Introduction: Should Emergency Action Pre-empt Philosophical Inquiry?

 

Some would say that WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are long on ‘let’s get the job done’ capability and short on philosophical inquiry into what is actually going on.   This can boomerang since as complex problem phenomena unfold, aggressive actions based on overly simplistic models may be having effects that go far beyond the resolving of the issues identified.  In fact, the issues identified in an overly simplistic model will not be ‘real’ issues.

What comes to mind is land mines that do not explode until the detonator has been depressed a half dozen or more times, so that advancing troops will only find out they have gone into a minefield after they are well into the mine-field and unable to safely retreat.

Hopefully, our COVID 19 response will not be a severe case in this respect but it has the markings of having this type of exposure which ‘systems’ theorists refer to as ‘putting our ladder up against the wrong wall’ (so that as we climb the ladder to get to what needs repairing, it is actually taking us farther away from being able to address it.

If our understanding of the complex reality we are included in could be improved, it seems likely that our success in dealing with such unfolding complexities such as COVID 19 could be improved.

In any case, this essay explores how we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have come to accept the concept of COMPETITION as a ‘real’ and ‘sensible’ social dynamic, though there is no such thing as ‘competition’ in the reality of our actual natural experience.  The basic dynamic is relational flow which is ‘gathering and scattering’ in the sense of BOTH/AND logic of the INCLUDED medium (quantum physics logic).

Nietzsche’s ‘anti-Darwin’ comments, together with his pointing out our WESTERN CULTURE chronic DOUBLE ERROR reality-reducing habit, is a critique of the suggestion that people are ‘things-in-themselves’ driven inside-outwardly by an internal ‘will’.  Meanwhile a ‘person’ understood as a LOCAL ‘thing-in-himself’ does not exist because ‘things-in-themselves’  do not exist.  However, once we use language and grammar to impose the DOUBLE ERROR, and once people start believing that we, ourselves, are NAMING-instantiated local independently-existing things-in-themselves with GRAMMAR-instantiated powers of sourcing actions and developments, the abstract groundwork is laid down and the concept and practice of ‘competition’ follows. (Note that ‘competition’ IS a DOUBLE ERROR based LOCALIZING of the SOURCING of actions and developments).  In the reality of our sensory experience, there is only relational transformation and there are no LOCALLY incipient SOURCES of actions and developments, as play a foundational role in the abstract concept of ‘competition’.

So, yes, we have this TOOL of the DOUBLE ERROR that allows us to break through the barrier of INEFFABILITY, and if we employ this DOUBLE ERROR tool as in the EAST, as INFERENCE of the INEFFABLE Wave-field (the Tao) that, ITSELF, lies innately beyond the reach of capture in language and grammar, we are in good shapre, but the issue is that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are treating this tool of INFERENCE of the ineffable, as if it were capable of delivering a direct and explicit understanding of REALITY.

We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are so accustomed to using the DOUBLE ERROR as if it pointed to something ‘real’ that we rarely question it.  For example, we say things like; ‘The raging fire swept through the forested valley incinerating the Jones’ farm, along with farmer Jones and his cow Bessie, and went on to destroy most of Evansville’.   This is the DOUBLE ERROR construction of ‘reality’, but IN REALITY, … there is no such thing as “a fire” vested with the powers of sourcing actions and developments such as ‘sweeping through the valley and incinerating the Jones’ farm’.  What is REALLY going on here is TRANSFORMATION but we don’t put TRANSFORMATION into our language and grammar narratives because it has no beginning and no ending (it is ‘the transforming relational continuum aka the Tao aka the Wavefield) and it has no beginning and ending that we are privy to.   Since TRANSFORMATION is not LOCALIZABLE in space/time; i.e. it is the ineffable, all-including ‘Tao’ (Wave-field), we pass over it in silence and shift gears to a reduced but effable representation in DOUBLE ERROR terms.  The FIRST ERROR is to use NAMING (‘the fire’) to impute LOCAL thing-in-itself BEING to a relational form in the (transformative) flow, and the SECOND ERROR conflates the first using GRAMMAR to impute to the NAMING-instantiated thing-in-itself (‘the fire’) the power of SOURCING actions and developments; “swept through the forested valley incinerating the Jones’ farm along with framer Jones and his cow Bessie.”

What we ‘dropped out’ of our intellectual consideration here is REALITY by inserting the FIRE based DOUBLE ERROR.  That is, we chopped out the REALITY of relational TRANSFORMATION which is the real dynamic, because it is ineffable.  It is ineffable because it is THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM.  ‘The fire’ is not a real thing-in-itself that can do stuff, it is HOW TRANSFORMATION MANIFESTS and TRANSFORMATION cannot be tied down to something LOCAL.

This ceaseless process of deferral is best summed up by Nishitani … For Nishitani, `fire does not burn fire’ nor does `water wash water’. The essence of fire is to burn, yet fire cannot burn itself. It cannot exist in self-enclosure or possess a simple identity. 

