INTRODUCTION:

Should we understand reality as a world constituted by name-instantiated things-in-themselves with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments as in the WEST?  Or, should we understand reality as inclusion within a transforming relational continuum as in the EAST and as in modern physics?  In spite of the arrival of modern physics which supports the reality of the EAST, MODERN WESTERN CULTURE REALITY remains hung up on what Nietzsche terms as ‘the double error’ of language and grammar: … the first error being the use of language for ‘naming’ that imputes persisting thing-in-itself existence to visual flow-forms in the Tao including ‘humanings’ and the second (compounding) error being GRAMMAR that allows us to impute the powers of sourcing actions and development to the naming-instantiated thing-in-itself.  Thanks to this language and grammar based ‘double error’, we are able to CONSTRUCT our WESTERN CULTURE abstraction-based ARTICULATE pseudo-reality.

As Bohm and Schroedinger point out, modern physics supports ‘reality’ as understood by indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taosim/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta; i.e.in the NONLOCAL terms of the transforming relational continuum.   By contrast, the WESTERN CULTURE UNDERSTANDING OF REALITY continues to be in terms of LOCAL things-in-themselves-with-notional powers of sourcing actions and developments (the double error).  The double error based concepts of; …  the PRODUCER-PRODUCT dynamic, GROWTH, and EVOLUTION, all support a ‘double error’ conceptualizing of reality in terms of SORCERY (local sourcing of actions and developments).

While WEST associates reality with LOCAL SOURCING OF ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS, EAST associates reality with NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION.  Modern physics reaffirms the reality of the EAST and rejects the assumed LOCAL SOURCING reality of the WEST, however, the WESTERN CULTURE belief in LOCAL SOURCING OF ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS is ‘LOCKED IN BY HIGH SWITCHING COSTS’.  This ‘lock-in’ has been established through many centuries of the WESTERN CULTURE practice of rewards and punishments associated with belief that ‘forms-in-the-Tao are LOCAL things-in-themselves-with-their-own-powers of sourcing actions and developments (the ‘double error’).  How this ego-based delusional practice is a CRAZY-MAKER that permeates the WESTERN CULTURE social dynamic, is explored herein;

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Something big  is stirring in the WESTERN CULTURE SOCIAL COLLECTIVE.  It manifests in the Republican-Democratic polarization in the United States (and in the general WESTERN CULTURE conservative-liberal polar antagonism).  It manifests in the Indigenous Aboriginal actions in Canada that are interrupting  transnational rail traffic.

 

This ‘stirring’ associates with our different ways of understanding of ‘reality’ as with duality and non-duality; the self-other split, the inhabitant-habitat split, the figure-and-ground split which divides EASTERN and WESTERN understandings of ‘reality’,  We may be divided within ourselves or among ourselves by dual options of understanding ‘the Two and the One’ (as explored in Eliade’s Mephistopheles et l’Androgyne’).  Are self-and-other as with boil-and-flow ONE THING with a dual appearance, or ‘two things’ as language and grammar make them out to be?   How we understand this splits EAST and WEST.

 

The EASTERN understanding of ‘reality’ (figure and ground as ONE) is consistent with modern physics, indigenous aboriginal reality, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta.

 

The WESTERN understanding of ‘reality’ (figure and ground as TWO) is what Newton used to precipitate Newtonian physics (see Benjamin Whorf’ review of this).

 

What is tricky for WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS to ‘remember’, but which is the pivot between understanding of reality in the NONLOCAL-FLUID terms of the EAST or the LOCAL-EXPLICIT-BEING based terms of the WEST, is that language and grammar REDUCE reality that is innately INEFFABLE in order to contrive an EFFABLE and thus shareable (albeit by way of an approximating reduction) allusion to’ the INEFFABLE reality of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

 

In the current WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT social dynamic that predominates in the global social dynamic, there is widespread belief in the ‘reality’ of double error language and grammar constructs, as pointed out by Nietzsche.

