This note is a summary of the findings of the psychological investigations that have been shared on this ‘Aboriginal Physics’ website.

Warning: Understanding how language and grammar, as used in Western culture, is at the bottom of this ‘Culture Against Man’ phenomenon (as Jules Henri put it) requires the reader’s close vigilance since the language that is hiding self-deception within it, is the same language I am using herein to explain Western culture language and grammar based self-deception.

SUMMARY OF HOW WESTERN CULTURE LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR BASED SELF-DECEPTION ‘WORKS’.

Because our language and grammar is capable of presentations in either ‘process’ or ‘structure’ mode, we have ‘two methods’ (process-based and structure-based) for using language and grammar to convey the ‘reality’ we are are experiencing, which deliver understanding (psychological apprehension) in two different form; i.e. ‘process’ and/or ‘structure’.

I will use the example of ‘duning’ to make this point.  ‘Duning’ is a particular example of the ‘process’ based approach to communicating (using language to generate shareable psychological impressions) our personal experiences.  The popular alternative in Western language usage is to start with the abstraction  of ‘structure’; in this case the structure known as ‘the dune’.  Note that structures are fixed visual forms that are abstraction since everything is fluid in the real world of our inclusion in the transforming relational continuum (modern physics understanding of reality).  ‘Structure’ is not ‘real’ but it is useful (if not taken seriously) communication-serving abstraction.

While the real world of our sensory experience is in continuing flux, structures are fixed by ‘naming’ and names impart to the psyche (prior to our psychologically animating them with grammar), persisting, ‘thing-in-itself, changeless being’.  For example the sand ‘dune’ is a structure with persisting thing-in-itself existence, thanks to psychological impact of ‘naming’.  Grammar gives us the option, after the fact of creating ‘structure’, to impute ‘motion’ and ‘change’ to that structure; e.g. ‘the dune is growing larger and longer’

NOTE CAREFULLY that what has just been expressed is an ‘anthropomorphism’; i.e. we are giving to our psyche an impression that the dune is endowed with powers of sourcing actions and developments.  This is the power of ‘sorcery’ that we Western culture adherents give to ourselves.  It is grammatical in origin and termed a ‘double error’ by Nietzsche (he uses the example ‘lightning flashes’ to illustrate this double error pointing out that what we experience is ‘flashing’ and NOT some ‘thing-in-itself’ with powers of flashing).  This double error of language and grammar is how we use language to reduce ‘process’ to ‘structure’.  I am using the example ‘dune’ (structure) which is referring to ‘duning’ (process).  Since we are included in a transforming relational continuum, the process of ‘duning’ makes sense, but fixed name-instantiated structures such as ‘dunes’ are abstractions that are not verifiable by experience; i.e. there are no ‘independently-existing thing-in-itself’ structures’ in the relational reality of our actual experience wherein ‘everything is in flux’ (Heraclitus, modern physics).

Anthropomorphism is rooted in the ‘double error’; i.e. with the help of our abstracting intellect, we psychologically imagine our self to be a ‘thing-in-itself’ structure (aka ‘organism’) with our own powers of sourcing actions and developments; — the ‘double error’.

In other words, the source of belief in our own powers of sorcery is delusion termed ‘ego’.  Anthropomorphism begins with this delusion about our self as a (psychologically name-instantiated) thing-in-ourself with powers of sourcing actions and developments.

Starting from ‘structures’ that we create by ‘naming’ relational flow-forms, we use anthropomorphism to psychologically give to named entities (which can be so-called ‘animate’ or ‘inanimate’ forms, the notional powers of sourcing actions and developments.

This is the basis of Western culture INVENTED REALITY and it is based on ‘structures’ that we psychologically animate with the double error of language and grammar; e.g. ‘the dune is growing larger’, ‘the dune is shifting and elongating’, ‘the dune is dissipating.’

That is is the language and grammar based approach to the construction of a structure-based INVENTED REALITY.

