Exploring the relational reality that lies beyond ‘being’-based abstraction

 

‘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’

 

What is confusing us is ‘calling a spade a spade’, ‘what a named thing ‘really is”  which distinguishes it from ‘what it is not’.  As understood within the abstract concept of ‘being’, there are only the two choices of ‘is’ or ‘is not’.  This ‘logic of the excluded third’ began to overtake the purely relational understanding of Heraclitean flow as the basis of Western cognition, starting from the time of Parmenides (circa 500 BCE).

 

“In France, they call this ‘une forchette’, … in Germany, they call this ‘ein Gabel’, while in England, we call it a ‘fork’ which, of course, ‘is what it actually is’”.  In this pleasantry, allusion is made to how words that could signify purely relational forms emerging in a flow, are cognitively hardened (reified) to impute thing-in-itself ‘being’ to what is, in the reality of our actual experience, relational form (i.e. names impute ‘being’ to relational forms in the transforming relational continuum, not only in the case of hurricanes in the flow of the atmosphere but in the case of humans/organisms and relational forms in general, in the natural (relational) world of our actual experience.  That is, relational forms in the transforming relational continuum are the physical-experiential  reality.

There is no such thing as ‘being’ in a transforming relational continuum, the world as indigenous aboriginal culture understands it which is the world as modern physics understands it.

 

Language used in a rational (being-based aka ‘things and what things do’-based) manner (as contrasted with language used in a poetic manner wherein ‘things’ are used as expedients to conjure up purely relational cognition) is language that gives definitive meaning to ‘things-in-themselves’ (‘things-that-exist’) which connotes their notional (abstract) state of ‘being’.  This is how language deceives us (psychologically) as is Wittgenstein’s and Nietzsche’s philosophical complaint;

 

“Indeed, nothing has yet possessed a more naïve power of persuasion than the error concerning being as it has been formulated by the Eleatics, for example.  After all, every word and every sentence we say speak in its favor.  Even the opponents of the Eleatics still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being: Democritus, among others, when he invented his atom. “Reason” in language — oh, what an old deceptive witch she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’.

 “that which we are unable to capture in language, we must pass over in silence.”  (“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen” ) — Wittgenstein

The world of modern physics is a transforming relational continuum.   THERE IS NO ‘BEING’ IN A TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM! aka ‘the Tao’;

 

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things  — Lao Tzu

 

Yes, of course, it seems to make sense to name relational forms and then to employ language that uses these names, which we have now imputed ‘being’ to, in grammatical structure; … for example; … ‘Katrina is growing larger and stronger’, … ‘Katrina is heading for the Gulf Coast’, … ‘Katrina is ravaging New Orleans’, … ‘Katrina is dissipating and dispersing’.

Though we start from perception of a relational form in a transforming relational continuum, we employ language to ‘dress up’ such relational forms in being-based clothes and grammar to imply being-based actions.

 

We do the same with humans such as ourselves; i.e. we are relational forms in the transforming relational continuum, that appear to bull our way around for some time in the manner of a ‘hurricane Katrina’, … and appear to dissipate and disperse.  The flow in which these forms are continually outwelling and inwelling continues on unabated as relational transformation so that the only thing to which we can impute persisting existence to is the ‘name’ that we hang on the intrinsically ‘relational form’ in the flow].

We humans, too, emerge/outwell and subduct/inwell as forms within the energy-charged field or ‘plenum’ (Bohm) and we never ‘get out of the field’ since the field is everything; i.e. it is the transforming relational continuum.

 

The point is that humans are NOT ‘beings’ [persisting existence is abstraction cognitively induced by ‘naming’ relational forms in the flow]. Humans are relational forms in the transforming relational continuum as implied by the indigenous aboriginal words ‘mitakuye oyasin’, all things are related.

