Aboriginal Physics Newsletter

Modern physics would have us understand nature in terms of a transforming relational continuum.  Newtonian physics, as Benjamin Whorf has pointed out, derives from Western culture language and grammar.  Western culture Language and grammar reduces the relational reality of our experience with the ‘double error’ (Nietzsche) SUBSTITUTING, …. BY WAY OF THE ABSTRACT CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE INTELLECT, ‘PRODUCER-PRODUCT’ “REALITY”, …. AN ‘INVENTED REALITY FEATURING THE LOCAL ‘SOURCING’ OF ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS, …  IN PLACE OF RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION.

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This essay explores how, to put it bluntly, Western culture ‘normality’ is driving us crazy by having us believe in a ‘double error’ based ‘reality’ which is essentially the repackaging in respectable attire [Newtonian scientific legitimizing] of middle ages superstitious belief in sorcery.  Because this aberrant belief in ‘sorcery’ has become the Western culture behavioral ‘norm’, the non-complying ‘dissidents’ [including indigenous aboriginals] who remain grounded in natural relational experience and who thus reject ‘sorcery’ and/or those who are manifestly confused by being pressured to conform to this Western culture ‘aberrant sorcery-based normality’, are themselves judged ‘abnormal’ and subjected to programs of remediation that increasingly include anti-psychotic medicating, psychotherapy, confinement in psychiatric hospitals and simple social devaluation on the basis of their poor record in the sorcery department.  Those who accept Western culture sorcery-based ‘aberrant normality’ as the ‘operative norm’ and do well within it, tend to be generously rewarded and given positions of influence and authority that locks the system in place [“lock-in by high switching costs”].  The expression ‘the ‘tools run away with the workman, the human with the divine’ alludes to how the tools of language and grammar REDUCE relational forms in the transforming relational continuum, such as ourselves, to (notional) name-instantiated things-in-themselves with their own incipient powers of sourcing actions and developments [the ‘double error‘].

INTRODUCTION:

The tools run away with the workman, the human with the divine – Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Method of Nature

It is impossible to capture, in explicit language, the reality of our experience of inclusion as relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.    Some cultures accept this and never try to go beyond regarding language as ‘poetic expression’ of our innately ‘fluid’ experiential reality.  The tool of language as employed by our intellectualizing faculty is nevertheless capable of using relational forms as the basis for constructing an INVENTED REALITY featuring relational forms as name-instantiated things-in-themselves with powers of sourcing actions and developments. This is something we could use as a rough but useful ‘go-by’ to aid our navigating within the transforming relational continuum, …OR, we could fall into the trap, as we do in Western cultural generally, of confusing our language and grammar based INVENTED REALITY, for our actual operative reality.

But Western culture over the past few centuries has been defining itself by falling into this trap.  GONE from our intellectualizing mind is the relational understanding that continues to come to us through our relational experience as relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.  That is, our explicitizing tools of intellectual abstraction have ‘run away with us’, so that we recast ourselves in our abstracting intellect as name-instantiated things-in-themselves with our own powers of sourcing actions and developments.

This ‘double error’, as Nietzsche refers to it, is the selfsame aberration as Emerson is referring to as  The tools run away with the workman, the human with the divine .  That is, the ‘double error’ is the use of language and grammar to ‘invent’, by the name-instantiating abstracting power of language, a notional ‘thing-in-itself’ that can, by means of the second conflating error, be notionally endowed with the powers of sourcing actions and developments.

The source of the animating dynamic termed ‘reality’, instead of being understood as ‘immanent’ in the transforming relational continuum, is, thanks to Western language and grammar, pushed down and inside the name-instantiated things-in-themselves created with the ‘double error’ and, the root sourcing of reality is thus relocated to the interior of notional (naming and grammar instantiated) ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments.   This is the basis for Western culture’s intellectually contrived INVENTED REALITY which has, over the past few centuries, hijacked the behaviour animating helm formerly (naturally) manned by sensation-informed intuition.

