Western Culture Breeds Psychosis: – How to Indemnify Oneself

Western Culture Breeds Psychosis: Here’s How to Indemnify Oneself.

FIRST, THE BASIC SOURCE OF CONFUSION: If you have been diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, you will know that the Western culture treats this as an ‘abnormality SOURCED within YOU’ rather than as an ‘abnormality’ ’SOURCED within the aberrant dynamics of the culture you are situationally included in’.

The hidden, Western culture-inbuilt ‘crazy-maker’ or ‘source of psychosis’ is the belief in “reality” as constituted by notional “things-in-themselves notionally endowed with powers of sourcing actions and developments”.  This language and grammar-abstraction-based ‘INVENTED REALITY’ is by no means the equivalent of the relational reality of our actual experience as understood in modern physics and indigenous aboriginal and Taoist cultures.

The ‘Western culture’ way of thinking derives from letting intellectual impressions from language and grammar ‘over-ride’ our relational experience-based (and modern physics affirmed) understanding of humans etc. as relational forms in a transforming relational continuum. This ‘intellectual over-ride’ derives from applying ‘naming’ (which implies ‘fixed and persisting existence’) to transient relational forms in the flow, so as to conjure up a cognitive impression of ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves’.

Grammar complements and extends’ the illusion of the ‘thing-in-itself’ by notionally endowing the name-instantiated things-in-themselves with notional powers of sourcing actions and developments.  Western culture thus uses language and grammar in this way to INVENT REALITY for intellectual/cognitive deployment as the ‘operative reality’.   This INVENTED REALITY ‘eclipses’ and ‘occludes’ (‘wallpapers over’) the relational reality of our sensory experience of inclusion within the relational continuum, a non-locally contained sensory experience that eludes capture in terms of language’s explicit and local ‘constructions’.

Not only Heraclitus but also modern physicists have pointed out language’s innate inability to capture the reality of our actual experience (i.e. our actual experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum).  David Bohm, Nietzsche, Schroedinger and others re-affirm this point.

Western culture therefore invites us to take our place within its INVENTED REALITY where we are asked to believe that we, ourselves, are independently-existing things-in-ourselves with our own innate powers of sourcing actions and developments.    By subscribing to such belief, we can join in the activities and tap into the provisioning of nurturance available to supporters of this belief system.

Since this Western culture system is, in many places, the dominant system which occupies the land and tends to ‘starve out’ non-compliance, it is difficult to sustain, for example, indigenous aboriginal or Taoist subcultures within the Western culture.  Hence, the INVENTED REALITY of Western culture with its language-and-grammar instantiated belief in ‘independent beings’ with powers of sourcing actions and developments, tends to be the popular ‘operative reality’ shaping social dynamics.

The phenomenon of the ‘miner’s canaries’ refers to those who, while immersed within the Western culture INVENTED REALITY, are troubled by their innate awareness the relational nature of realty, and thus the bogus nature of the Western culture INVENTED REALITY.  To try to share that one’s distraught feelings are deriving from aberrance in the environment, with others who have ‘normalized’ to that environment, makes the ‘miner’s canary’ the ‘odd one out’ so that the distress is assumed to arise within the miner’s canary, and therapies and medications will then be administered so as to ‘turn off’ the ‘alarms’ that ‘must be mistakenly firing’ within the miner’s canaries since ‘there is nothing wrong with the environment’.

Western culture ‘treatment’ of psychosis therefore orients to ‘treating the ‘miner’s canary’ who’s aberrance IS NOT, IN FACT, COMING FROM WITHIN, but which is induced by the aberrance that pervades the Western culture she is included in.  Of course, in the Newtonian scientific model of the human as an ‘independently-existing thing-in-itself’, the source of thinking and behaviour is assumed to be inside-outward asserting, as is consistent with the Western culture concept of an individual as an ‘independently-existing thing-in-itself’ with its own powers of sourcing actions and developments.  Modern physics, indigenous aboriginal and Taoist cultures, on the other hand, understand the individual as a relational form in the transforming relational continuum, pointing to the fact that it is only Western culture language and grammar traditions that have reduced this view of relational forms to notional ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves.

Philosopher-psychiatrist  R. D. Laing (‘The Divided Self’) and also anthropologist Jules Henry in ‘Culture Against Man’ have identified this problem, however, Western culture is ‘locked in’ to its current psychosis inducing social dynamic by ‘high switching costs’; i.e. it is expedient for the Western culture collective to ‘fix the miner’s canaries’ (by having them take drugs to alleviate the stress associated with their natural (but not statistically normal) rejection of the INVENTED REALITY).

