Figure and Ground as One  is TRANSFORMATION

Figure and Ground as TWO is GROWTH as in RATIO and REASON

Negative space as recovery from thinking in terms of Figures as in Figure-and-Ground-as-Two  (Darwinism) to Figure and-Ground-as-One-as in TRANSFORMATION.

Nietzsche’s ‘Anti-Darwin’ is ‘anti-Figure-and-Ground-as-Two’.

Figure-and-Ground-as-TWO is LOCKED IN BY DOUBLE ERROR based Language wherein TRANSFORMATION is reduced to GROWTH

Mephistopheles et l’Androgyne (Mircea Eliade) is where ‘the Androgyne’ is split apart into ‘male’ and ‘female’ and the ‘female’ is discarded.

 * * *

Why Nietzsche’s Anti-Darwinism is ‘On Target’

The difficulty that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have in visualizing (cognitively connecting with) the artist’s so-called “negative space’ derives from our LANGUAGE-BASED-PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONING which splits the world into FIGURE-and-GROUND as if FIGURE and GROUND were TWO, and then keeps in the foreground of the psyche, the FIGURE, and lets the ‘GROUND’ fall away into obscurity.

This SELF-DECEPTION has been reinforced by Darwin with his ‘Theory of Evolution’ which tries to portray the FIGURE as a THING-IN-ITSELF that ‘EVOLVES’ over ‘TIME’.  Such abstraction splits FIGURE-and-GROUND (Inhabitant-and-Habitat) into TWO, and tries to develop a STORY based on the notion that the FIGURE is a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF that is EVOLVING over TIME.

Note that there the abstract concept of TIME only arises when we notionally split FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE (e.g. as implied in the Tai-Chi symbol) into FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO.

The reason for inventing TIME is that when we notionally split FIGURE-and-GROUND-into-TWO, .. we have to psychologically manage the development of the FIGURE (aka ‘INHABITANT’) as if it were INDEPENDENT of the GROUND (aka ‘HABITAT’).  Once we conjure up this SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO, we reduce TRANSFORMATION (wherein figure-and-ground-is-ONE) to GROWTH of the FIGURE as if it were INDEPENDENT of the GROUND; i.e. as if FIGURE-and-GROUND-were-TWO.

This gives the WESTERN CULTURE psyche (it is only in ‘the WEST’ that our language does this to us) a case of BIPOLAR DISORDER because of the conjugate ‘GHOST’ we make the HABITAT into as we allow, separately, the GROWTH of the INHABITANT.

For example, we speak of the GROWTH of ‘cultivated land’ as if that were ‘real’, however, this deployment of the term GROWTH as if it were REAL has us simply ‘forget’ about the conjugate decline in ‘Wilderness’.  That is, if the area of cultivated land can be said to GROW, or if the TOWN can be said to GROW, and if that is taken as ‘fact’, then there is no acknowledgement that DECLINE of Wilderness is conjugate with the GROWTH of the cultivated land or the GROWTH of the TOWN.

WHAT GOES MISSING, when we invoke this abstract concept of GROWTH, is the REALITY of TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GROWTH.  The concept is ABSTRACT and derives from RATIO aka RATIONALIT aka REASON.  We REASON with the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR as Nietzsche has pointed out. The FIRST ERROR is NAMING (e.g. ‘the TOWN’) and we conflate this with the SECOND ERROR of GRAMMAR (e.g. ‘the TOWN is GROWING’) so that we RATIO UP or REASON that there is a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF with ITS OWN POWERS OF SOURCING actions and developments.

This takes our psychological representing of things OUT of realm of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE in which TOWNING is included, into a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein the FIGURE is free so “GROW” independently of the GROUND it is included in, as if FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO separate and independent entities.

With this DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR, we abstractly LIBERATE the FIGURE from the GROUND, so that instead of TRANSFORMATION which is NONLOCAL and relational/implicit, we have GROWTH which is LOCAL (it applies to NAMING-instantiated THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES) and EXPLICIT (we impute a pseudo-REAL RATIO-ING-UP of the LOCAL NAMING-INSTANTIATED THING-IN-ITSELF such as ‘the TOWN’.

