What I want to share is the understanding that our WESTERN CULTURE SOCIAL DYNAMICS are falling progressively into the trap described by Systems Sciences pioneer Kenneth Boulding in the terms ‘The name of the DEVIL is SUBOPTIMIZATION.

This is dysfunction which comes from thinking what Nietzsche terms the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.  Thanks to the DOUBLE ERROR, we can construct representations such as ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ which is NOT REALITY since such logical propositions, while TRUE in an innately incomplete way, fail to acknowledge the reciprocal SHRINKAGE of the Wilderness.

Our WESTERN CULTURE language based representations of reality are replete with DOUBLE ERROR conceptualizations.  We say that TOWNS GROW in size and population and production’ but this is a FALSEHOOD based on RATIONAL THOUGHT.  We use RATIO whenever we say that some THING like the TOWN “IS GROWING”.   The RATIO-based representation serves up a SUBSTITUTE REALITY which avoids having to deal with TRANSFORMATION of the LANDSCAPE.

TRANSFORMING is the basic reality of our sensory experience (we are included in the transforming relational continuum) but it is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT (relational).

WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS could employ the SUBSTITUTE REALITY as a tool of inference of the INEFFABLE TRANSFORMATION which is ‘going on everywhere at the same time’.   The LANDSCAPE IS TRANSFORMING as the “towns grow” and the “wilderness shrinks” and while TRANSFORMATION is the REALITY, our WESTERN CULTURE habit is to stick with RATIO based terms such as GROWTH of LOCAL things-in-themselves, because RATIO-nality aka REASON is a convenient (but abstract) tool for SIDE-STEPPING the fact that TRANSFORMATION is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT.

THAT IS WHY THE TITLE OF THIS COMMENTARY is NONLOCALITY is REAL, to remind us that that we use the DOUBLE ERROR base concept of LOCAL things-in-themselves with their own (notional) powers of SOURCING LOCAL actions and developments to construct something that is EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT; e.g. the TOWN has DOUBLED its size over the past ten years.   This has an explicitness that is lacking in the statement of the indigenous aboriginal that ‘The Landscape is transforming’, … a statement that does imply that the creatures of forest and meadow are going missing etc., a reality that is NOT CAPTURED in ‘The TOWN is GROWING’.

Thus, “The TOWN is GROWING” is not representing the REALITY OF OUR SENSORY EXPERIENCE, it is constructing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on RATIO.  See this ‘before’ picture of the TOWN and see this ‘later’ picture of the TOWN. Is that not PROOF of the GROWTH of the TOWN?

If one answers “YES” to this question, then one has just psychologically jumped inside of a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO.

In the reality of our sensory experience, FIGURE and GROUND are ONE, as Schroedinger and Bohm affirm.  Within the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE, there is TOWNING, but when we speak of TOWNS as LOCAL things-in-themselves with their own powers of SOURCING GROWTH and development, we are in the business of constructing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY that is RATIO based (i.e. RATIONALITY or REASON based).  THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LOCAL GROWTH, it is a DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR as Nietzsche points out.

DANGER, DANGER, DANGER!!! on the scale of widespread WESTERN CULTURE patterns of ABERRANT thinking and behaviour, notably in the form of SUBOPTIMIZATION.

If GROWTH were REAL, it would make sense to unabatedly pursue the GROWTH of the Cultivating of land and the GROWTH of Industry, GROWTH is NOT REAL, … TRANSFORMATION is REAL and it included the SHRINKAGE of Wilderness reciprocal to the GROWTH of cultivated and industrialized land.

The point is that when we speak of GROWTH we are using RATIO and saying that ‘here’s a small thing-in-itself called a TOWN that is, OVER TIME, becoming larger and more populous and more productive etc. etc.  WE MAKE NO MENTION OF THE RECIPROCAL SHRINKING OF WILDERNESS.  In fact, both of these terms ‘cultivated land’ and ‘wilderness’ are ANTHROPOCENTRIC REDUCTIVE DISTORTIONS of TRANSFORMATION.

Only in a SUBSTITUTE REALITY can we isolate and present ‘the WORKS OF HUMANS’.

In REALITY, there are only HUMANINGS within the TRANSFORMATION which is inherently EFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT.

WHERE DOES THE SUBSTITUTE REALITY START AND STOP?

The SUBSTITUTE REALITY STARTS AND STOPS with DOUBLE ERROR based LANGUAGE wherein we NAME relational forms and make the out to be LOCAL things-in-themselves with GRAMMAR-given powers of SOURCING actions and development.  This is where RATIO-based abstract thinking comes from as in ‘the TOWN is GROWING.  If you believe that the TOWN is GROWING is MORE REAL than ‘the LANDSCAPE is TRANSFORMING, then are in the SUBSTITUTE REALITY and thus in the grip of a RATIONAL-INTELLECTUAL SUBSTITUTE REALITY.