That is, in our infancy, as with other (non-language-utilizing) forms in nature, our sensations inform us of our inclusion within the all-inclusive world-continuum.  This topological understanding of inclusion in the relational continuum never abandons us, but, in the case of humans, such awareness is exposed to being ‘covered over and buried’ by layers of intellectual abstraction which effectively ‘hijack’ reality constructing operations (eclipsing/burying our sensation based experience of relational inclusion).

This problem of the innate shortfall of language-stimulated intellection in capturing the ‘reality’ of our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum leads to further problematic complications in Western culture where is employed as if it were the ‘operative reality’.  For example;

The tools run away with the workman, the human with the divine – Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Method of Nature

“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

 “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we continue to believe in grammar” — Nietzsche

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.

The point is that the reality of our inclusion, as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum, is not EXPLICITLY expressible in language and can only be obliquely inferred as in poetic expression and/or ‘the Surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’.  If we can ‘picture it’, it is not ‘reality’ (the all-including transforming relational continuum is not picturable; i.e. it cannot be visualized as something ‘out there in front of us’.)

THE DOUBLE ERROR IS THE EMBODIMENT OF EGO, THE BELIEF THAT ‘WE HAVE THE POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS’.  THIS IS CRAZINESS; I.E. IT IS ABERRANT THINKING THAT IS EQUATED WITH WESTERN CULTURE ‘NORMALITY’, as has been pointed out not only by philosophers such as Nietzsche and physicists such as Bohm but also by psychiatrists such as R.D. Laing.

AVOIDING THE EXPOSURE TO ASSIMILATING OF WESTERN CULTURE CRAZINESS WHILE ONE IS LIVING WITHIN A WESTERN CULTURE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT REQUIRES ONE TO ‘REGROUND’ IN RELATIONAL UNDERSTANDING, AS IS DEMONSTRATED BY INDIGENOUS ABORIGINALS, BUDDHISTS/TAOISTS AND ADVAITA VEDANTA ADHERENTS IN THIS SITUATION.

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If anyone reading this can dispute the following, or qualify it, this would be of interest to me because all of my inquiry, and, as discussed herein, the inquiry of Nietzsche and Bohm and Wittgenstein and Emerson and others I have cited EVIDENTLY support these findings.  What I am talking about is the ‘delusional’ basis on which Western culture social collectives divide into opposing political camps termed ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ (e.g. ‘Republicans’ and ‘Democrats’).  This antagonistic dichotomy, is based on a ‘delusion’ which is popularly referred to in Western culture as ‘cause-effect’ and ‘producer-product’.  Nietzsche has exposed such ‘local sourcing of action and development’ as a language-and-grammar based ‘double error’.

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Forward::

As Nietzsche pointed out, the ‘double error’ provides a psychological foundation for Western culture cognition; the first error uses ‘naming’ to impute the ‘persisting independent existence’ of a notional thing-in-itself, conflating this error with the second error of using grammar to impute powers of sourcing actions and developments to the name-instantiated thing-in-itself.  The double error basis for ‘inventing reality’, ‘wallpapers over’ and ‘silences’ our understanding of reality in terms of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.   Instead, the double error equips us to psychologically construct reality ‘bottom-up’, laying the foundations simply by using ‘naming’ [first error] to invoke the psychological impression of ‘thing-in-itself existence’ which is then grammatically ‘animated’ as if by its own ‘internal name-instantiated parts [repeat of first error] with their own [second error] grammatically imputed powers of sourcing actions and developments. There has been a slow, creeping ‘take-over’ of this double-error based Invented Reality in Western culture development, as referenced by Charles Dickens in ‘Hard Times’.

In the scene where Sissy Jupe, who has a romantic (relational) notion of a horse, encounters the scientific literalism of her teacher Thomas Gradgrind and his obedient student Bitzer, whereby; it can be established, firmly and rigidly, and every student should know, that a horse is; ‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’

Dickens ‘warning’ of Western culture’s slide into a hard form of ‘double-error reductionism’ which occludes the impression of reality as inherently relational as conveyed by poetic expression has gone unheeded, and we (Western culture adherents) are currently living in a popularly conceived and linguistically articulated reductionist INVENTED REALITY that is serving as our culturally endorsed ‘operative reality’.

