Archive for March, 2019

SYNOPSIS:

Experiential reality, as understood by the indigenous aboriginal, and/or by the ‘indigenous aboriginal within each of us’, is inherently ‘relational’ and thus very different from the intellectual-cognitive ‘being’-based reality understood by the Western culture adherent, the latter’s ‘sense of self’ being re-engineered by the intellect to incorporate the ‘double error’ described by Nietzsche; i.e. the abstract ‘reality’ that is in terms of name-instantiated things-in-themselves, notionally with ‘their own local powers of sourcing actions and developments’; a sense of ‘self’ also known as ‘the ego’.

The pre-acculturation centre of organismic understanding is topological (relational in a manner that is independent of the abstract notion of name-instantiated things-in-themselves’) as described by F. David Peat in Mathematics and the Language of Nature‘;

To the infant’s developing mind, topology comes before geometry. In general, deeper and more fundamental logical operations are developed earlier than more specific rules and applications. The history of mathematics, which is generally taken as a process of moving towards deeper and more general levels of thought, could also be thought of as a process of excavation which attempts to uncover the earliest operations of thought in infancy. According to this argument, the very first operations exist at a pre-conscious level [i.e. ‘pre-intellectualizing’ level in the conscious and intuitive infant] so that the more fundamental a logical operation happens to be, the earlier it was developed by the infant and the deeper it has become buried in the mind.” – F. David Peat,

It is therefore possible for Western culture acculturated individuals to ‘escape’ from the psychosis-inducing influence of double-error based abstraction, which is language-and-grammar (intellect) based, by re-developing direct access to natural relational understanding that has been ‘covered over’ and buried by our Western culture acculturation, to restore the relational mode of understanding to its natural primacy, and thus escape from the psychosis-laden Western culture with its ‘double-error’ based INVENTED REALITY.

Our desire to restore ‘relational reality’ to its natural primacy tends to have been ‘buried’, in Western culture adherents, by one’s imagined ‘role-play’ within the INVENTED REALITY that may be delivering an ego-inflating (double-error based) sense of ‘independent being’ with powers of ‘sourcing actions and developments’.

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PROLOGUE: Exploring the essentials of ‘reality’, linguistically, as I am doing here, is limited by the ‘limitations’ of language.  The language based scheme of ‘constructing impressions of reality that prevails in Western culture; i.e. the language scheme which authors Western culture INVENTED REALITY, employs the ‘double error’ (Nietzsche) wherein relational forms are given psychological/intellectual representation by (Error 1) ‘naming’ to impute ‘persisting being’, and (Error 2) ‘compounding’ Error 1 by imputing the power of sourcing actions and developments to the naming-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’.

This intellectual, language and grammar based Western INVENTED REALITY has, by way of ‘acculturation’ during our early development from infancy, served as an intellectual ‘operative reality’ that sits over top of and occludes the natural reality of our sensory experience.  That is, the natural reality of our pre-lingual relational (topological) experience that precedes name-instantiated intellectual conceptualizing is ‘covered over’ or occluded by language-and-grammar based intellectual constructions (INVENTED REALITY).

To the infant’s developing mind, topology comes before geometry. In general, deeper and more fundamental logical operations are developed earlier than more specific rules and applications. The history of mathematics, which is generally taken as a process of moving towards deeper and more general levels of thought, could also be thought of as a process of excavation which attempts to uncover the earliest operations of thought in infancy. According to this argument, the very first operations exist at a pre-conscious level [i.e. ‘pre-intellectualizing’ level in the conscious and intuitive infant] so that the more fundamental a logical operation happens to be, the earlier it was developed by the infant and the deeper it has become buried in the mind.” – F. David Peat, ‘Mathematics and the Language of Nature’ (referring to Piaget).

The radical departure from the inherent primacy of relational experience over the reduction, to language and grammar based intellectually constructed abstraction that serves as ‘reality’ is characteristic of Western culture.  By contrast, indigenous aboriginal cultures have developed language, and a method of using language, that does not ‘over-ride’ the inherent ‘relational’ nature of our experience; i.e. ‘mitakuye oyasin’ (all my relations) is an indigenous aboriginal expression that reminds one that ‘everything is related’ so that the relational dynamic as implied by constructing a web of relations is understood as the primary reality, while the named forms used to weave the relational web are expedients that can be forgotten once the relational understanding is gained.   Wittgenstein has also described this process although Western culture’s mainstream mode of INVENTING REALITY treats the abstract language and grammar constructions in terms of ‘things-in-themselves with powers of sourcing actions and developments’ … as the ‘operative reality’

6.54 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.