Meanwhile, your sensory experience of inclusion in the TRANSFORMING relational continuum persists as PRIMARY REALITY.

If one experiences emotions such as are captured in the following quote, then one continues to put SENSORY EXPERIENCE REALITY in its natural precedence over RATIONAL SUBSTITUTE REALITY;

This we know, the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”— “Chief Seattle”

The TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE is something that is both NONLOCAL and innately MORE REAL than the ‘Town that is GROWING larger and more populous’.

Consider what RATIO, as in ‘the TOWN IS GROWING’ is doing to our conceptual representations of reality.  YES, because that phrase is LOCAL and EXPLICIT, we can visually “PICTURE IT” but only in the same sense as we can visually “PICTURE” … ‘The SAND DUNE is GROWING larger and longer and is shifting towards the coast.  Such resonance based TRANSFORMATION REALITY is lost from cognitive grasp as we introduce the DOUBLE ERROR based LOCAL PICTURE of dynamics within a SUBSTITUTE REALITY created with NAMING and GRAMMAR.

THERE IS ONLY “DUNING” within the TRANSFORMING relational continuum wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE while ‘the DUNE’ belongs to a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO.

THERE IS ONLY “HUMANING” within the TRANSFORMING relational continuum wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE while the ‘HUMAN’ as a notional ‘thing-in-itself belongs to a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO.

It is the SUBSTITUTE REALITY where suboptimization appears possible, however, suboptimization is NOT POSSIBLE in the real reality of our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

Suboptimization would only ‘be real’ if the system undergoing ‘optimization’ were truly INDEPENDENT as in the SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein, for example, NATIONS “DECLARE” their “INDEPENDENCE” and seek to SUBOPTIMIZE “THEIR OWN” actions and developments as if such a thing were ‘real’ (it cannot be real within a transforming relational continuum).

LOCAL GROWTH and DEVELOPMENT ONLY APPEARS REAL, as in the GROWTH of the TOWN example wherein the REAL REALITY is the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE within which there is TOWNING.

THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY (NAMING does not create PERSISTING REALITIES that over-ride continuing transformation: i.e. it is NOT that ‘the TOWN GROWS’, but rather the LANDSCAPE TRANSFORMS’.

THE NOTIONAL “GROWING TOWN” IS, IN REALITY, A “TOWNING” within the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.  THE CONCEPT “GROWTH” is RATIO-BASED ABSTRACTION  which conjures up a SUBSTITUTE REALITY.  Whether we are speaking of HUMAN GROWTH or the GROWTH of a COLONY or SETTLEMENT, “GROWTH” is an ABSTRACT RATIO based term that SUBSTITUTES LOCAL SOURCING for relational TRANSFORMATION

The ‘chopping down’ of forest, removal of toots and major butchering of the interdependent relational complex constituting a Wilderness ecosystem, ‘GOES MISSING’ in language based representations where language is used that deploys an abstract RATIO-based (rational) concept of GROWTH; i.e. the GROWTH of the TOWN says NOTHING about the SHRINKAGE of the Wilderness.

The aphorism ‘the map is not the territory’ speaks to this SUBSTITUTING of a new, ABSTRACT REALITY featuring the GRAMMAR-imputed GROWTH of a NAMING-instantiated NOTIONAL ‘thing-in-itself’ as in ‘the TOWN is GROWING larger and more populous and productive.

This GROWTH based SUBSTITUTE REALITY beings with it the (double error) notions of LOCAL INDEPENDENT EXISTENCE of TOWN thing-in-itself, notionally with its own GRAMMAR-given powers of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and development.

SUBOPTIMIZATION STARTS HERE!

Together, NAMING and GRAMMAR allow us to construct a SUBSTITUTE REALITY which ‘starts from scratch’.   Naming is like BAPTISM in that it ESTABLISHED-BUT-ONLY-IN-THE-PSYCHE, the notion of LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF BEING that serves as a PUPPET that GRAMMAR can ANIMATE.  Hence, ‘The TOWN is GROWING’ is a SUBSTITUTE REALITY that supersedes ‘the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE’.

RATIONALITY aka “REASON” is the enabler of this SUBSTITUTE REALITY while INTUITION retains our sensory experience of REALITY of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are screwing up through our practice of allowing REASON based KNOWING to supersede INTUITIVE UNDERSTANDING.

We can conjure up all kinds of LOCAL, DETAILED, EXPLICIT REPRESENTATIONS of butchers, bakers and candle-stick makers and their construction of dwellings with the TOWN.  But if I resituate the basis of my reality to the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE and speak in terms of “TOWNING” as a secondary ‘rash’ on the body of reality, then I REMOVE FROM THE TOWN, ITS NOTIONAL LOCAL SOURCING POWER OF GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT.

We can say the same for “HUMAN” and the “HUMANINGS” in the transforming LANDSCAPE (the transforming relational continuum).