 

The first error is where we use the language based ploy of NAMING to infer LOCAL independent existence to a relational form (all there is in the transforming relational continuum aka Tao, is relational ‘formings’).  The second error (GRAMMAR) conflates the first by imputing the power of sourcing actions and developments to the NAMING-INSTANTIATED THING-IN-ITSELF.  Thus, the purely relational resonance phenomenon of desert sand DUNING is REDUCED by way of the ‘double error’ to an abstract LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF terms a “DUNE” that GRAMMAR ‘animates’ so as to impute to it, ‘its own powers of sourcing actions and developments.  Thus we use language end grammar to build an ANIMATION wherein the DUNE becomes something we see (in our intellectual linguistic pseudo-reality constructions) as having its own powers of sourcing actions and developments.

 

HOORAY!   LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR give our intellects the capability of REDUCING the ineffable-because-IMPLICIT, NONLOCAL-RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION, … to something (artificial yet articulable) LOCAL AND EXPLICIT.  The HOORAY is because this ‘double error’ reduction allows us reduce the inarticulable to the articulable and thus to share (albeit in reduced rom) our ineffable experience of inclusion in the Tao.

 

THIS REDUCTION IS AVAILABLE TO BOTH EAST AND WEST, BUT PLEASE MAKE NOTE OF THIS VERY BASIC DIFFENCE IN USAGE OF THIS TOOL; I.E. WHILE THE “EAST” USES THE REDUCTION-TO-SHARABLE TERMS AS AN *** IMPLICIT*** UNDERSTANDING THAT TRIGGERS recall of our sensory relational experience based understanding, the “WEST” uses the REDUCTION-TO-SHAREABLE TERMS AS AN ***EXPLICIT*** UNDERSTANDING that WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS employ AS OUR “OPERATIVE REALITY”.

 

The *** highlights point to something which is easy to overlook and which is commonly overlooked because of the way in which language and grammar reduce complex phenomena to simplistic representations; e.g. there is a resonance phenomenon in the Tao that might call ‘duning’ (with an ‘ing’ suffix to impute that ‘duning” belongs to the transforming relational continuum and is NOT a LOCAL ‘thing-in-itself’ based (producer-product) action and development.

 

THIS IS WHERE WE USE LANGUAGE TO DISCRETIZE THE TAO AND RECAST IT IN ABSTRACT PRODUCER-PRODUCT REPRESENTATIONS.   “The ‘dune’ is growing longer and higher and is shifting across the desert floor”.  WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

 

That is, what is in our actual sensory experience, a resonance phenomenon (wave-phenomenon) of ‘duning’, and which is not directly ‘effable’ since it is included in the Tao (the overall transforming relational continuum), is, THANKS TO LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR, reduced to a LOCAL and EXPLICIT, PRODUCER-PRODUCT ACTION AND DEVELOPMENT.  The REALITY remains ineffable; i.e. reality is the transforming relational continuum, but our double error based REDUCTIVE ARTICULATION of reality is an ‘effable’ reductive rendering of the ineffable.

 

HOW ENORMOUSLY USEFUL TO linguistic SHARING OF (even though a reduced representation) our experience this has proven to be!

 

BUT, WAIT A MINUTE!  WHILE THE ‘EAST’ EMPLOYS THIS ‘REDUCED-TO-SHAREABLE PSEUDO-REALITY’ ONLY AS INFERENCE, AS AN INTUITIVE AIDE OR SPRINGBOARD TO TRIGGER RELATIONAL-EXPERIENTIAL INSIGHTS THAT LIE BEYOND EXPLICIT CAPTURE, THE “WEST” EMPLOYS THIS ‘REDUCED-TO-SHAREABLE-PSEUDO-REALITY’ *** AS THE OPERATIVE “REAL” REALITY  ***.

 

Wittgenstein, in his closing propositions in ‘Tractatus’ points to this technique common in EASTERN usage, which in modern physics has been termed ‘bootstrapping’ (a means of using explicit language to INFER innately implicit reality; i.e. the reality of the ‘Tao’, the ‘wave-field’ aka the ‘transforming relational continuum’.);

 

 

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.

–Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

 

SUMMARY :   (Note: ‘EAST’ refers to the relational reality of modern physics, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta).

 

Language serves the purpose of rendering the ineffable reality of our inclusion in the Tao (an intellectually reduced version thereof) effable.  BOTH EAST AND WEST cultures manifest this profound language and grammar-based development that opens the way to sharing and learning from (reduced representations of) one another’s ineffable experience.  The ‘double error’ is where we (first error) use NAMING to impute LOCAL thing-in-itself being to a relational flow-form and conflate this with GRAMMAR (second error) to impute the power of SOURCING actions and development to the “LOCAL NAMING-instantiated thing-in-itself.  This allows us to LOCALIZE the inherently NONLOCAL Tao dynamic.