Of course, in reality, what we are calling ‘the TOWN’ is in reality “A TOWNING” in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE wherein when we observe the GROWTH of the TOWN, there is an encroaching of the TOWN into the Wilderness so that if there is MORE TOWN, there is LESS WILDERNESS in which case what is really going on is TRANSFORMATION as the Wilderness is transformed into TOWN.  The REALITY being that along there there being ‘more TOWN’, there is, in conjugate measure, ‘less Wilderness’.  Logically, we cannot have GROWTH of the TOWN without SHRINKAGE of Wilderness or NOT-TOWN.

This brings us to the ARTIST’s NEGATIVE SPACE concept where her challenge is to capture TRANSFORMATION which is where we have to pay attention to BOTH the POSITIVE SPACE “masculine-asserting” (the TOWN is GROWING) and the conjugate NEGATIVE SPACE “feminine-accommodating”.  Together, these conjugate dynamics constitute TRANSFORMATION.

Language that ONLY CAPTURES the MALE-ASSERTING aspect of GROWTH chops the REALITY of TRANSFORMATION into HALF and that masculine-asserting “HALF” is termed “GROWTH”.

GROWTH IS NOT REAL!  TRANSFORMATION IS REAL!

Language-wise, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have developed, as Nietzsche points out, a “DOUBLE ERROR’ based language wherein we use NAMING and GRAMMAR to construct a representation of REALITY (SUBSTITUTE REALITY) based on the abstract invention of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and development.  The FIRST ERROR is NAMING (e.g. ‘the TOWN’) and this we conflate with the SECOND ERROR of GRAMMAR (e.g. the TOWN is GROWING’.

NOTA BENE!   In saying ‘the TOWN is GROWING’, we are OMITTING the conjugate reality of the WILDERNESS SHRINKING.   When we consider BOTH the GROWING of the TOWN AND the CONJUGATE SHRINKING of the WILDERNESS, we UNDERSTAND what is going on AS TRANSFORMATION which is the REALITY.

By contrast, if we ‘go with’ (psychologically accept) the pseudo-reality of GROWTH, we are thus conjuring up a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein we are conceiving of FIGURE-and-GROUND (TOWN and LANDSCAPE) AS TWO so that the FIGURE has the capability of GROWTH AS IF IT IN ITS OWN INDEPENDENT RIGHT.  As if, as it were, it is a FIGURE that lives in an ABSOLUTE SPACE THAT IS INDEPENDENT OF THE FIGURE.

At this point in our intellectual inventing, GROWTH takes over from TRANSFORMATION because the FIGURE that is deemed to GROW is understood as being INDEPENDENT of the GROUND as in a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO pseudo-reality.   Well, the REALITY of our actual sensual experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum is a REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE so that if the TOWN is seen as GROWING then there is a CONJUGATE SHRINKING of the WILDERNESS, these two conjugates comprising TRANSFORMATION.

TRANSFORMATION is “REALITY” in our sensory experience of inclusion in a spherical space, and only in an abstract FLAT SPACE (Euclidian space) of infinite extent could there be GROWTH of the FIGURE as a separate ONTOLOGY without the conjugate SHRINKAGE of the GROUND.  Such ONTOLOGICAL abstraction wherein we conceive of an INDEPENDENTLY EXISTING FIGURE in abstract non-participating ‘containing space’ is possible in our MIND, thanks to our DOUBLE ERROR based stimulus of language, as in ‘the TOWN is GROWING’.

HOW DID WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS GET LOCKED INTO BELIEF IN REALITY AS A FIGURE-AND-GROUND-AS-TWO based REALITY?

