-1- As Nietzsche points out, the concept of things-in-themselves with the power of sourcing actions and developments is A DOUBLE ERROR OF LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR.

-2- Belief in the ‘double error’ gives rise to belief in ‘sorcery’ which is the source of ‘ego’. [“sorcery” is the belief in a name-instantiated thing-in-itself having the power of sourcing actions and developments]

-3- The reality of our experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum is OCCLUDED, thanks to the ‘double error’, whereby we INVENT REALITY in terms of name-instantiated “things-in-themselves” with notional powers of “SOURCING” actions and developments.

-4- Early Western Culture linguistic expressing of reality was POETIC, as it has to be to capture an impression of the reality of our inclusion as relational forms in a transforming relational continuum, as affirmed in modern physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta

-5- Modern physics ‘the surprise version of the game of Twenty Question’ exemplifies the indirect approach needed in using (fixed terms based) language to capture an impression of a reality that is in continual flux, where ‘forms’ are relational flow-features.

-6- Western culture belief in the ‘double error’ of (first error) the existence of name-instantiated things-in-themselves, conflated by (second error) grammar that imputes the power of sourcing actions and developments to the name-instantiated thing-in-itself …. is the source of ‘ego’ which comes in two forms tied to TWO FORMS OF SORCERY; ‘CONSERVATIVE’ and ‘LIBERAL’.

Conservative sorcery is a language and grammar construct pivoting from single name-instantiated things-in-themselves.  Liberal sorcery is a language and grammar construct pivoting from collections of things.  Conservative sorcery: -“One bad apple sources rot of the whole barrel of apples”.  Liberal sorcery: – “It takes a whole community to raise a [good/bad] child”.

There is no such thing as ‘sorcery’ in the relational world of our actual experience, there is only relational transformation, hence Jonathan Swift’s (Gulliver’s Travels) mocking of the conservative-liberal (sorcery-believers) conflict in terms of peoples arguing over which end of a hard-boiled egg was the correct one to crack open to get to the egg.  In other words, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ‘SORCERY’ AND THUS NO BASIS FOR THE CONSERVATIVE – LIBERAL DISAGREEMENT AS TO WHETHER SORCERY ORIGINATES FROM THE INDIVIDUAL OR THE COLLECTIVE.

While Western culture ‘reality’ is based on the ‘double error’ delusion as pointed out by Nietzsche, the INVENTED REALITY so derived, embodies ‘ego’ and leads to a system of values that assigns superior value and influence to those perceived as ‘superior sorcerers’ and assigns reduced social value and influence to ‘inferior sorcerers’.

-9- In Western culture, one can grow one’s ‘sorcerer’ status by acquiring land and property, the more land and property, the more sorcery credits which accrue TO THE “OWNER” (an abstract logical concept) OF THE LAND AND PROPERTY (name-instantiated parcels superimposed by language and grammar on the transforming relational continuum).

Thanks to language and grammar, the abstract notional power of sorcery of the man is extended to include the man and ‘his property’ (isn’t language and grammar like (black) magic?), swelling the man-as-sorcerer’s notional power along with his ego by visualizing his ‘enlarged property’ as an extension of ‘sorcerer-self’; i.e. as an extension of ‘HIS POWERS OF SORCERY’.

As Ayn Rand captures this, not only is ‘land’ NOT the transforming relational continuum of modern physics that man is included in, it is instead linguistically portrayed as a separate resource placed there for man’s benefit (even atheists can impute God-status to men, language and grammar facilitate this, as Nietzsche points out; “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we continue to believe in grammar”.  So, here comes Ayn Rand and a large portion of Western cultural adherents, using the double error of language and grammar to split themselves out of the transforming relational continuum and RE-PRESENTING HIMSELF (MAN) as a separate being with his own incipient powers of SORCERY.

“They [the indians] had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages. The white man did not conquer this country. And you are a racist if you object, because it means you believe that certain men are entitled to something because of their race. You believe that if someone is born in a magnificent country and doesn’t know what to do with it, he still has a property right to it. He does not. . . .Any European who brought with him an element of civilization had the right to take over this continent, and it’s great that some of them did.” — Ayn Rand

THE GREAT DISTRACTION in Western Culture adherence, pointed out by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels, is the question of whether sorcery is rooted in the ‘individual’ (the pointy end of the boiled egg aka ‘conservative belief’) or whether sorcery is rooted in the ‘collective’ (the roundy end of the boiled egg aka ‘liberal belief’), the result of this distraction being that ‘sorcery’ is taken for granted as being ‘real’ (the querying of whether ‘sorcery’ is real is lost in the shuffle as sides are taken as to whether sorcery derives from the individual or from the collective).