 

Western noun-and-verb Languages have a problem with this ‘thingless’ (beingless) fluid reality or ‘Tao’, because, as Heraclitus pointed out ‘everything is in flux’.  There is no ‘being’ or ‘beings’ or ‘things with persisting existence’ and thus no ‘solid and persisting reference points’ to push off from in talking about what is going on.   If we use language to ‘name’ a form in the flow, we impute persisting being to it, which has no basis in our experience since flow-forms have no persisting being even though the ‘outline’ of their relational form within the flow can make a ‘persisting cognitive impression’ [that we then cognitively/grammatically absolutize as a notional thing-in-itself].  Based on the ‘impression’ of a persisting form in the flow, as with a hurricane, we can focus our attention on the ‘form’ and capture it in language (name it) and grammar as if it were a ‘thing-in-itself’ that ‘exists’ or ‘is’ as in ‘being’.  This is abstraction deriving from ‘naming’ which cognitively implies persisting existence.

 

Once we give representation to the flow-form in the notional terms of ‘its own being’ by ‘naming’ it and imputing persisting ‘being’ to it, … language can take over from there so as to use ‘grammar’ to psycho-linguistically ‘animate’ this now-reified (objectified as a thing-in-itself) relational form-in-the-flow within another new abstraction we call ‘the environment’ which is everything else but the ‘being’ we have abstractly reduced the relational form in the flow to.  Without language and naming we can understand our experience as inclusion in a turbulent flow, but with language and naming, we speak of ‘other forms’ in the flow, besides ourselves, by giving them names, whether they are other humans or other relational forms such as whorls in the all-including transforming relational space.  Giving them names, which psychologically imputes ‘persisting being’ to the relational form in the flow, … we then use the names within a system of grammar so as to ‘reanimate them’ within an abstract notional ‘environment’ that is deemed to be separate from the name-defined ‘beings’.  This new abstract ‘container’ we impute ‘being’ to by ‘naming it’ the ‘environment’ is deemed to include many other named ‘beings’, implying the separate existence of ‘things-in-themselves and thus the separate existence of the container they reside in.

 

A whole new abstract ‘reality’ can be (and in Western culture ‘is’) cognitively constructed with language and grammar on this basis to re-render the dynamics of our natural experience, which, in the physical reality of our natural experience, in terms of relational forms in a transforming relational continuum, recasting them in an abstract ‘being-based’ cognitive representation, which now splits apart (cognitively) the relational forms in the transforming relational continuum, … into notional independent ‘things-in-themselves’ (being-based entities) that notionally reside within an absolute abstract containing frame called ‘space’ wherein the ‘position’ and ‘motion’ of these notional ‘things-in-themselves’ can be established by reference to purely abstract (absolute) space and time reference coordinates.

 

No matter that the ‘movement of a whorl within a flow’ is intuited as relational transformation of the flow, once we ‘name the whorl’, we impute ‘being’ or ‘persisting identity’ to the whorl so that the flow it is included in falls away (psychologically/cognitively) leaving the named being ‘on its own’ as if its continuing development and movements were self-sourced..  Language and grammar oblige us by giving us the means to firm up such artificial cognitive constructions, leaving behind in the dust our experience-affirmed physical reality in terms of a transforming relational continuum.

 

Of course, this whole ‘being-based’ pseudo-reality construction that eclipses the reality of our actual relational experience of inclusion within a transforming relational continuum stands or falls on a belief in the ‘reality’ of ‘being’ and this belief has been supported by the Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and (Newtonian) Science.  I have included ‘science’ as a religion since science, from the time of Newton, has been built on a psychological foundational belief in the ‘reality’ of ‘being’ (as in ‘material being’).  As Newton expressed this;

 

“It seems probable to me that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that these primitive particles being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first creation.” —Newton, cited in ‘the Tao of Physics’.

 

CONCLUSION:  ‘Laborit’s observation is on target’.