The Western culture ‘fix’ for the ‘miner’s canaries’ troubled reaction to the INVENTED REALITY is thus to ‘fix the troubled miner’s canaries’ rather than to ‘fix the aberrance in the Western culture that encourages adherence to a language-and-grammar based INVENTED REALTY’ that is nothing like our natural sensory experience based reality.  Lobotomizing drugs as well as lobotomizing psychotherapies are the common ‘therapeutic’ approach which is aimed at ‘fixing’ the sensitive ‘miner’s canaries’ so as to dull down their sensitivities, rather than addressing the root source of Western culture dysfunction; i.e. the INVENTED REALITY.

Western culture indoctrination is, figuratively speaking, a ‘lobotomizing’ operation, first to ‘liberate left lobe rational thinking’ from the inherently more comprehensive ‘right lobe relational understanding’, opening the way to putting the ‘left lobe cognition’ into an unchallenged cognitive leadership role.  It is ‘unchallenged’ in the following sense.  In Jantsch’s ‘three levels of reality’, the lowest and simplest level (level 3 termed ‘nature’) is implicitly comprehended in the next highest level (level 2 termed ‘nurture’) which is implicitly comprehended in the highest level (level 1, relational).

In understanding these levels in terms of flow (Tao), Western culture cognitively reduces the ‘dimensionality’ of flow to either of the two lower levels; …  level 3 (lowest) is where reality is understood, in the fluid metaphor, in terms of the ‘boil’ sourcing the ‘flow’ (one-to-many sourcing as in ‘one bad apple spoils the whole barrel of apples).  Level 2 is in terms of the ‘flow’ sourcing the ‘boil’ (it takes a whole community to raise a child). Level (1) understanding is where boil and flow are ‘appearance’ (it is how relational transformation ‘appears’), thus the concept of ‘sourcing’ never arises and never comes into play in this level 1 reality which is in terms of ‘sourceless’ relational transformation.  Western culture ‘ego’ is the belief in ‘sorcery’ at either the level of the individual (individualism) or at the level of the collective (nationalism, corporatism). While Western culture adherents battle over whether ”nature’ over-rides ‘nurture’ as the sourcing agency (conservative politicians) …  or whether ‘nurture’ over-rides ‘nature’ as the sourcing agency (liberal politicians), modern physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures and Taoists understand reality as ‘relational transformation.    In reality as a transforming relational continuum, the illusion of ‘sorcery’ does not come into play, and by the same token, the INVENTED REALITY of Western culture, which is based on ‘sorcery’ of either the ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ variety, does not get chance to hijack the psychological helm to impose its ego based conceptualizations.

In sum, belief in Western culture INVENTED REALITY stand or falls on an ego-based ‘belief in sorcery’.

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This note is to; (a) elucidate on the origins of psychosis arising from within Western culture, and (b) suggest non-medicinal ways of avoiding recurrent bouts of psychosis.  The (b) solution is, essentially, to opt out of pathological cognitive practices of Western culture while continuing to reside physically within a living space where it is the dominant ‘belief system.   This is akin to living like an indigenous aboriginal or a Buddhist within Western culture (i.e. dropping the psychosis-inducing psychological conditioning practices of Western culture while striving to cultivate and sustain harmonious social relations.)

THE CORE PSYCHOSIS-INDUCING WESTERN CULTURE’S LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR INSTILLED BELIEFS AS INCORPORATED IN WESTERN CULTURE ‘INVENTED REALITY’.

-1- The belief in name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’ (a persisting state of ‘is’ until ‘is not’)

-2- The belief in the powers of name-instantiated things-in-themselves to SOURCE actions and developments.

-3- The belief in SOURCED actions and developments as being EITHER ‘good’ OR ‘bad’.

(The real world of our actual experience is a transforming relational continuum, without ‘things-in-themselves’ and thus ‘without ABSTRACT things-in-themselves with the notional powers of sourcing actions and developments) and therefore without ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ‘actions and developments’ and/or without ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ‘sorcerers’; i.e. there is only RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION that can be experienced as harmony and dissonance (transformation that some experience as harmony, others may experience as dissonance).

Inclusion in relationally harmonious ambient influence may induce sustained resonance based development of relational forms such as hurricanes, while inclusion in relationally dissonant ambient influence may starve relational forms of resonances that sustain and promote development.

vision-based language may

Corollary psychosis-inducing beliefs;  … ‘sorcery’, ‘credit’, ‘blame’, ‘forgiveness’ ‘accreditation’

-a- The belief in ‘forgiveness’ (‘forgiveness’ makes no sense since there is no ‘sourcing’ of actions).

