An inclusional worldview
Archive for March, 2021
A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF HOW PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS REFUTE “WESTERN REALITY”
0March 31, 2021
by ted lumley
in APN
EPILOGUE:
This reportage on philosophical investigations into the meaning of our everyday ‘reality’ as we try to establish it through language reaffirms the findings of Mach, Nietzsche and Bohm, … as well as Poincaré, Wittgenstein, Schroedinger and others. There is much commonality in these findings but also significant differences.
Disagreements over ‘what is reality’ abound and different cultures deal with this differently since, for example, while WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS believe that there reality is ‘in common’ and thus DEBATE over ‘who has the best understanding of reality’, the resolution of which is established by the tongue-in-cheek principle of Lafontaine; ‘La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure’ (the understanding of the strongest is always the best). In the EAST, the indigenous aboriginal culture employs the ‘learning circle’ wherein participants share their unique personal sense-experiences of reality such that the ‘take-away’ for circle participants is an ineffable-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT ‘relational’ understanding, even though the shared ‘inputs’ are effable-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT.
What ‘comes through’ generally is that in society at large, we tend to DIVIDE on the basis of understanding reality in one or more of three manners; REDUCTIONISM, HOLISM and TRANSFORMATION.
REDUCTIONISM (conservatism) is an understanding of reality based on belief in male-assertive LOCAL AUTHORING of actions and developments as if ‘from a single point of light’ (or ‘particle’). HOLISM (liberalism) is an understanding of reality based on belief in female-inductive LOCAL AUTHORING of actions and developments as if from a social collective. TRANSFORMATION is based on NONLOCAL AUTHORLESS emergence.
For example, the REDUCTIONIST/conservative will see the HURRICANE as AUTHORING a male-assertive stirring up of the ATMOSPHERE while the HOLIST/liberal will see the ATMOSPHERE as AUTHORING a female-inductive stirring up of the HURRICANE. Both of these options imply LOCAL AUTHORING and both are EFFABLE by way of NAMING-and-GRAMMAR (the ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ cited by Nietzsche).
TRANSFORMATION, on the other hand, is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT and thus INEFFABLE, although it is the Wave-field reality aka the Tao which is everywhere-at-the-same-time, which is the nature of WAVE-FIELD. The COMBINED implication of the EARTH EXTRUDING new (volcano-effusing) materials and the EARTH SUBDUCTING established CRUST is TRANSFORMATION. That is, the coniunctio oppositorum of the MALE ASSERTIVE EXTRUSION and the FEMALE INDUCTIVE SEDUCTION is TRANSFORMATION wherein there is no longer any need for the notion of an AUTHOR. Instead of the EARTH EXTRUDING-and-the-EARTH-SUBDUCTING, these two imply an AUTHORLESS, androgynous EARTHING in the Wave-field.
The notion of ‘AN EARTH’ as the androgynous coincidentia opporitorum involving AUTHORING of both EXTRUSION and SUBDUCTION gives way to the AUTHORLESS phenomenon of a purely relational EARTHING or PLANETING in the Wave-field. This EARTHING is NOT a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF, … i.e. it is NEITHER a MALE-EXTRUDING THING-IN-ITSELF NOR A FEMALE SUBDUCTING THING-IN-ITSELF but an androgynous THINGLESSNESS without local AUTHORING properties as is the nature of Wave-field forms.
UNDERSTANDING THINGLESSNESS is by way of UNDERSTANDING HOLOGRAPHIC REALITY where ‘everything is in flux’.
UNDERSTANDING the INEFFABLE is one thing, but SHARING what we understand is another thing, and in order to develop language to support sharing of the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT, the INEFFABLE reality must be ‘compromised’ in one way or another (the male-assertive REDUCTIONIST compromise where ‘the HURRICANE is AUTHORING the stirring up of the ATMOSPHERE or the female-inductive HOLIST compromise where ‘the ATMOSPHERE is AUTHORING the stirring up of the HURRICANE.