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

(Wittgenstein’s final two propositions in ‘Tractatus Logico Philosophicus)

Wittgenstein’s approach in using language is to get beyond ‘things-in-themselves’ as implied by ‘naming’, to get to purely implicit, relational understanding.  This expedient employing of naming forms (which imputes explicit thing-in-itself representation) as an expedient to get to purely relational representation is ‘built in’ to the indigenous aboriginal languages, and into modern physics representations and is termed ‘bootstrapping’;

[Geoffrey Chew]: “when you formulate a question, you have to have some basic concepts that you are accepting in order to formulate the question. But in the bootstrap approach, where the whole system represents a network of relationships without any firm foundation, the description of our subject can be begun at a great variety of different places. There isn’t any clear starting point. And the way our theory has developed in the last few years, we quite typically don’t know what questions to ask. We use consistency as the guide, and each increase in the consistency suggests something that is incomplete, but it rarely takes the form of a well-defined question. We are going beyond the whole question­and­answer framework.”

So, as newborns of any culture, we sense relations; i.e. we ‘are’ relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.

Depending on which culture we are raised in, we learn languages that we can use to REDUCE our relational experience to linguistically expressible conceptualizations.  This is where the division has emerged between indigenous aboriginal cultures, whose languages preserve the natural primacy of relational reality (mitakuye oyasin), and Western culture adherents whose languages equip them for ‘speaking with forked tongue’.  For example, English language allows one to (a) construct a reality wherein the ‘boil’ sources the ‘flow’ (the behaviours of the individuals are the source of the behaviour of the collective), and/or (b) construct a reality wherein the ‘flow’ sources the ‘boil’ (the behaviour of the collective is the source of the behaviours of the individuals).  One bad applies spoils the whole barrel ‘works’ but so does ‘it takes a whole community to raise a child’.

This ‘forked tongue’ confusion in Western culture not only ‘divides the social collective’ (into ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’), it is at the origin of ‘The Divided Self’.  For example, we may attribute the source of our successes to ‘our self’ and the source of our ‘failures’ to the circumstances in which we are situationally included, or should it be ‘the other way around’?.  Which is the real source?

The more basic issue here, which is not present in indigenous aboriginal cultures, Buddhism/Taoism or Advaita Vedanta, is in assuming the ‘reality’ of a ‘source’.  While Newtonian physics made use of the abstraction of ‘force’ as a ‘source’ of actions and developments, Newton borrowed this from the realm of the ‘occult’.

“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’ 

Included in the Newtonian physics package of concepts is the ‘sourcing force’ which has no place in the relational transformation of modern physics, except as a language and grammar based abstraction; i.e. F=ma describes how a mass is accelerated by an applied force.  The ‘bouble error’ operates beneath this by first supposing the existence of a name-instantiated thing-in-itself notionally with powers of sourcing actions and developments.  If this double error were true, Newtonian physics can elaborate on it and ’embellish’ our understanding, in spite of it being abstraction based on ‘the double error’ from the get-go.  For example, man’s ego has us see our ‘self’ as the ‘source’ of actions and developments and Newtonian physics does not question the ‘double error’ in the reasoned proposition we Western culture adherents make, for example, the reasoning that if Fred carries a 200 pound object up a flight of stairs to a 10 foot higher elevation, in 5 seconds, ‘the power he generates’ in the process will be (200 x 10)/5  =400 foot-pounds per second (1 horsepower is 550 foot pounds per second).

What is REALLY going on, is relational transformation in which the man is included; i.e. the man is a relational form in the transforming relational continuum.  To employ language and grammar to concoct the cognitive (intellectual-conceptual) impression that the man ‘generates’ (i.e. ‘sources’) action and development is the ‘double error’ that Nietzsche alerts us to (i.e. the name-instantiating of a notional thing-in-itself, notionally with powers of sourcing actions and developments).

The reality of our actual relational experience is of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.  WE ARE NOT ‘INDEPENDENT BEINGS’ WITH POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS!   THAT IS THE DOUBLE ERROR!   That is, it is cognitive misconception facilitated by Western culture style language and grammar.  Of course, it is possible for a social collective (such as the Europeans who came to live in the same space and mix with indigenous aboriginals) to persist in employing the ‘double error based INVENTED REALITY’ as THEIR operative reality, even while interspersed within indigenous aboriginal culture adherents who continue to understanding ‘reality’ in a purely relational (mitakuye oyasin) sense.