Figure and Ground as One  is TRANSFORMATION

Figure and Ground as TWO is GROWTH as in RATIO and REASON

Negative space as recovery from thinking in terms of Figures as in Figure-and-Ground-as-Two  (Darwinism) to Figure and-Ground-as-One-as in TRANSFORMATION.

Nietzsche’s ‘Anti-Darwin’ is ‘anti-Figure-and-Ground-as-Two’.

Figure-and-Ground-as-TWO is LOCKED IN BY DOUBLE ERROR based Language wherein TRANSFORMATION is reduced to GROWTH

Mephistopheles et l’Androgyne (Mircea Eliade) is where ‘the Androgyne’ is split apart into ‘male’ and ‘female’ and the ‘female’ is discarded.

 

SUMMARY:

The Invention of a SHAGGY DOG tale is needed to explain reality by splitting the ANDROGYNE of TRANSFORMATION into TWO in order to break it down into the abstractions of LOCAL and EXPLICIT to satisfy the limitations of language’s limited representational capability.

The SHAGGY DOG story is DARWIN’s ‘theory of evolution’ which contrives to explain how LOCAL THINGS-in-THEMSELVES COME TO BE.

Of course, none of this Shaggy Dog story contrivance is needed for modern physics nor for indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta where there is acceptance of reality wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE and where relational TRANSFORMATION is continually ongoing, thus providing an explanation of the continuing emergence and subduction of the relational forms of Nature.

That is, Modern physics understands reality in terms of an overall transforming energy field within which relational forms are continually emerging and subducting.  In this case, no SHAGGY DOG story such as DARWIN’s THEORY OF EVOLUTION of ‘the great variety of disparate and unique THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES because there are no THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES, … that abstract notion coming from the inventions of language and grammar.  There is only the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka the Tao.

So, Nietzsche’s ‘anti-Darwin writing is well-founded and Nietzsche goes on to explain how we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS use the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR to construct an ABSTRACT SUBSTITUTE REALITY of the type ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ that ‘takes over’ from the REAL REALITY of TRANSFORMATION in which TOWNING is an included relational dynamic.

GROWTH is abstraction that is supported by RATIO which is the basis of REASON and RATIO-nality, and while our sensory experience is of reality wherein we are included in the transforming relational continuum (the Wave-field aka the Tao), such inclusion in TRANSFORMATION is INARTICULABLE because it is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT.

When the cultures of the EAST ‘hit this wall’ in their inventing of language, they opted for a RELATIONAL design whereas we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS opted for a ABSOLUTE design based on NAMING to impute the notional LOCAL EXISTENCE OF THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES and invented GRAMMAR as a complementary abstraction to impute to the NAMING-instantiated (notional) things-in-themselves, their own powers of SOURCING actions and developments.

Instead of the indigenous aboriginal relational constructs such ‘Dances with Wolves’ which captures dynamics in FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE terms, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS opted for JOHN DUNBAR INHABITS this TERRITORY (HABITAT).  The Presocratic philosophers noted that this NAMING approach brought with it ‘the burden of concreteness’ because we are now forced to come up with a system of words to ANIMATE the NAMING-instantiated (notional) THING-IN-ITSELF called JOHN DUNBAR as if were SEPARATE FROM and INTERACTING WITH his (notional) HABITAT.

Such WESTERN FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO representation of reality succeeds with respect to setting up a notional SUBSTITUTE REALITY THAT WE CAN DESIGN A LANGUAGE FOR REPRESENTING, which is no longer the REAL REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE and everything is in continual flux.  Nevertheless, our advantage is that we can capture the SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ within a representation that is LOCAL and EXPLICIT, whereas in reality, where there is TOWNING within the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE, we are stymied as far as using words designating EXPLICIT LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES for representing such reality.

SOMETHING HAS TO ‘GIVE’ IF WE WANT TO ACHIEVE EXPLICIT LOCAL REPRESENTATION, and WHAT ‘GIVES’ is REALITY as a transforming relational continuum, and in its place we construct a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein we speak of ‘the TOWN THAT IS GROWING’, implying that such could happen WITHOUT CONJUGATE SHRINKING OF WILDERNESS; i.e. OUT OF THE CONTEXT OF NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION.