In both cases, there is the psychological impression of LOCAL AUTHORING of action and development. We use language to impose this psychological SPLIT by virtue of language being incapable of directly capturing TRANSFORMATION and thus forcing the REDUCTIONIST and HOLIST splitting so that some of us speak in terms that ‘the TOWN is AUTHORING its own GROWTH and development (the male-assertive-reductionist local authoring view), … while others are speaking in terms of ‘the LANDSCAPE is AUTHORING the development of TOWNS’ (the female-inductive-holist local authoring view). DOES the TOWN author, by assertive action, the inflating and filling in of the LANDSCAPE’ in the manner of the male organ in the female receptacle, or does the LANDSCAPE author, by seduction, the emergence and expansion of the TOWN in the manner of the female organ that induces the swelling and growth of the male insertion? Is the seductive CUNTRY the primary agency or is the asserting TOWN the primary agency?
Evidently, language is not sufficiently equipped for capturing what is REALLY going on which imposes a danger to our psychological well-being insofar as our language-based constructions of reality are falling short on either the male assertive (reductionist) side of expression or on the female inductive (holistic) side of expression.
Physics, being a language-based form of knowledge-sharing has an exposure with regard to the limitations of language (such as being able to capture and share representations ONLY in a reductionist (conservative) or holist (liberal) fashion, the reality of TRANSFORMATION being NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT and thus INEFFABLE (beyond language’s representation capability). BUT MEANWHILE, WE ARE NOT “UNAWARE” OF THIS SHORTFALL OF LANGUAGE BECAUSE OUR SENSE-EXPERIENCE INFORMS US THROUGH ‘CHOICELESS AWARENESS’. This means that our SENSE-EXPERIENCE-INFORMED PSYCHOLOGICAL AWARENESS is more deeply informing than our intellectual-language-articulable RATIONAL KNOWING. This means that our psyche has comprehending capability that extends beyond the reach of language-stimulated intellection.
The science of psychology is auxiliary to physics. The two mutually support one another, and it is only when they are united that a complete science is formed. From our standpoint, the antithesis of subject and object, in the ordinary sense, does not exist.” — Ernst Mach. ‘The Analysis of Sensations and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical,
No-one ever said that language was capable of fully capturing our sense-experience and such would seem intuitively to be out of the question, so that reducing sense-experience to language-based expression will inevitably involve ‘drop-out’. This leaves us with an exposure to schizophrenia, as pointed out by Bohm since the reduction of sense-experience to language splits into the two options of REDUCTIONISM (conservatism) and HOLISM (liberalism) available through spoken and written language communications.
PSYCHOLOGICALLY, we can make that intuitive leap from the bipolar opposites of male-assertive authoring and female-inductive authoring to AUTHORLESS TRANSFORMATION, as where we see the EARTH AUTHORING male-assertive EXTRUSIONS and the EARTH AUTHORING female-subductive INTRUSIONS, this coniunctio oppositorum, INTUITIVELY comprising the one NON-AUTHOR driven dynamic of TRANSFORMATION in which EARTHING is an included relational dynamic rather than a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF.
BUT IF WE ‘BALK’ and fail to make the intuitive leap, we are condemned to that schism which divides reductionists/conservatives and holists/liberals into POLAR OPPOSING CAMPS with their interminable-because-innately-unresolvable polarizing disagreements, and for those who don’t like to fight with their brothers and sisters, this schism can be ‘swallowed’ into one’s own psychological ‘internals’ as in ‘BIPOLAR DISORDER’ and “SCHIZOPHRENIA’. The way out for those so afflicted, beyond switching to an EASTERN culture, is to restore the natural primacy of sense-experience of inclusion in relational TRANSFORMATION, over language-based rational intellection.
* * * END OF EPILOGUE * * *
There are many philosophical investigations that point to how screwed up our popular WESTERN CULTURE conceptualization of reality is, and there is a CONSISTENCY to them. By ‘them’ I include the philosophical investigations of Mach, Nietzsche, Bohm, Poincaré, Wittgenstein, Schroedinger and others. I would include Einstein in this but with the proviso that Einstein and Mach disagreed over ‘the existence of particles’ or ‘atoms’, an abstraction that is preserved in the present day ‘consensus version’ of Modern physics by probability theory (wave-particle duality). See footnote [1].