 

‘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’

 

In my own experience, the above comment by Laborit is very much on target.  The sort of thing being written about here doesn’t ‘fit’ with ‘what is cool’ in our Western society. Our society elevates in social status comments that are truthful, sincere, and brief and ‘to the point’ that ‘call a spade a spade’.  Our society, by the same token, reduces in social status comments that are rambling and seem to ‘beat around the bush’ (a sign of deviousness).  That is why, as David Suzuki points out, he has archives of film footage of comments by respected indigenous aboriginal elders that will ‘never be aired’ because the elders ‘ramble’ and ‘don’t make their points quickly and efficiently’ as is needed to keep the attention of Western television viewers.

 

The first focus in modern Western society is on ‘being’ or ‘what is’.  This tendency to cognitively orient to the ‘material being’ rather than to the poetic and therefore ‘essentially relational’ is common in Western society where one hears in male conversations; ‘does she have nice boobs, … and ‘does she go’, … more often than the poetic “Can she be compared to a summer’s day, … and is she more lovely and more temperate?’.  In other words, there has been a shift in values in Western culture coming out of the mythopoetic era from relational to material being based cognition; i.e. a shift to ‘calling a spade a spade’ and/or ‘to telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth‘ as in Western determinations of ‘Justice’ that pertain to ‘Crime and Punishment’.

But what is ‘truth’ when one makes the abstract assumption of the existence of ‘beings’ that are  imputed to be the jumpstart sources (sorcerors) of actions and consequences, ignoring the greater reality of humans as relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.  As Nietzsche reflects;

 

What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms — in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors – in moral terms, the obligation to lie according to fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all…

‘On Truth and Lie in an Extra-moral Sense’

 

Though ‘the Emperor’s new clothes’ have ‘worn down’ to reveal his ordinariness, the facade may linger on in the form of bowing and curtseying.  In the same way, the ‘belief’ in ‘being’ – based ‘truth’ in Western culture has elevated the cognitive notion of ‘being-authored dynamics’ to serve as ‘the operative reality’, supported by the cultural obligation to lie according to fixed convention.  ‘Being’ falls into this category of lying according to fixed convention.  A name has the power to ‘spin straw into gold’ as in the 4000 year old fable of Rumpelstiltskin, … or to transform a pauper into a prince.

 

“Heraclitus had declared ‘being’ a perpetual ‘becoming’ and had correlated the two concepts with his ‘hidden attunement.’ Now Parmenides declared the two to be mutually exclusive, and only ‘being’ to be real.” — ‘The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man’, — ‘Frankfort et al’

 

‘Being’ is NOT the foundation of primary (experience-based) reality, it is language-based abstraction.  Relational experience informs us of our inclusion within the transforming relational continuum.  The problem is that our ‘relational experience’ within the transforming relational continuum is beyond the capability of being-based expression because there is no ‘being’ in a transforming relational continuum.  While ‘naming imputes ‘being’, ‘being’ can only be used to infer the continual becoming of the relational world of our actual experience, hence the ‘surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ which uses being-based language as a throw away expedient or ‘Wittgenstein ladder’ to induce purely relational cognition.

 

Poetic usage is needed to capture the relational reality we are included in.

 

”Do not forget that a poem, although it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information. “ … “Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry.”  — “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language”– Wittgenstein

 

There is no way to speak directly; i.e. in being-based terms’, of a reality that is inherently relational as is the reality of our actual experience in a transforming relational continuum.  Our propositions as to ‘what is going on’, insofar as the language we use to compose such propositions is ‘being’ based, cannot be taken ‘literally’.  Being-based propositions are abstraction that can only allude to the relational reality they addressing.

 

“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” — Wittgenstein

 

Poetry is a linguistic device that can be used to allude to the relational reality that lies beyond being-based (named-thing-based) linguistic expression.  Poetry allows us to use names to construct purely relational cognition or ‘non-being’ dependent cognition as matches the relational world of our actual experience.  As David Bohm says, as applies to this comment on poetry, what we see as ‘beings in empty space’ are in physical reality relational forms in the transforming relational continuum (the plenum);

 

It is being suggested here, then, that what we perceive through the senses as empty space is actually the plenum, which is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves. The things that appear to our senses are derivative forms and their true meaning can be seen only when we consider the plenum, in which they are generated and sustained, and into which they must ultimately vanish.” — David Bohm

