Archive for year 2020

The ‘Boiled Frog’ adage is the story of a frog who jumps into a pot of cold water on a stove and as the water gets warmer, the frog that is basking in this warmth gets lazier and more comfortable and as time passes, while he thinks about making the needed change, he delays his summoning up of energy to enjoy a wee bit more basking in what is now a VERY relaxing hot tub.  When he finally discerns that he MUST make the needed move or perish, it is too late as he can no longer summon the needed energy.

In SYSTEMS terms, this is known as being LOCKED IN BY HIGH SWITCHING COSTS.  When we invest so much in converting so many of our applications to the Microsoft PC, as it becomes evident that the Apple or the UNIX system offers a better platform, by that time  the resources needed to back out of Microsoft and ‘port’ to a new superior system will have become gargantuan so that we will have no choice but to accept the unfolding Microsoft-dependent future that we have trapped ourselves in.

Where we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are as a social collective, generally, is in this sort of situation because of our commitment to GROWTH.  The WESTERN CULTURE commitment to GROWTH in our constructive developments is exemplary of being LOCKED IN by HIGH SWITCHING COSTS.  We are ADDICTED TO GROWTH and this has us TURN OUR BACK TO THE REALITY of TRANSFORMATION.

Our grandchildren stand to PAY BIGTIME for our insistence on our pretending we don’t see what’s really going on, which is TRANSFORMATION and NOT “GROWTH”.  GROWTH is a RATIO-based concept wherein something LOCAL is said to increase in magnitude.   GROWTH is an abstract LOCALIZER of dynamics (to LOCALIZE is to EFFABLE-IZE), but REALITY remains NONLOCAL since REALITY IS TRANSFORMATION.  That is, RESONANCE is the REALITY but it is NONLOCAL and thus INEFFABLE.  GROWTH is LOCAL and thus EFFABLE but it is only REAL within a SUBSTITUTE REALITY.

(more…)

FORWARD: Both the EAST and Modern physics understand ‘health’ in the body and ‘health’ in the social collective in terms of NONLOCAL relational resonance, while understanding illness in terms of NONLOCAL relational dissonance. This understanding employs the ‘quantum’ BOTH/AND logic of the INCLUDED medium wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE (“inhabitant” and “habitat” are ONE).  Illness is understood as the falling out of relational resonance and remediation is the restoring of resonance.

Conversely, both the WEST and Newtonian physics understand ‘health’ in the body and ‘health’ in the social collective in terms of LOCAL production of beneficial outputs and conditions, and illness in terms of the production of pathological outputs and conditions. This understanding employs the EITHER/OR logic of the EXCLUDED MEDIUM wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO.  Illness is the attack of pathogens and remediation is the neutralizing of pathogens.

While the EAST view accords with the modern physics supported reality, the WEST mistakes NONLOCAL phenomena for LOCAL phenomena, both in the case of beneficial outputs and pathological outputs.  In the WEST, dissonance arising from imbalance (e.g. in race relations) although NONLOCAL in essence, is misinterpreted as a LOCAL ‘attack of pathogens’.  NONLOCAL dissonance is not resolved (and may be exacerbated) by attempts to eliminate “LOCAL” pathogens while short term superficial relief may be gained at the expense of long term deepening of the problem.

* * *

(This note was formerly titled “A Cynic’s view of Popular Models of Reality”)

The masculine assertive model of ‘reality’ is very popular in our WESTERN CULTURE.  It makes it appear as if we are ‘in control of our own destiny’.   I am pondering this as my nephew, who was due to fly to England today to join his girl friend was bitten by a dog while on a morning jog.  Will he still make his flight?  We’ll see.  As Robbie Burns allowed, The best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley’.

My university’s motto is Tuum Est, ‘It’s up to you’.   I never did like that motto.  For me, it gives out too much of a born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-one’s-mouth allusion.  Why not, instead, ‘It’s up to us’.

