. It is nothing like the reality of our actual experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum. This Western ‘Invented Reality’ has NOT been ‘bought into’ by indigenous aboriginals, Taoists, adherents of Advaita Vedanta, and Western culture sceptics among whom I count myself.
Western Culture Belief in the Binary of Life and Death is Psychosis Inducing.
0February 6, 2019
by ted lumley
in APN
Author’s Prologue:
Dear Reader; Imagine for a moment that you have been born and raised in the indigenous aboriginal culture. You know that you ‘understand reality differently’ than a Western culture acculturated person. But you also know that modern physics has shown your ‘relational understanding’ to be very much in accord with modern physics. If you can hold this understanding in your mind, as you read this, and thus remain open to the understanding that there is a relational (modern physics) world view that is more comprehensive than, and which ‘includes’ as a reduced representation, the ‘beings-wiith-powers-of-sourcing-actions and developments based Western Invented Reality, the option will then be available to reflect on which of these ‘realies’ merits primacy over the other. In fact, if one puts the relational reality in primacy, the being-based reality is still accessible as a reduction of the relational reality, however, if the being-based reality is given primacy, the relational reality is ‘eclipsed’.
My philosophical researches (exploring the philosophical researches of many others) have turned up the following;
-1- Western culture ‘reality’ is nothing like indigenous aboriginal culture reality, which I guess is obvious, but the important point, to me, is this observation by David Bohm in this regard, which my own personal researching affirms (i.e. the foundational role of ‘relations’ as understood in indigenous aboriginal cultures);
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’
-2- Western culture reality in an INVENTED REALITY THAT IS BASED ON LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR
The important [understanding-inverting] point to pick up on here is that Newtonian physics is a simplified construction of reality based on the structures of language and grammar. NOTA BENE! The point is that Western language and grammar CAME FIRST and Newton extracted his (Newtonian) physics from the structures of language and grammar; i.e. the noun (name) became the basis for ‘thing-in-itself beings’, and the ‘name-verb grammatical contribution because the basis for the concept of ‘thing-in-itself-based sourcing of actions and developments.
That is; the very basic foundations of Newtonian physics have become the foundations of the ‘Invented Reality’ that serves as the ‘operative reality’ of Western culture. Benjamin Whorf studied and compared the mapping between languages and cognitive impressions and came to the following conclusion; i.e. that Newtonian physics, and the Western understanding of ‘reality’ that comes with it, derives from language which first came up with the abstract notions of the existence of things-in-themselves with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments;
“It is sometimes stated that Newtonian space, time, and matter are sensed by everyone intuitively, whereupon relativity is cited as showing how mathematical analysis can prove intuition wrong. This, besides being unfair to intuition, is an attempt to answer offhand question (1) put at the outset of this paper, to answer which this research was undertaken. Presentation of the findings now nears its end, and I think the answer is clear. The offhand answer, laying the blame upon intuition for our slowness in discovering mysteries of the Cosmos, such as relativity, is the wrong one. The right answer is: Newtonian space, time, and matter are no intuitions. They are receipts from culture and language. That is where Newton got them.” – Benjamin Whorf, ‘The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language’
Thus, it is not the case that Newtonian physics is ‘capturing’ ‘the way the world works’, … Newtonian physics is capturing the way people talk about the world; i.e. Newtonian physics is constructing an INVENTED REALITY based on the way that Western Europeans ‘express themselves linguistically’. For example, humans are NOT REALLY things-in-themselves with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments, that is an impression that comes from Western language based ‘talk’ that has been ‘codified’ as (Newtonian physics). As modern physics informs us there are no ‘things-in-themselves’ with the powers of sourcing actions and developments; … that is abstraction brewed up by language and grammar.
-3- ‘Lock-in-by high-switching costs’ is a common nonlinear dynamic that explains why Western culture, which serves as the dominant culture in the world (indigenous aboriginal cultures and Taoist/Buddhist and Advaita Vedanta REALITIES are not the dominant ‘OPERATIVE REALITY’ in the modern world social dynamic). The ‘INVENTED REALITY’ based on the abstract notions of ‘beings’ with powers of sourcing actions and developments is the globally dominating ‘operative reality’ IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT IT IS THE PRECIPITATE OF EARLY WESTERN LANGUAGE STRUCTURE THAT WAS CAPTURED IN NEWTONIAN PHYSICS AS A FORMALIZED CODIFICATION OF THE SIMPLIFIED/ABBREVIATED WAY THAT WESTERN PEOPLES ARTICULATED THEIR OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIENCES’ i.e. in terms of notional ‘name-instantiated things-in-themselves notionally with the powers of sourcing actions and developments.
The ‘Lock-in’ comes from incorporating in the social dynamic, for example, the rewarding and punishing of people or nations or organizations based on seeing them as ‘beings’ (things-in-themselves) with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments. This is language-instantiated madness! But it is the ‘INVENTED REALITY’ of Western culture that has been implemented as the ‘operative reality’ in Western social dynamics. What this has produced is; (a) a comprehensive positive hierarchy of people elevated in social status and showered with honours and rewards [those perceived as beings whose powers of sourcing have given rise to actions and developments perceived in a favourable/exceptional light], and; (b) a comprehensive negative hierarchy of people demoted in social status and dumped on with abuse and punishments [those perceived as ‘beings’ whose powers of sourcing have given rise to actions and developments perceived in an unfavourable light.]