-b- The belief in being responsible for (the source of) actions and outcomes;

(the corollary belief in pathogens/criminals and the ‘virtuous’ (sorcerers of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ works).

-b-1 The belief in ‘sin’, ‘punishment’ and ‘repentance’

(again, there is no ‘sourcing’ of actions and developments)

-b-2 The belief in ‘virtuous deeds’

(again, there is no ‘sourcing’ of actions and developments).

-c- The belief in ‘pathogens’ and ‘criminals’

(there are only ‘relations’ that can be harmonious or dissonant, ‘in-balance’ and ‘out-of-balance’).

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The above outline entitled; Western Culture Breeds Psychosis: Here’s How to Avoid It is intended to share ideas on how to find relief for those struggling with recurrent bouts of psychosis that is arising from their inclusion within the psychosis inducing Western culture.

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SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES: The Relational Understanding

Assimilation of ‘relational’ understanding’ (described in this footnote and drawing from nature-based ‘wisdom’), where retained as a foundational ‘reality’ reference, is seen as having the potential to contribute to mental-emotional (spiritual) harmony and stability.  That is, ‘relational understanding is a naturally ‘grounding’ and stabilizing influence and is an integral part of indigenous aboriginal and Taoist ‘acculturation’ that is ‘missing’ in Western culture based acculturation.

Relational understanding informs us that we are included in a ‘reality’ wherein ‘everything is in flux’.  In other words, in relational understanding, the world is a transforming relational continuum which includes relational forms such as ourselves.  WE USE LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR TO CONSTRUCT ‘REPRESENTATIONS’ OF THIS FLUID WORLD.  NOTE THAT THE LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATIONS OF RELATIONAL REALITY DO NOT ‘REPRODUCE’ THE RELATIONAL REALITY OF OUR ACTUAL EXPERIENCE!!!

As the humorous reminder would have it, we must distinguish between giving our 15 year daughter ‘sex education’ and ‘sex lessons’ (sex experience) and we must also acknowledge that, in general, our children or members of other cultures, may have a very comprehensive ‘intellectual knowledge’ aka ‘understanding’ of phenomena  by way of language; i.e. by way of visualization based intellectual understanding NOT THROUGH PHYSICAL-EXPERIENTIAL INVOLVEMENT.   The Superintendent in the steel mill may have never left his air-conditioned office, yet he will be looked to as the ‘expert spokesman’ for what goes on in the mill.  In other words;

WESTERN CULTURE TEACHES US TO UNDERSTAND LINGUISTIC (VOYEUR VISUAL) REPRESENTATIONS AS IF THEY “ARE” “REALITY”!!!

It is one thing to use linguistic representations to give us an intellectual impression of the flow we are included in, (a flow which is a transforming relational continuum in which we are included, that is beyond capture in terms of language-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’).  Sure we can use language to ‘name’ a hurricane ‘Katrina’, and once we do use language like this to impute ‘thing-in-itselfness’ to a relational form in the flow, we can make further use of grammar to psychologically endow the language-instantiated (name-instantiated) thing-in-itself with its own ‘powers’ of sourcing actions and developments, as in ‘Katrina is growing larger and stronger’, … ‘Katrina is ravaging New Orleans’, … ‘Katrina is weakening and dissipating’.   As Nietzsche points out, this name-instantiating of ‘things-in-themselves and imputing powers of sourcing actions and developments to name-instantiated thing-in-itself is a ‘double error’ that serves as the foundation for ‘INVENTING REALITY’.

Even though our experience is of inclusion in a transforming relational dynamic, the intellectual-visual discernment of local images that we use language to ‘name-label’, including our ‘self’ as visually perceived in the flat-space plane as a mirror image, take on, in our a intellect, a ‘life of their own’, with the help of language and grammar, eclipsing our sensual awareness of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.  That is, the intellectual process of ‘naming’ a visual image, whether the image of ourselves in the mirror, or the image of a hurricane in the flow of the atmosphere, imputes, in the intellect, the notion of its persisting ‘thing-in-itself being’. Such reified-by-naming images, we then use within the intellectual realm of language and grammar, to put together an ‘INVENTED REALITY’ where such named images are RE-presented as name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’, notionally with powers of sourcing actions and development (the ‘double error’ spoken of by Nietzsche).

Error 1, the use of language to stimulate cognitive understanding in terms of the notional existence of a thing-in-itself by way of ‘naming’ a form in the flow.