 

This is affirmed in modern physics generally;

 

In Newtonian and special relativistic physics, if we take away the dynamical entities – particles and fields – what remains is space and time. In general relativistic physics, if we take away the dynamical entities, nothing remains. The space and time of Newton and Minkowski are reinterpreted as a configuration of one of the fields, the gravitational field. This implies that physical entities – particles and fields – are not all immersed in space, and moving in time. They do not live on spacetime. They live, so to say, on one another. It is as if we had observed in the ocean many animals living on an island: animals ‘on’ the island. Then we discover that the island itself is in fact a great whale. Not anymore animals on the island, just animals on animals. Similarly, the universe is not made by fields on spacetime; it is made by fields on fields.”   — Carlo Rovelli, in ‘Quantum Gravity’

 

‘Fields’ are relational energy that manifests as fluid forms in fluid flow without having to invoke the abstract concept of ‘being’ [again, ‘being’ is an abstraction that we cognitively create by the psychological impact of ‘naming’ that suggests ‘persisting existence’].  ‘Fields’ as with fluid flow, have no dependency on ‘being’; i.e. ‘language’ is the source of ‘naming’ which induces the cognitive notion of ‘persisting existence’ aka ‘being’.  There is no such thing as ‘being’ in our real world relational experience as ‘being’ comes to us cognitively from language where we ‘name’ relational forms in the flow-continuum.  Our ‘literal’ cognition of being-based language can therefore be problematic and, as Bohm notes, the source of ‘incoherence’ in our social dynamic.

 

To discuss what’s wrong with our use of language, using the language that is problematic to explain what’s wrong, is a bit like trying to bite one’s own teeth or a dog attempting to bite his own tail.  One is forced to make the ‘Wittgenstein’ leap somewhere, from the use of being based words/names to the purely relational.  This has to be done within the cognitive dynamic of the listener/reader.  The speaker/writer cannot make it explicit, he can only infuse the relational basics to support the leap, it is up to the listener/reader to pick up the relational inference (poetic inference) and make the cognitive leap.  If the listener/reader persists in purely rational cognitive mode, the encoded relational understanding will be missed.

 

SUMMARIZING SCHOLIUM: WHY WESTERN SOCIETY CONTINUES TO OPERATE AS IF ‘BEING’ WERE ‘REAL’ RATHER THAN ‘ABSTRACTION’

In economics, as Brian Arthur pointed out, in nonlinear systems dynamics (the general case), there is not only the possibility of ‘sensitive dependence on initial conditions’ where the unfolding developments cannot be predicted from an intellectual analysis of the system, but also the understanding that there can be ‘lock-in’ where an overly simplistic understanding of the system (e.g. a natural dynamic) which delivers solutions that in turn source new problems.  The ‘lock-in’ derives from high ‘switching costs’.

In Brian Arthur’s 1989 paper, ‘Competing Technologies’, Increasing Returns and Lock-in by Historical Events, he states;

“A technology that by chance gains an early lead in adoption may eventually ‘corner the market’ of potential adopters, with the other technologies becoming locked out.”

This ‘lock-in’ phenomenon is evident in the case of the popular assumption of the ‘reality’ of ‘being’ as imputed by ‘naming’.  As in the case of economic lock-in, the ‘switching costs’ to revert to a more sensible approach can be prohibitive.

This seems to be where Western society finds itself today in regard to the ‘lock-in’ of the assumption of ‘being’.  As Nietzsche notes, the belief in being has inflated many egos as has been referred to in social folklore as ‘the Emperor’s new clothes’; i.e. the person who is ‘named’ as the ‘being’ responsible for some popularly acclaimed ‘invention’ or ‘turn of events’ is afflicted with ‘the Emperor’s new clothes’ syndrome, his/her ego having them believe that he/she is the jumpstart source of the highly regarded outcome or product.  But there can be no outcomes or products in the sense of ‘events-in-themselves’ or ‘things-in-themselves’ in a transforming relational continuum, everything is included in the ‘recycling continuum’ [eternal returns] of nature, so it is merely language  and grammar (naming and grammatically animating) that induces the cognitive impression of ‘new being’ that we associate with recycling forms in the flow.  A human baby is one of the most exquisite ‘products’ but it is not produced by humans, not in any jumpstart sense, since humans are relational forms in the transforming relational continuum (nature).