Now you may be thinking, how is he going to write a BRIEF account of ‘reality’ after having introduced such a complex idea as arguments over Wave-particle duality and the probability theory ‘solution’ contested by Mach, which as Mach pointed out, leads to the need to UNIFY physics and psychology. How much explanation is THAT going to take?
My approach in this note is to point to how these different views manifest in our psychological impressions of reality in terms of either FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE (the Wave-field view) and FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO (the Particle view) and to our WESTERN CULTURE historical architecting of language with a BUILT-IN FIGURE-and-GROUND-AS-TWO …”REALITY ARCHITECTURE”.
If we can see how this can SPLIT us into TWO DIFFERENT CAMPS, which we might call EAST and WEST (recall that Bohm acknowledges that indigenous aboriginal languages preserve the UNDIVIDED WHOLENESS of sense-experience reality as in the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE view of reality.
AND, NO, THIS REALLY “IS NOT” DIFFICULT STUFF! because we know how to employ either/both of these approaches to comprehending reality as the following SIMPLE EXAMPLE shows;
[EAST] In the relational language architectures such as indigenous aboriginal cultures where FIGURE-and-GROUND-is-ONE, … we say that “THERE IS TOWNING IN THE TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE” which accommodates reality where everything is in flux, consistent with Modern physics.
[WEST] In our WESTERN CULTURE binary logical EITHER matter OR space language architecture, the same sense-experience is reported as THE TOWN IS GROWING LARGER AND MORE POPULOUS AND PRODUCTIVE.
NOTA BENE! THERE IS A “DOUBLE ERROR” in the [WEST] language based representation of reality. The DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR is what stimulates the psyche’s construction of LOCAL AUTHORING of actions and developments. This is of KEY IMPORTANCE in understanding the difference between the language-based REALITY CONSTRUCTIONS of WEST and EAST. — THERE IS NO “DOUBLE ERROR” in the [EAST] presentation of the same sense experience phenomenon.
One more thing to keep in mind is that this brings forth TWO types of LOGIC and we are using LOGIC in language to construct REPRESENTATIONS OF “REALITY”. The EAST’s linguistic REPRESENTATION OF REALITY employs the BOTH/AND LOGIC of the INCLUDED medium wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE while the WEST’s linguistic REPRESENTATION OF REALITY employs the EITHER/OR LOGIC of the EXCLUDED medium wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO.
Goedel, Nietzsche and Mach
0March 29, 2021
by ted lumley
in APN
AUTHOR’S PREFACE:
WHY “REASON” IS EFFING US UP (US WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS), and NOT indigenous aboriginals and others who stay away from hard-core reliance on “REASON” .
For the answer, first consider the following quote by Poincaré, and then the discussion that follows it.
And just as our Copernicus said to us : It is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round, since thus the laws of astronomy are expressible in a much simpler language ; this one would say: It is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round, since thus the laws of mechanics are expressible in a much simpler language. . This does not preclude maintaining that absolute space, that is to say the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence. Hence, this affirmation; ‘the earth turns round’ has no meaning, since it can be verified by no experiment; since such an experiment, not only could not be either realized or dreamed by the boldest Jules Verne, but can not be conceived of without contradiction; or rather these two propositions; ‘the earth turns round,’ and, ‘it is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round’ have the same meaning; there is nothing more in the one than in the other. “ — Henri Poincaré, ‘Science and Hypothesis’, Ch. VII Relative Motion and Absolute Motion
What this establishes, and it is a very general practice in WESTERN CULTURE language-based representations, … is a DOUBLE ERROR based SUBSTITUTE REALITY that avoids complex language based constructions. IMAGINE, for example, how difficult it would be to capture the transformation associated with cross-pollination where honey bees move about from flower to flower in a flower-filled meadow. IMAGINE, for example, how difficult it would be to capture the transformation associated with seeds and insect eggs being gathered and scattered on the mud-caked tread in one’s boots as one travels around the countryside or even around the earth. TRANSFORMATION of relational diversity associates with actions that we normally capture in language in a kind of simplified icon-based representation where we speak about the movement and changing relational interactions of “A HUMAN” with no mention of the inevitable ‘microbial’ gathering and scattering that is an inextricable part of such movement. (See, for example; https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43674270 )
The point is that the view of humanings in modern physics wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-ARE-ONE is supported by the microbial level view. We might have known we couldn’t get away with saying things like John flew Maine to Mexico when the microbial level reality makes I seem more like the movement of a GYRE or TWISTER from Maine to Mexico which is no longer MOTION of ONE THING within ANOTHER THING (figure-and-ground as two) but is instead ONE MOTION within ANOTHER MOTION, like a little WHORL within a BIGGER WHORL. While it may APPEAR, so we say in our news reports, that, the TWISTER is “MOVING THROUGH” the ATMOSPHERE, the sense-experience reality is that there is TWISTERING in the ATMOSHEREING; i.e. FIGURE-and-GROUND-ARE ONE! … AND NOT TWO!