Error 2 (compounding the first error), the use of grammar to stimulate cognitive understanding of things-in-themselves having powers of sourcing actions and developments.

REMEMBER, … we started off with a relational form in a transforming relational (flow-) continuum and we are building language-based ‘representations’ in the mind which are in terms of name-instantiated things-in-themselves with grammar-instantiated powers of sourcing actions and developments.   Hence, language allows us to say and write ‘Katrina is growing larger and stronger’, … ‘Katrina is ravaging New Orleans’, … ‘Katrina is weakening and dissipating’.

REPRESENTATION IS NOT REALITY.  REALITY IS THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM OF OUR INCLUDED EXPERIENCE WHICH IS BEYOND THE CAPABILITY OF VISUAL REPRESENTATION.  THE FACT THAT VISUAL REPRESENTATION IS INCAPABLE OF CAPTURING ‘EXPERIENTIAL REALITY’ IS UNDERSTOOD IN MODERN PHYSICS, INDIGENOUS ABORIGINAL AND TAOIST/BUDDHIST CULTURES.  But in Western culture, as Emerson points out, the (language-based) ‘tool of representation runs away with the workman’; i.e. Western culture adherents employ linguistic-visual representations to construct a visual representation based ‘INVENTED REALITY’ that substitutes (and occludes) the beyond-visualization relational understanding of our actual experience OF INCLUSION IN A TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM.

Since the tool of language is  INCAPABLE of direct representations of our inclusion as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum (which we understand by way of our SENSORY EXPERIENCE), the basis of linguistic articulation turns to ‘vision’ based ‘representations’ (note that ‘visual images’ are ‘flat-space images’ in that they come from our perspective viewing through two eyes on one side of our head.   ‘Perspective’ based representation informs us NOT IN TERMS OF OUR INCLUSION IN A TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM, AS OUR EXPERIENCE INFORMS US, … but in terms of visual images ‘out there in front of us’.  This process whereby voyeur vision ‘takes over our cognitive grasp on ‘reality’ is where the ‘double error’ that Nietzsche speaks of, comes into play; i.e. where we allow our voyeur vision based representations (of name-instantiated things-in-themselves with notional powers of sourcing actions and developments) to hijack our beyond-visualization relational experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum (aka ‘experiential reality’ as distinguished from intellectual Invented Reality).

For example, our experience is of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum as also, the relational form we use ‘naming’ (Katrina) to cognitively reduce to a ‘thing-in-itself’, and compound this with grammar to impute to the ‘thing-in-itself’ we just ‘created’ with ‘naming’, … the powers of sourcing actions and developments (Katrina is growing larger and stronger, … she Is moving towards the Gulf Coast, … she is ravaging New Orleans, …. she is weakening and dissipating).    THIS IS A ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ OF IMPUTING ‘THING-IN-ITSELF’ BEING TO A RELATIONAL FORM, AND COMPOUNDING THIS FIRST ERROR WITH THE SECOND ERROR OF IMPUTING POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS TO THE ‘THING-IN-ITSELF’ WE JUST INVENTED.

This double error is superficially useful because we are confronted with a beyond-language-capturable natural experiencing of inclusion within a transforming relational continuum.  As Wittgenstein says in his final proposition in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus; ‘Of that which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence’.  In other ‘words’, the relational world of our actual experience is ‘beyond “words”; i.e. it is beyond cognitive capture by words.  This is why we must resort to using language to construct ‘Wittgenstein ladders’ where words are used to capture the reality of our experience of inclusion in BEYOND WORDS AND LANGUAGE … ‘transforming relational continuum’.   In modern physics, this approach has been termed “The surprise version of the game of twenty questions”.   The approach is to use language as an expedient for alluding to a purely relational ‘reality’; i.e. ‘Dances with wolves’ and other relational concepts can be used to infer the ‘reality’ of something that is ‘beyond explicit articulation’.

THE BASIC CRAZY-MAKING ERROR OF WESTER CULTURE IS TO ACCEPT THE EXPLICIT CONSTRUCTIONS OF LANGUAGE AS ‘REALITY’.

THIS IS WHERE THE PSYCHOSIS OF WESTERN CULTURE’S SENSITIVE ‘MINER’S CANARIES’ COMES FROM.

For example, how would you feel if everyone around you is ‘operating’ by regarding ‘the double error’ as ‘reality’; i.e. … behaving as if we are ‘independent things-in-ourselves’ with our own powers of sourcing actions and developments.   THIS IS THE WESTERN CULTURE EGO UNDERSTANDING OF ‘SELF’.  IT COMES FROM THE DOUBLE ERROR WHICH WE HAVE BUILT INTO LANGUAGE AND WHICH WE KEEP REPEATING OVER AND OVER AGAIN TO OURSELVES.