The ‘elevating’ of favoured people into positions of power and influence over changes to (evolving of) the social system and the dis-empowering of disfavoured people so as to remove their influence on changes to the social system constitute ‘lock-in’ that perpetuates the deploying of an archaic language-based ‘Invented Reality’ as the ‘operative reality’ of the Western culture social dynamic.
As ridiculous and ‘psychosis-inducing’ as this Newtonian physics based (early Western language-based) Invented Reality is, it continues to be the globally dominant ‘operative reality’ because of the massive lock-in it enjoys. People are elevated to positions of authority on the basis of their proficiency in ‘sourcing actions and developments’ deemed ‘beneficial to society. But in modern physics, there is no such thing as ‘beings’ with the power of ‘sourcing’ actions and development!
One can thus see lock-in in terms of having given higher authority or even veto power to those who are most benefiting from the policies of elevating people like themselves. The emperor does not want to hear that ‘the new clothes of Emperorship that he is wearing’ are ‘all in his head’. In other words, the basis of his being rewarded and elevated in social status; i.e. his independent-being-based sourcing of actions and developments, … is ‘imaginary’]. The concept of ‘being-based sourcing of actions and developments is the imaginary cognitive construct of language and grammar, as becomes evident in the relational view of modern physics and indigenous aboriginal cultures. However;
We’ who explore such topics, cannot easily share them because (a) they do not fit into the typical dinner conversation format of our present culture, since to express them takes a lot of relational connections that can’t fit into a rapid-fire repartee, and (b) because the humanism implicit in trying to share them is not seen as “a humanism of real worth” since it undermines, besmirches or topples the esteemed icons, pillars of society, founding fathers, and celebrities of the culture-in-place. – Henri Laborit, ‘La Nouvelle Grille’
To conclude this Author’s Prologue,
If we can summon up the audacity to consider it, Western culture has ‘piled up’ a massive ‘lock-in-due to high switching costs’ which is preserving the Newtonian physics based ‘Invented Reality’ featuring belief in name-instantiated ‘beings’ with powers of sourcing actions and developments. The dimensions of this ‘lie’ that the Western social collective tells itself have grown so big that it would be unthinkable to acknowledge it. It is like the ‘big lie’ described by Hitler in ‘Mein Kampf’ that is so big that most people don’t have the audacity to question it. That is, there are no ‘beings with powers of sourcing actions and developments’, … such mind-hijacking grammatical fabrications are abstract reductions of the transforming relational continuum of our included experience. The boil and the flow are one and NOT two.
* * * * * * * * * * END OF PROLOGUE * * * * * * * * *
The concept of binary opposites (life and death being an exemplar) are the abstractions of language and grammar that the Western culture psyche tends to employ as a foundational ‘logical truth’ in its ‘Invented Reality’. As Benjamin Whorf has shown, the ‘truth’ of binary opposites is not something that goes on in nature that we express with language, but something we express with language that contributes to our Western culture ‘Invented Reality’;
“It is sometimes stated that Newtonian space, time, and matter are sensed by everyone intuitively, whereupon relativity is cited as showing how mathematical analysis can prove intuition wrong. This, besides being unfair to intuition, is an attempt to answer offhand question (1) put at the outset of this paper, to answer which this research was undertaken. Presentation of the findings now nears its end, and I think the answer is clear. The offhand answer, laying the blame upon intuition for our slowness in discovering mysteries of the Cosmos, such as relativity, is the wrong one. The right answer is: Newtonian space, time, and matter are no intuitions. They are receipts from culture and language. That is where Newton got them.” – Benjamin Whorf, ‘The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language’
Modern physics does not see the ‘boil’ in the ‘flow’ in terms of binary [action=reaction] opposition as Western culture with its aberrant ‘Divided Self’ does [i.e. where language splits apart ‘habitat’ and ‘inhabitant’ as with ‘human’ and ‘environment’. The distinction between ‘boil’ and ‘flow’ is RELATIONAL APPEARANCE and not BEING-BASED. The DIVIDED SELF of Western culture is the product of language and grammar; it is a corollary to the language and grammar based binary opposite of ‘life’ and ‘death’. (more…)
Recovery of Western Culture from the Problem of the Double Error
0February 2, 2019
by ted lumley
in APN
The ‘Double Error Problem’ is Western culture’s use of language and grammar to reduce purely relational experiential reality to the abstract combination of ‘beings’ (things-in-themselves’) with the power of ‘sourcing action and development’, in an ‘Invented Reality’ that ‘occludes’ and ‘takes the place of’ the natural reality of our relational experience.
“Our judgement has us conclude that every change must have an author”;–but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say “lightning flashes,” I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, “is” and does not “become.”–To regard an event as an “effecting,” and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.” – Nietzsche, ‘Will to Power’, 531
In this commentary I would like to make the ‘double error problem’ and its psychological effect, overtly obvious. The ‘double error problem’ is perhaps best described by Nietzsche, who ties it to ‘ego’. It is the problem of ‘sorcery’, i.e. of linguistically pushing a notional ‘being’ underneath an action so as to suggest that the action is ‘sourced’ by a ‘sourcing agent rather than being purely relational as in the transforming relational continuum we share inclusion in.
Nietzsche used the example of ‘lightning flashes’ where the lightning ‘is’ the flashing but in using Western language and grammar to articulate what is going on, we split the relational action into two parts; i.e. the ‘source’ and the ‘action’, as if the source is the author of the ‘action’;
The metaphor of the ‘boil’ and the ‘flow’ may be better in bringing forth fluid impressions which tie to ‘field’ in modern physics and to ‘the Tao’ in Taoism/Buddhism.
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