ted lumley

FORWARD:

Our WESTERN CULTURE fosters belief in SORCERY.  This belief in SORCERY comes with the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar, described by Nietzsche, the FIRST ERROR is the use of NAMING to impute local thing-in-itself existence to whatever relational feature in the transforming flow-continuum is given the NAME; e.g. person, nation, corporation, bacterium, virus etc.  The SECOND ERROR is GRAMMAR that imputes the power of LOCAL SOURCING to the NAMING-instantiated (notional) thing-in-itself, hence ‘LIGHTNING FLASHES’ (Nietzsche) and FIRE BURNS (Nishitani).

This DOUBLE ERROR allows us to use language and grammar to LOCALLY JUMPSTART ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS; i.e. to ‘break into the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL flow-continuum’ aka the Wave-field aka ‘the Tao’ and reductively render it in EFFABLE-because-LOCAL terms.  For example, the familiar resonance phenomenon that manifests as DUNING is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL but we can use the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR to reduce it to “the DUNE’ that ‘grows higher and longer and shifts across the ‘desert floor’” which is EFFABLE-because-LOCAL.

Now we have something LOCAL to attribute development and actions to; “This DUNE X-34 centred at latitude X and longitude Y developed in the sandstorm that started yesterday and has grown to several metres in height and about 50 metres in length, and has been steadily shifting towards the coast”.

Note how the DOUBLE ERROR allows us to shift from the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL (resonance) to the EFFABLE-because-LOCAL (mechanistic).

The world as understood in modern physics is a transforming relational continuum.  This is the fluid world of Heraclitus, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta wherein developments are INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL and where FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE.

The world as understood in classical physics is a world of material objects in empty space wherein developments are EFFABLE-because-LOCAL and where FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO.

SORCERY as a locally incipient birthing of being is a concept that is impossible in the world of modern physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta where ‘everything is in flux’ (where TRANSFORMATION is the basic reality aka the Wave-field dynamic aka the Tao)

Our WESTERN CULTURE obsession with SORCERY brings with it the associated superior social status for those believed to be major contributors in the SOURCING of VALUABLE actions and developments and the associated inferior social status for those believed to be lesser contributors in the SOURCING of VALUABLE actions and developments and/or contributors to the SOURCING of negative actions and developments.

Nowhere is this SORCERY based values systems stronger than in the UNITED STATES where those seen as SOURCING valuable actions and developments are treated as HEROES while those seen as SOURCING little of worth are ignored and those seen as SOURCING disruptive or destructive actions and developments are perceived as VILLAINS.

In modern physics as in indigenous aboriginal cultures, reality is understood in terms of relational transformation (LOCAL SOURCING DOES NOT ARISE).  Actions and developments may be DESCRIBED as manifesting LOCALLY as in LIGHTNING FLASHES and FIRE BURNS but these expressions are DOUBLE ERROR reductions of the NONLOCAL RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION that is the primary reality.

The point is that SORCERY is not REAL but is a language and grammar DOUBLE ERROR based EFFABLE-IZING device useful for INFERRING the INEFFABLE.  “NAMING” establishes a LOCAL thing-in-itself existence while GRAMMAR equips the LOCAL thing-in-itself with the notional powers of SOURCING actions and developments.

In our WESTERN CULTURE, the deservedness of the allocated socially requisite praise and rewards for SORCERY achievements is often highly controversial.  The correction sought has been with respect to the relative equitability of deservedness of SORCERY credits; e.g. are males and whites being given more rewards and praise than females and blacks, for the same feats of SORCERY?  Equitability corrections are in progress, but the deeper problem remains untouched by this WESTERN CULTURE social initiative since the root of the problem is that there is no such thing as SORCERY aka the PRODUCER-PRODUCT dynamic, there is only TRANSFORMATION.

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Our common WESTERN CULTURE use of language conjures up representations in terms of the LOCAL SOURCING OF ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS by NAMING-instantiated things-in-themselves.   This is a DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar (Nietzsche) and it is the source of a general craziness in our WESTERN CULTURE, as is the topic of this note.  This ‘general craziness’ includes the polarizing division into politically opposite factions termed ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’.  This Polar Division associates with a basic ambiguity infused into the WESTERN PSYCHE by the DOUBLE ERROR  That is; ‘is it the individual’s thinking that sources the group’s thinking or is it the group’s thinking that sources the individual’s thinking? .  ‘Does the man source the times or do the times source the man?’  Did Hitler source WWII or did WWII source the rise of Churchill?