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. –-Wittgenstein

WE KEEP REPEATING TO OURSELVES THIS ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ WHEREBY WE IMPUTE ‘INDEPENDENT BEING’ TO NAMED FORMS AND COMPOUND THIS ERROR WITH A SECOND ERROR OF IMPUTING  POWERS, TO THE NAME-INSTANTIATED ‘INDEPENDENT BEING’, … OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS, …. ALL PART OF A LANGUAGE GAME.

Ok, as I already acknowledged, this language game, wherein we portray OURSELVES as ‘independent beings with our own powers of sourcing actions and developments can be useful for sharing relational experience that is innately beyond linguistic representation (i.e. our experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum).

UNLIKE INDIGENOUS ABORIGINAL AND TAOIST CULTURES, Western culture has opted to treat the language-stimulated intellectual understanding as ‘reality’, putting it ‘on top of’ our inarticulable relational experience so that our language-based reality ‘eclipses’ and ‘occludes’ the beyond-word-capture reality of our actual relational experience of inclusion, as relational forms, in the transforming relational continuum.

AGAIN, THE PROBLEM IS NOT LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR PER SE, SINCE THESE INTELLECTUAL/COGNITIVE TOOLS CAN BE USED TO GIVE A ‘COGNITIVE REPRESENTATION’ of the relational reality which is innately beyond DIRECT, EXPLICIT capture in language and grammar.

THE PROBLEM IN WESTERN CULTURE IS, AS EMERSON PUTS IT, “THE TOOL HAS RUN AWAY WITH THE WORKMAN, THE HUMAN WITH THE DIVINE”.

“THE TOOL” is the ‘double error’ of language and grammar, of using ‘naming’ to impute the existence of a ‘thing-in-itself’ (e.g. ‘human being’) and compounding this first error with the second error of imputing ‘powers of sourcing actions and developments’ to the ‘thing-in-itself’.   Ok, ‘the divine’ is the ‘all’ aka ‘the ‘transforming relational continuum’, the ‘human’ is this INTELLECTUAL CONCEPTUALIZING  of forms in the flow by ‘naming’ (Christening, Baptizing) them.

ONCE AGAIN, THE TOOL IS VERY USEFUL AS A ROUGH ‘GO-BY’ SO LONG AS IT DOES NOT ‘RUN AWAY WITH THE WORKMAN’ so that the workman, by naming himself, invokes the double error wherein he is now an ‘independently-existing thing-in-itself’ with the ‘powers of sourcing actions and developments’.

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Ok, that is the ‘background’.   What is driving Western people nuts is that they/we are letting the tool run away with the workman; i.e. Western culture adherents use language constructions to INVENTE REALITY wherein they themselves (we ourselves) represent ourselves via the double error, as ‘things-in-ourselves’ with our own powers of sourcing actions and developments’.   Sure, this is useful representation to get around the problem that the transforming relational continuum is beyond language based expression.   We can make up all kinds of intricate representations with language and grammar and attach them to visual imagery; e.g. a photograph of hurricane Katrina as she breaks houses into pieces and scatters them about.  By having language and grammar to capture this in terms of the ‘double error’  (a name-instantiated thing-in-itself with powers of sourcing actions and developments), we eclipse the NATURAL REALTY of our actual relational experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.

HEY, THE HURRICANE IS NOT THE ONLY RELATIONAL FORM WE CAN RE-INVENT WITH THE DOUBLE ERROR, …. since the double error starts with ‘naming’, we can ‘name’ a ‘human’, an ‘animal’, a ‘nation’, a ‘corporation’ and that gives us part one of the double error, the creation of a notional thing-in-itself, … as the base for part two of the double error, the imputing of powers of sourcing actions and developments to the name-instantiated thing-in-itself.   All we have to start with, in ‘reality’ (the reality of our actual relational experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum) is a relational form in the flow.  The human is a kind of fleshy hurricane like ‘Katrina’ so we can use it as the basis for a double error to give it ‘being’ with powers of sorcery’, and a community is purely relational but is another candidate for the double error, and the nation and corporation and any transient cluster of relational activity.