Laborit’s earlier-cited quote is essentially about the high ‘switching costs’ payable by current Western society, to overcome the ‘lock-in’ whereby Jantsch’s levels 3 and 2 being-based cognitive ‘realities’, based respectively on ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ have been put into an unnatural precedence over level 1 relational reality. So much has been invested in the constructing of this abstract, unnatural order as the popular  cognitive go-by (pseudo-reality) that the emotional switching costs are very high, as implied in Laborit’s (above) comment.

However, the costs accruing from the social dysfunction (relational incoherence — Bohm) that is spawned by this unnatural inversion of cognitive reality-level precedence continue to build, perhaps towards a ‘tipping point’.

The problem with the current popular ‘Western culture conception of ‘reality’ can be expressed with the help of the following observations;

 

1. ‘being’, ‘time’ and ‘space’ are all abstractions while physical reality is our experiencing of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

2. ‘naming’ conjures the abstraction of persisting ‘being’ that ‘masks’ continually transforming forms in the transforming relational continuum or ‘Tao’.

3. ‘movement’ or ‘motion’ is abstraction that is cognitively/semantically constructed in terms of ‘beings’ moving in ‘space’ over ‘time’.

4. ‘things moving’ is not ‘reality’ but language-based abstraction; likewise ‘things being born’ and ‘things dying’ is abstraction based on ‘naming’ as with hurricanes. all natural forms are relational features in the transforming relational continuum.  Relational forms never separate from the plenum.

5. ‘reality’ is our experiencing of inclusion within the transforming relational continuum wherein there is no ‘being’, no ‘time’ and no ‘space’.

6. ‘poetry’ is language-based ‘bootstrapping’ which uses names without anchoring them in ‘being’, ‘time’ and ‘space’.

 

* * *

 

The ‘being’, ‘time’ and ‘space’ language-based Western ‘scientific’ articulation of “reality” is not the reality of our relational experience, but an abstract language-based pseudo-reality that, insofar as we use it to guide our actions, is the source of ‘incoherence’ (Bohm).

For example, there is no such thing as ‘movement’ in the physical reality of our experience, there is only relational transforming.

Both ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ are popular Western reasoning concepts for explaining development and behaviour that are based on the abstraction of ‘being’ and the ‘movements’ of ‘beings’.  Where ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ are level 3 and 2 ‘realities’ in Erich Jantsch’s ‘Design for Evolution’, … level 1 is purely relational (‘beingless’) flow.

Western ‘reality’ (popularized by language-based abstraction as in television broadcasts, newspapers, internet discussions) … departs radically from the reality of our actual relational experience as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum.

For example, the five W’s of investigative journalism comes in here; i.e. it assumes point source origination of ’cause’ by the agency of ‘being’, in ‘space’ and ‘time’; i.e. the five w’s; — who (being); —where (space); — when (time);  —why (causal source), and what (‘event’), … reducing nonlocally unfolding relational transformation to notional emergent events emanating from point-sourcing-in-space-and-time.  This alternative means of understanding the dynamics of reality in an inside-outward and/or outside-inward manner is discussed, for example, by Ian Stewart in ‘The Collapse of Chaos’.  That is, while Western culture has opted for inquiry that delves down into the jumpstart source of unfolding events, it is also possible to examine the source of what unfolds as deriving from outside-inward induction, and then again, as emanating within the undifferentiated relational flow, which can be abstractly reduced to a basis in ‘being’, either in the sense of inside-outward asserting origination of ‘being’ as in ‘nature’ and/or  outside-inward inductive origin of origination of being as in ‘nurture’.  Both ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ assume the persisting existence aka ‘being’ of the unfolding/infolding development, rather than understanding developments NOT in the sense of ‘being’ but as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum; i.e. as ‘flow-features’, without cognitively according them ‘being’, as is implied when we ‘name’ them and thus impart (cognitively) persisting ‘being’ to them.