Toto, we are no longer in Kansas.  Language with its abstractions such as GROWTH is putting us into a new SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein our TOWN can GROW as if in its own right, out of the context of the conjugate shrinkage of Wilderness; i.e. out of the context of the REAL REALITY of TRANSORMATION which is ‘everywhere-at-the-same-time’.

It is this ‘everywhere-at-the-same-time’ property of Wave-field dynamic that screws up our chances of CAPTURING REALITY IN LANGUAGE and reminding us of Lao Tzu’s observation that ‘the Tao that can be told is not the true Tao’.

Could we not CHEAT a little and use words to connote notional LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES and then mobilize these things with GRAMMAR so as to construct an EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT pseudo-reality?

YES, WE CAN CHEAT and WE DO CHEAT and construct such SUBSTITUTE REALITY as when we employ the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR to speak the words ‘the TOWN is GROWING”.  But we have just, in the same fell stroke, INVENTED ABSOLUTE SPACE in the process of liberating the FIGURE as if in a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO pseudo-reality.

Why Eliade’s title ‘Mephistopheles et l’Androgyne’ for his anthropological exploration of the vying for primacy between the options of FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE versus FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO?  Evidently because WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS SOLD OUT the GYNE and retained only the ANDRO in order to architect our language so that it could half-ass capture the reality of our sensory experience of inclusion in the Tao (the continuing TRANSFORMATION).

Here comes the loss of NEGATIVE SPACE with the invention of a type of language that breaks the conjugate relation as in TRANSFORMATION into two separate pieces and ‘tosses out’ the FEMALE by putting full focus on the MALE as with reducing TRANSFORMATION to GROWTH.

As the TOWN GROWS, the Wilderness SHRINKS and this Wilderness is the accommodating RECEPTACLE for the asserting GROWTH of the TOWN.  In reality, TOWNING is an expression of TRANSFORMATION of the LANDSCAPE, and TRANSFORMATION implies that SOMETHING HAS TO CONJUGATELY “GIVE” in order for ‘the TOWN TO GROW”.  That is, there has to be a FEMALE ACCOMMODATING in CONJUGATE relation to the MALE ASSERTING GROWTH.  The Wilderness has to open up and accommodate the masculine asserting GROWTH of the construction of the TOWN. Together with the GROWTH of the TOWN there is SHRINKAGE of the Wilderness in spite of our LANGUAGE based REPRESENTATION stopping short with masculine assertive component of the conjugate dynamic of TRANSFORMATION.

ONE THING FOR SURE, the REDUCTION OF TRANSFORMATION TO THE MASCULINE ONLY ASPECT OF GROWTH (IGNORING THE FEMALE ACCOMMODATING OF THE WILDERNESS) OPENS THE WAY TO ESTABLISHING EFFABILITY IN LOCAL AND EXPLICIT TERMS, BY DROPPING OUT THE INNEFFABLE ASPECTS OF NONLOCAL AND IMPLICIT.

In artist’s terms, the participation of ‘negative space’ (the female aspect) GOES MISSING so that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS develop from childhood learning how to draw ‘things-in-themselves’ like people, trees, and houses as if they are stand-alone abstractions.  This THING-BASED SUBSTITUTE REALITY forming from the combination of LANGUAGE reinforced by VISUAL PICTURES … ATROPHIES our COGNITIVE AWARENESS of the FEMININE ACCOMMODATING SPACE such that, in ART, we are impelled to remind ourselves of the conjugate reality of NEGATIVE SPACE.

We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have become so focuses on POSITIVE SPACE occupied by NAMING-INSTANTIATED THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES such as ‘the TOWN’ and “THEIR” GRAMMAR-CONSTRUCTED assertive actions and developments (the MALE aspect of reality), that we have difficulty in bringing into our conscious awareness the accommodating NEGATIVE SPACE (the FEMALE aspect of reality).