The ‘naming’ triggered ‘double error’ of language and grammar allows us to ‘home in’ and ‘focus’ on ‘particular relational forms’ as and grammar allows us to portray the ‘named things’ as if they were self-animated, whether ‘humans’, ‘nations’ or ‘corporations’. This use of language and grammar equips us for psychological suboptimization’ i.e. illusion/abstraction whereby we undertake to ‘optimize’ a notional ‘thing-in-itself’ (person, nation, corporation) that we have psychologically created by ‘naming’. In some cases, the ‘naming’ can be applied to a relational form in the flow such as a ‘hurricane’ (e.g. ‘Katrina’) as the stem for imputing to it, its own powers of sourcing actions and developments; “Katrina is growing larger and stronger”, … “Katrina is ravaging New Orleans”, … “Katrina is weakening and dissipating”.   ‘Naming’ has ‘magic’ power that can hold the psyche hostage, by way of the ‘double error’, as ‘sorcery’.

‘Naming’ serves communicating in the manner that ‘wheels’ on a car serve to ‘get us to our destination’ of ‘making our point’ in a ‘direct’ manner since by ‘naming’, we ‘define’ the persisting thing-in-itself existence of the ‘named explicit entity’.  Language allows us to formulate the psychological impression that the hurricane named ‘Katrina’ is the source of turbulent flow.  In other words, language allows us to employ the abstraction of ‘sorcery’ by way of ‘naming’ and ‘grammar’.  Relational transformation is ‘occluded’ by this grammar based inference of name-instantiated things-in-themselves with the powers of ‘sourcing’ actions and developments.  This use of ‘naming’ to locally ‘jumpstart’ (source) actions and developments per the ‘double error’ is difficult to extricate ourselves from so as to recover understanding that is in terms of ‘relational transformation’ rather than ‘thing-in-itself based sorcery’.  In other words, Western language and grammar usage ‘tricks and traps the psyche’ through the invoking of local ‘name-instantiated, local thing-in-itself jumpstarted ‘sorcery’.  Sure, it is a short-cut means of communication, but how do we get from such ‘double-error’ based understanding to understanding in terms of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum?

That ‘double error’ issue is put on display by Nietzsche as a Western culture psychological dysfunction; e.g.

“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

What this ‘double error’ does is to occlude or ‘cover up’ with this ‘cheap intellectual double-error wallpaper’, our natural experiencing of dynamics in terms of relational transformation.  ‘Naming’ gives us ‘lightning’ as a notional ‘thing-in-itself’ which grammar conflates with powers of sourcing actions and developments.  Language gives it form in terms of a picture that is available to voyeur perception that is bereft of experiential-sensational content.  We trade out our relational experience for a piece of illustrated intellectual wallpaper.  This opens the door to our current Western culture situation wherein a virgin teenager can know far more about sexual intercourse than her uneducated by sexually experienced counterparts.  Western culture has had a strong tendency towards embrace of a mode of understanding that puts ‘name’ based intellectual knowledge into an unnatural primacy over our experience of inclusion in a nameless relational continuum where “the Tao that can be told is not the true Tao”.

‘Naming’ is far more direct and ‘to the point’ than relational understanding.  This can be seen for example, by way of modern physics; ‘Surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’, and/or by the ‘sharing circle’ of indigenous aboriginal tradition where understanding of ‘reality’ including ‘self’ and ‘other’, is developed from ‘relations’ as in ‘mitakuye oyasin’ (all my relations).  On the other hand, the Western culture ‘ego’ that is triggered by the abstract concept of the ‘independent thing-in-itself’ is ‘naming-instantiated’.  In indigenous aboriginal cultures, ‘naming’ is used to develop relational understanding that lies intrinsically beyond the psychological powers of ‘naming’; i.e. to imply a floating, relational make-up to the individual, in the same manner as the ‘surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ of modern physics.