WESTERN CULTURE ARCHETYPE IN THE MIST OF INFERENCE: Whazzamatta ghetto-boy, don’t have what it takes?  Just read MY biography while I play the Frank Sinatra favourite ‘I did it my way’.

The Tuum Est model of reality works especially well for ego-inflation-prone WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS like many if not most of us WCAs, but there are other models of reality.  There is the Sophie’s choice model of reality where’s its ‘up to you’ to determine whether your first born or second born child will be ‘taken’.

There is also the Paleface choice when you find yourself in a desperate situation and your buddy Tonto says to you, ‘what you mean ‘we’, white man?

As Newton complained, there are no solutions to dynamic situations involving more than two bodies. “An exact solution for three bodies, exceeds, if I am not mistaken, the force of any human mind” – Isaac Newton 

Trouble is, … life’s full of such interferential relational complexities where three or more bodies are simultaneously influencing the unfolding reality.

When one is being chased by a bear, survival is not determined simply by how fast you can run, but by how fast the others you are with can run.

But language still allows us to say; ‘I am a survivor because I set my mind to it and escaped from the attacking bear’ (left unsaid; ‘the others weren’t so fortunate’)  One statement may be logically true but it simply brings forth recall of Goedel’s theorem which proves the INCOMPLETENESS of all finite systems of logical propositions.  Keep your eye on the trickery in the simple masculine assertive propositions we employ all the time, like those which employ the word GROWTH, which obscures the reality of TRANSFORMATION.   Nietzsche pointed out the DOUBLE ERROR problem in this regard, where we say stuff like ‘the TOWN is growing larger and more populous and productive’ which makes NO MENTION OF THE REALITY of the conjugate SHRINKAGE of Wilderness and its diversity.

(more…)

Figure and Ground as One  is TRANSFORMATION

Figure and Ground as TWO is GROWTH as in RATIO and REASON

Negative space as recovery from thinking in terms of Figures as in Figure-and-Ground-as-Two  (Darwinism) to Figure and-Ground-as-One-as in TRANSFORMATION.

Nietzsche’s ‘Anti-Darwin’ is ‘anti-Figure-and-Ground-as-Two’.

Figure-and-Ground-as-TWO is LOCKED IN BY DOUBLE ERROR based Language wherein TRANSFORMATION is reduced to GROWTH

Mephistopheles et l’Androgyne (Mircea Eliade) is where ‘the Androgyne’ is split apart into ‘male’ and ‘female’ and the ‘female’ is discarded.

 * * *

Why Nietzsche’s Anti-Darwinism is ‘On Target’

The difficulty that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have in visualizing (cognitively connecting with) the artist’s so-called “negative space’ derives from our LANGUAGE-BASED-PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONING which splits the world into FIGURE-and-GROUND as if FIGURE and GROUND were TWO, and then keeps in the foreground of the psyche, the FIGURE, and lets the ‘GROUND’ fall away into obscurity.

This SELF-DECEPTION has been reinforced by Darwin with his ‘Theory of Evolution’ which tries to portray the FIGURE as a THING-IN-ITSELF that ‘EVOLVES’ over ‘TIME’.  Such abstraction splits FIGURE-and-GROUND (Inhabitant-and-Habitat) into TWO, and tries to develop a STORY based on the notion that the FIGURE is a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF that is EVOLVING over TIME.

Note that there the abstract concept of TIME only arises when we notionally split FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE (e.g. as implied in the Tai-Chi symbol) into FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO.

The reason for inventing TIME is that when we notionally split FIGURE-and-GROUND-into-TWO, .. we have to psychologically manage the development of the FIGURE (aka ‘INHABITANT’) as if it were INDEPENDENT of the GROUND (aka ‘HABITAT’).  Once we conjure up this SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO, we reduce TRANSFORMATION (wherein figure-and-ground-is-ONE) to GROWTH of the FIGURE as if it were INDEPENDENT of the GROUND; i.e. as if FIGURE-and-GROUND-were-TWO.