I keep using words that imply that SORCERY  is a real dynamic, but it it, really?  Nietzsche says NO!  What ‘sorcery’ (the notion of LOCAL SOURCING OF ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS) is, is a DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar as where we say LIGHTNING FLASHES and FIRE BURNS. The first error is NAMING that imputes LOCAL thing-in-itself BEING, and the second, conflating error is GRAMMAR that imputes the power of sourcing actions and developments to the NAMING-instantiated LOCAL thing-in-itself.

We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are schooled in the belief in an ‘individual’s powers of SORCERY   of EITHER good OR evil actions and developments.  In fact, such powers of SORCERY  can be credited to anything we care to NAME such as a person, nation, animal, insect, corporation etc.   This notion of having the personal power of SORCERY  gives rise to EGO.

There is no SORCERY   in the transforming relational continuum aka ‘the Wave-field’ aka ‘the Tao’ aka ‘the reality’ of modern physics., there is only TRANSFORMATION.

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SYNOPSIS:

This comment elaborates on how “REALITY” can be constructed differently depending on our intellectual habits.  I have referred to the major split as EAST versus WEST in this regard and would include in ‘EAST’, modern physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta.  Included in ‘WEST’ are Newtonian physics and the WESTERN CULTURE ADHERING belief system.  These are general ‘groupings’ that can be more definitively described in terms of the relative priority (in ‘reality constructing’) given to TRANSFORMATION versus ‘PRODUCTION-and-CONSUMPTION’.  TRANSFORMATION is a NONLOCAL dynamic (i.e. it is a WAVE-FIELD dynamic) and since it is going on everywhere-at-the same time’, it is INEFFABLE.

Language and grammar equip us for intellectually splitting TRANSFORMATION (wherein FIGURE and GROUND are ONE which is why TRANSFORMATION is INEFFABLE) into TWO SEPARATE components; PRODUCING (creating/extruding) and CONSUMING (annihilating/subducting) wherein FIGURE and GROUND are TWO (i.e. where we imagine that there are TWO separate ontological entities).   The splitting of TRANSFORMATION into two separate parts succeeds in re-rendering (reducing) the ineffable-because-NONLOCAL, to effable-because-LOCAL   That is, we can ‘talk about’ FIGURE AND GROUND when we conceive of these as TWO as if, for example, the INHABITANT were INDEPENDENT of the HABITAT and was able to roam around on its own accord exploring and exploiting the PERCEIVED AS SEPARATE AND INDEPENDENT “HABITAT”.  This is part of the WESTERN CULTURE belief system that distinguishes the WEST from the EAST, since the EASTERN belief, which accords with modern physics, is that INHABITANT and HABITAT are ONE, … or in geometric terms, FIGURE and GROUND are ONE, this latter understanding is supported by the Wave-field conceptualizing of reality.

The point being made by Nietzsche and Nishitani is that the DOUBLE ERROR of “LIGHTNING FLASHES” (Nietzsche) and “FIRE BURNS” (Nishitani) is an expedient for reducing TRANSFORMATION which is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL (something we must remain silent about, as Wittgenstein puts it) to something EFFABLE-because-LOCAL such as CREATION and EXTINCTION as with FIRE BURNS and FIRE is EXTINGUISHED.  The reality of our sensory experience, meanwhile, is that we share inclusion in a seasonal world wherein what we are included in cycles through hot periods where everything gets dried out and becomes like gunpowder ready to burst into flames.  This is TRANSFORMATION but because TRANSFORMATION is NONLOCAL we can’t do our usual trick with language and grammar to render it in LOCAL terms until the opportunity for a LOCAL approach to reality capture opens up for us, as where we can say FIRE BURNS.   Likewise, when relations are such as to grow the relative difference between regions of surplus and regions of deficiency (rich and poor), we are still in the realm of relational TRANSFORMATION.

TRANSFORMATION continues as the operational dynamic even while, at some point, the ‘rebalancers’ like Robin Hood and Jean Valjean ‘come out of the woodwork’, a development which is met IN OUR WESTERN CULTURE by labelling the emergent agents of rebalancing PATHOGENS aka CRIMINALS aka THIEVES.  We do this LABELING by way of DOUBLE ERROR constructions akin to FIRE BURNS, such as THIEVES STEAL which ignores the RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION that is steadily developing (which is INEFFABLE but just because we can’t ‘lingualize’ and articulate it doesn’t mean we don’t experience it; i.e. WE DO EXPERIENCE the INEFFABLE relational TRANSFORMATION that we are all included in, and it is this experiencing of being included in rising relational imbalance that induces Robin Hood and Jean Valjean’s rebalancing actions).