We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS tend to be TRANSFIXED by the IMAGERY of our LOCAL, DETAILED, EXPLICIT REPRESENTATIONS as comprise the SUBSTITUTE REALITY, which, for example, is where we use language-based representations of the TOWN, its streets, and avenues filled with shops and buildings and pedestrians and motor vehicle traffic.  WHERE DID THE TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE GO, the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT, all-including TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM?

Our PRIMARY REALITY (the all-including, transforming relational continuum) did not “evaporate”, it simply took a back-seat in the psyche as the SUBSTITUTE REALITY took over ‘centre stage’, thanks to the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO WORD-PICTURE constructions of our DOUBLE ERROR based (NAMING and GRAMMAR based) language where we engineer our LOCAL SOURCING based SUBSTITUTE REALITY.  Instead of the NONLOCAL TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE, we engineered for ourselves, with the help of the ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ of NAMING and GRAMMAR, the LOCAL GROWING TOWN.

WHY?

BECAUSE this SUBSTITUTE REALITY gives us something LOCAL and EXPLICIT that we can talk about while the Transforming Relational Continuum aka the Wave-field aka ‘the TAO’ is something that, as Lao Tzu, Wittgenstein and others noted, ‘cannot be told’ since the TRC is an all-including continuing flow.

LANGUAGE ILLUMINATES aka EN-LIGHT-ENS even if language must do it by means of introducing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY.  Like the drunken man who lost his watch on a dark and unlit section of the road who searches for it in the brightly illuminated stretch of road under the Streetlamp “because the search conditions are much better there”.

As Bohm points out LANGUAGE ILLUMINATES the death of Lincoln with the DOUBLE ERROR construction, “James Wilkes Booth and his gun-powder fuelled lead-shot projectile launching pistol is the LOCAL SOURCE of the death of Lincoln.  However, the transforming relational continuum is the REAL REALITY which is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT and includes the many developments involved in the unfolding Lincoln’s death reality.

REALITY is too big to capture in language in a finite number of words, so why not CONSTRUCT A SUBSTITUTE REALITY that allows us to impute LOCAL SOURCING and cut out the endless web of relational influences that comprise the all-including, transforming relational continuum; i.e. an ‘endless relational web of influences’ that makes articulation impossible.  “The Tao that can be told is not the true Tao” as Lao Tzu observes.

SUBSTITUTE REALITY CONSTRUCTION: EAST and WEST APPROACHES

We start off with the reality of our sensory experience which is informs us through our being included within the transforming relational continuum.  So long as we do not open our mouths and try to capture and share this sensory experience, we ‘tell no lies’, but of course it ‘would be’ of great utility to be able to share at least some semblance of our INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT experience of inclusion in the Wave-field aka the Tao.

TWO WAYS of constructing a SUBSTITUTE, EFFABLE, PSEUDO-REALITY.

As David Bohm pointed out, we need a language capable of representing a FLOW-BASED REALITY and his aim was to develop ‘Rheomode’, a language that would go beyond English and the European languages and their constraining architecture that gives a foundational role to the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING-instantiated LOCAL THINGS-in-THEMSELVES (first error) conflated with GRAMMAR instantiated POWERS of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments (second error).

IN OTHER WORDS, a language is needed that DOES NOT IMPUTE A SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein LOCAL SOURCING ‘takes over’ as the operative understanding from NONLOCAL.  And don’t forget, EGO comes ‘bundled in’ with the abstraction of LOCAL SOURCING while NONLOCALITY is an understanding wherein ‘we’ and our actions and developments are INSPIRED as in an all-including flow which flows through us flow-forms like the breath-of-life that permeates reality (‘reality’ as the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka the Tao).

So, TIED UP WITH OUR LANGUAGE STRUCTURE is our SENSE OF SELF, either as in the EASTERN notion of being a channel through which participation in actions and developments is inspired (mitakuye oyasis – ‘I am all my relations’), or as in the WESTERN DOUBLE ERROR notion of a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF with its own EGO based powers of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments.

The title of this note; “NONLOCALITY IS REALITY”, seeks to clarify that the construction of reality in LOCAL terms of (NAMING-given) LOCAL things-in-themselves with their own (GRAMMAR-given) POWERS OF LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments is the construction of an abstract SUBSTITUTE REALITY, which is the TOOL that as EMERSON says in ‘the Method of Nature’, is ‘running away with the workman’, meaning that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are FORGETTING SOMETHING IMPORTANT!

WHAT ARE WE FORGETTING?