While the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR lets us SKIM OFF the MASCULINE ASSERTIVE aspect of TRANSFORMATION and leave in the lurch the FEMALE ACCOMMODATING aspect of TRANSFORMATION, as in ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ which says NOTHING of the LANDSCAPE’s ACCOMMODATING of such ‘notional’ GROWTH.  And here I have said ‘notional’ GROWTH because the reality is TRANSFORMATION wherein the ABSTRACTION of MALE GROWTH-ASSERTING is CONJUGATE to the ABSTRACTION of FEMALE ACCOMMODATING-RECEPTION, … the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO abstraction DISAPPEARS as it is superseded by the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE reality of TRANSFORMATION.

 

HOW ARE WE GOING TO “GET PAST” the LIMITATIONS OF LANGUAGE in their inability to capture TRANSFORMATION which is going on EVERYWHERE AT THE SAME TIME?

WHY NOT CONSTRUCT A SUBSTITUTE REALITY THAT OUR LANGUAGE “IS” CAPABLE of constructing REPRESENTATION OF, such as where we split out the MALE conjugate of TRANSFORMATION and say ‘the TOWN IS GROWING’ and the just ‘leave out’ the FEMALE conjugate of TRANSFORMATION wherein the Wilderness is SHRINKING.

Since we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have done this and are using it from early childhood, we train ourselves to think of REALITY in the one-sided terms of the MASCULINE ASSERTIVE whereby we DROP OUT the FEMALE ACCOMMODATIVE aspect which reduces TRANSFORMATION to GROWTH as in “the TOWN is GROWING”.   NO, THAT IS NOT REALITY, the REALITY IS THAT THE LANDSCAPE IS TRANSFORMING which involves both MALE GROWTH of the TOWN and FEMALE ACCOMODATING of the CUNTERY.

The spirit of the valley never dies.
This is called the mysterious female.
The gateway of the mysterious female
Is called the root of heaven and earth.
Dimly visible, it seems as if it were there,
Yet use will never drain it.

Know the male.
But keep the role of the female.
And be ravine to the empire.
Then the constant virtue will not desert you.
And you will again return to being a babe;
–Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching XXVIII

In other words, ‘know how to assert’ but be the accommodator and keep the ethic of accommodating in the primacy since this is the game-play that the forms of nature are born into.  We are NOT ‘machines’ made for ‘asserting’ and ‘constructing’ but ‘forms’ that develop in the service of accommodating.

We welcome new INHABITANTS into our HABITAT which is TRANSFORMING with such continuing reception. The ‘inhabitant’ can’t step into the same habitat twice because it is not the same habitat and he is not the same inhabitant.  INCLUSION IN TRANSFORMATION IS LIKE THAT.

Each increment of GROWTH of the TOWN changes BOTH TOWN and COUNTRY such that the TOWN cannot repeat this GROWTH because it is not the same TOWN and the COUNTRY is not the same COUNTRY.  What we have here is TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE.

GROWTH is abstraction wherein we think in the one-sided male-assertive terms of RATIO (rationality aka reason). This allows us to represent ‘change’ in the abstract ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ based terms of LOCAL SOURCING implied by NAMING and GRAMMAR.

The above descriptions are to ‘make the point’ that TRANSFORMATION is the REALITY but since TRANSFORMATION is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT (it is everywhere at the same time), we have invented a SUBSTITUTE REALITY which is EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT in order to use language to share THIS SUBSTITUTE REALITY.

In other words, we attained our goal of designing a language to share our sensory experiencing of REALITY but only at the price of introducing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY that is representable in this language.  In other words, we had to ‘DUMB DOWN REALITY’ (construct a simpler SUBSTITUTE REALITY) in order have something that could be represented by LANGUAGE.  Thus the TOWNING in the TRANSFORMING is recast in the SUBSTITUTE REALITY terms of ‘the TOWN in the COUNTRY’ as if this were a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO SUBSTITUTE REALITY rather than the FIGURE-and-GROUND-AS-ONE REAL REALITY of the TRANSFORMING relational continuum.