In the reality of our actual experience, everything is in flux, and thus ‘duning’ is a ‘process’  with no dependency on structure

****** IMPORTANT NOTE ON DISTINGUISHING PROCESS FROM STRUCTURE ****** 

a ‘dune’ is a ‘structure’ while ‘duning’ is a process.  THERE IS NO SUCH THING IN THE REALITY OF OUR ACTUAL EXPERIENCE AS A ‘DUNE’ (STRUCTURE).  ‘Dune’ is just a ‘word’ that triggers in our psyche a picture display of of a ‘form’ with (notionally) persisting thing-in-itself existence, from our word-to-form-picture memory that holds abstractions such as ‘spheres’, ‘cubes’ , ‘ellipsoids’ and other geometric abstractions foreign to our actual relational experience.  [Recall how, as pre-lingual infants, our natural perception of the world is topological/relational without self-other, subject-object splitting, the latter coming with language and grammar stimulated psychological abstraction.]

The ‘double error’ of Western culture language and grammar, pointed out by Nietzsche and by Bohm (in the latter’s example of the John Wilkes Booth producer-product death of Lincoln) is deeply instilled in the Western culture adherent’s psyche.  It is psychological abstraction/illusion that we know as the ‘producer-product’ basis of Western culture INVENTED REALITY.

Just as ‘duning’ is a process that language and grammar has reduced to a structure we call ‘dune’, so can we  likewise reduce relational processes to structure based abstraction, by way of the psycho-logical ‘double error’  (i.e. using ‘naming’ to impute ‘thing-in-itselfness’ to relational forms and conflating this first error with the second error of imputing ‘powers of sourcing actions and developments’ to the name-instantiated thing-in-itself.

Of key psychological importance is this duplicity whereby Western language and grammar reduces the ‘humaning’ process that to a ‘human’ structure, that language and grammar then ‘re-animates’ within a ‘double error’.  When we ground our psyche-based understanding in the experiential process world, it is clear that ‘structures’ are language based abstractions that we psychologically ‘re-mobilize’ using ‘grammar’ within a ‘double error’.

In the process view, as contrasted with the structure view, just as there are no ‘dunes’ and thus no ‘birth of dunes’ and no ‘death of dunes’, there are no ‘human beings’ and thus no ‘birth of human beings’ and no ‘death of human beings’.  In other words, as with duning, so also with himaning; i.e. ‘humaning’, like ‘duning’, is a ‘process’ within the transforming relational continuum, and just as there are no ‘dune-things-in-themselves’ structures in the reality of our experience of inclusion with the process (the transforming relational continuum), there are no ‘human-things-in-themselves’ structures.  These ‘structures’ are the abstract artifacts of language that we use within a double error to psychologically construct an INVENTED REALTY that anthropomorphizes name-instantiated thing-in-itself structures.  This simply builds error upon error (doubles the error) since the ‘self’ that serves as the archetype for the anthropomorphism is the ego-based ‘sorcerer’ abstraction.  As with ‘duning’, so also is ‘humaning’ a process within the transforming relational continuum rather than a ‘thing-in-itself’ structure with ‘powers of sourcing actions and developments’ [a psychological abstraction brought on by a double error of language and grammar]..

****** § ******

The above ‘Important Note on Distinguishing Process from Structure captures and articulates the basic problem which I refer to as the ‘crazy-making’ nature of Western culture adherence.

Once we able to ‘see through’ the false origins of Western culture induced belief in ‘our own powers of sorcery by way of the ‘double error’, that becomes an ‘archetype’ or ‘anthropomorphism’ that we have embedded in language and grammar that triggers  an abstraction-based psychological approach to “understanding”, we are then equipped to ‘deconvolve’ and ‘remove’ the ‘double error’ infection from our language and grammar stimulated psychological understanding of ‘reality’.

We don’t actually have to ‘remove’ anything, we only need to ‘suspend’ our language-and-grammar stimulated falling into the double error trap.  For example, when we hear the words; “the dune is growing larger and longer and is shifting towards a neighboring dune”, … we can open our mind up to imagine duning as a field of relational resonances as in waves in the sea involving interactions of sun and atmosphere (wind and weather) all tied together in a transforming relational continuum; i.e. ‘duning’ as purely relational ‘resonance’ (process) rather than ‘dunes’ as ‘structures’ (‘things-in-themselves’).

