When will WESTERN CULTURE psychologists wake up to what is going on here?

“Reason” in language!—oh what a deceptive old witch it has been! I fear we shall never be rid of God, so long as we still believe in grammar.  – Nietzsche

Reason is also known as rationality because it is based on ‘RATIO’ and this supports the other bogus notion called GROWTH, a ‘reason’ based concept that does not exist in indigenous aboriginal cultures nor in modern physics

Intuition informs us that we earth-dwellers live in a curved space wherein, if the TOWN expands, the WILDERNESS contracts such that we can only legitimately speak of TRANSFORMATION of the LANDSCAPE rather than ‘GROWTH ‘ of the TOWN.

That’s what we get for living in a curved space.  If we were FLAT-LANDERS living on a notional flat plane of unlimited extent, the we could justifiably speak of the GROWTH of the TOWN and the GROWTH of its population and production etc.

But the REALITY is that we don’t live on a flat plane of unlimited extent and THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GROWTH, not even if you are talking about the changes in your child as she “GROWS” to adulthood.   If the population GROWS, the unoccupied space on the sphere of the earth reciprocally “SHRINKS” in conjugate relation.  In other words, there is TRANSFORMATION (more cows, less grazing space).  Our language lets us talk about the ‘more cows’ part without mentioning the ‘less grazing space’ even though the REALITY is that we live in a finite space where the available space SHIRINKS in conjugate relation to the GROWTH of its occupants.

So, as Heraclitus observed, you can’t GROW the same TOWN twice because it is not the same TOWN and the COUNTRYSIDE it is in conjugate relation with is NOT THE SAME COUNTRYSIDE.  Thus what is going on is not GROWTH but TRANSFORMATION.

WE GET FOOLED, HOWEVER, because our language has our mind conceive of the TOWN as being situated on a flat plane of infinite extent, in which case the GROWTH of the TOWN “IS” possible, and that is where the words RATIONAL and REASON come from because our WESTERN CULTURE languages support this kind of REASON-based talk because it is EASIER to PICTURE what we are saying.

If a farmer’s crop is struck with blight, we can say that the blighted area is GROWING larger, but if we are observing from the moon, it is like looking at a “rotten” spot on an apple that is, as all things in nature do, undergoing TRANSFORMATION.  But while it is “TRUE” (quote/unquote) that we can SEE  the rotten spot GROWING larger on the apple, it is EQUALLY EVIDENT that there is a conjugate SHRINKING of the healthy area, which GROWTH, being one-sided RATIO-based notion, says nothing about.

Evidently, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS employ plane-geometry-infused language that is suited for people living on a flat plane of infinite extent, but not so much for people living in a curved space as we actually do.   The need for a ‘wake-up call’ was the reason for why one our fellow WESTERN CLUTURE ADHERENTS, the English Schoolmaster Edwin Abbott, writing a book satirizing ourselves on this account called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884).

We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS read and enjoy the satire just as we read and enjoy the adventures of Robin Hood and Jean Valjean which make good sense in their moral critiques of our WESTERN CULTURE social dynamics, and we go to the movies and it makes us cry for them and their brave actions for which our society punishes them, and all others who attempt the same sort of ‘rebalancing’ outside ‘the system’.

GROWTH is an unreal, abstract concept that is based on RATIO and RATIONAL THOUGHT, that continues to be popular confused for reality in our WESTERN CULTURE so that we SUBSTITUTE GROWTH for TRANSFORMATION in our everyday rhetorical constructions of reality, and we have made GROWTH the basis of our ‘economy’ which is setting us up for a some disastrous consequences; i.e. is putting us on the proverbial ‘bus trip to hell’.

Here’s one example of a solitary writer ‘sounding the alarm’.

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.

He is ‘on target’ but the economic effects he is focusing on are only one aspect of our CRAZY-MAKING bus trip to hell (or at least to a heavy-duty wake-up call) due to belief in GROWTH and our blindness to TRANSFORMATION … BECAUSE WE ARE SUBSTITUTING GROWTH for TRANSFORMATION, as in the example ‘the TOWN is GROWING’!  NO ITS NOT! … The LANDSCAPE IS TRANSFORMING, …. i.e. LETS NOT FORGET TO ACKNOWLEDGE that in the spherical space we live in, as the industrialized area GROWS, the Wilderness SHRINKS in conjugate relation which boils down to TRANSFORMATION of the overall LANDSCAPE.

This is why we can rightfully say that ‘there is no such thing as GROWTH’.  GROWTH is a RATIO-based concept which implies the existence of LOCAL things-in-themselves which reside in an absolute space of infinite extent, wherein they can GROW in the sense of RATIO based increase in an assumed LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF.   Language allows us to say ‘the DUNE is growing larger and taller’ as if the DUNE is the LOCAL SOURCE of its own actions and development.  This is the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR that Nietzsche points out is us using REASON that screws up our own understanding, and pushing INTUITION out of the “PICTURE”.

Our INTUITION informs us that GROWTH is NOT REAL.  Our INTUITION informs us that “The GROWTH” of the sand DUNE is simply APPEARANCE and the physical reality is TRANSFORMATION as associates with “DUNING” which is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT as is the nature of RESONANCE as in the dynamics of the Wave-field aka the Tao.

WHY USE “GROWTH”?

It’s a matter of the ease of formulating language to deliver REPRESENTATIONS of reality; i.e. it’s much easier to use GROWTH than TRANSFORMATION because GROWTH is LOCAL and it is RATIO based which makes it a ONE-SIDED thing where we need speak only to FIGURE (the GROWTH of the FIGURE) as if the FIGURE and GROUND were TWO separate things; e.g. as if the DUNE and the DESERT were TWO separate things.