The point is that our being included in TRANSFORMATION is an INEFFABLE EXPERIENCE and we sweat our way through the long hot summer as we walk through forests that are becoming more and more desiccated and turning into fire-bombs-in-waiting, and all through this we say nothing until, … LOOK!, THERE’S A FIRE BURNING OVER THERE!.

That’s how PATHOGENS like COVID 19 get INVENTED, as an EFFABLE COVER for INEFFABLE TRANSFORMATION.  Such DOUBLE ERROR EFFABLE-IZING TOOL can be highly useful since it allows us to share our experiences and observations and coordinate our actions, but it can be a CRAZY-MAKER when we, as we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are prone to doing, ‘let the tool run away with the workman, the human (LOCAL) with the divine (NONLOCAL).

The LOCALIZING abstractions of ‘FIRE BURNS’ and ‘PATHOGENS ATTACK and KILL’ (e.g. COVID 19, clostridium difficile etc.) are great communication aids but, like FIRE BURNS, they are only up to the job of INFERENCE of something innately more profound that is going on, which is TRANSFORMATION, … something that is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL.  So, thanks to the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar, we are able to reduce the NONLOCAL to the LOCAL as we are doing when we speak in terms of “FIRE BURNS” and “COVID 19 KILLS”, as if the relational world of NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION of our sensory experience could be reduced by our language based intellectual constructions, to a world of LOCALLY SOURCED ACTIONS and DEVELOPMENTS, which is what the DOUBLE ERROR does; …. thank you very much ‘FIRE BURNS’ and ‘COVID 19 KILLS’, because you (the reductive DOUBLE ERROR) are a VALUABLE TOOL for enabling at least a REDUCED version of the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL “TRANSFORMATION” to be put in a form that is EFFABLE-BECAUSE-LOCAL [*The ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ identified by Nietzsche is (first error) ‘NAMING’ to impute LOCAL thing-in-itself being, conflated with (second error) GRAMMAR to impute to the NAMING-instantiated thing-in-itself the power of SOURCING actions and developments)*].

IF ONLY WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS DIDN’T let the tool run away with the workman, the human (LOCAL) with the divine (NONLOCAL) , and instead, like our EASTERN CULTURE and MODERN PHYSICS cultures, hold in perspective, the reality that such reductions to the LOCAL are only good for INFERENCE of the ineffable and are not good for direct employment as a notional EXPLICIT (pseudo-) REALITY feature.  For example “FIRE BURNS” cannot be construed as a REAL LOCAL phenomenon because the real phenomenon is NONLOCAL relational TRANSFORMATION that, because it is INEFFABLE, we do not talk about.  Though we can’t break TRANSFORMATION down into LOCAL agency, we know that we are included in some overall process that is sucking the moisture out of the once-green moist grass and shrubbery and transforming this vegetation into an easily triggered explosive while we ourselves are funnels for water coming in and evaporating out of our pores even as we turn brown and sunburned, much like the grass without the extreme desiccating that can convert shrubbery into easily detonated explosives.  WE ARE FIGURES INCLUDED IN A GROUND that is NOT INDEPENDENT OF OURSELVES, and we can’t escape from the TRANSFORMATION that characterizes the transforming relational continuum aka the ‘Wave-field’ aka ‘the Tao’ that is all inclusive and that includes us (i.e. FIGURE and GROUND are ONE).

So, the expressions ‘FIRE BURNS” and “COVID 19 KILLS” are convenient DOUBLE ERROR abstractions that we can use for purposes of reductive EFFABLE INFERENCE of the INEFFABLE TRANSFORMATION that we share inclusion in.  Such REDUCTIONS are good only for INFERENCE and not competent for use as EXPLICIT REPRESENTATIONS of REALITY, however, that is what is currently going on in our popular WESTERN CULTURE psychological reality constructing practice.   ‘FIRE BURNS’ and ‘COVID 19 KILLS’ come with the archetypal sense of LOCAL SOURCING OF ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS that, in the psyche of us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, USURPS the reality-furnishing role of our INTUITION of NONLOCALITY that is innate in TRANSFORMATION.