We are forgetting that the SUBSTITUTE REALITY we construct with DOUBLE ERRORS-that-LOCALIZE the inherently NONLOCAL; e.g. “the TOWN is GROWING” (in place of the NONLOCAL REALITY that ‘the LANDSCAPE IS TRANSFORMING), … is only fit for use as a “Wittgenstein ladder” or BOOTSTRAPPING tool that delivers a capability for INFERRING NONLOCALITY, the actual sensory-experience-affirmable REALITY.  IN BRIEF, “THE TOWN IS GROWING” is NOT REALITY, it is a SUBSTITURE REALITY REPRESENTATION based on the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR, as Nietzsche has pointed out.

We can’t have our REALITY both ways!

Which do you prefer? ;

CHOICES OF REALITY:

-1- The Town is GROWING.  In this (double error) choice, the TOWN is understood as a LOCAL thing-in-itself with ‘its own powers of ‘growing’.

-2- The Landscape is TRANSFORMING.  In this choice, what we were calling ‘the TOWN’ becomes “a TOWNING’-within-the-TRANSFORMING, like an eddy in the flow, a relational flow-feature.  NONLOCALITY prevails in this case.

One might ask oneself, at this point, which of these two options for ‘reality’ one is in the habit of ‘putting first’.

Note that if we employ the SUBSTITUTE REALITY of ‘the Town is GROWING’ which is LOCAL and RATIO-based reality, we can continue our language based articulation of reality without the encumberment of having to deal with ‘inclusion in the transforming relational continuum’.

SUCH RATIO-NALITY BASED DISENCUMBERMENT IS WHAT MAKES THIS MODE OF REPRESENTING REALITY (ACTUALLY, THIS MODE OF CONSTRUCTING A SUBSTITUTE REALITY) VERY CONVENIENT.

This allows us to ILLUMINATE THE LOCAL and thus take on the approach of the man who lost his watch on an UN-ILLUMINATED stretch of road shift his search to beneath the STREETLAMP because the ILLUMINATION makes it so much easier to see things there.

If this seems like a silly an inappropriate analogy, let’s take another look.  The concept of RATIO underlies the notion of GROWTH and RATIO based GROWTH allows us to REDUCE TRANSFORMATION which is NONLOCAL and thus IMPLICIT to something LOCAL and EXPLICIT;  i.e. GROWTH.  Is that ‘TREE’ a relational form in the transforming relational continuum or ‘ecosystem’ in which case FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE and we can’t talk about the FIGURE out of the context of the GROUND which puts on us the burden of addressing a nonlocal continuum of influences that explain the LOCAL phenomenon which is NOT REALLY LOCAL, but VISUALLY PICTURABLE AND ADDRESSABLE IN LANGUAGE AS IF IT WERE “LOCAL”.

PROBLEM! …  giving REPRESENTATION to the “NONLOCAL” by way of language or visual pictures is impossible.  Our camera-based snapshots of the boil in the river-flow do not capture the solar energized sea-to-atmospheric fluid-cycling, and if we had included, in our language capture, what-all the sun is tied up in interdependent relations with, our language based representation would be never-ending.

SO, RATIO-BASED DISENCUMBERMENT from NONLOCALITY does not capture a REPRESENTATION OF THE NONLOCAL, but instead, introduces a SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on “NOTIONAL” “LOCAL” things-in-themselves with GRAMMAR-given powers of SOURCING actions and developments.  This is a new and abstract RATIO-NAL language-based SUBSTITUTE REALITY: EXAMPLE: “the TOWN is GROWING’.

Notice how we have lifted the relational eddy-like “TOWNING” out of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE and REPLANTED IT as a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF within a new SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein we now have a “TOWN” which we GRAMMAR-equip with its own LOCAL powers of SOURCING actions and developments; i.e. we invoke the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR as Nietzsche pointed out.

So, we have these CHOICES OF REALITY:

-1- The Town is GROWING.  In this (double error) choice, the TOWN is understood as a LOCAL thing-in-itself with ‘its own powers of ‘growing’.

-2- The Landscape is TRANSFORMING.  In this choice, what we were calling ‘the TOWN’ becomes “a TOWNING’-within-the-TRANSFORMING, like an eddy in the flow, a relational flow-feature.  NONLOCALITY prevails in this case.

And as discussed above, the CHOICE OF LOCAL REALITY (reality as constructed on the basis of the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR) is the WESTERN CULTURE popular representation of reality since it is EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT.  Of course, the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT “REAL REALITY” remains the operative reality.  That does not change just because, as Lao Tzu says, ‘the Tao that can be told is not the true Tao’, or as Wittgenstein says, ‘Of that which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence’.

In other words, the reality THAT WE CAN SPEAK OF, IS NOT THE REALITY OF OUR SENSORY EXPERIENCE OF INCLUSION IN THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM AKA THE WAVE-FIELD AKA THE TAO.

The REALITY THAT WE CAN SPEAK OF IS A SUBSTITUTE REALITY which we construct using RATIO, aka REASON which allows us to LOCALLY JUMPSTART our REPRESENTATION of REALITY; i.e. our REPRESENTATION being that of a SUBSTITUTE REALITY which can be built up from the LOCAL, so that we ‘do an end run’ around the obstacle of the limitations of language in that language is incapable of representing the transforming relational continuum.