We have the same problem with ‘fever’ as with ‘fire’ in that it does not appear to have a LOCAL SOURCE yet we speak about it as if it did, which, of course, removes from our awareness an understanding of FIRE or FEVER as NONLOCAL relational TRANSFORMATION.  The green grassy plains of the prairie may transform into brown tinder dry dessicant ready to be tickled into combustion and as this TRANSFORMATION continues to  unfold, we FLIP TO DOUBLE ERROR mode where we speak of “A FIRE’ that IS GROWING IN SIZE and FEROCITY as if it had ‘its own LOCAL IDENTITY’ which is abstraction since everything is included within the transformation relational continuum aka Wave-field.

WE SAY … “THE FIRE IS GROWING LARGER AND IS DESTROYING THE TOWN OF EVANSVILLE” … ALTHOUGH AS NISHITANI POINTS OUT, THERE IS NO ‘FIRE’ IN THE SENSE OF ‘A LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF’ WITH ITS OWN POWERS OF ACTION, GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT, and what we are experiencing is NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION in which we are included.  And as with FIRE, so also with FEVER; i.e. what is going on is TRANSFORMATION of FIGURE-AND-GROUND AS ONE.  Only in a FLATSPACE pseudo-reality can we speak of the GROWTH of the burned-out area.  In spherical space, there is a reciprocal REDUCTION of the green area or in other words, an overall TRANSFORMATION.  The DOUBLE ERROR MISREPRESENTS the REALITY.

By using the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar we focus in on the LOCAL and lay it in our minds like a Cuckoo’s egg that hatches out as an artificial effable LOCALITY that distracts us from the ineffable NONLOCAL phenomenon of TRANSFORMATION.  The TRANSFORMING of LANDSCAPE manifests through flood and fire and alluvial erosion etc. The ‘fire’ is NOT a thing-in-itself, it is one of the ways in which TRANSFORMATION manifests; i.e. TRANSFORMATION is real, not ‘the fire’.

“COMPETITION” is similarly exemplary of our confusion-infusing use of DOUBLE ERROR based pseudo-reality as our ‘operative reality’; i.e. as the pseudo-reality that shapes our relational social dynamics (a very different reality from that of those who intuit themselves to be relational forms in the transforming relational continuum aka ‘the Tao’ aka the Wavefield).

“COMPETITION” is one of these backhanded-inference terms like ‘FORGIVENESS” that implies binary abstraction; i.e. ‘FORGIVENESS’ legitimizes the binary poles of RIGHT and WRONG and ‘COMPETITION’ legitimizes the binary poles of WINNER and LOSER.   The terms WINNER and LOSER are backhanded-inference that establishes the existence of something that can be ‘won’ or ‘lost’, namely something (an ‘event’) that is LOCAL in space and time like ‘A FIRE’.  Speaking in these reduced DOUBLE ERROR based LOCALIZING terms has us LOSE SIGHT of the primary reality of NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION.

These language and grammar categorizations like FIRE and FEVER are what we need to EXPLICITIZE relational phenomena so that we can representationally extricate and ‘effable-ize’ relational formings in the inffable transforming relational continuum.  ‘FIRE’ does not ‘burn’; i.e. ‘FIRE’ IS THE BURNING aka ‘THE TRANSFORMING’.

If we recall that the Wave-field (the Tao) is ineffable, and that we are forced to use shortcuts, in language and grammar, in order to allude to the ineffable, so that what we speak about is only inference of what lies beyond the effable, we will not accept anything ‘explicit’ or ‘literal’ other than as a springboard to tickle an intuitive leap to the ineffable that lies beyond the language and grammar based springboard.  The ineffable relational medium is the message, not the effable explicit content.  While the EAST remembers not to forget this, the WEST forgets what we were supposed to remember, and thus ‘the tool runs away with workman, the human with the Divine.

 

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A Philosophical Investigation of the abstract concept of COMPETITION.

The concept of ‘competition’ has been given, by us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, a foundational role in our intellectual construction of REALITY.  This note explores the misconception of reality that follows from our acceptance of COMPETITION as something ‘basic in Nature’.

This note discusses the problematic concept of COMPETITION, with respect to how it shapes our intellectual impression of our SENSORY EXPERIENCE REALITY (our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum aka the ‘Wave-field’ aka ‘the Tao).

Competition is abstraction based on the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar which employs NAMING to impute the existence of LOCAL BEINGS, conflating this first error with a second error of GRAMMAR as used to impute powers of sourcing of actions and developments to the NAMING instantiated thing-in-itself.

There is no ‘competition’ where subject and object are only one (Schroedinger) and everything included in a fluid-dynamical One-ness.  Sure, the lizards will home in on a fly when it lands, like iron filings home in on a magnet, but it does not follow that the impetus for such convergent movement derives from the interior of the individual participants.  In other words, we must question on what basis we impute the forms in nature to be ‘independent individuals’?  Reflection shows that such invention derives from our own EGO-given impression of ourselves; i.e. by way of EGO based ANTHROPOMORPHISM.

Could the lizards not be included in the Wave-field dynamic, as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum?  Modern physics says yes to this; i.e. as Schroedinger points out, when it comes to fluid dynamics as in the Wave-field, SUBJECT AND OBJECT ARE ONE (i.e. FIGURE AND GROUND ARE ONE).  The lizards and other forms are developments withing the all-encompassing ‘field’.

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