The point is that our WESTERN CULTURE SUBSTITUTE REALITY CONSTRUCTIONS are based on FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO, and if the reality is, as our sense-experience affirms, that FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE, as in the mictrobiome view wherein ‘humanings’ are microbial assemblages, then the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR based SUBSTITUTE REALITY needs revising so as to shift gears from the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO topology back to FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE topology.
Nietzsche’s ‘Twilight of the Idols’ speaks to the point that complex forms such as the microbial assemblage as a local relational collection within a fluid continuum as a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF is an IDOL that is on its way out, which is as Modern physics would have it, and Bohm’s UNDIVIDED WHOLENESS is jus the FLIP-SIDE of TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS. In the former, Bohm has the tough task of trying to describe UNDIVIDED WHOLENESS which we can sense experience through CHOICELESS AWARENESS, … while Nietzsche has taken on the conjugate task of DISCREDITING THE LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES into which the DOUBLE ERROR has divided everything up to create the abstract FRAGMENTED world.
Bohm has taken the ‘high road’ and the NEAR-IMPOSSIBLE TASK of describing UNDIVIDED WHOLENESS, as through choiceless awareness, while Nietzsche has taken the ‘low road’ of discrediting the IDOLS, those separate things-in-themselves that we have invented with the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR. It is impossible to embrace UNDIVIDED WHOLENESS without ‘SMASHING THE IDOLS’ that are the basis of WESTERN CULTURE SUBSTITUTE REALITY.
My impression is that we are all of different personality biased preferences so ‘SMASHING IDOLS’ can be done as an initial preparatory step to ‘clear the way’ for embracing UNDIVIDED WHOLENESS. When I mock the DOUBLE ERROR language structures suggesting the GROWTH of a TOWN, I am just clearing the way for the intuitive acknowledging of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE which informs us of the UNDIVIDUAL WHOLENESS, in the belief that this might make it easier to see what is going on. For me, the direct embrace of UNDIVIDED WHOLENESS …. WITHOUT…. SMASHING IDOLS, … is more difficult because the GROWTH of the TOWN ‘hangs around in the psyche’ as Wittgenstein points out;
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.
Can YOU see “THAT TOWN GROWING”? I can see it hear all kinds of talk about it and it makes it hard as hell for my perception to ‘cut through’ and see the UNDIVIDED WHOLE wherein there is TOWING in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.
Like Nietzsche, I want to knock out that TOWN because I can’t see the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE for the “GROWING TOWN”.
* * * END OF AUTHOR’S PREFACE * * *
The MAKINGS of the WESTERN CULTURE “SUBSTITUTE REALITY”
0March 25, 2021
by ted lumley
in APN
A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON “NONLOCALITY”
When we read written narratives, we have the option of understanding ACTIONS and DEVELOPMENTS as being either LOCALLY AUTHORED or NONLOCALLY AUTHORED (e.g. as in a BUMPER-CAR-GAME. Intellectual works involve this same ambiguity in regard to the their ‘origin’ or ‘authorship’. Newton spoke of ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ and Michel de Montaigne spoke of bees that picked things up from here and there unintentionally which contributed to unfolding reality in a manner that was not of their deliberate intention. This suggests a reality that is more complex than simple LOCAL AUTHORING and is more like a BUMPER-CAR GAME wherein WE ARE NOT AUTHORS of our actions and developments, due to our inclusion in the transforming relational continuum. As in the BUMPER CAR GAME, we may APPEAR to be the AUTHOR of an action even though the action does not ORIGINATE with us, thus we are NOT THE AUTHOR but we are instead a PARTICIPANT in a relational dynamic that transcends our LOCAL ACTIONS and RELATED DEVELOPMENTS, as in the case of the honey bees.