 

EAST and WEST BOTH use language and grammar based ‘double error’ abstraction to articulate a reduced, shareable version of experiential reality.

 

HOWEVER, EAST AND WEST DIFFER IN THIS WAY;

 

— EAST USES LANGUAGE BASED REDUCTIONS ONLY AS “INFERENCE” OF A REALITY (THE TAO) THAT IS INNATELY ENEFFABLE.

 

—WEST USES LANGUAGE BASED REDUCTIONS AS THE OPERATIVE REALITY.

 

EXAMPLE OF EAST-WEST difference in employing the double-error.

Both EAST and WEST may speak of the resonance phenomenon we know as ‘duning’ in the double error based terms where we use NAMING to impute the local existence of DUNES and conflate this with grammar to impute to the DUNES, their own powers of sourcing actions and developments.  For example; ‘The Dunes are growing longer and higher and are shifting to the south.

 

Such language and grammar constructs may induce us, as WESTERN LISTENERS and THINKERS, to see the dunes in ‘anthropocentric’ terms, as we see ourselves; i.e. as REAL, LOCAL INDEPENDENT BEINGS WITH OUR OWN POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS.  (THIS IS A DOUBLE ERROR, “EGO”-BASED CONCEPTUALIZING OF REALITY).

 

However, these very same language and grammar constructs may induce us, as EASTERN LISTENERS AND THINKERS, to understand the talk about ‘dunes’ ‘growing’ and ‘shifting to the south’ AS MERE INFERENCE, to trigger understanding of REALITY IN NONLOCAL TERMS OF OVERALL RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION as in modern physics wave-field phenomena as implied in the Tao.

 

WE CAN MENTALLY CHECK OUT, OURSELVES, OUR ABILITY TO OPT FOR EITHER REALITY; EAST OR WEST;

 

But in doing so, it is useful to make note of the fact that if we elect the option to UNDERSTAND REALITY IN NONLOCAL TERMS OF OVERALL RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION, we cannot use this understanding to share what we like to say are LOCAL PHENOMENA such as “The dune is shifting to the East and burying your tent and vehicles.”. 

 

But this only serves to illustrate the SIGNALLING/COMMUNICATING UTILITY of language that reduces the NONLOCAL/INEFFABLE to the LOCAL/EFFABLE a ‘utility’ that supports the ‘PRODUCER-PRODUCT’ outlook of the WEST.

 

Nevertheless, “THE TAO THAT CAN BE TOLD (COMMUNICATED) IS NOT THE TRUE TAO”, and while this understanding has been LOST in the WEST, it has been RETAINED in the EAST, as is consistent with MODERN PHYSICS.

 

* * *

 

SOCIAL IMPACT:

 

The memory failure of the WEST is a CRAZY-MAKER and it leads directly, through a mistaken (double error based) belief in the reality of ‘sorcery’, to the polarized split in the U.S. between Republicans (individual to social collective sourcing of actions and developments) and Democrats (social-collective to individual sourcing of actions and developments) and to the indigenous-non-indigenous polar contention in Canada and elsewhere.

Note that in polarizations such as the TRUMP-REPUBLICAN versus DEMOCRATIC political polarization, as in the Zen koan of wind-and-flag, both of the polarized political factions are wrong since the basic error lies in the assumed reality of ‘sorcery’ (i.e. belief in the double error based power of LOCAL sourcing of actions and developments).   The EAST, and modern physics, supports the understanding of ‘mitakuye oyasin’, ‘all things are related’.  In this understanding, the real-world dynamic is relational transformation, in which case, there is no ‘need’ or place to invoke ‘local local things-in-themselves with powers of sourcing actions and developments.