‘Naming’ has a powerful psychological influence on understanding.  If we see a ‘stars-and-stripes’ shoulder patch on a person’s garment, or a Texas licence plate on the car someone is driving, the name ‘American’ or ‘Texan’ may hijack the helm of our understanding and shut down understanding that is available to us through the experience of relational interaction. This exposure is only an exposure where intellectual understanding has been put into primacy over relational experience based understanding.

Depending on our own experiential and cultural-intellectual history, we may have very different meanings to assign to the name ‘American’, but the point I wish to make here is that ‘naming’ can hijack how we understand things by aborting our natural process of relational inquiry that allows us to develop understanding through experiential co-immersion in the transforming relational continuum. Language, grammar and ‘naming’ (the ‘double error package’) are a great but deceptive ‘intellectual short cut’ to understanding that, in some cultures, has been given a ‘throw-away’ supporting role, while in Western culture, it ends to be a ‘tool that has run away with the workman’ .

For example, if a person says they are a ‘Christian’, that is just a ‘name’.  What does that have to do with the reality of our actual relational experience?  Some say that “the only true Christian was Christ”, indicating once more as in ‘Dicken’s warning’, that ‘naming’ opens the door to an unnatural psychological inversion that puts the understanding coming from ‘naming’ and ‘language-and-grammar triggered intellection’ into an unnatural precedence over our real-life grounded relational experience.  Sure, it may be expedient to use name-labeling as a means of rapid-fire informing on what we are looking at, as with a stars-and-stripes or ‘union-jack’ shoulder patch, but that ‘convenience’ leads us to into psychological submersion in a shallow double-error based INVENTED REALITY.  This point is made by Emerson in ‘The Method of Nature’; i.e. the tools run away with the workman, the human with the divine.

In other words, ‘naming’ is a tool of convenience that puts the spotlight on a relational feature in the flow that is in no way ‘locally knowable’ since, like the boil in the ‘flow’, it is the manifesting of inherently ‘nonlocal’ phenomena.  In Western culture, ‘naming’ is commonly used to reduce a relational forms in the transforming relational continuum to notional ‘things-in-itself’ that can be used within double error based constructions to INVENT REALITY, however, this INVENTED REALITY based on the double error abstraction is nothing like the reality of our actual relational experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum, hence Charles Dicken’s ‘complaint’ expressed through Gradgrind and Bitzer in ‘Hard Times’.

In modern physics as in indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, ‘naming’ is an expedient to trigger understanding that is purely relational as in the realty of our actual experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum. As Emerson pointed out, the tool of ‘naming’ has tended, in Western culture, to ‘run away with the workman’.  In Western culture (in our current era, we are experiencing decline in the perceived value of poetic (relational) expression) by its being displaced by a rising influence of ‘name-dropping’ and its associated ‘double error’ psychological impact (i.e. the psychological impression of being-based sorcery is supported by ‘naming’).  As a result, we are cultivating ‘ego’-based ‘lock-in’ with ‘high switching costs’.  That is, language and grammar abstraction-based (i.e. naming-instantiated things-in-themselves-with powers of sorcery-based) ‘ego that swells the head’ has been steadily unseating and usurping the natural precedence of  purely relational ‘inspiration that fills the heart’. 

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Summary: … Termed the ‘double error’ of Western culture by Nietzsche, the first error uses ‘naming’ to impute the ‘persisting independent existence’ of a notional thing-in-itself, conflating this error with the second error of using grammar to impute powers of sourcing actions and developments to the name-instantiated thing-in-itself.   ‘Ego’ is the psychological ‘embodying’ of the ‘sorcerer’ archetype within forms in the transforming relational continuum which are inherently relational.  Examples of psychologically invented ‘sorcerers’ include (a) a name-instantiated ‘human being’, (b) a name-instantiated ‘nation’, (3) a name-instantiated ‘corporation’ or ‘organization’.  By way of the double error’, such abstract (language-and-grammar instantiated) entities are understood, psychologically, as ‘independent things-in-themselves with incipient powers of sourcing actions and developments’.  This ‘double error’ is the source of Western culture ego and the INVENTED REALITY based on it.

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