Western culture indoctrination makes it harder (but not impossible) for us to ‘de-structure’ the psyche to unearth the process of ‘humaning’ which lies buried beneath the ‘double error’ cover up, as we did with ‘duning’ but we have for support our understanding of the natural primacy of reality as understood from our relational experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum, as supported by modern physics; e.g. as Schroedinger puts it, our actual embodying of understanding oneself as a relational form within the transforming relational continuum is a ‘spiritual experience’ and not just an ‘intellectual exercise’; i.e. by including ourselves in ‘the all’ this is like ‘becoming one with everything’ (aka ‘God’);

… In Christian terminology to say: ‘Hence I am God Almighty’ sounds both blasphemous and lunatic. But please disregard these connotations for the moment and consider whether the above inference is not the closest a biologist can get to proving God and immortality at one stroke.

In itself, the insight is not new. The earliest records to my knowledge date back some 2,500 years or more. From the early great Upanishads the recognition ATHMAN = BRAHMAN (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world. The striving of all the scholars of Vedanta was, after having learnt to pronounce with their lips, really to assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts.

 Again, the mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God).

To Western ideology the thought has remained a stranger.  – Erwin Schroedinger, ‘What is LIfe’, ‘Epilogue: On Determinism and Free Will’

The implication of modern physics is that there is just one transforming relational continuum and we and everything is included in it. Compare this to the ‘producer-product’ (double-error based) view of self as a name-instantiated (language and grammar instantiated) independently-existing producer of products aka ‘sorcerer’.

ARE WE INCLUDED IN A PROCESS LARGER THAN OURSELVES, OR ARE AN INDEPENDENT STRUCTURE WITH OUR OWN POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS AS IN THE ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ OF LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR?

Is there, in the reality of our actual experience, a ‘duning process’, or is there a ‘dune structure’ that we anthropomorphize withe language and grammar to give it (psychologically) its own powers of sourcing actions and developments by way of the double error of (firstly) naming the purely relational process (as associates with a form such as a duning) to impute persisting independent thing-in-itself being, and (secondly) conflating the first error by (second error) endowing the invented being with its own powers of sourcing actions and developments.  The duning is then no longer understood as a resonance feature within the flow, but as ‘the ‘dune’, a thing-in-itself ‘structure’ that is the sorcerer of its own development and actions.

COMPLICATIONS AND ABERRATIONS DERIVING FROM THE BELIEF IN THE ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ AKA ‘SORCERY’.

‘Naming’ ordains or baptizes or ‘Christens’ a form arising as a relational process, psychologically converting it from a ‘process’ to a local, independently-existing structure.  This is the medieval alchemy formalized in ‘Knighting’ and ‘Baptism’ wherein ‘naming’ serves to impute (psychologically) ‘thing-in-itself structure based existence to a relational flow-form or ‘process’.  The ‘duning’ process is, thanks to the ‘double error’ transformed (in the psyche) into a local thing-in-itself ‘structure’ notionally endowed (thanks to grammar) with powers of sourcing actions and developments.  Once we have built this picture of a fixed structure into our (Western culture adherents’ language), we keep repeating the double error to ourselves over and over again.  As you read the following observation by Wittgenstein, think of how the word ‘dune’ presents the psyche with a picture of a fixed structure;

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

Our experience in the shifting sands was an experience of ongoing process including relational resonances that can sustain standing wave forms, like the waves made of sand that are continually migrating across the desert, … WHOOPS!, … these shifting sand waves ARE THE DESERT PROCESS, and if we are not careful, we will end up pasting thing-in-themselves structure labels on all of the forms in the transforming relational continuum, forcing ourselves to use grammar to ‘re-animate’ the relational process related forms that we psychologically reduced to thing-in-itself ‘structures’, with the help of a the ‘double error’.  This reduction has been called ‘the burden of concreteness, and it (this reduction from process to structure) became popular with the subsuming of the philosophy of Heraclitus with the philosophy of Parmenides;

“In the writing of Heraclitus, to a larger degree than ever before, the images do not impose their burden of concreteness but are entirely subservient to the achievement of clarity and precision.” –(The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, Henri Frankfort et al)

 * * *

WESTERN CULTURE’S ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ AS THE BASIS OF ABERRANT THINKING

The double error of language and grammar gives us the sense (psychological impression) that we are ‘independent beings’ with powers of sourcing actions and developments.  This manifests as

-1- Belief in sorcery.  The double error = belief in ‘sorcery’ instantiated by ‘naming’ that psychologically instantiates an impression of ‘independent thing-in-itself existence’ conflated by grammar that endows the thing-in-itself with powers of sourcing actions and developments.