Ok, once we have removed the relational form in the flow by way of the double error, which also imputes to it, its own powers of sorcery, … we have to explain its powers of sorcery fully and solely in terms of what is inside it.  This becomes a ‘game’ which we call ‘science’ (the Newtonian version which reduces everything to parts within parts or sorcerers within sorcerers).  This science bottoms out in language and grammar and bears no resemblance to ‘modern physics’ which is field and flow based.

You can see where ‘ego’ comes into the ‘double error’ view of ‘self’ as an ‘independent thing-in-itself’ with its own powers of sourcing actions and developments’.  Also, you can see what is implied by;

Ego is a swelled head, inspiration is a full heart’.

In the modern physics, indigenous aboriginal and Taoist view where ‘mitakuye oyasin’ (we are all related) is the understood reality, , there is no invoking of the ‘double error’ which is where ‘ego’ plays the foundational role.   Of course, in this ego-based ‘game-play’ where ‘sorcery’ is considered ‘real’, one has to ‘go along’ with the masses who celebrate those with great powers of sorcery and demean those with ‘undeveloped’ or ‘shrivelled’ powers of sorcery.  Admonishments such as “Come on boy, get your act together and get out there and accomplish something worthwhile’.   So far as the boy PSYCHOLOGICALLY buys into the double error, he or she may begin to suffer from an ‘under-developed ego’ which, in the case of a ‘psychological breakdown’ will encourage treatments designed to rebuild the ego through re-cultivating the individual’s ‘collapsed ego’ (re-inflating it).

Personally, I have never believed in the attributions given to me for some or other above-average accomplishment since it is evident that what MATERIALLY unfolds never comes simply and directly an individual.   This is a ‘game’ that Western culture adherents like to play which fits in with the ‘double error’ and the imputing of powers of ‘sorcery’ to individuals;   As Bohm points out, (e.g. in his example of the death of Lincoln’, what unfolds derives from an unbounded matrix of relational influences.  This exposes the concept of local sourcing as unrealistic abstraction.  In my own case, I worked with a lot of ‘big egos’ who were insistent on sticking with the game of accrediting themselves and thus people in general (for consistency) with the powers of sourcing actions and developments (‘good’ or ‘bad’).

My overt opinion was that this practice of crediting the individual with ‘sourcing’ something was stupid.  The new manager comes in, drills a well and makes an oil discovery is credited with ‘making the discovery’ even though the idea was developed by the prospectors who had worked on understanding the geology, over the past fifty years.   However, to object to this is to go against the basic assumptions of Western culture, … so the situation was as R.D. Laing describes it;

They are playing a game.  They are playing at not playing a game.  If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.  I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.”  – R.D. Laing

Western people are brought up to esteem one’s ‘own powers of sorcery’; i.e. to embrace the ‘double error’.  ‘Ego’ is tied up with belief in the ‘double error’ which uses ‘naming’ to impute ‘the existence of things-in-themselves’ and grammar to notionally endow the thing-in-itself with the powers of sorcery’.

We continue to bring up our children with this understanding and it is a ‘crazy-maker’.  It sets them up for psychosis, but if they are in a group where the belief in ‘ego’ is supported by the group, they are psychologically ‘in tune’ if they, too, believe in ‘ego’ (the double error).  But this belief is very masculine and action oriented so it works better when combined with male strength and aggressiveness.   For those sensitive males and females who find themselves to be the ‘miner’s canaries’ in this environment, they are caught in the following psychological dilemma which may ‘play out’ at a level deep in their psyche that lies beneath their overt psychological dynamics.  In other words, they may be trying to ‘buy in’ to the popular (screwed up) Western reality even while their intuition is rejecting it.  So that the following understanding is playing out in their minds at a level below their overt level of consciouslness;

They are playing a game.  They are playing at not playing a game.  If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.  I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.”  – R.D. Laing

There is a lot of emotional stress on a person whose friends and family who one loves are committed to the Western culture double-error based game, while one’s own inner understanding (don’t forget that topology, which is purely relational, is the deepest mode of understanding that we are born with but which Western culture quickly teaches us to abandon by teaching us ‘language’ and giving us the sense that the language and grammar based ‘double error’ is ‘capturing reality’).  Before we ever learned language, we were in possession of more fundamental relational (topological) means of understanding reality.

“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’

Ok, this is all to point out that the our language-based reality is a psychological reduction of an inherently relational physical-experiential reality, to abstract terms of name-instantiated things-in-themselves, notionally with powers of sourcing actions and development.

However useful this psychological reduction may be, if we let it over-ride our relational understanding, we are setting ourselves up for psychological aberrance such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.  This psychological aberrance comes to the most sensitive miner’s canaries, who are psychologically ‘divided’ by the pull of family and culture to buy into belief in the double error’, and, at the same time, by the opposing pull of their own child-based understanding of reality that is in a purely relational sense.