Our investigation will reveal that there is no such thing as a LOCAL AUTHOR of actions and developments, this being ABSTRACTION that derives from the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR as Nietzsche points out. In other words, language allows us to formulate representations of reality such as ‘bees make honey’ but the imputing of LOCAL AUTHORING is simplifying abstraction as in Nietzsche’s example of the DOUBLE ERROR; ‘Lightning flashes’ where the flashing IS the lightning and there is no LOCAL AUTHOR called ‘lightning’. In the same sense there is an overall, all-including relational dynamic in which bees and honey-making are included such that speaking in terms of the BEE as a LOCAL AUTHORING AGENT is abstraction born of the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.
WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are in the habit of constructing A SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on LOCAL AUTHORING of actions and developments based on the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR. While the reality of our sense experience is of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum which is a NONLOCAL DYNAMIC, NONLOCAL DYNAMICS are INEFFABLE since our WESTERN language accords to the LOCAL and EXPLICIT the foundatonal role. While statements that imply LOCAL AUTHORING such as ‘the bee makes honey’ DO AN END-RUN around the obstacle of INEFFABILITY of our sense-experience reality of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum which is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT, what we are putting ourselves into, with such DOUBLE ERROR based abstraction, is a SUBSTITUTE REALITY featuring notional (NAMING-INSTANTIATED) THING-IN-ITSELF BEING with notional (GRAMMAR-GIVEN) powers of AUTHORING actions and developments. This REDUCED to EFFABLE-because-lOCAL-and-EXPLICIT SUBSTITUTE REALITY facilitates the construction of the Apollonian pseudo-“reality”.
Problems develop when we employ the SUBSTITUTE REALITY (the Apollonian abstraction which is only good for INFERENCE of the Dionysian [fluid or Wave-field] reality, as a DIRECT SUBSTITUTE REALITY. These problems characterize modern WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT social dynamics.
* * * END of PRELIMINARY NOTE * * *
The following EIGHT points (numbered in German) list the ‘basic ingredients’ that go into our WESTERN CULTURE construction of a NAMING and GRAMMAR-based SUBSTITUTE REALITY that is so familiar to us that we automatically ‘pick up on it’ (through reading or hearing English or one of the ‘Standard Average European’ (Whorf’s terms) languages.
The SAE language SERVES UP FOR US A “SUBSTITUTE REALITY” which is a SIMPLER REALITY that the REAL REALITY of our SENSORY EXPERIENCE: i.e. it is “SIMPLER” to express in language.
Yes, what I am saying (which has been said many times by others, such as Poincaré) is that trying to construct REPRESENTATIONS of reality with language based on fixed entities (nouns or names implying LOCALLY EXISTING THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES) is IMPOSSIBLE in the sense that such a language cannot represent a flow-continuum (the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka ‘the Tao’ wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE. The architecting of a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF based language has, by definition, a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO topology wherein the FIGURE “MOVES THROUGH” the GROUND and does not capture situations like the HURRICANE in the ATMOSPHERE understood as a HURRICANING OF THE ATMOSPHERE implying the REAL FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE topology.
Here we have the primary architectural design criterion used in the development of SAE languages such as English; i.e. SIMPLICITY. And what is meant by simplicity in language architecture is AVOIDANCE of having to capture the entire transforming relational continuum when talking about our experiences, since, IN REALITY (i.e. in the REALITY of our sense-experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka the Tao), there is just one continually transforming world, which we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have chosen to RE-PRESENT in a PIECE-MEAL fashion.