The reality of the non-indigenous Western culture adherents is the ‘INVENTED REALITY’ in which the ‘double error’ based understanding prevails; i.e. the Western culture adherent sees himself as an ‘independent being’ with his own powers of sourcing actions and developments.  His cultural belief in INVENTED REALITY  makes him egotistical in that he will claim to be the ‘source’ of ‘productive developments’, while his ‘forked tongue’ capability will have him attribute  the ‘sourcing’ of ‘destructive developments’ to others or to the collective which he sees as ‘split apart’ from himself.

Meanwhile, the INVENTED REALITY is language and grammar constructed abstraction based on the ‘double error’; i.e. the use of ‘naming’ to psychologically create notional ‘things’-in-themselves’, notionally with powers of sourcing actions and developments; i.e. there is no such thing as ‘sourcing’ in the real world of our relational experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.  As Whorf stated in his above-cited comment, the abstract concepts of Newtonian science come from language and not from our experience-based intuitions of the reality we experience inclusion in.

In the INVENTED REALITY that Western man employs as the ‘operative reality’, he refers to the skyscrapers, the highways and the air transportation systems ‘he has sourced with his ingenuity’ as ‘improvements’ on the ‘raw land’.   But that is intellectual self-deception of the ‘double error’ type.  The only possible dynamic in the reality of our actual relational experience within the transforming relational dynamic is ‘transformation’ (as with transforming relational forms in the transforming relational continuum).

We are all included in ‘relational transformation’; i.e. we are all transient forms within the transforming relational continuum, but, thanks to language and grammar, we are able to use a ‘double error’ to reduce the transforming relational continuum, conceptually (psychologically) to terms of notional (name-instantiated) things-in-themselves, notionally with the powers of sourcing actions and developments.   For example, the ‘first error’ allows us to name the relational form in the transforming relational continuum ‘Katrina’  (the hurricane) to impute to a swirling in the transforming continuum ‘persisting thing-in-itself existence’ (‘the psychological effect of ‘naming’), and concatenating with this the ‘second error’ of imputing the power of sourcing actions and developments to the thing-in-itself we just created with ‘naming’).  We Western culture adherents then proceed with employing the double-error-based ‘INVENTED REALITY’ as our ‘operative reality’.   We enthusiastically claim authorship of positively perceived ‘sorcery’ while vehemently denying responsibility for negatively perceived ‘sorcery’.  Of course, in the reality of our actual relational experience, ‘sourcery’ does not exist, there is only relational transformation.  Of course, ‘the reality of our actual relational experience’ is not the operative reality of Western culture.  The operative reality of Western culture is the INVENTED REALITY where ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ (‘angels’ and ‘devils’) doe exist, thanks to the ‘double error’ wherein we use naming to impute persisting ‘thing-in-itself being’ to relational forms and psychologically embellish this by endowing the ‘things-in-themselves’ with notional powers of sourcing actions and developments.

A cross comparison of Western culture patterns of understanding reality with indigenous aboriginal patterns of understanding reality may elucidate on the psychosis cultivating propensities of Western culture and the relational stability cultivating propensities of indigenous aboriginal cultures.

Example of Western culture pattern of understanding reality;

“What we call ‘normal’ is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience.” – R. D. Laing, author of ‘The Divided Self’

The ‘double error’ of Western culture gives the individual the impression she is an ‘independently-existing thing-in-herself’ endowed with powers of sourcing actions and developments.  This is the source of the ‘divided self’ which occludes the topological understanding of the relational self of our early development (infancy) as a boil in the flow where the ‘self-other’ division is ‘appearance’.

Example of modern physics and indigenous aboriginal culture patterns of understanding reality;

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’

The Western culture INVENTED REALITY would have our intellectualizing mind picture ourselves as ‘independent beings’ strolling through a ‘habitat’ that is intrinsically separate from inhabitants such as ourselves, so that such language-and-grammar stimulated psychological impressions of ‘reality’ eclipse and occlude our relational experience based sense of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.  We then see ourselves as independently-existing ‘sorcerers’ of actions and developments, no longer as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum.

Such a distorted ‘Divided Self’ impression of reality comes to us by way of language and grammar which empowers the intellect to take control and demote relational experience based intuition from its natural precedence.  Thus, language is a kind of nemesis of Western culture acculturated man, since it is a tool which gives us the psychological capability of dividing ourselves out of the transforming relational continuum and recapturing ourselves (psychologically) as ‘independent beings’ with our own powers of sourcing actions and developments; whereby; the tools run away with the workman, the human with the divine.