SO, HOW DO WE GET FROM THE SUBSTITUTE REALITY WHEREIN “THE TOWN IS GROWING” TO THE REAL REALITY OF THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM?

Wittgenstein describes how in his last two propositions in Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus; i.e. in order to get to the NONLOCAL reality, our propositions based on the LOCAL, must be used as INFERENCE of what lies beyond their explicit reach (e.g. the TOWN implies TOWNING within the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE (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. (“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen”),

–Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

With this insight in hand, we can understand that WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENCE comes with the problem that we are accepting the RATIO and REASON as having the power of nailing down REALITY which is a MISTAKE which is cultivating ABBERANCE and DYSFUNCTION in our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT social dynamic.

For example;

-A- THERE IS NO LOCAL SOURCING: — There is no such thing as LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments in our sensory experience reality.  LOCAL SOURCING is only meaningful in THE SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR where we say things like ‘the TOWN is GROWING’.  This MAKES NO SENSE in the reality of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE in which TOWNING is a purely relational APPEARANCE and NOT a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF with its own notional LOCAL powers of SOURCING GROWTH and DEVELOPMENT.

As a TOOL OF INFERENCE, this notion of LOCAL THINGS with their own powers of LOCAL SOURCING is useful, but NOT USEFUL if we take ‘literally’ so that ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ become a new SUBSTITUTE REALITY that ‘takes over’ from the NONLOCAL understanding wherein ‘the LANDSCAPE IS TRANSFORMING’.  TOWNING within the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE is a case of FIGURE and GROUND as ONE so that NONLOCALITY is the operative reality.

-B- THERE IS NO LOCAL SOURCING BUT EGO and NATIONALISM ARE BASED ON THE BELIEF THAT THERE IS.

Acknowledging NONLOCALITY as the operative reality in the transforming relational continuum shifts our understanding of the animating energy over to INSPIRATION.  INSPIRATION is a NONLOCAL influence wherein we are, for example, induced to dive into the raging rapids to rescue an infant that has fallen in and is being swept out to sea.  Such an adult has an inbuilt sense of ‘mitakuye oyasin’ (we are all related) so that the animating influence is not LOCALLY SOURCED as in the notion of EGO with its sense of LOCAL SOURCING POWER.

INSPIRATION fills the heart while EGO swells the head.

NATIONALISM is a collective form of EGO which is based on belief in the ‘reality’ of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments.  It is thus a form of psychological aberrance.

But if we can say that THE TOWN IS GROWING, which is RATIO based binary logic implying LOCAL SOURCING we can also similarly say that OUR PRODUCTIVE ACHIEVEMENTS ARE GROWING.  In such cases, we construct a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein LOCAL SOURCING is operative.  LOCAL SOURCING is NOT OPERATIVE in the reality of our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.  So the point is that while the concept of LOCAL SOURCING is USEFUL as a means of reducing the interminability of articulating the NONLOCALITY innate in the transforming relational continuum, it is not to be confused for REALITY.  The reality is the NONLOCAL TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE and THE LOCAL REALITY of ‘The TOWN IS GROWING’ is a SUBSTITUTE REALITY, a tool of INFERENCE that as EMERSON has pointed out is tending to ‘run away with the workman, the human with the divine’ in the case where we say ‘the HUMAN IS GROWING’.

The reality is that the LANDSCAPE is the TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM and we and everything are included in it so that our sensory experience of inclusion is our primary reality.  The problem is that this REAL REALITY of experiencing inclusion in the NONLOCAL is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT  However we come up with language-based representations of reality, they are not going to be ‘superior to’ our sensory experience reality in their reality informing capability.  Our call to action when the infant is being carried away in the rapids is sensory-experience-induced and supports the modern physics conception of ourselves as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum wherein ‘mitakuye oyasin’ (everything is related) applies.

WE ARE IN THE SUBSTITUTE REALITY when speak of ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ and ‘the HUMAN is GROWING’ and ‘the NATION is GROWING’, and however useful this language-based SUBSTITUTE REALITY based REPRESENTION may be, … IT IS AN ABSTRACT RE-PRESENTATION that SUBSTITUTES the abstraction of LOCAL SOURCING in place of NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION.

TO CONCLUDE this final comment: WHILE EGO AND NATIONALISM ARE BOTH BASED ON  LOCAL SOURCING, THERE IS NO BASIS FOR LOCAL SOURCING in the transforming relational continuum which is the REALITY of our sensory experience.

NONLOCALITY IS REALITY.  The challenge is that NONLOCALITY is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT as is the nature of the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka the Tao..