This gives the WESTERN CULTURE psyche (it is only in ‘the WEST’ that our language does this to us) a case of BIPOLAR DISORDER because of the conjugate ‘GHOST’ we make the HABITAT into as we allow, separately, the GROWTH of the INHABITANT.

For example, we speak of the GROWTH of ‘cultivated land’ as if that were ‘real’, however, this deployment of the term GROWTH as if it were REAL has us simply ‘forget’ about the conjugate decline in ‘Wilderness’.  That is, if the area of cultivated land can be said to GROW, or if the TOWN can be said to GROW, and if that is taken as ‘fact’, then there is no acknowledgement that DECLINE of Wilderness is conjugate with the GROWTH of the cultivated land or the GROWTH of the TOWN.

WHAT GOES MISSING, when we invoke this abstract concept of GROWTH, is the REALITY of TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GROWTH.  The concept is ABSTRACT and derives from RATIO aka RATIONALIT aka REASON.  We REASON with the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR as Nietzsche has pointed out. The FIRST ERROR is NAMING (e.g. ‘the TOWN’) and we conflate this with the SECOND ERROR of GRAMMAR (e.g. ‘the TOWN is GROWING’) so that we RATIO UP or REASON that there is a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF with ITS OWN POWERS OF SOURCING actions and developments.

(more…)

What I want to share is the understanding that our WESTERN CULTURE SOCIAL DYNAMICS are falling progressively into the trap described by Systems Sciences pioneer Kenneth Boulding in the terms ‘The name of the DEVIL is SUBOPTIMIZATION.

This is dysfunction which comes from thinking what Nietzsche terms the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.  Thanks to the DOUBLE ERROR, we can construct representations such as ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ which is NOT REALITY since such logical propositions, while TRUE in an innately incomplete way, fail to acknowledge the reciprocal SHRINKAGE of the Wilderness.

Our WESTERN CULTURE language based representations of reality are replete with DOUBLE ERROR conceptualizations.  We say that TOWNS GROW in size and population and production’ but this is a FALSEHOOD based on RATIONAL THOUGHT.  We use RATIO whenever we say that some THING like the TOWN “IS GROWING”.   The RATIO-based representation serves up a SUBSTITUTE REALITY which avoids having to deal with TRANSFORMATION of the LANDSCAPE.

TRANSFORMING is the basic reality of our sensory experience (we are included in the transforming relational continuum) but it is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT (relational).

WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS could employ the SUBSTITUTE REALITY as a tool of inference of the INEFFABLE TRANSFORMATION which is ‘going on everywhere at the same time’.   The LANDSCAPE IS TRANSFORMING as the “towns grow” and the “wilderness shrinks” and while TRANSFORMATION is the REALITY, our WESTERN CULTURE habit is to stick with RATIO based terms such as GROWTH of LOCAL things-in-themselves, because RATIO-nality aka REASON is a convenient (but abstract) tool for SIDE-STEPPING the fact that TRANSFORMATION is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT.

THAT IS WHY THE TITLE OF THIS COMMENTARY is NONLOCALITY is REAL, to remind us that that we use the DOUBLE ERROR base concept of LOCAL things-in-themselves with their own (notional) powers of SOURCING LOCAL actions and developments to construct something that is EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT; e.g. the TOWN has DOUBLED its size over the past ten years.   This has an explicitness that is lacking in the statement of the indigenous aboriginal that ‘The Landscape is transforming’, … a statement that does imply that the creatures of forest and meadow are going missing etc., a reality that is NOT CAPTURED in ‘The TOWN is GROWING’.

Thus, “The TOWN is GROWING” is not representing the REALITY OF OUR SENSORY EXPERIENCE, it is constructing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on RATIO.  See this ‘before’ picture of the TOWN and see this ‘later’ picture of the TOWN. Is that not PROOF of the GROWTH of the TOWN?

(more…)