-2- Ego is the feeling of ‘pride’ and/or ‘shame’ that arises in association with the language and grammar instantiated psychological belief in one’s own powers of sorcery (the ‘double error’).

-3- ‘Sorcery’ is a psychological impression stemming from language and grammar that is also referred to as the ‘producer-product’ dynamic that arises in many different forms including individual ‘ego’, ‘collective ego’ as in ‘nationalism’ and ‘corporatism’ wherein the named entity is assumed to have the powers of ‘producing products’ (aka ‘sorcery’).  This false impression of dynamics seen in terms of ‘structures’ such as ‘factories’ capable of ‘sourcing products’ can occupy the psyche and displace or ‘occlude’ our process based understanding of dynamics in terms of relational processes.  ‘Sorcery’ can be used to psychologically explain change in terms of ‘authored’ actions and developments that may be judged ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Such thinking ‘occludes’ process based understanding as in a transforming relational continuum; e.g. ‘duning’ is a process that is not dependent on the ‘structure’ known as a ‘dune’.  The structure ‘dune’ is a ‘name’ and ‘names’ have the psychological impact of imputing ‘persisting thing-in-itself being’ to the named ‘form’, setting it up for the double error which imputes powers of sorcery to the form that has been objectified and anthropomorphized by ‘naming’; e.g. “hurricane Katrina is growing larger and stronger”, .. “katrina is devastating New Orleans”, … “Katrina is weakening and dissipating”.  Similarly; ‘The dune is growing larger’, … ‘shifting’, … ‘spreading’.  In reality, ‘duning’ is a relational process which has no dependency on any thing-in-itself being.  There is only process, no structure.

-4- Producer-product logic is illusion (it is delusion where we regard it as ‘real’ and shape our actions according to belief in its reality).  Rewarding and punishing on the basis of belief in producer-product logic is psychologically aberrant.  We share inclusion in relational processes (within the transforming relational continuum) that are without explicit authorship.  David Bohm’s example of the death of Lincoln falsely seen in the producer-product context wherein John Wilkes Booth is seen as the ‘author’ or ‘sorcerer’ of the death of Lincoln is exemplary of the artificiality of producer-product (‘double-error’) logic.  Reality unfolds as a relational process and not through producer-product structures aka ‘double error’ (sorcery based) constructions.

-5- Ego-based-pride and ego-based-guilt follow from the mistaken belief in the ‘double error’ aka the belief in ‘being’ based ‘sorcery’.  Both of these feelings (pride and guilt) are psychological delusions dating back to Western medieval thinking that have ‘crazy making’ potentials.   There are no ‘structures’ with powers of ‘sorcery’ in a transforming relational continuum, there are relational forms that entangle within relational dynamics that can be harmonious and dissonant. As inclusion within relational space (e.g. as in deriving within the flow of traffic) our relational movements can cultivate harmony or dissonance, and the cultivating of harmony or dissonance can inductively shape our relational movements. We can let our behaviours be shaped by a belief in ourselves as structures capable of ‘sorcery’ (pride and guilt) which is delusional (double error based) or we can let our behaviours be shaped on understanding ourselves as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum, engaging in the cultivating of harmony or dissonance.

-6- The ‘conservative’ – ‘liberal’ divided views of reality are two out of three common views of reality, and these first two are both based on ‘sorcery’ and are thus the source of aberrant social dynamics, the former understanding ‘sorcery’ in the inside-outward asserting terms (‘One rotten apple spoils the barrel’) and the latter understanding ‘sorcery’ in the outside-inward inductive terms (‘It takes a whole community to raise a [good/bad] child].  Both views are delusional in that they are ‘sorcery’ based (double error based).  In the three levels of reality of Erich Jantsch’s ‘Design for Evolution’, the first and highest level of reality is relational transformation wherein the concept of ‘sorcery’ never arises.