* * *

 

APPENDIX:

NONLOCAL vs LOCAL … a Simplfying Explanation

The main point here is;

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GROWTH, .. only TRANFORMATION.

Think about it.  There have been a number of philosophers like Nietzsche, Einstein, Bohm, and Kenneth Boulding (systems sciences who have pointed to what Boulding calls ‘suboptimization’.

What suboptimization is point to is that as we develop improvements to our understanding, these improvements are taking us to ever greater ‘heights’ of understanding as if towards some kind of ‘complete understanding’.  Isn’t that what ‘EXPERTS’ are all about?  The expert is the person we consult to tap into the ‘most advanced’ understanding of the phenomenal area that that person is expert in.

So why did Boulding coin the aphorism ‘The name of the devil is suboptimization’?

He said this because, as in the case of Newtonian physics, improving one’s understanding in a classical physics context will make you an AUTHORITY on that particular way of thinking which CRAPS OUT before it can take you to an understanding of more complex (“nonlinear”) phenomena that are not even capturable within the Newtonian paradigm of matter, force and time.

While Einstein and Infeld point this out with the following metaphor, what they don’t mention, and what is useful to ‘bring to the surface’, is how we can ‘get stuck’ by launching our climb on a FOOTHILL rather than on the MOUNTAIN (this is just a metaphor that can be helpful).  In this case, our solutions and the understanding they bring are innately limited because the are solutions that bring an understanding of NOT THE REAL ISSUE, but an understanding of an OVER-SIMPLIFIED ISSUE.

Thus, we find ourselves all climbing up this ‘foothill’ which is capped by ‘the experts’ and we too can rise to this ‘foothill peak’ and be capped as ‘an expert’.  The problem is that the understandings of the ‘expert’ are understanding of an OVER-SIMPLIFICATION of the ‘PHENOMENON WE ARE INVESTIGATIONG’.  THIS IS WHAT OUR STANDARD WESTERN CULTURE NEWTONIAN THING BASED ON BINARY LOGIC GETS US TO.

I could copy Einstein’s statement right now, where he gives the imagery of a man who thinks he is climbing the mountain but in fact he is on a foothill so that although he is making ‘steady progress and advancement’ towards the summit, … it is not advancing him towards ‘the mountain peak’ but is instead advancing him towards “A SECONDARY PEAK” … which can serve him up an EXPERT understanding of a REDUCED formulation of the REAL phenomenon.

But for those who RISE to this secondary peak, there is EXPERT STATUS awaiting them and they will inspire others to follow them in this same ascent.

The question then arises; WHY NOT STAY ON TOP OF THIS SECONDARY PEAK even though it is a SECONDARY PEAK because it is where one achieves the status recognition and rewards of an EXPERT.

The alternative, if one is really committed to the search for ‘truth’ or ‘reality’, is that ONE MUST DESCEND FROM THAT WAY OF UNDERSTANDING OF THE TYPE THAT “PEAKS OUT” WITHOUT EVER GETTING TO RESOLVE the REAL COMPLEXITIES.

In other words, ‘becoming an EXPERT’ can be a form of ENTRAPMENT since the EXPERT is highly sought after for his/her valuable knowledge and understanding.  This is where SUBOPTIMIZATION (the name of the DEVIL is subobtimization) comes in because this social orientation is “LOCKED IN BY HIGH SWITCHING COSTS”.

For example, the highly sought after and highly recognized and rewarded EXPERT may not want to KNOW that his victorious climb to the summit, has taken him to the summit of a foothill which now puts full understanding even farther out of reach because he has to descend from the ‘false peak’ of ‘suboptimization’ in order get back on track of mastering the more comprehensive understanding (e.g. the mastery of nonlocal wave-field reality which one can’t get to from the mastery of local material reality.)

The German physicist Max Planck said that science advances one funeral at a time. Or more precisely: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

This gives insight to Nietzsche’s approach of ‘philosophizing with a hammer’.  Rather than formulating theories formulated in the positivist terms of ‘explaining what is going on’ which has led us to EGO-based formulations such as the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR, we need to go more in the direction of ‘smashing all our rigid propositions’, as also described by Wittgenstein;

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. (“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen”),

–Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

SOUNDS “ON TRACK” WITH NIETZSCHE, RIGHT?

Nietzsche rejects REASON because REASON is based on simplistic linear relationships as in the DOUBLE ERROR based concept of GROWTH which completely ECLIPSES and WALLPAPER OVER “TRANSFORMATION”.

GROWTH is based on the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR where we say thing like ‘The TOWN IS GROWING LARGER AND MORE POPULOUS AND PRODUCTIVE’.

In reality, there is the transforming LANDSCAPE aka the TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GROWTH, .. only TRANFORMATION.

But it is not hard to see why one would introduce the concept of GROWTH because TRANSFORMING is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT whereas “GROWTH’ assumes that there is SOME LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF that is DOING THE GROWING.