EXAMPLE: Where our sensory experience is informing us that THE LANDSCAPE IS TRANSFORMING and that this includes the TOWNING as GROWTH that is conjugate with SHRINKING OF WILDERNESS, our choice of language architecture has us speak in terms of ‘the TOWN’ as if it were a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF which was the GRAMMATICAL AUTHOR of its own GROWTH, as in ‘the TOWN is GROWING’.
Here we ‘kiss goodbye’ to REALITY, the sense-experience reality of our inclusion in a TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE wherein TOWNING is manifest, NOT simply in terms of “A TOWN” that is ITSELF GROWING and DEVELOPING, … but in the context of TOWNING as an included feature within the overall TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE which also includes the CONJUGATE SHRINKING of the WILDERNESS.
OUR WESTERN CULTURE SORCERY-based SUBSTITUTE REALITY
0March 18, 2021
by ted lumley
in APN
AUTHOR’S PREFACE: Language that has a dependency on the abstract voyeur viewable concept of LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES is ‘not up to the task’ of capturing the REALITY of an all-including transforming relational continuum wherein everything is in flux.
Engineering a language based scheme for REPRESENTING a reality that is in continual flux, involves some ‘trickery’. The ‘bootstrapping’ approach described by Wittgenstein is to use the notional ‘existence’ of ‘local things’ to establish a web of relations among, whereupon the purely relational web will be the ‘take-away’ and the ‘things-in-themselves’ disposable expedients;
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. (“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen”),
–Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The thing-based illustration e.g. of the TOWN that is GROWING with its many streets and buildings ‘under construction’ is a PICTURABLE CARTOON which we could flesh out with STICK-FIGURE WORKERS and RESIDENTS or with a high resolution DOCUMENTARY FILM. The narration accompanying the CARTOON can describe, in great detail, the construction activity including the importation of construction materials, the quarrying of sand and gravel for concrete, the smelting of iron ore for steel beams, the logging and milling of trees for lumber, the hiring and training of construction workforce, etc. etc.
However convincing a ‘reality’ captured in this documentary, because of its VOYEUR representation mode, it can never move beyond its CARTOON status in that ‘what is going on’ it is always ‘out there in front of us’ and the workers always seem to be moving around as if they are ‘free things-in-themselves’ driven by their internal instructions, as informed by some ‘master plan’ or some previously acquired skills.
AT SOME DEPTH WITHIN OURSELVES, we INTUITIVELY understand that this CARTOON activity we picture as ‘going on out in front of us’ is contributory to the constructing of an intellectual SUBSTITUTE REALITY that liberates the CARTOON characters from the transforming relational continuum, and re-establishes them as LOGICAL OBJECTS participating in a VISIBLE CONSTRUCTION DYNAMIC.
SUCH PSYCHE-INFORMING CARTOONS play the same role as ‘LOGICAL PROPOSITIONS’ in Wittgenstein’s above comments. In other words, these CARTOONS are NOT to be taken literally; “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.”
The high resolution filming of the construction of the TOWN is one of those THROW AWAY LADDERS. The indigenous aboriginal people whose sense-experience is of inclusion in the transforming landscape, ‘see’ (intuit) ‘the TOWN’ as a TOWNING in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE, and NOT as some ‘LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF’ accorded ‘its own local BEING’ thanks to the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR of Standard Average European language constructions.
In our sense-experience reality, THERE IS NO “LOCAL TOWN THAT IS GROWING”, … THERE IS ONLY “TOWNING IN THE TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE” (i.e. in the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka the Tao). The MENTAL PICTURE of THE TOWN THAT IS GROWING is a VOYEUR VIEWABLE CARTOON that is not qualified as a SUBSTITUTE for the REALITY of TOWNING in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.
WATCH OUT! THE POINT IS THAT DIFFERENT language architectures induce intellectual understanding of sense-experience reality in different ways! THE CARTOON reality where we “SEE” ant-like workers swarming over the new TOWN-SITE and CONSTRUCTING the NEW TOWN is a CARTOON-like visual presentation, as could be captured in a DOCUMENTARY FILM, that gives us the impression that the TOWN is ‘under construction’ and is GROWING LARGER and MORE POPULOUS as the new dwellings become OCCUPIED.