 

In summary, then, both nature and nurture are ‘being’-based understandings of the source of unfolding actions and developments which fall innately short of understanding actions in a relational [modern physics, indigenous aboriginal, Taoist sense.

(a)  ‘nature’ assumes that ‘being-based’ (‘thing-in-itself’-based) asserting is the source (genesis) of actions and developments, while ‘nurture’ assumes that development arises (‘comes into being’) from outside-inward inductive influence.  The ‘third’ understanding, which is captured in Erich Jantsch’s ‘Design for Evolution’ is where development is understood in the ‘beingless’ terms of a transforming relational continuum (the ‘Tao‘).

While the notional ‘being-based’ sourcing of developing forms; ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’, are brought into cognitive existence by ‘naming’ relational forms-in the-flow, thereby imputing persisting ‘being’ to them, … ‘poetry’, is a linguistic-cognitive approach that serves to bootstrap cognition in purely relational terms without having to ‘directly/explicitly name’ and thus impute ‘being’ to a relational form in the flow.  ‘Bootstrapping’ is described by modern physics researchers Geoffrey Chew and John Wheeler as ‘the surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ where a relational form is identified by relational references to other named forms, none of which ‘exists independent of the others’, all of which depend on their relations with one another, so that there none depend on the abstraction of ‘being’.

‘Reality’ or ‘the physical reality that comes to us through our relational experience’ is thus the nameless, beingless reality of  the Tao in which are included relational forms in the flow.   Poetic language allows us to speak and write of the beingless reality of nature using ‘names’ not to impute ‘being’ to the named things, but to use them as ‘Wittgenstein ladders to induce purely relational cognition.

 

The ‘lock-in’ phenomenon is evident in the case of the popular assumption of the ‘reality’ of ‘being’ as imputed by ‘naming’.  As in the case of economic lock-in, the ‘switching costs’  to revert to a more sensible approach can be prohibitive.

‘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’

* * *

 

Footnote:

 

A few months before his death, Bohm met with a number of Algonkian speakers and was struck by the perfect bridge between their language and worldview and his own exploratory philosophy. What to Bohm had been major breakthroughs in human thought — quantum theory, relativity, his implicate order and rheomode – were part of the everyday life and speech of the Blackfoot, Mic Maq, Cree and Ojibwaj.” – F. David Peat, ‘Blackfoot Physics’

 

 

PHILOSOPHICAL POINT OF NOTE: DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN PHENOMENA OF EXPERIENCE AND ABSTRACTION

 

As Zeno pointed out, ‘movement’ is an abstract intellectual concept and not a phenomenon that we directly experience.  The world as a transforming relational continuum is the world of our experience, whereas the world of ‘being’  and ‘the movement and interaction of beings’ is the product of our abstracting intellect.   We ‘feel’ (we physically experience) acceleration as associates with relational transformation in the flow (Tao), however, we do not ‘feel’ (we do not physically experience) movement.  ‘Movement’ is an abstract concept belonging to ‘intellection’ that employs language and grammar to ‘dumb down’ our experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum. The abstractions of ‘space’ and ‘time’ are enlisted together with the abstraction of ‘being’ to come up with the abstract concept of ‘movement’.   If one claims to have moved from New York to London or from a farm on the prairies to a mountain enclave, the physical reality is one of relational transformation; i.e. in the real world of our actual experience, New York is no longer the same New York when we move out and London is no longer the same London  when we move in.  It is ‘naming’ that gives us the abstract sense of ‘persisting being’.