(Note that by ‘walking the talk’ so that our behaviour is conformant with the aberrant INVENTED REALITY, we walk together with the Western culture majority even though, as ‘heretics’ like Giordano Bruno (burned at the stake for ‘heresy’ in Rome in 1600 A.D.) observe; … ‘the majority has no monopoly on the truth’.   However, the majority DOES have a monopoly on defining and ‘policing’ ‘normality’ since ‘normality’ is a statistically derived aka majority-determined concept).

The crazy-maker, from my own experience, is that, in Western culture, everyone around us wants us to buy into and support the double error since it allows us all to claim that we are independent beings with the powers of sorcery of actions and developments.   If we don’t ‘buy in’, we are trouble-makers.   Indigenous aboriginals do not ‘buy in’ to this Western culture psychosis inducing abstraction and neither does modern physics or Buddhism and that sets them apart from Western culture adherents, but those who buy in to the ‘double error’ which has one seeing oneself as an ‘independent being with powers of sourcing actions and developments’ do not want this illusion to be undermined because general belief in it is what delivers to them special status within the Western culture believing collective, as ‘high achievers’ (superior sorcerers).

The Western public’s practice of giving ‘high achievers’ greater than average powers over changes to the Western social scheme ‘locks-in’ the established practice of imputing the power of ‘sourcing’ of actions and developments to name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’ (Nietsche’s double error), since those who benefit most from the ‘double error’ are entrusted with the task of identifying and correcting ‘errors’ in the system).  This impediment to change is analogous to the delay in the acceptance that doctors were infecting their pregnant female patients by giving vaginal examinations without washing their hands after autopsies; i.e. the delay was due to the difficulty in accepting that those who are popularly seen as the solution may instead be the problem.

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’

If we were ever in a situation that our child was dying of starvation while the rich were basking in plenty, but refusing to share, it would be ‘natural’ for us to become a ‘Robin Hood’ since rebalancing is only natural, however, Western culture, because its adherents embrace a ‘reality’ based on the ‘double error’, where they believe themselves to be ‘independent beings’ whose disproportionate accumulation of and access to nurturances etc., they have acquired as ‘independent beings’ through their own powers of sorcery.

So, language and grammar allow us to psychologically represent ‘the human’ as an exquisitely complex machine, a ‘thing-in-itself’ that can be understood by an amazing system of internal parts (components such as heart, lungs, brain etc.) that work together, giving rise to its own internal powers of sourcing actions and developments.  In this language instantiated abstraction based view, there is no sense that a human is a relational form in a transforming relational continuum, as is the understanding of indigenous aboriginals, modern physics etc.   In other words, the exquisite patterns produced by language are akin to the exquisite structure of a snowflake.  It attracts our attention as a ‘thing-in-itself’ with its own unique crystal structure, … but in order to understand the ‘source’ of that structure, one has to go back to the ambient environmental conditions in which the crystal was forming since it is those ambient environmental conditions that hold the explanation for what appears to be a local thing-in-itself.

That is, there are no local ‘things-in-themselves’ in a transforming relational continuum; i.e. snapshot images are are ‘representations’ that language captures as closed form things-in-themselves and grammatically ‘animates’, … all this transpiring in the intellect’s REALITY INVENTING operations, reanimating (“re-presenting”) relational forms in the flow out of relational context, as ‘things-in-themselves’, notionally with powers of action and development.

The ambient conditions that induced the crystal formation are no longer visible, so IT IS NOT REALISTIC to understand the beauty of the crystal nor credit the beauty ‘to the crystal’ as a ‘thing-in-itself’.   The exquisite beauty of this shape derives from the relational dynamics shaping its emergent development.  We can say the same for a ‘human being’.   The human is a relational form in the transforming relational continuum and did not develop from the ‘inside’ from notional ‘tiny sorcerers’ called ‘genes’.  Even though snowflakes are unique in their structure, we cannot realistically trace this back to ‘snowflake genes’ as would be suggested by the ‘double error’ that imputes ‘independent being’ to a form to give it ‘thing-in-itself status’ and compounds this error with another to impute to it its own powers of sourcing actions and developments.   We speak of ‘growing crystals’ in terms of forces of attraction of molecules etc. as if the local sourcing process is inside-outward as in ‘nature’ or ‘outside-inward’ as in ‘nurture’.  Language and grammar makes these notional ‘constructions’ possible, but the reality of our experience is that there is no such thing as ‘sorcery’ and no such thing as ‘things-in-themselves’.