Since the REAL REALITY (sense-experience reality) is that of TOWNING in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE, the CARTOON in which workers and residents are continually constructing new edifices and GROWING the LOCAL TOWN is a PICTURE-supported SUBSTITUTE REALITY that is INTELLECTUAL ABSTRACTION (hence ‘CARTOON’) that is NOT SENSE-EXPERIENCE SUPPORTED.
In WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT SOCIETY, because the language architecture gives a foundational role to the abstract concept of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and development, by way of the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR, the CARTOON representations made thus available support the fabrication of a SUBSTITUTE REALITY which is LOCAL SORCERY based. No matter how convincing the documentary film footage of the CONSTRUCTION of the NEW TOWN, it remains, in ESSENCE, a CARTOON which is hijacking, in the psyche, and SUBSTITUTING FOR, the REAL REALITY of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE (i.e. the transforming relational continuum).
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.
We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have become STUCK within the ‘simplified’ SUBSTITUTE REALITY of our own making; i.e. the TOOL of CARTOON based RE-presentation of reality has (as Emerson observes) ‘run away with the workman’). As in indigenous aboriginal languages and as in Bohm’s ‘Rheomode’ language, there is no TOWN, there is only TOWNING in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE. The concept of ‘the TOWN that is GROWING’ is an artifact of the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR, a CARTOON.
* * * END OF AUTHOR’S PREFACE * * *
The TURNING POINT for the WEST was RIGHT HERE where those who were influential in architecting our SAE (standard average Euopean) languages encountered the challenge to architecting language posed by our inclusion in a reality that is in continual flux;
It is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round, since thus the laws of mechanics are expressible in a much simpler language.— Henri Poincaré, ‘Science and Hypothesis’, Ch. VII Relative Motion and Absolute Motion
Once we design a language that makes a BINARY LOGICAL separation of the FIGURE from the GROUND we are on our way to CONSTRUCTION OF A SUBSTITUTE REALITY which is much SIMPLER than the reality of our sense-experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.
We use ‘language’ to reduce our visual sensing of relational forms-in-the-flow to CARTOONS wherein the FIGURE is seemingly (thanks to NAMING and GRAMMAR, liberated from the GROUND. These CARTOONS can ‘hold us captive’ so that we cannot ‘find our way back’ to our natural sense of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum, but remain captives of a CARTOON world;
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.
The SIMPLIFIER in our WESTERN CULTURE SAE language architecture is the injection of the abstract concept of SORCERY or in more euphemistic terms, LOCAL AUTHORING of actions and developments by way of (as Nietzsche has pointed out), the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR. SORCERY is the accessory to the NAMING and GRAMMAR based CARTOONING of reality.
Once we say ‘the earth turns round’, we hammer into the mind, BINARY LOGIC as the basis of our spoken (language-captured) SUBSTITUTE REALITY. This WESTERN CULTURE spoken, or written, language-based REPRESENTATION of reality departs from our sense-experience reality once we choose the path of ‘more convenient’ representation wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND are TWO instead of ONE. This split-up clears the way for a CARTOON like RE-PRESENTATION of our FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE sense-experience reality. When we say ‘the TOWN is GROWING, we PICTURE the TOWN as a CARTOON THING that is GROWING.
Note that “the convenience” in the statement; “It is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round” is the convenience of SUBSTITUTING a figure-and-ground-as-TWO CARTOON wherein (the EARTH and SPACE are RE-PRESENTED as TWO distinguishable ontological entities,.
In this case, the FIGURE-as-a thing-in-itself and the containing SPACE as a thing-in-itself), … are abstractions we SUBSTITUTE for the figure-and-ground-as-ONE NON-PICTURE-REPRESENTIBLE REALITY (such a ‘picture’ would have to continue unbounded in spacetime).. A local picturable piece of reality is a CARTOON that is NOT REALITY (e.g. the CARTOON of Robin Hood removing grain from the King’s granary is NOT REALITY.