There is only relational transformation in the real world of our actual experience.  The abstract concept of ‘movement’ requires the supportive abstract concepts of; …  ‘being’ (the persisting existence of that which is moving), … and,  ‘space’ (the abstract absolute framework or ‘coordinate system’ which allows us to specify ‘places’ absolutely, in the sense of the mutual exclusion of ‘here’ and ‘there’.   Once we buy into the abstraction of the ‘movement’ of ‘things-that-be’ within an abstract notional ‘reference frame called ‘space”, we can invoke the abstraction of ‘time’ as an ‘absolute’ measure of ‘duration’ that allows us to ‘say something’ about the difference we perceive in the movement of the tortoise and the hare that is entirely out of the context of relational transformation that is the ‘physical reality’ that we actually experience.

Nevertheless, it is obviously ‘incomplete’ to single out the ‘movement’ of a man from town A to town B without mentioning that the neighbour is now sleeping with the wife, or to say ‘the rock fell from the mountain without acknowledging that ‘the mountain’ is no longer ‘the same mountain’ since it now has a big hole in it that matches the size and shape of the rock that dropped out of it.  This points to the problem that ‘names’ and ‘naming’ imply persisting ‘being’ and the movement of ‘things-that-be’ which is pure abstraction that conflicts with our experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.

The point is that our experience, prior to our intellectual abstracting in terms of ‘movement’ of ‘beings’ in ‘space’ and ‘time’, is of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum aka ‘the Tao’.   In ‘The American Indian Model of the Universe‘ by Benjamin Lee Whorf, Whorf points out that the languages of the indigenous aboriginal cultures of North America do not employ Western concepts of space and time;

 

“It is possible to have descriptions of the universe, all equally valid, that do not contain our familiar contrasts of time and space.  The relativity viewpoint of modern physics is one such view, conceived in mathematical terms, and the Hopi Weltanschauung is another and quite different one, nonmathematical and linguistic.” — Benjamin Whorf

 Modern physics accords with the indigenous aboriginal (American Indian etc.) view of the universe as a transforming relational continuum.  As described above, there has been a cultural ‘lock-in’ to the imputing of ‘reality’ to the Western culture language-and-grammar based abstractions of ‘being’, ‘space’ and ‘time’.  The psychology of lock-in manifests within language and grammar using cultures, in the same general characteristic manner as with ‘lock-in’ to technologies, whereby one develops dependence on them in the manner that one depends on the wheels of one’s car which, if discovered to be seriously suboptimum, are difficult to ‘change out’  ‘on the fly’ (since they have become essential to one’s ongoing movements that are the means of making such changes).

“A technology that by chance gains an early lead in adoption may eventually ‘corner the market’ of potential adopters, with the other technologies becoming locked out.”

While the indigenous aboriginal languages are designed for evolution, as Erich Jantsch has described, and are thus amenable to expressing a reality based in relational transformation, the lock-in of a language based on the abstractions of ‘being’, ‘space’ and ‘time’ that is fundamentally ill-equipped for conveying cognitive impressions of one’s inclusion in a transforming relational continuum, puts the current dominant Western world culture in the position wherein “…  ‘switching costs’ to revert to a more sensible approach can be prohibitive’.

The ‘switching costs’ include dealing with those who have experienced elevation in their ‘social status’ on the basis of their superior skills in the locked-in cognitive paradigm.  As Henri Laborit observes, those who would act out of their ‘relational empathy’ to subsume the social dysfunction arising from lock-in’ to over-simplistic practice and who ‘make way’ for a more sensible and harmony-cultivating approach, are unlikely to find their actions well-received by those whose status has been elevated by having had a key role in developing and refining the locked-in practices.  That is, undoing the ‘lock-in’ ” … “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.” (Laborit) 

[Nota bene: While my language is ‘being’-based language (English), I am only expediently employing ‘being’-based grammar structures so as to ‘infer’ the relational understanding that is intended.  It is therefore necessary to heed Wittgenstein’s reminder;

”Do not forget that a poem, although it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information.“

That is to say, insofar as my rhetoric appears to ‘blame certain people’ for promoting non-poetic use of language, since my message is coming from relational (poetic) understanding, I am NOT playing the language game of ‘giving information’ but trying to share relational understanding that lies beyond the ‘being’-based grammatical structures of the English language. 

