The ORCHARD and the LANDSCAPE open the door of language-based understanding to TWO possibilities; i.e. the ORCHARD that we say ‘grows larger’ as implies the LOCAL and EXPLICIT existence of the ORCHARD and ascribes to it the DOUBLE ERROR based powers of GROWTH, … or, quite differently, … the LANDSCAPE which is continually TRANSFORMING which steals and diffuses the spotlight from the ORCHARD with its notional LOCAL thing-in-itself existence with its endowment of powers of SOURCING actions and development including it’s locally incipient GROWTH.  While it is common to hear language-based conceptualizations featuring the GROWTH of the ORCHARD as if it were a LOCAL and EXPLICIT thing-in-itself as if FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO, …  we also hear language-based conceptualizations featuring the transforming LANDSCAPE in which the ORCHARD has been cast in the manner of a boil in the flow wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE.

If we START by imputing the existence of a LOCAL thing-in-itself (the ORCHARD) that we say GROWS larger OVER TIME, we are making use of RATIO-NAL INTELLECTION.  If we, on the other hand, start with the concept of the transforming LANDSCAPE,  we are appealing to RELATIONAL INTELLECTION which is purely relative and has no absolute foundation as in the case of RATIO which implies that SOME LOCAL-THING-in-ITSELF that was smaller has GROWN into a larger version of ITSELF.  This conceptualizing has no dependence on influences coming from beyond the notional LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF; i.e. the implication is one of GROWTH in the sense of RATIO of its present larger state from its prior smaller state. On the other hand, the term LANDSCAPE implies something that is in a continual condition of TRANSFORMATION in which the ORCHARD is included, NOT as a local thing-in-itself but as a relational form in the fluidity of the transforming relational continuum.

In terms of language-based sharing of visual and other sensory experience, TALK in terms of the ORCHARD as if it were a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF with its own (GRAMMAR-GIVEN) powers of SOURCING ACTIONS and DEVELOPMENT such as GROWTH (of a local thing in space that ratios up over TIME), gives us a LOCAL FOCUS that is ABSTRACT but nevertheless LOCAL and FINITE and far easier to capture and share in language than the transforming LANDSCAPE which is unbounded in spacetime as are the relational features in the transforming relational spacetime continuum.

It is evident that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have opted in our reductive language-based conceptualization of reality NOT for that which is most true according to our sensory experience (the transforming LANDSCAPE) but for that which is most easy in our intellectual sharing (the local ORCHARD that grows larger (ratios up) over TIME).

In general, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS use RATIO based concepts to render TRANSFORMATION that is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT in the SUBSTITUTE terms of the EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT, thus we speak of NON-realities such as GROWTH (and its shadow DECLINE), PROGRESS (and its shadow SETBACK) and IMPROVEMENT (and its shadow DETERIORATION).  These are NOT REAL (there is only TRANSFORMATION) but, the thinking they induce has emotional impact for us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS.

While the RATIO-NALIZING of TRANSFORMATION delivers up abstract snapshot PICTURES that, in the culture of the EAST, only qualify for use as tools of INFERENCE of the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT, … these RATIO-NALIZATIONS that are EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT are employed by us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, as the basis of our OPERATIVE REALITY.

 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 – Philosophical Investigations.

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This note opens up a view to why our WESTERN CULTURE is cultivating social dysfunction that is continuing to intensify.  The problem is our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT orientation to RATIONAL INTELLECTION aka REASON as a FIRST ORDER tool for UNDERSTANDING REALITY.

As David Bohm, Nietzsche and others have pointed out, we have INTELLIGENCE-and-INTUITION which orient to TRANSFORMATION which is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT, and then we have RATIONAL INTELLECTION which orients to GROWTH which is LOCAL and EXPLICIT

What is going wrong on the scale of an entire CULTURE is that our WESTERN CULTURE has put RATIONAL INTELLECTION as is capturable in explicit language (BECAUSE it is a reduction to the LOCAL and EXPLICIT) into an unnatural precedence over INTELLIGENCE and INTUITION with attunes to TRANSFORMATION which, because it is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT is NOT CAPTURABLE in explicit LANGUAGE.  The title of the ORCHARD (local and explicit) and the LANDSCAPE (nonlocal and implicit) was chosen to highlight this difference in our modes of understanding; RATIONALITY which is informed by the abstractions of LOCAL and EXPLICIT and INTELLIGENCE/INTUITION which is informed by the sensory experience of the NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT.

The concern expressed in philosophers such as Nietzsche and Alan Watts is a concern that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are taking the crude tool of RATIONALITY aka REASON as a substitute conception of REALITY.   REASON can inform us on the LOCAL EXPLICITS of the ORCHARD but it CANNOT inform us on the NONLOCAL IMPLICATIONS of LANDSCAPE TRANSFORMATION.    The misplaced precedence given to RATIONALITY (GROWTH of the ORCHARD) over INTELLIGENCE (the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE) and how this leads to a dysfunctional sense of ‘reality’ is the focus of this essay.  REASON aka RATIONALITY which abstractly splits out the FIGURE from the GROUND (e.g. the ORCHARD from the LANDSCAPE) and constructs a reality oriented to the GROWTH, DEVELOPMENT and QUALITIES of the FIGURE as if INDEPENDENT of the GROUND, can lead to an abandonment of INTELLIGENCE.

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