This NON-PICTURE-REPRESENTIBLE FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE reality is our basic sense-experience reality as understood through Modern physics and in indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and ADVAITA Vedanta. Talking about it is beyond the scope of BINARY LOGIC and we instead need Quantum logic, the BOTH/AND logic of the INCLUDED medium as can be intuited from the finding that;
the elementary particles of matter are also, in their essence, nothing else than condensations of the electromagnetic field— Einstein, ‘Ether and the Theory of Relativity’
Since the relationship between matter and field requires the BOTH/AND logic of the INCLUDED medium and this is the general case in nature, it is misleading to construct representations of reality in FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO CARTOON terms. Another way of saying this is that when we use FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO representation, we are constructing representations of a CARTOON-like SUBSTITUTE REALITY. The proposition ‘The TOWN is GROWING’ is an example of this CARTOON-like SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO.
From Modern physics to Nietzsche’s Dionysian-and-Apollonian ‘REALITY’
0March 12, 2021
by ted lumley
in APN
From Modern physics to Nietzsche’s Dionysian and Apollonian
The APOLLONIAN REALITY REDUCTION is popularly employed, in WESTERN CULTURE constructions of reality, as a SUBSTITUTE REALITY rather than as a TOOL OF INFERENCE of the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT DIONYSIAN REALITY. This deployment of the APOLLONIAN as a SUBSTITUTE REALITY rather than as an INFERENCE of the ineffable-because-nonlocal-and-implicit DIONYSiAN REALITY is an error that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS continue to be troubled by.
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WHAT THIS IS ABOUT: I am writing this to point out a major source of confusion coming from language-based representations of reality which continues to divide and polarize our WESTERN CULTURE social collective. This involves what Nietzsche calls the DIONYSIAN and APOLLONIAN senses of reality. While the following explanation will cover this, the DIONYSIAN reality corresponds with Modern physics wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE as with a CLOUD in the ATMOSPHERE (i.e. in Modern physics, material entities are condensations of the electromagnietic field), while the APOLLONIAN reality corresponds with Newtonian physics wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO (i.e. where the FIGURE is INDEPENDENT of the GROUND). In Modern WESTERN CULTURE, the APOLLONIAN reality is currently dominant;
In a few years, it will be 150 years since Nietzsche called for a return to a Dionysian culture in his The Birth of Tragedy, at least in the Western context. Can we today say that the spirit of our contemporary culture is Dionysian? I would say not, although there are pockets of Dionysian practices in general culture and many Dionysian movements in the domain of the spirit. Modern dance was inspired by Nietzsche’s ideas on the Dionysian; Kandinsky appropriated the Dionysian into visual arts and thereby initiated abstract painting; in philosophy Bataille and Heidegger developed ideas on ecstasy and ecstatic disposition; installation and performance art forces human capabilities and operates along limit experiences; the whole drug culture, though fraught with nihilism (and in the US with racism) has Dionysian elements, and finally, psychoanalysis promotes the Dionysian indirectly insofar as it opens up new vistas and experiences for the non-rational in the human. However, these Dionysian movements of the last 100 years or so are divergent and lack coherence to a large extent. To make the Dionysian the spirit of our times will take much effort and also chance. As for the former, we can do our share; as for the latter, we can hope for Dionysus to appear.
– – – from … The Dionysian Revealed Itself As Truth: Have We Understood it? By Yunus Tuncel
To give a very simple example of what’s involved in this shift in understanding, the APOLLONIAN conceptualization has us see forms as LOCAL, INDEPENDENT THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES with their own powers of AUTHORING actions and development such that we see the TOWN as something that is GROWING larger and more populous and productive in a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO sense (content and container as two). However, the DIONYSIAN conceptualization has us see TOWNING in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE as a RELATIONAL FORM in the transforming relational continuum. The DIONYSIAN conceptualizing is supported by Modern physics while the APOLLONIAN conceptualization is supported by Newtonian physics and manifests in the WESTERN CULTURE concepts of INDEPENDENT BEING OF ‘HUMANS’, ‘NATIONS’ and ‘CORPORATIONS’.
Modern physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta have this DIONYSIAN understanding that EVERYTHING-IS-RELATED (mitakuye oyasin).
This essay associates the DIONYSIAN with FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE, and the APOLLONIAN with FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO.
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