“In the book ‘Causality and Chance in Modern Physics’ Bohm argued that the way science viewed causality was also much too limited. Most effects were thought of as having only one or several causes. However, Bohm felt that an effect could have an infinite number of causes. For example, if you asked someone what caused Abraham Lincoln’s death, they might answer that it was the bullet in John Wilkes Booth’s gun. But a complete list of all the causes that contributed to Lincoln’s death would have to include all of the events that led to the development of the gun, all of the factors that caused Booth to want to kill Lincoln, all of the steps in the evolution of the human race that allowed for the development of a hand capable of holding a gun, and so on, and so on. Bohm conceded that most of the time one could ignore the vast cascade of causes that had led to any given effect, but he still felt it was important for scientists to remember that no single cause-and-effect relationship was ever really separate from the universe as a whole.”

What I am suggesting with the Bohm quote is also captured in the following quote from Wittgenstein;

“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” — Wittgenstein

That is the challenge in trying to capture, in being-based language, purely relational phenomena.  We say ‘Katrina devastated New Orleans’ just as we say ‘John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln’ as if such notional ‘being-based’ ’cause-effect’ statements ‘made sense’ as a means of ‘cognitively capturing reality’, but they do not capture the reality of our actual relational experience!

Again, this ‘Nota bene’ applies generally to my essays on this topic of ‘levels of reality’ (‘levels of consciousness’)]

 

So, here we are, with modern physics having opened the way for us to transition to a more natural and sensible (experience-grounded) way of understanding the relational dynamics of ourselves and the world we share inclusion in,,… butting up against the forces of cultural lock-in as defended by people and practices that have been made the pillars of Western community as it currently is.  Yes, the poets are still among us, but we are no longer in the mythopoetic era wherein the poets were at the apex of social/cultural influence.  We are currently deeply ensconced in the era of belief in ‘simple materialist science’ with its language-and-grammar based rhetorical ‘pseudo-realities’ fashioned from the intellectual abstractions of ‘being’, ‘space’ and ‘time’ that the culture has put into an unnatural primacy over the natural reality of our experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.

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.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

 

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F I N A L L Y   T H E  P E N N Y  H A S  D R O P P E D ! ! !

 

D o  y o u  k n o w  w h a t ‘ s  w r o n g  w i t h  N e w t o n ‘ s  L a w s  o f  M o t i o n ?

 – – – T h e r e  i s  n o  s u c h  e x p e r i e n c e a b l e  t h i n g  a s  ‘ m o t i o n ‘  a. k. a.  ‘ m o v e m e n t ‘ ! ! !

 

‘ N A T U R E ‘ S  D Y N A M I C  I S  T R A N S F O R M A T I O N ! ! ! 

… I T  I S  P U R E L Y  R E L A T I O N A L   T H U S  R E Q U I R I N G  P O E T I C  E X P R E S S I O N ! ! !

 

‘ B e i n g ‘  . . . ‘ S p a c e ‘ . . . a n d . . . ‘ T i m e ‘  a r e  a l l  u n r e a l ,  u n – e x p e r i e n c e a b l e  a b s t r a c t i o n s ! ! !

‘N a m i n g ‘  i s  t h e  s o u r c e  o f  a l l  ” b e i n g ”  

t h e  ‘n a m e d b e i n g’ =   ‘ a b s t r a c t  e n t i t y  p u r p o r t e d  t o  h a v e  ” p e r s i s t i n g  t h i n g – i n – i t s e l f  e x i s t e n c e” ! ! !

W e s t e r n  s c i e n t i f i c  ‘ r e a l i t y ‘  i s  . . .

a  l a n g u a g e – b a s e d  m i n d – g a m e  t h a t  e c l i p s e s  e x p e r i e n t i a l  ( r e l a t i o n a l )  u n d e r s t a n d i n g ! ! !

 

 

 

 

 

 

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