Also lost in the shuffle is the reality that there is only relational transformation [without any abstract, language and grammar supported binary split into ‘inhabitant’ and ‘habitat’], as is naturally understood through our sensory experience of inclusion, as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum.

Of course, the reality of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum is something we must pass over in silence, because our experience of inclusion in the flow is beyond capture in language (as pointed out by philosophers like Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Bohm.).  In those cases where we do want to use language to try to allude to the ‘flow’ we are included in, this can only be indirectly expressed, as in poetry and by indirect inference as in ‘The surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’.

SUMMARY:

The ‘reality’ of our actual relational experience (i.e. of inclusion as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum) is beyond the discursive/expressive capability of language since language is based on ‘words’ that imply ‘persisting being or persisting conditions’ and there are NO things that persist in a flowing continuum.  Our inclusional aka purely relational experience has no need of words and as infants, our understanding (our basis for learning) is purely relational-topological and without separation from the transforming relational continuum we are included in.

Our self-other separation, which is purely intellectual, comes when we learn language and grammar.  However, as has been pointed out in by philosophers like F. David Peat (see immediately below), we never ‘lose’ our access to our infantile relational sensation based understanding of inclusion (non-separate inclusion) in the transforming relational continuum), it just goes ‘underground’ and lies ‘buried’ beneath the superficial chatter of our language and grammar based INTELLECTUAL INVENTED REALITY.  So, we have just ‘demoted the included self’ from its natural primacy although it persists since ‘it is the real sensory-relational self’ that we have only grammatically split out of the ‘all’ of the transforming relational continuum; i.e.

To the infant’s developing mind, topology comes before geometry. In general, deeper and more fundamental logical operations are developed earlier than more specific rules and applications. The history of mathematics, which is generally taken as a process of moving towards deeper and more general levels of thought, could also be thought of as a process of excavation which attempts to uncover the earliest operations of thought in infancy. According to this argument, the very first operations exist at a pre-conscious level [i.e. ‘pre-intellectualizing’ level in the conscious and intuitive infant] so that the more fundamental a logical operation happens to be, the earlier it was developed by the infant and the deeper it has become buried in the mind.” – F. David Peat, ‘Mathematics and the Language of Nature’ (referring to Piaget).

So, Western culture is a CRAZY MAKER in that it has us employ language and grammar to construct, by way of ‘the double error’, an INVENTED REALITY which imputes to us ‘existence’ as ‘independent beings’ with ‘our own powers of sorcery’ (the basis of ‘ego’) leaving us divided and arguing over whether the root of our sorcery lies in the ‘individual’ (conservative) or in the ‘collective’ (liberal).  This argument is not resolvable because ‘sorcery’ is a language and grammar fomented unreal abstraction that is perpetuated by ‘ego’, whether the ego of those who deem themselves ‘independent individuals with powers of sorcery’ or the collective ego of those who deem themselves ‘independent collectives with powers of sorcery’.  The continuing focus on the root source of ego-based ‘sorcery’ (whether rooted in the individual or the collective) distracts Western culture adherents from THE REAL ERROR which is the belief in sorcery, which is supported by ‘ego’.

Where there is no belief in sorcery (e.g. modern physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Buddhism/Taoism, Advaita Vedanta), there is no ‘liberal’ – ‘conservative’ splitting (individual ego and collective ego based splitting) to block the divided populace from the realization that ‘sorcery’ and its cohort ‘ego’ are the unreal artifact of language and grammar.

This aberrant belief system (Western culture) is ‘held in place’ by the nonlinear dynamic termed ‘lock-in-by high switching costs’.   That is, ‘sorcery’ provides the basis for social value, as in the Ayn Rand view, which is ego supported and pervades both ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ camps, the former believing that sorcery (and thus ego) is individual-rooted and the latter believing that sorcery (and thus ego) is social collective rooted.

The ‘high switching costs’ can be seen in how Western society has elevated in respect and rewards, and differentially empowered with influence over social change, the ‘superior sorcerers of good’ and likewise differentially disempowered ‘inferior sorcerers of good’ along with sorcerers of actions and developments deemed ‘bad’.