In other words, GROWTH is a backdoor entry ploy for injecting the abstract concept of a LOCAL BEING which is ‘doing the GROWING’, something LOCAL that is not found in TRANSFORMATION which overcome NONLOCALITY which is what makes TRANSFORMATION INEFFABLE.

Once we start building representations of reality with DOUBLE ERROR based language constructs; e.g. ‘the TOWN is GROWING ‘, … WE ARE IN THE BUSINESS OF CONSTRUCTING A SUBSTITUTE REALITY, the foundation of which is LOCAL things-in-themselves, notionally with their own GRAMMAR-GIVEN powers of sourcing actions and developments.

We say that ‘THE TOWN IS GROWING’.   Is the TOWN and ‘organism’, then, since such statement impute to the TOWN its own powers of sourcing GROWTH?

Well, NO.   But we can see that ‘the TOWN IS GROWING’ overcomes, … or rather ‘sidesteps’, the quandary of ‘How the hell is one supposed to CAPTURE in LANGUAGE, NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION, as in REALITY as affirmed in our sensory experience?

JUST LIFT OUT A BOIL IN THE FLOW, GIVE IT A NAME AND ADD SOME GRAMMAR so as to overcome the INEFFABILITY of NONLOCALITY.  For example, ‘Hurricane Katrina is devastating New Orleans’.  This is a clear case of the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR which spares us the interminable string of words that would be required to articulate the REAL REALITY of TRANSFORMATION as in the TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM.

Ok, makes sense, we say, providing that we do not fail to remember that our DOUBLE ERROR constructions are to LOCALIZE phenomena  that is inherently NONLOCAL and thus RE-RENDER the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL as EFFABLE-because-LOCAL.

This LOCAL REALITY (e.g. ‘the TOWN that is GROWING’) is a SUBSTITUTE REALITY, which would be caught immediately by the indigenous aboriginal who would point out that what is really going is NOT the GROWTH of the TOWN, but the TRANSFORMATION of the LANDSCAPE.

He/she is CORRECT, OF COURSE!

Along comes Emerson and says; … Careful, don’t let the tool of language with its substitute reality constructing capability run away with the workman, the human with the divine.

And Emerson is course, right on target with this warning, although we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are not following his advice.

SUMMARY:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GROWTH, .. only TRANFORMATION.

Since we are included in the transforming relational continuum, we are included in NONLOCALITY which is fine for us as living relational forms within the TRANSFORMATION.

BUT IF WE WANT TO COME UP WITH A SCHEME OF UTTERANCES THAT ALLOWS US TO SHARE SOME SEMBLANCE OF OUR INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT experience, we need to make some compromises on REALITY.   That is, we need to invent a SUBSTITUTE REALITY that language is capable of giving representation to.

The EAST has made the wide choice to invent language wherein the basic relational nature of reality is retained

The WEST opted for a SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR as exemplified by ‘the TOWN is GROWING’.  As Nietzsche points out, the FIRST ERROR is NAMING that imputes LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF-BEING to relational forms in the flow, while the SECOND ERROR of GRAMMAR imputes the power of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments to the notional NAMING-instantiated ‘LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF’.

This TOOL of DOUBLE ERROR based language allows us to construct a SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on LOCAL THINGS notionally animated by GRAMMAR.  Once we deploy this SUBSTITUTE REALITY, there is a tendency to FORGET ABOUT the REAL REALITY which is INEFFEBLE-because-NONLOCAL.  Meanwhile, the SUBSTITUTE REALITY drops out a whole lot of the reality of our sensory experience and this opens up a huge gap between our sensory experience and our language based account of our sensory experience.

In particular, we use the DOUBLE ERROR to construct the SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein we say ‘the TOWN is GROWING’, and this TAKE THE PLACE, in our linguistic representation, of our sensory experience of inclusion in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE, as in the TOWNING which is in the CONTINENTING which is in the PLANETING, all of which is in the Wave-field aka the Tao.

There is no doubt as to the utility of language, but there is also no doubt as to the incompleteness of language in its representation of our experience, a primary example of this shortfall of language-based representation being;

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GROWTH, .. only TRANFORMATION

OF COURSE IT MAKES SENSE TO EMPLOY LANGUAGE in spite of its artificiality; i.e. its construction of representations of a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein there are local THINGS-in-THEMSELVES with their own (notional) powers of SOURCING actions and development.

ATTENTION: It does NOT MAKE SENSE to use these language-based constructions of SUBSTITUTE REALITY as the OPERATIVE REALITY.  It only makes sense to use the language-based SUBSTITUTE REALITY as INFERENCE of the REAL REALITY of our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

BELIEF THAT GROWTH IS REAL IS DELUSION.  THE IMPRESSION OF GROWTH DEPENDS ON FIRST ASSUMING THE LOCAL BEING OF THE THING THAT WE PURPORT TO BE GROWING, AS IN THE EXAMPLE OF THE HURRICANE, that is ‘growing larger and stronger and is devastating New Orleans’.  All of this is DOUBLE ERROR base “SUBSTITUTE REALITY” construction.