Similarly, a fossilized plant in a sedimentary rock formation is a likeness of the plant form whereby a mineral such as silica has now replaced the vegetable matter.  is the silica replacement not playing the same role as words in language, to construct a replica of a relational form in the transforming relational continuum?   That reminds me of trying to deal with this issue earlier in an essay on ‘words’ https://www.goodshare.org/words.htm  which recalled a Russian poet’s allusion to words as ‘dead bees’;

The message is simple, intuitive, and we know it only too well prior to being ‘educated out of it’, … and that is that ‘whole-and-part’ fluid relationships are more fundamental than ‘things’ seen ‘in their own right’. The only meaning a ‘thing in it’s own right’ can have is a dead meaning. As Vygotsky says “A word devoid of thought is a dead thing”, … and, citing Gumilev, … “… and like bees in the deserted hive the dead words have a rotten smell.”.  Sure, we can use language and grammar to INTELLECTUALLY RE-ANIMATE, impressions of our relational experience, that we have frozen with voyeur visualization, but such ‘representation’ falls short of the reality of inclusional experience, which is beyond explicit capture in language, but which can be ‘alluded to’ by, for example, ‘The surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’.

Each snow-flake is a unique and beautiful structure that cannot be understood by reducing it to a local ‘thing-in-itself’ by analyzing and extolling its aesthetic angles and elemental parts.  That is, the snowflake is informing us of the limits of vision-based representation in conveying inclusional relational experience.  Visual perception is inherently limited in this manner, and the clearer and more explicit the image (whether in language or in visual imaging), the more incomplete is the understanding.  Impressionist paintings attempt to go beyond the explicitness of sharp imagery as is available to our continuing experience of inclusion in the relational unfolding, even as science continues to perfect increasingly clear and finer grained explicit representation technologies as may be used, together with language, to INVENT REALITY in an ‘explicit’ and thus ‘rationally understandable’ form, unlike the reality of our actual relational experience.

Our Western culture ‘show and tells’ featuring name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’ visual representations supported by linguistic rhetoric, is the basis for Western culture INVENTED REALITY.  Such ‘representation’ wherein we are able to isolate and animate ourselves and others for voyeur visualization, is a case of “the tool running away with the workman’, the human with the divine’ – Emerson.

The life of the snowflake, on the other hand, is the transforming relational ‘canvas’ in which it develops.  The snowflake can have no ‘existence’ that is independent of the relational ‘canvas’ that embodies its relational unfolding.   As voyeur observers making use of language based articulations, our powers of ‘representation’ of our relational experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum are radically reduced, even though our intuition continues to bring recall of our sensory experiencing of inclusion within the unfolding relational continuum, an experience that lies beyond the capability of language-based reductions to voyeur viewing which the intellect serves up within an INVENTED REALITY featuring familiar ‘name-instantiated entities’ that become ‘common intellectual building blocks’ for constructing Western culture ‘standard operating reality’.

“ … Yet each of us has the indisputable impression that the sum total of his own experience and memory forms a unit, quite distinct from that of any other person. He refers to it as ‘I’ and What is this ‘I’? If you analyse it closely you will, I think, find that it is just the facts little more than a collection of single data (experiences and memories), namely the canvas upon which they are collected. And you will, on close introspection, find that what you really mean by ‘I’ is that ground-stuff upon which they are collected. You may come to a distant country, lose sight of all your friends, may all but forget them; you acquire new friends, you share life with them as intensely as you ever did with your old ones. Less and less important will become the fact that, while living your new life, you still recollect the old one. “The youth that was I’, you may come to speak of him in the third person, indeed the protagonist of the novel you are reading is probably nearer to your heart, certainly more intensely alive and better known to you. Yet there has been no intermediate break, no death. And even if a skilled hypnotist succeeded in blotting out entirely all your earlier reminiscences, you would not find that he had killed you. In no case is there a loss of personal existence to deplore. Nor will there ever be.” – Erwin Schroedinger, ‘What is Life?’

There is nothing in the ‘core’ of ‘The surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’, there are only ‘relations’.  The explicit order of Newtonian science can serve only as ‘Wittgenstein ladders’ to infer a deeper ‘implicit order’; a relational reality, as signified by the exquisite experience-inspired structures of snowflakes

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ADDENDUM

See also; … writings by Raymond Cochrane (The Social Creation of Mental Illness (Applied Psychology), R. D. Laing (The Divided Self), Thomas Szasz, ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’