Where this gets confusing is that we don’t know from a person’s language, if they are ‘coming from the EASTERN understanding or ‘coming from the WESTERN understanding’ because WESTERN language and grammar is ambiguous in this respect. If a person uses the DOUBLE ERROR and says ‘my farm is growing larger and increasing its production’, such language usage does not mention that ‘the Wilderness lands’ are growing reciprocally smaller.  This ‘incompleteness’ is the same incompleteness of all finite logical constructs as pointed out by Goedel’s theorem.  In other words, our normal WESTERN logic is the EITHER/OR logic of the EXCLUDED MEDIUM wherein FIGURE and GROUND are TWO (note that the medium is excluded when we talk in terms of the GROWTH of a LOCAL ‘NAMING-instantiated-thing-in-itself such as ‘a farm’).

What we need, as Bohm and Nietzsche and others have pointed out, is a more comprehensive language which employs what has been called ‘quantum logic’; i.e. the BOTH/AND logic of the INCLUDED medium where FIGURE and GROUND are ONE.  In this case, there is no such thing as the GROWTH of ‘the FARM’, there is only relational TRANSFORMATION which comprehends as ONE, BOTH the “GROWTH” of the farm AND the SHRINKAGE of ‘the Wilderness’.  Not only does TRANSFORMATION do away with the abstract concept of GROWTH (which comes from the DOUBLE ERROR), it does away with the abstract concept of ‘LOCAL’ which, together with the abstract concept of ‘GROWTH’, usurps understanding in terms of TRANSFORMATION.  The only place that the GROWTH of things (such as FIRES that BURN) could be possible ‘on its own’ is within an absolute space of infinite extent, something that is not available to our real-life sensual experience.

Just because TRANSFORMATION is INEFFABLE doesn’t mean that it is NOT REAL.  It is the DOUBLE ERROR constructions such as “FIRE BURNS” and “COVID 19 KILLS” that are NOT REAL, and take us inside an abstract absolute space based pseudo-reality notionally populated with NAMING instantiated LOCAL things-in-themselves with GRAMMAR-given (notional) powers of SOURCING actions and developments.  This DOUBLE ERROR bullshit is fine as a tool of INFERENCE of an ineffable reality but used as an EXPLICIT reality-substitute rather than IMPLICITLY, it is a CRAZY-MAKER and that is the current plight of those of us who are WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS or ‘WESTERN CULTURE FELLOW TRAVELLERS’.

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What we have in the world today are TWO different strains of language architecture.  As David Bohm pointed out, modern physics needed a new and more comprehensive language to capture ‘reality’ that would overcome the limitations of our European languages.  The needed language architecture was one wherein there was no hard dependency on the abstract concept of LOCAL things-in-themselves, as in the European languages which are based on the NAMING and GRAMMAR which creates LOCAL things-in-themselves that facilitate a LOCAL, bottom-up construction of representations of reality.

Isaac Newton (somewhat cautiously) affirmed the correctness of this approach to linguistic-conceptual representations of the reality of our experience (as separate things-in-ourselves) in Nature, justifying it on the basis that it fit the way God would have done it in the CREATION;

The fertile mind of Isaac Newton turned to this concept, in his 31st Query, one of a number appended to his work on Optics. Newton published certain of his thoughts, each in the form of a Question, “because I am not yet satisfied about it for want of Experiments.” He launched into considering this Query by writing:

“Qu. 31. Have not the small Particles of Bodies certain Powers, Virtues or Forces, by which they act at a distance, not only upon the Rays of Light for reflecting, refracting and inflecting them, but also upon one another producing a great part of the Phænomena of Nature?”

After speaking of chemical reactions, and various musings on attraction in different circumstances, several pages later he proceeds as follows:

“All these things being considered, it seems probable to me, that God in the Beginning form’d matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable Particles, of such Sizes and Figures, and with such other Properties, and in such Proportion to Space, as most conduced to the end for which he form’d them; and these primitive Particles being Solids, are incomparably harder than any porous Bodies compounded of them; even so very hard as never to wear or break in pieces: no ordinary Power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first Creation.”

Newton quotes from Opticks (1704, 2nd ed., 1718), 350 & 375-376

For a very different perspective on where Newton got the foundataional basics for his Natural Philosophy, see Benjamin Whorf’s investigations that show that Newton’s extracted his laws of physics from the already existing European language and grammar, the basic building block in which is the DOUBLE ERROR (Nietzsche) of NAMING (to conceptually establish in the intellect a LOCAL thing-in-itself), conflating this with GRAMMAR ( to impute the power of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments to the NAMING instantiated thing-in-itself.   