It is SUBSTITUTE REALITY because it is LOCAL and EXPLICIT and thus EFFABLE, while the REAL REALITY of inclusion in TRANSFORMATION  is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT and thus INEFFABLE.

We don’t have to go through this complicated language based explanation process in order to INTUIT the dynamic REALITY that we are experiencing inclusion in.  Our animal aspect can ‘get by without language’ that reduces reality to intellectually articulable conceptualizations.  But languages is a ‘trick’ that has changed who we are in the sense that our understanding of the world has been EXTENDED (however imperfectly) as if the experiences of others were plugged in to ourselves, like millions of extra limbs and senses, to contribute to the shaping of our ‘world view.

There is a PROBLEM here in that while we can trust the raw sensory data of our direct experiences, we don’t get that ‘raw sensory data’ through our language based intellectual transfers.  If we are female, we have no carnal sensory experience of the male sexual experience and vice versa.  When we are informed by language through the intellect, our learning and knowledge can be ‘cantilevered’ well beyond the limits of ratification from our own direct sensory experience.  This can greatly extend our understanding but it carries within it the exposure to come to understand and believe in falsehoods that are not being ‘corrected’ by our direct sensory experience.

Not only may a male not be able to intellectually know a female’s sexual experience, males and females may NOT be able to intellectually know a COVID 19 sufferer’s illness experience.  Language opens the way to sharing, BUT ONLY IN TERMS OF a SUBSTITUTE REALITY because our language based constructions are LOCAL and EXPLICIT and thus EFFABLE, while the REAL REALITY of inclusion in TRANSFORMATION  is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT and thus INEFFABLE.

RATIONALLY and INTELLECTUALLY, we get the message that the FOREST FIRE is approaching or that the COVID-19 infection front is approaching such INTELLECTUAL KNOWLEDGE does not FIRE UP our sensory experiencing.

Suffice it to say that language, however valuable in its ability to convey ‘SUBSTITUTE REALITIES’ can cultivate social dissonance where taken ‘LITERALLY’, a prime example of this associating with belief in GROWTH.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GROWTH, .. only TRANFORMATION.

OUR FIXATION ON GROWTH IS BLINDING US TO TRANSFORMATION.  This is becoming only too apparent, recalling the observations captured in ‘the letter of Chief Seattle’

 But in your perishing you will shine brightly, fired by the strength of the God who brought you to this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and over the red man. That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are slaughtered, the wild horses tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the Eagle? Gone. The end of living and the beginning of survival.

While we are, in reality, INCLUDED in NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION, we have developed a form of language where we set ourselves up as notional LOCAL BEING with LOCAL POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT.  We see GROWTH as if it were something REAL (WE HAVE TO TAKE OUR PICK, NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION OR LOCAL GROWTH, THEY BOTH CAN’T BE REAL).  Does the TOWN ‘REALLY GROW’ or does the LANDSCAPE TRANSFORM?

As reviewed above, language can handle RATIO aka REASON which is the basis of GROWTH but, as Lao Tzu and Heraclitus both pointed out, and modern physics has reaffirmed, language CAN’T HANDLE TRANSFORMATION.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GROWTH, .. only TRANFORMATION.

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FOOTNOTE: We WESTERN CULTURE FOLKS having been confusing ourselves for a long time with this ‘belief in GROWTH’ are starting to catch on to our aberrant thinking. e.g.

https://ensia.com/voices/end-economic-growth-economy/

Opinion: Sooner or later, we have to stop economic growth — and we’ll be better for it

The end of growth will come one day, perhaps very soon, whether we’re ready or not. If we plan for and manage it, we could well wind up with greater well-being.

by Richard Heinberg

January 8, 2019 — Both the U.S. economy and the global economy have expanded dramatically in the past century, as have life expectancies and material progress. Economists raised in this period of plenty assume that growth is good, necessary even, and should continue forever and ever without end, amen. Growth delivers jobs, returns on investment and higher tax revenues. What’s not to like? We’ve gotten so accustomed to growth that governments, corporations and banks now depend on it. It’s no exaggeration to say that we’re collectively addicted to growth.

The trouble is, a bigger economy uses more stuff than a smaller one, and we happen to live on a finite planet. So, an end to growth is inevitable. Ending growth is also desirable if we want to leave some stuff (minerals, forests, biodiversity and stable climate) for our kids and their kids. Further, if growth is meant to have anything to do with increasing quality of life, there is plenty of evidence to suggest it has passed the point of diminishing returns: Even though the U.S. economy is 5.5 times bigger now than it was in 1960 (in terms of real GDP), America is losing ground on its happiness index.

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