As pointed out, the handiness of using ‘naming’ to notionally instantiate LOCAL things-in-themselves with notional powers of sourcing actions and developments is undeniable, however, improving facility in communicating concepts by simplifying the concepts is akin to the man who searches under a streetlight for the watch he lost on a dark stretch of the road, ‘because the search conditions are better there’.  Dropping out the ineffable content of an understanding so as to render ‘it’ ‘communicable’ is same sort of cognitive error if one fails to remember that one cannot accept the effable-ized content ‘as-is’ but use it only as an inference-springboard to trigger ‘an intuitive leap’ to the ineffable understanding that is suggested by it.  EXPLICIT COMMUNICATIONS CANNOT DELIVER AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE INEFFABLE!

But this only serves to illustrate the SIGNALLING/COMMUNICATING UTILITY of language that reduces the NONLOCAL/INEFFABLE to the LOCAL/EFFABLE a ‘utility’ that supports the ‘PRODUCER-PRODUCT’ outlook of the WEST.

 * * *

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FOOTNOTE COMMENT ON EAST VERSUS WEST “REALITY”

Reality as we understand it by way of our sensory experience of inclusion within the transforming relational continuum, is ineffable.  It is termed “the Tao that cannot be told” (Lao Tzu) because it is the overall, all-including energy flow-field.   Forms within the transforming relational continuum are resonances within the flow, and as with ‘duning’, which is the manifesting of resonance phenomena associated with flow, language and grammar equips us for the ‘double error’ (Nietzsche) wherein we (first error) use NAMING to impute the LOCAL existence of things-in-themselves [e.g. we reduce the resonance feature of ‘duning’ to a notional ‘local thing-in-itself’ we call a DUNE.  The second error is achieved with grammar, conflating the first error by imputing to the NAMING-instantiated thing-in-itself ITS OWN POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT.

 

Thus, while the reality is of our experience of inclusion in Wave-field resonance, our language and grammar reduces the ‘duning’ (a wave-field organizing influence) to an abstract thing-in-itself (dune), notionally with its own powers of sourcing actions and developments.  This is, once again, A DOUBLE ERROR, as pointed out by Nietzsche.

 

Now, it is not hard to see that this ‘double error’ allows us to build a language and grammar supported mental picture that GETS AROUND the ‘ineffable’ barrier that keeps us from explicit language capture of reality.  That is, we can’t say anything about NONLOCAL phenomena which is what reality is (the Wave-field continuum), but we can say a lot about LOCAL abstract reductions of NONLOCAL phenomena.   Duning is a NONLOCAL resonance phenomenon that we have sensory experience of inclusion in.   It is MUCH MORE THAN “DUNES THAT ARE GROWING LARGER AND LONGER AND SHIFTING TO THE WEST”.

 

The REDUCING, via language-and grammar based (intellectual abstract representation), of the Wave-field phenomenon of DUNING to terms of DUNES THAT MOVE AND GROW delivers the desired result of rendering the ineffable, effable, albeit in a radically reduced ‘caricature’.  That is, while what is REALLY going on is NONLOCAL (ineffable) resonance phenomena, our ‘double error’ based language and grammar constructions trigger in our intellect, A REDUCED BUT EFFABLE SUBSTITUTE REPRESENTATION; i.e. the “DUNE” aka THING-IN-ITSELF, notionally with its own power of ‘GROWING LARGER AND LONGER’ and with its own power of “SHIFTING” across the desert floor.

 

NOTE THAT WE HAVE JUST, NOTIONALLY, REDUCED AND DIVIDED THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM INTO TWO SEPARATE ONTOLOGIES; (1) THE DUNE AS FIGURE AND (2) THE DESERT AS GROUND.   This splitting is the price of abstractly squeezing out a reduced-to LOCAL and EFFABLE representation of the NONLOCAL ineffable (the Wave-field, the Tao).

 

While modern physics and the EASTERN culture; i.e. indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta regard such effable-izing reductions as a NOT-TO-BE-TAKEN-LITERALLY expedient that can trigger intuitive understanding of the ineffable Tao, WESTERN CULTURE HAS FALLEN INTO THE CRAZY-MAKING TRAP OF employing the DOUBLE ERROR REDUCTION as the OPERATIVE REALITY.

 

What ‘anchors’ this ‘double error’ in place in WESTERN CULTURE, is NOT our belief that ‘dunes’ are ‘independent-things-in-themselves’ with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments, which is our accustomed manner of speaking, but our belief that WE  HUMANS (and NATIONS and CORPORATIONS) are ‘independent things-in-ourselves’ with our own powers of sourcing actions and developments.