This language and grammar finagling is the result of the limitations of language that employs the EITHER/OR logic of the EXCLUDED medium wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO.

Modern physics has introduced QUANTUM LOGIC aka the BOTH/AND logic of the INCLUDED medium which is already in place in indigenous aboriginal languages.  This language accommodates FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE, as in TOWN and COUNTRY as ONE as in the case of TRANSFORMATION wherein TOWNING is like the bruise on an apple and not something separate from the apple as in FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO but rather as an indication of TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE.

Now we have a POTENTIAL PROBLEM (CONFUSION) because our DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING AND GRAMMAR is having us say; ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ which makes no mention of the CONJUGATE SHRINKAGE of Wilderness.  Here we can see the rise to primacy of the male and the banishment of the female as alluded to in the above quote by Lao Tzu.

If the TOWN is GROWING, then the CONJUGATE is also true that the Wilderness is SHRINKING, in which case there is TRANSFORMATION.

Know the male.
But keep the role of the female.
And be ravine to the empire

The MISTAKE that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are making is in our focusing on GROWTH as if the GROWTH were REAL, but there is no such thing as GROWTH out of the (conjugate) context of SHRINKAGE wherein these are both abstract ways of describing TRANSFORMATION.

By treating GROWTH as REAL, we lose sight of the REAL REALITY of TRANSFORMATION such that our continuing efforts at achieving what we THINK is GROWTH as in ‘the GROWTH of the TOWN’ is, in reality, TRANSFORMATION and by our focus on GROWTH as if it WERE REAL, we are inadvertently infusing TRANSFORMATION.

Can you imagine how this begins to blow up in our face as we continue to focus on the GROWTH of the things we like, reducing the diversity that constitutes nature, the nature that is all inclusive that we experience inclusion and are ourselves constituted by relational resonances therein?

As we know from our ‘c. difficile’ experience, ‘scurvy’ and other perceived ‘attack of pathogens’, resonance is what we are made of and the sustaining of resonance is what we our persisting viability depends on.  As F. David Peat points out, the ‘loss of diversity’ leads to a weakening of resonance which manifests by what we identify as ‘the rise of pathogens’ whether in the field of medicine or justice where sustaining of resonance has degenerated, in WESTERN CULTURE, to the ‘eliminating of perceived pathogens’.

THERE IS NO “GROWTH OF PATHOGENS”.  We live in a RELATIONAL continuum based on relational resonance (Wave-field) wherein we may fall into the error of cultivating a decline of resonance which is alternatively seen as the growth of dissonance.

All of these concept ‘work together’ to give us our sense of ‘reality’ and as far as CONFUSION ENTERS INTO OUR CONCEIVING OF REALITY, the abstract concept of GROWTH as in LOCAL SOURCING (aka SORCERY) is at the top of the list.  This abstract concept of GROWTH comes from the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR as in ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ which obscures the REAL REALITY of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.

How did we ‘come up with this’ DOUBLE ERROR’?

Here, we are fortunate in that there has been a recent discovery of a stone chiseled account of an early architect of language development, Czyp da Glyf from circa 1000 B.C..  It has been translated as follows;

“Early on in our quest to find a means of using symbols to convey and share experiences, we encountered the obstacle wherein the carving of unfolding life situations into stone by way of symbols was quickly overtaken by unforeseen events which made obsolete the renderings carved into the stone.  Those presented as worthy were found to be unworthy while establishments whose locations were pointed to by markers had ceased to exist. A system of symbols was needed that could persist beyond the local and explicit; i.e. a system of symbols that could capture reality in terms of the nonlocal and implicit rather than in terms of the local and explicit as in the transforming of mountain and valley rather than in the piecemeal terms of the avalanche that placed its ‘pile of rubble’ at ‘the foot of the mountain’.  