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As has been discussed elsewhere in this ‘series’ on how Western culture cultivates aberrance in the social dynamic, those ‘miner’s canaries’ that cannot let go of their intuitive grasp of the essentially ‘relational’ basis of reality, and who ‘have trouble’ with ‘walking the talk’ of the ‘double error’ wherein they must understand themselves as ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves with their own innate powers of sourcing actions and developments (i.e. where they are forced to ‘grow an ego’), this breeds schizophrenia aka ‘the divided self’ since the ‘natural self’ is NOT separate from the world one is situationally included in.   This natural relational understanding is the ‘norm’ in indigenous aboriginal culture as it is in modern physics, however, it is seen as ‘illness’ in Western culture where the ‘divided self’ is the ‘norm’.  The divided self is the Western culture ‘norm’ that is deemed ‘mentally healthy’ yet in the case of the relationally sensitive, such ‘culturally-correct’ role-play as a ‘Western culture normal’ can bring on psychosis, the Western culture treatment for which is to restore the individual to the culturally accepted aberrant state that is the source of her psychosis.  While the alternative to restoring the overall dysfunctional Western culture collective to a natural relational equilibrium is an ideal (but impractical-in-the-short-term) goal, the recovery of the sensitive ‘miner’s canary’ from psychosis brought on by the stress of immersion in Western psychosis-inducing culture can be approached by;

(a) immersion within an empathic circle of others, as in ‘rehabilitation’ where ‘recovery’ is facilitated.  However, ‘recovery’ is seen in the Western culture as something which is undergone by the individual, whereas, the ‘recovery’ is in fact the recover of the relational social environment that the ‘miner’s canary’ has been moved into.  Western culture, following the recovery perceived as the ‘repairing of the individual’ when the ‘recovery’ is the repairing of the social relational ambiance the individual is included in, encourages the ‘healed individual’ to return to the psychosis-inducing Western cultural dynamic that is the real source of the psychosis, whereupon the descent into yet another bout of psychosis ensues.  In other words, what needs to be remediated to avoid psychosis is the social environment the ‘miner’s canary’ is situationally included in, rather than something within the miner’s canary.

(b) re-situation within a social-relational environment that is not heavily invested in Western psychosis-inducing (double error based) social dynamics.  For example, in social environments where mutual caring/empathy is in primacy over competition or corporate objectives infused with belief in the individual/organization/nation in the double error sense of a name-instantiated thing-in-itself, noitionally with the powers of sourcing actions and developments.   A point to remember is that the double error manifests within organizations that cultivate ‘double-error’ based beliefs such as ‘individualism’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘corporatism’.

The ‘double error’ that is foundational to Western culture INVENTED REALITY is intrinsically tied to ‘ego’; i.e. in social collectives that would have one see oneself as an independently existing thing-in-oneself with powers of sourcing actions and developments, ego rules, whereas in empathic relational collectives ‘inspiration’ is in a natural precedence over ‘ego’; i.e. Ego is a swelled head, inspiration is a full heart’  and avoidance of ‘double error’ based psychosis requires situating oneself within a relational dynamic that ‘runs on inspiration first’, ‘ego second’.  To invert this natural order is to let the tools run away with the workman, the human with the divine. In other words, the individual in the reality of modern physics, indigenous aboriginal culture, Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, is innately ‘relaitonal, without ‘independent being’ and without ‘powers of sourcing actions and developments’, … such abstract conceptualizations being the produce of language and grammar supported only by the calculations of the intellect, and not supported by the experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.
 * * * END OF PROLOGUE * * *

Unless one is born into and/or raised in an indigenous aboriginal and/or Buddhist/Taoist or Advaita Vedanta culture, it is not easy to assimilate the full ‘meaning’ of the understanding that we Western culture adherents have psychologically entrapped ourselves in an INVENTED REALITY.  I have continually explored and written about the INVENTED REALITY since it has been the source of rising psychological aberrance in our Western society that manifests in mass murders, psychological imbalances, political divisions and other abnormalities that we Western culture adherents have taken to be ‘the norm’;

“What we call ‘normal’ is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience.” – R. D. Laing, author of ‘The Divided Self’

Laing endorsed the similar views of anthropologist Jules Henry, author of ‘Culture Against Man’ whose philosophical investigations, like my own, suggest that Western culture is fomenting conflict within itself, as also in Nietzsche’s ‘double error’ (the use of language (naming)) to invent ‘things-in-themselves’ with the notional powers of sourcing actions and developments).

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