Western culture is an ego-based system that rewards and punishes on the basis of belief in ‘sorcery’, an ‘illusion’ stemming from the ‘double error’ of language and grammar.  It is locked in place by having given disproportionate influence over ‘what changes will be made’ to ‘superior sorcerers’.  It is thus unlikely that those enjoying elevated status and influence on the basis of their supposed exceptional powers of sorcery, are going to endorse the proliferating of understanding that dissolves belief in ‘sorcery’ that bolsters the ego and the elevated social status of those deemed ‘superior sorcerers’.

Concepts such as I am writing about are not easily ‘shared’ because, in addition to being difficult to express since they involve webs of relations, by dissolving belief in ‘sorcery’, undermine the established Western social status that is based on belief in ‘sorcery’; e.g;

‘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

EPILOGUE

The above summary of my philosophical investigations entitled; Connect the dots: Western culture is a CRAZY-MAKER! includes nothing that that hasn’t been said many times before, although writing is akin to cooking soup in that one can vary the ingredients and how they are combined and cooked up together which sometimes facilitates ingestion/assimilation.

There is no reason why this particular variant of a familiar recipe should be any more or less digestible than other renderings such as by Emerson and Nietzsche, or then again Bohm and Schroedinger; i.e. it has all been said before.

In this offering, I headlined the term Crazy-Maker because, in my view, the growing split between conservatives and liberals, as in the U.S. Republicans and Democrats, is doing us a service of sorts, by taking the ‘double-error’ delusion to the manifest extreme (making the error ‘more visible’); i.e. …. is it the individual boil-dynamic that sources the collective flow [Republican] or is it the collective flow that sources the boil-dynamic [Democrat].  Does the man make the times or do the times make the man?  [hint: the concept of ‘sorcery’ [making something happen] is unreal abstraction]

Relational transformation does NOT have this sorcery-based ambiguity issue, but once ego gets into the works as in the language-and-grammar ‘double error’ of ‘sorcery’ based on (first error) name-instantiated things-in-themselves notionally endowed with (second error) powers of sourcing actions and developments, it is hard to back out of it.  That’s because we institute a social system of rewards and recognition based on belief in (the double error of) ‘sorcery’.

I persist in writing about this and trying to join those trying to ‘expose the fallacy’ in the foundations of Western culture because my heart goes out to (is not separable from) those ‘identified patients’ or ‘miner’s canaries’ who try to live within an ego-belief based Western culture social dynamic without themselves embracing ego wherein one inflates the value of self and others on the basis of perceived powers of sorcery.  Living without an ego in an ego-based (sorcery-believing) Western culture puts one in a very vulnerable situation, as indigenous aboriginals have experienced with the invasion of those who understand reality in Ayn Rand like terms where everything other than oneself is perceived as an exploitable ‘re-source’ to inflate one’s powers of ‘sorcery’.

It seems high time, in this Western culture permeated social dynamic, to dig out from its burial by language-and grammar, our sensation-based relational (undivided) natural self of infancy and restore it to its natural primacy over our Western culture double-error ego-based sorcerer self.  My sense is that this can be safely approached in groups wherein we leave our sorcerer-selves behind; i.e. where ‘mitakuye oyasin’ rather than ‘double error’ based politics is shaping the social dynamic; i.e. where it is safe to mingle in ego-free relational mode without exposure to belief-in-sorcery based competition.

Note how the ego-based belief-in-sorcery leads to the ‘Republican’ – ‘Democrat’ split and how resolution is impossible so long as belief in sorcery (aka ‘ego’) is the operative animator, since the ambiguity that leads to division is inherent in the abstract concept of ‘sorcery’; there is no ‘sorcery’ in a transforming relational continuum; ‘sorcery’ is the intellectual artefact of the ‘double error’ of language and grammar.  It is a case of ‘the tool’ of language and grammar ‘running away with the workman’, as Emerson puts it, or “I am afraid we are not rid of God (sorcery) because we continue to believe in grammar” , as Nietzsche puts it.   Transformation is motion that is relational and without ‘source’.  Sorcery comes from reducing relational transformation by way of the ‘double error’; i.e;

“Our judgement has us conclude that every change must have an author”;–but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say “lightning flashes,” I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, “is” and does not “become.”–To regard an event as an “effecting,” and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.” – Nietzsche, ‘Will to Power’, 531

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