-7- The pro-life – pro-choice divided views on the aborting of unwanted pregnancy pivot from differing conceptions of ‘sorcery’.  The conservative view is that the source of the child lies beyond the contributions of the two parents, while the liberal view is that the ‘mother’ is the primacy source of the developing child and should be able to choose whether she allows this development that is part of her should continue to ‘full term’.  This choice can be explored within the context of the ‘duning’ metaphor wherein their are contributions from the ‘mound’ or male aspect of the duning (colour the mound blue for male) and from the ‘trough’ or ‘female aspect of the duning (colour the trough pink for female).  As resonances form so that a new ‘little dune’ emerges from the encounter of mound with trough, it is easier to see the new little dune as arising within the trough, however, this resonance based feature, while it makes its appearance locally, owes its origin to the entire field of duning as is the nature of ‘resonance’ based development.  The duning is not a ‘local phenomena’ where we could say that the new little dune was the product produced by the local mound and trough.  Resonance is a relational spatial process that does not work like that; i.e. local structures are intellectual artifacts stimulated by nonlocal relational dynamics aka ‘resonance’.

‘Humaning’, and ‘duning’ are resonance features within the transforming relational continuum.  They are part of an overall process, they are NOT local thing-in-itself structures as the abstracting power of language and grammar can inform the psyche.

‘Reproduction’ is a Western culture medieval concept based on belief in ‘sorcery’.  Western culture believers in ‘sorcery’ (the ‘double error’) always have two choices as to how to understand ‘sorcery’.  These choices are hotly debated in social collectives that believe in ‘sorcery’, whether seen as made in heaven by God or by humans on earth.  In indigenous aboriginal belief, as in modern physics, there is no such thing as ‘sorcery’, there is only an overall relational transformation as implied in ‘mitakuye oyasin’, ‘we are all related’.

Without ‘sorcery’ there is no ‘production’ (producer-product dynamic) and ‘no ‘reproduction’.  As Nietzsche and others have pointed out, ‘sorcery’ is a ‘double error’ of grammar.  There is only inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.  Ego based pride and shame and being based on the abstract concept of ‘sorcery’ do not arise in the understanding of reality in terms of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

We are currently ‘locked in’ to the crazy-making belief in ‘double-error’ based ‘sorcery’ by ‘high switching costs’ since we are using belief in ‘sorcery’ to administer rewards and punishments in our social system, and to allocate proportionally greater influence to the proud, high performing ‘sorcerers’ as to how we change our social systems (values and rewards) while giving reduced influence to the ‘meek and humble’.  It is not just because the ‘meek and humble’ have softer voices, but that they tend to understand that ego comes from a swollen head which tends to fuel braggadocio while inspiration that comes from a full heart tends to be experienced quietly or through poetic expression.  Henri Laborit has addressed ‘lock-in by high switching costs’ as follows;

We’ who explore such topics, cannot easily share them because (a) they do not fit into the typical dinner conversation format of our present culture, since to express them takes a lot of relational connections that can’t fit into a rapid-fire repartee, and (b) because the humanism  implicit in trying to share them is not seen as “a humanism of real worth” since it undermines, besmirches or topples the esteemed icons, pillars of society, founding fathers, and celebrities of the culture-in-place.  – Henri Laborit, ‘La Nouvelle Grille’  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Laborit

Benjamin Whorf makes a similar point, based on this investigations of differences in the (unnatural) psychological grasp of reality coming through Western language and grammar (which accords with Newtonian science and alchemy) as contrasts with the (natural) psychological grasp of reality coming through the relational language of modern physics and indigenous aboriginal languages;

From the form-plus-substance dichotomy the philosophical views most traditionally characteristic of the “Western world” have derived huge support. Here belong materialism, psychophysical parallelism, physics–at least in its traditional Newtonian form–and dualistic views of the universe in general. Indeed here belongs almost everything that is “hard, practical common sense.” Monistic, holistic, and relativistic views of reality appeal to philosophers and some scientists, but they are badly handicapped in appealing to the “common sense” of the Western average man–not because nature herself refutes them (if she did, philosophers could have discovered this much), but because they must be talked about in what amounts to a new language. “Common sense,” as its name shows, and “practicality” as its name does not show, are largely matters of talking so that one is readily understood. 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 recepts from culture and language. That is where Newton got them.” — Benjamin Whorf

The ‘bottom line’ is that Western culture, because of the ‘double error’ built into language and grammar usage, breeds psychosis.

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

 

* * *