By contrast, indigenous aboriginal cultures along with Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta grounded their language in the understanding that ‘everything is in flux’ (Heraclitus) wherein reality is inherently NONLOCAL in the manner of a fluid flow or Wave-field dynamic and THAT WHICH APPEARS TO BE A LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF is instead a persisting RELATIONAL GATHERING AND SCATTERING like the ‘BOIL’ in the river FLOW and the DUNING in the DESERTING.

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The following is a review of what is screwed up in this popular narrative of the PATHOGEN named COVID 19, which includes the point that the concept of a PATHOGEN  is a DOUBLE ERROR based abstraction, meaning that “PATHOGENS” do not exist in reality, but are intellectual concepts based on two mutually compounding errors of grammar, the first error being NAMING that implies the LOCAL existence of a thing-in-itself, and the second, conflating error being GRAMMAR that notionally equips the NAMING-instantiated thing-in-itself with the notional power of SOURCING actions and developments.

Once can see what this DOUBLE ERROR in the examples given by Nietzsche (LIGHTNING FLASHES) and Nishitani (FIRE BURNS), the DEVICE of using language to impute LOCAL SOURCING OF ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS.

This DEVICE is what is needed to EFFABLE-IZE the INEFFABLE dynamic of TRANSFORMATION.  TRANSORMATION associates with a fluid environment as when a mountain of mud SLUMPS and raises the valley floor, blurring the BINARY distinction between ‘mountain’ and ‘valley’ in the sense that FIGURE (mountain) and GROUND (valley) are not understood as TWO but are understood as ONE.  If one understands this in 3 or 4 dimensional terms, one can intuit the FIGURE and GROUND relation of a hologram or holodynamic wherein FIGURE and GROUND truly ARE ONE.  Modern physics supports this concept of the holographic universe wherein the visible forms are condensations of wave-field energy so that there is only the Wave-field, the local concentrations of energy within it being what we call ‘material’ entities.  In other words, ‘material entities are ‘made of field’ (concentrations within the field) so that the Wave-field IS the ‘whole ball of wax’ which means that FIGURE and GROUND are ONE.

Wave-field resonances can explain material structures without resorting to the assumptions of anything LOCAL such as Newton’s ‘corpuscles’ or Democritus’ ‘atoms’ (Greek for atomos of ‘indivisible’).

The thing to remember in here is that the Wave-field understanding of reality implies NONLOCALITY while the Newtonian physics understanding of reality implies LOCAL thing-in-itself existence.

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Understanding (the essence of Goedel’s Theorem) is not, in my view, some esoteric philosophical undertaking since it speaks to why WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENCE is a CRAZY-MAKER.  Goedel’s theorem implications crop up in Nietzsche’s philosophical explorations as ’the DOUBLE ERROR’ where we say things like ‘FIRE BURNS’ to construct the concept of LOCAL, an abstraction that we then allow to ‘over-ride’ in our language and grammar constructions of reality, the sensory-experience reality of NONLOCALITY; i.e. the sensory experience of our inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

While the DOUBLE ERROR reduction of the NONLOCAL to the LOCAL is a useful tool that ‘effable-izes’ the ‘ineffable’ (the all-including Wave-field aka the Tao), it cannot be overlooked that such effeble-izing comes at the expense of a a BASIC REDUCTION IN ESSENTIAL MEANING.  Instead of reality being the ineffable-because-NONLOCAL flow we share inclusion in, … effable-izing reduction delivers representations in terms of LOCAL NAMING-instantiated things-in-themselves, with GRAMMAR-given notional powers of sourcing actions and developments.   That is, instead of the NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION of our sensory experience, the DOUBLE ERROR language and grammar reduction delivers abstract REPRESENTATION in terms of NAMING instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’ with GRAMAMR instantiated powers of SOURCING actions and developments.

This DOUBLE ERROR reduction is a useful TOOL that, as Emerson point out, has ‘run away with the workman’ (the WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT ‘workman’).  This is where EGO comes in, in the sense that the DOUBLE ERROR imputes to NAMING-instantiated ‘(notional) things-in-themselves’, powers of sourcing actions and LOCALLY SOUCING actions and developments.

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