We believe that such a system of symbols is possible wherein the symbols signify movement rather than stasis so that there need not be two types of symbols; those that signify local objects and those that signify the movement of be local objects, but instead, just one type of symbols in which both ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ are combined as ‘one’.”

No further stone chiselings by Czyp da Glyf have been found to date, so that it is not known how this early reflection on language-design continued to evolve.

However, it is known that the ancient language architecting effort continued along the divided paths; one of which oriented to building on a PURELY RELATIONAL base which avoided the concept of ‘local things-in-themselves’ and the alternative (WESTERN CULTURE language architecture) path which gives a foundational role to the LOCAL and EXPLICIT.

It was recognized by the architects of the flow-based languages that the alternative of giving a foundational role to ‘local things-in-themselves’ would invoke two errors which would have to cancel each other out; i.e. the use of NAMING would instantiated a LOCAL motionless thing-in-itself while the use of GRAMMAR could impute MOTION to the NAMING-instantiated thing-in-itself as in; … “the piecemeal terms of the avalanche that placed its ‘pile of rubble’ at ‘the foot of the mountain’.”.

This sort of language architecture furnished a succession of ‘still pictures’ which selectively focused on “local things-in-themselves” in a succession different embodiments over time.  While the GROWTH of the TOWN was captured in language by way of accounts of the continual addition of new buildings, out of sight and out of mind, was the various ‘holes’ in the surrounding countryside from whence the materials of construction were gathered.  In other words, while the reality was TRANSFORMATION of the Landscape, the language-based deliver was LOCAL GROWTH of the TOWN.

This was the problem that the relational language-based architects were choosing to avoid even though it ‘cost their architecture’ in terms of ‘EXPLICIT’ and ‘LOCAL’ and forced them to ground their representations in the IMPLICIT-and-NONLOCAL.  However, their capture of the slumping of the male assertive role of the mountain and the infilling of the female accommodating role of the valley as in the overall TRANSFORMATION were NOT represented in language that delivered in the male-only “piecemeal terms of the avalanche that placed its ‘pile of rubble’ at ‘the foot of the mountain’.”.

As Goedel’s theorem proves, there is an incompleteness to finite systems of logic as shows up here; i.e. while it is logically ‘true’ to assert that the avalanche placed a pile of rubble at the foot of the mountain, there is no mention of female ‘opening’ of the landscape in conjugate relation to the male ‘piling up’ of rubble, these two developments, understood together, comprising TRANSFORMATION of the Landscape.

Can we therefore say ‘IT WAS TRUE” that “the avalanche placed a ‘pile of rubble’ at the ‘foot of the mountain’.  It may be said to be ‘true’ in the sense that all finite logical truths are INCOMPLETE.  It is particularly notable that the male aspect accepted as the incomplete truth while the ‘female aspect’ is the ‘incompleteness’.  Thus there is GROWTH of the terrain at the ‘foot of the mountain’ even though the REALITY is NOT GROWTH but TRANSFORMATION which includes the SHRINKAGE of the mountain.

Language design comes to a crossroads here; whether to go with TRANSFORMATION and ‘take the hit’ with respect to getting stuck with only a relational allusion to the IMPLICIT and NONLOCAL dynamic of TRANSFORMATION, or to go with the EXPLICIT and LOCAL wherein the focus is on the AVALANCHE and the LOCAL mound of earth it has deposited.  Note that the expression ‘the Avalanche deposited a huge pile of rubble at the foot of the mountain’ is a DOUBLE ERROR construct.

See if you can find in the avalanche statement the double error that Nietzsche is pointing to with the following;

“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

That is, there is this same sort of ‘double error’ in the statement; ‘the Avalanche deposited a huge pile of rubble at the foot of the mountain’ since the ‘avalanche’ IS THE DEPOSITING’.