 

This is an abstraction-based PLOY that allows us to overcome (in our language and grammar stimulated intellect) the NONLOCALITY of real-world dynamics (the transforming relational continuum) and deliver EFFABLE, LOCALLY INSTANTIATED ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS.

 

As Bohm pointed out with his example of John Wilkes Booth and the death of Lincoln, such unfolding relational phenomena arise from more influences coming together than we can explicitly capture, from the invention of gunpowder to the vagaries of the butterfly effect.  The point is that THE DOUBLE ERROR is a radical over-simplifier of the Tao that delivers an EFFABLE statement of fact, that is made possible by the DOUBLE ERROR.

 

While the EAST employs such DOUBLE ERROR based constructs as merely as INFERENCE of an ineffable reality that lies beyond capture in effable terms, WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS employ the DOUBLE ERROR based “reality” as our OPERATIVE REALITY.  This is a CRAZY-MAKER.

 

EXAMPLE:  We Western culture adherents commonly speak in terms of name-instantiated things-in-themselves (abstractions) notionally with their own powers of actions and development; e.g. “The town is growing larger and more populous and is manifesting major growth in its capacities of producing products and services.”

THIS IS “THE DOUBLE ERROR”. In reality, what is going on is transformation of the relational space, the ‘ground’ in which the ‘figure’ of the town is a visual appearance.  THE FIGURE (TOWN) AND GROUND (“SURROUNDING” COUNTRY) IS VISUAL APPEARANCE; I.E. THERE IS NO EXPLICIT AND SEPARATE ‘THINGNESS’ TO THE FIGURE (TOWN) AND THE GROUND (COUNTRY), TOWN AND COUNTRY ARE ONE.

Once this language and grammar splitting of FIGURE (TOWN) and GROUND (COUNTRY) are make via the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar, the “FIGURE” is ABSTRACTLY LIBERATED as a name-instantiated thing-in-itself with grammar instantiated powers of self-sourcing actions and development.

THIS IS WHERE THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SHIFT OCCURS, …. OUT OF THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM (THE INEFFABLE TAO) … TO THE SPLIT APART SEPARATE BINARY DUALITY OF ‘FIGURE’ AND ‘GROUND’ , unleashing in the psyche, to dual possibilities of ‘animating’ EITHER figure OR ground; e.g. ‘Does the man make the times or do the times make the man’?  WHERE IS THE “SOURCE” OF THE ACTION AND DEVELOPMENT COMING FROM?

ANSWER: THERE IS NO ‘SOURCE’ BECAUSE IN THE REALITY OF OUR ACTUAL SENSORY EXPERIENCE, THERE IS ONLY THE INEFFABLE RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION, THAT WE USE THE LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR BASED PLOY OF THE DOUBLE ERROR REDUCTION TO RENDER ‘EFFABLE’ (AT THE COST OF THE LOSS OF ESSENTIAL UNDERSTANDING OF REALITY AS A TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM IN WHICH WE ARE INCLUDED).

THE SPLITTING INTO FIGURE AND GROUND AS TWO SEPARATE AGENCIES, EACH NOTIONALLY WITH THEIR OWN POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS (as in the Zen koan of wind and flag) leads to SCHIZOPHRENIA on a WESTERN CULTURE WIDE SCALE; i.e. the enigma of whether the flapping flag sources wind or whether the wind sources the flapping of the flag, is the same (double error based) enigma as to whether the individual dynamic sources the collective social dynamic or whether the collective social dynamic sources the individual dynamic.  BOTH ASSUMPTIONS (WHICH DIVIDE THE WESTERN SOCIAL COLLECTIVE) ARE FALSE; I.E. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ‘SOURCING’; … IT IS THE DOUBLE ERROR OF LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR, … THERE IS ONLY THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM.  The reduction to local sourcery is a tool for abstract construction of effable representation, … a tool that is only good for inference, which has, in the case of WESTERN CULTURE, ‘run away with the workman’ (Emerson), the human with the divine.   The local name-instantiated (abstract) things-in-themselves thus become, in WESTERN CULTURE, the ‘sourcerers’ of actions and developments, ECLIPSING the physical reality of relational transformation (the Tao).