THE PHYSICAL REALITY is that FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE so that DUNING is the reality and it is TRANSFORMATION associated with relational resonance which is UNBOUNDED IN SPACETIME.  In other words, as Lao Tzu says and as modern physics reaffirms; ‘The TAO that can be told is not THE TRUE TAO”.  Sure, we can speak of “THE DUNE” but it is impossible to capture, in a finite number of words, “DUNING” which associates with resonance that includes influences from moon and stars and universe.

NO PROBLEM, we have INTUITION that can bring us understanding of being included in a world of resonance.  In fact, a common translation of the indigenous aboriginal language based expression of the universe is ‘the GREAT HARMONY’.  Unfortunately our own language is based on the BINARY LOGIC of MATERIAL CONTENTS and EMPTY CONTAINER, … that is why modern physics pioneers like David Bohm saw the need to develop a FLOW-based language;

What is needed, Bohm argued in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, is a new sort of language, one based on processes and activity, transformation and change, rather than on the interactions of stable objects. Bohm called this hypothetical language the “rheomode.” It is based primarily on verbs and on grammatical structures deriving from verbs. Such a language, Bohm argued, is perfectly adapted to a reality of enfolding and unfolding matter and thought.

 David Bohm had not known when he wrote of that concept that such a language is not just a physicist’s hypothesis. It actually exists. The language of the Algonquin peoples was developed by the ancestors specifically to deal with subtle matters of reality, society, thought, and spirituality.

 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’

 

The point is that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “GROWTH” in the physical reality of our sensory experience.  GROWTH is a word that keys to the ABSTRACTION of RATIO which is the basis of REASON and RATIONALITY which we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have elevated to GOD-LIKE STATUS, which is the point made by Nietzsche quote critiquing REASON that I began this commentary with.

GROWTH is a RATIO-based concept which allows us to reduce reality that is NONLOCAL to a SUBSTITUTE REALITY that is LOCAL, … i.e. that we visualize as being LOCAL which gives us ‘the DUNE’ which is ‘GROWING larger and taller and is shifting towards the coast’ etc. etc.   We just REDUCED what we know from experience is a resonance feature; i.e. when we walk in the wind-blown sand, we notice how the sand gathers in the quieter spots and is dispersed in the exposed windy places setting up a resonance based scattering-gathering as Heraclitus talks about.

FOR US TO SAY; ‘THE DUNE IS GROWING LARGER AND HIGHER AND IS SHIFTING TOWARDS THE COAST is, as Nietzsche points out, a DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.  We use the tool of language (NAMING AND GRAMMAR) to psychologically CHOP UP the ongoing resonance which is innately NONLOCAL and RELATIONAL (implicit) and re-cast it in language, in representations featuring forms that are LOCAL and EXPLICIT such as ‘the DUNE’.  This is great for EFFABLE-IZING the INEFFABLE, so long as we remember that this language is good only for INFERRING the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT fluid reality; i.e. the TRANSFORMING landscape.

As EMERSON points out, “The tool runs away with the workman, the human with the divine”.   We can understand ourselves as A NON-PICTURABLE HUMANING, in the same manner as we can understand what we call ‘the DUNE” as a NON-PICTURABLE DUNING, a form within the resonance-based LANDSCAPE continuum.  Likewise, we can understand ‘TOWNING’ in the ‘LANDSCAPING’ continuum consistent with the NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT nature of TRANSFORMATION, in place of ‘the TOWN’.

CONCLUSION:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GROWTH IN OUR REAL-LIFE SENSORY EXPERIENCE.  The reality of our sensory experience is of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.  While language is used to ‘break this down into parts’ and present us with a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein we employ abstract concepts such as GROWTH, this SUBSTITUTE REALITY is only good for INFERENCE of the INEFFABLE-BECAUSE-NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT reality of the transforming relational continuum.

In a transforming relational continuum, there is nothing LOCAL and everything is in flux which we can understand intuitively, but it is difficult to put into language so that we can share our experiences of inclusion in the flow.  Language supplies us with a tool in this regard, and the design of this tool is one of the things that splits EAST and WEST because the EAST employs language wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND are intended as ONE as in the Tai-Chi symbol of yin/yang which implies quantum BOTH/AND logic of the INCLUDED medium while the WEST employs language wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO as in the BINARY LOGIC of EITHER ‘IS’ OR ‘IS NOT’.

When one regards DUNE and DESERT as TWO, as in the WEST, then we understand that the DUNE moves across the DESERT and the DUNE GROWS LARGER and LONGER etc.

When one regards DUNE and DESERT as ONE as in ‘DUNING’ as a resonance phenomenon as in the EAST, the we understand that everything is related (mitakuye – oyasin) such that ‘DUNING’ is a relational feature within the transforming relational continuum.

Indigenous aboriginals can, for sure, learn and use English as well, and speak in terms of ‘the DUNE is GROWING larger and longer’ etc. but such talk is regarded only as INFERENCE of the Wave-field reality (the transforming relational continuum) and is not employed as a SUBSTITUTE REALITY as in our WESTERN CULTURE way of thinking wherein GROWTH is considered REAL, hence, while the WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT will listen to the words ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ and SEE THE PICTURE IN HIS MIND of the TOWN SPREADING OUT ACROSS THE VALLEY, … the EASTERN CULTURE ADHERENT, in hearing those same words, would INTUIT A TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.

Now that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have developed a GROWTH-based ECONOMY (along with a lot of other screw-ups in treating GROWTH as something REAL), we are putting ourselves on the proverbial ‘bus trip to hell’ in that we are going to have to come to grips with the reality that GROWTH is RATIO-based abstraction and that what is REALLY GOING ON is TRANSFORMATION.

When the WAKE-UP arrives, the EAST-WEST divide will be on the path to healing, along with a lot of other harmony restoring developments.

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