Which method of language architecting do you personally prefer?  If we speak in DOUBLE ERROR based terms of ‘the avalanche depositing a huge pile of rubble’, we are in the same mode of communication as ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ and in the process, we are obscuring the REAL REALITY of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.

As choosers of a language architecture, we have the ‘other option’, the option taken by indigenous aboriginal cultures and by Bohm and modern physics; i.e. we can design and employ language that conveys meaning in a purely relational manner as with ‘Dances with Wolves’ and ‘there is ‘HUMANING’ in the LANDSCAPING.

This relational language architecture is the choice of Zen, as pointed out by Zen scholar Alan Watts;

Scientists would be less embarrassed if they used a language, on themodel of Amerindian Nootka, consisting of verbs and adverbs, andleaving off nouns and adjectives. If we can speak of a house as housing,a mat as matting, or of a couch as seating, why can’t we think of people as “peopling,” of brains as “braining,” or of an ant as an “anting?” Thus in the Nootka language a church is “housing religiously,” a shop is “housing tradingly,” and a home is “housing homely.” Yet we are habituated to ask, “Who or what is housing? Who peoples? What is itthat ants?” Yet isn’t it obvious that when we say, “The lightning flashed,” the flashing is the same as the lightning, and that it would be enough to say, “There was lightning”? Everything labeled with a noun is demonstrably a process or action, but language is full of spooks, like the “it” in “It is raining,” which are the supposed causes, of action. Does it really explain running to say that “A man is running”? On the contrary, the only explanation would be a description of the field or situation in which “a manning goes with running” as distinct from one in which “a manning goes with sitting.” (I am not recommending this primitive and clumsy form of verb language for general and normal use. We should have to contrive something much more elegant.) Furthermore, running is not something other than myself, which I (the organism) do. For the organism is sometimes a running process, sometimes a standing process, sometimes a sleeping process, and so on,and in each instance the “cause” of the behavior is the situation as a whole, the organism/environment. Indeed, it would be best to drop the idea of causality and use instead the idea of relativity.” – Alan Watts; The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.

As soon as one sees that separate things are fictitious, it becomes obvious that nonexistent things cannot “perform” actions. The difficulty is that most languages are arranged so that actions (verbs) have to be set in motion by things (nouns), and we forget that rules of grammar are not necessarily rules, or patterns, of nature. This, which is nothing more than a convention of grammar, is also responsible for (or, better, “goes with”) absurd puzzles as to how spirit governs matter, or mind moves body. How can a noun, which is by definition not action, lead to action?” —Alan Watts, ‘Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are’

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Ok, I admit it.  I should not have headed the above ‘SUMMARY’ since it has proven to be more of a compilation of supporting explanations for summarizing statements.

The title of this note was in the form of a collection of observations;

Figure and Ground as One  is TRANSFORMATION

Figure and Ground as TWO is GROWTH as in RATIO and REASON

Negative space as recovery from thinking in terms of Figures as in Figure-and-Ground-as-Two  (Darwinism) to Figure and-Ground-as-One-as in TRANSFORMATION.

Nietzsche’s ‘Anti-Darwin’ is ‘anti-Figure-and-Ground-as-Two’.

Figure-and-Ground-as-TWO is LOCKED IN BY DOUBLE ERROR based Language wherein TRANSFORMATION is reduced to GROWTH

Mephistopheles et l’Androgyne (Mircea Eliade) is where ‘the Androgyne’ is split apart into ‘male’ and ‘female’ and the ‘female’ is discarded.

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The discussion in the body turned towards the basic issues, in language design, that the architect would be confronted with.  Two optional architectures show themselves, and the discussion in the text is in regard to the relative challenges of each with particular emphasis on the pitfalls of architecture based on FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO geometry.

Nitetzsche’s criticism of Darwin’s concept of EVOLUTION is explained herein, the concept of the ‘evolution’ amounting to a FIX for undertaking an explanation of the transforming relational continuum (wave-field continuum) in terms of LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES, notional inhabitants in a habitat that is mutually exclusive of the inhabitants as in FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO.