Rip van Winkle, Max Planck, and Political Correctness

There is never GROWTH without conjugate DECLINE because Reality is

TRANSFORMATION

Does the metaphor “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” capture our social scene where political correctness abounds?  I should say; ‘our WESTERN CULTURE social scene’ because the indigenous aboriginal culture, for example, does not embrace this ‘political correctness’.  In the WEST, observations such as the following by Max Planck do seem to prevail;

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.”

There is also the story of Rip van Winkle and in the case of ‘political correctness’, many of us have had the experience of ‘waking up’ to the fact that ‘things have changed’.  For example our years of managing to drive safely WITHOUT SEAT BELTS have now been superseded by the powerful force of ‘political correctness’ that is poised to ‘tar and feather’ those who continue to practice behaviours that were perfectly ‘normal’ and socially accepted on a ‘that’s life’ kind of basis.

“Flirting” was one of those things, but as a Saturday Night Live satire points out, a male had better be handsome and confident in order to pull off ‘flirting’ without his face slapped or having the police called to arrest him.

So Planck’s observation on how scientific understanding changes, is pretty much on target for how social-relational understanding changes.

The ‘Rip van Winkle’ who cares deeply for others and has cultivated his driving skills to protect the safety of children when they are passengers in his vehicle, may be surprised if he ‘wakes up’ in a new era where he is regarded as a nasty criminal because, in the interim, seat-belt technology has arrived and laws have been passed criminalizing those who drive without ensuring that both passenger and driver are secured by seat belts.

What I am trying to bring forth for consideration here is this WESTERN CULTURE JUDGEMENTAL ATTITUDE termed POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.

The point is that we live in a TRANSFORMING social relational dynamic where the acquired behaviours of yesterday no longer satisfy todays JUDGEMENTS of CORRECT BEHAVIOUR.  Vehicle operating protocols and male-female relating are cases in point.  With respect to the latter, ‘flirting’, is dangerous ground for males (no problem for females), and all the moreso if one does NOT have the projection of handsomeness, coolness and desirability.  That is, the very same ‘overt flirting moves’ that charm the female when coming from the handsome and desirable-APPEARING male may go over like a lead balloon when coming from the plain and not-so-desirable-APPEARING male.

What ‘right’ does the ugly male have to approach a girl in a flirty manner?

What ‘right’ does the handsome male have to approach a girl in a flirty manner?’

Saturday Night Live gets laughs from its skit because of the obvious DOUBLE STANDARD in judging males on the dynamic of FLIRTING.

Compounding complications come into play in medical situations wherein a lot of boundaries are set aside with respect to closeness and touch where it may make sense to clarify that these relaxations of social distancing are purely out of necessity in enabling a medical procedure and do NOT as they might otherwise be interpreted, signify a general endorsement of greater intimacy.

The reality is that it DOES HAPPEN that males form relationships with nurses that have helped them through some difficulty and they get married and have children and live happily ever after.

WHAT AM I EXPLORING HERE?

My exploration is actually into the difference between WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT behaviour and EASTERN CULTURE ADHERENT behaviour, the latter being in accord with MODERN PHYSICS in the sense of acknowledging REALITY as inclusion in TRANSFORMATION.   Meanwhile, the REALITY of us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS is language-based and is in terms of the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.   Different REALITIES lead to the cultivating of different SOCIAL BEHAVIOURS.

In the examples just given, there is a question regarding INTELLECTUAL RULES THAT GOVERN BEHAVIOUR and SENSORY EXPERIENCE BASED INTUITION OF RELATIONAL HARMONY/DISSONANCE which is ‘more basic’ than INTELLECTUAL RULES, the latter being RIGID and FIXED and as some say ‘made to be broken’.

The case of Rip-van-Winkle and the advent of compulsory wearing of seat-belts is exemplary of a shift OUT OF SENSORY EXPERIENCE BASED INTUITION of RELATIONAL HARMONY/DISSONANCE, to INTELLECTUAL RULES THAT GOVERN BEHAVIOUR.

Old Rip-van Winkle might have noticed, when he got rudely hit by a POLICE-issued fine for not wearing a seat-belt, that this was no ISOLATED CHANGE, but that there was a whole CASCADING TSUNAMI of shifts away from the INTUITIVE towards the EXPLICITLY GOVERNED.

The new POLITICALLY CORRECT mode of DRIVING banished INTUITION to a background role.  Like the hockey players who had started wearing helmets to protect themselves from head injuries, there was instead an increase in head injuries as players presumed their invincibility with the new protective gear, and set aside their INTUITION of how to move so as to avoid injuring and being injured.

WHAT CAN WE SAY ABOUT THIS SHIFT WITHIN WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENCE FROM THE INTUITIVE AND IMPLICIT TO THE RATIONAL AND EXPLICIT?

FIRST AND FOREMOST, WE COULD ACKNOWLEDGE THAT IT IS HAPPENING! E.g. we are moving from handshakes to 20 page contracts.

The rational-intellectual is TAKING OVER in the reshaping of our relational social dynamics.  IS THIS A GOOD OR BAD THING?

The very QUESTION is formulated in BINARY LOGIC terms which is where our WESTERN CULTURE SOCIETY has been heading (and continues to head).  The concept of LOCAL SOURCING is ‘secured’ by the EGO based concept of the LOCAL SOURCING of EXPLICIT GOOD ACTS and the LOCAL SOURCING of EXPLICIT BAD ACTS which are reductive binary SUBSTITUTES for the relational concepts of HARMONY and DISSONANCE which are inherently NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT

That our INTUITION is informed by our sensory experience is a natural state of affairs.  Sensory experience is conditioned by our INTUITION is a natural state of affairs.  RATIONAL INTELLECTION is something LESSER as BOHM, Krishnamurti and others have pointed out.

Nietzsche, also, has pointed out that LANGUAGE which stimulates our RATIONAL INTELLECTION whereas SENSORY EXPERIENCE stimulates our INTUITION, gives us a REDUCED version of REALITY; i.e., a SUBSTITUTE REALITY as in the example ‘The TOWN is GROWING’ which OBSCURES the REAL REALITY of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.

 NOTA BENE: TRANSFORMATION is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT (it is ‘everywhere at the same time’ as is the nature of the Wave-field dynamic).

The RATIO-based SUBSTITUTE REALITY, because it is EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT has become the basis of our WESTERN CULTURE language-based discourse.

THE EAST DOES NOT GIVE SUCH A BASIC FOUNDATIONAL ROLE TO RATIO.

In other words, our WESTERN RATIO-nal constructs such as ‘the TOWN is GROWING larger and more populous and productive’, lead our psyches into a RATIONAL REALITY which SUBSTITUTES for the NON-RATIONAL inclusion in the transforming relational continuum, and in the process give us something that is LOCAL and EXPLICIT.

This ‘makes sense’ from the point of view of opening up a language based channel of communication which is NOT POSSIBLE WITHOUT REDUCING OUR SENSORY EXPERIENCE OF INCLUSION IN THE WAVE-FIELD, by way of constructing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY which, unlike the former, is articulable (representable in language) in LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT terms.

BUT LET’S NOT FORGET THAT THIS “SUBSTITUTE REALITY” WHICH IS IN LOCAL AND EXPLICIT TERMS (e.g. ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ larger and more populous and productive) is NOT the reality of our sensory experience, this latter being INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT as is the nature of flow as in the Wave-field aka the Tao.

IN OTHER WORDS, “THE LANDSCAPE IS TRANSFORMING” is the REAL REALITY regardless of the fact that it is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT and thus INEFFABLE.

OK, NOW BACK TO POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.

We have more than one way of UNDERSTANDING REALITY.

-1- We have INTUITION which is capable of understanding ‘TOWNING’ in terms of it being intrinsically included in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.  This is a reality wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE as where everything is in flux.

-2- We have RATIO based INTELLECTION which gives us the capability of understanding things in an abstract LOCAL sense by way of language and the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR, where the TOWNING, which is, IN REALITY, a purely relational dynamic within the transforming relational continuum, because RECAST IN A SUBSTITUTE REALITY as a notional LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF, notionally with ITS OWN POWER OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT.  This NAMING and GRAMMAR “IS” the “DOUBLE ERROR” pointed out by Nietzsche.

-1- and -2- taken together, illustrate how the NONLOCALITY of our sensory experience reality is REMOVED AND REPLACED BY A SUBSTITUTE REALITY.  This is done with LANGUAGE by (FIRST ERROR) NAMING a relational FORMING such as a TOWNING-in-the-TRANSFORMING-landscape, and conflating this FIRST ERROR with the SECOND ERROF of GRAMMAR which imputes the power of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and development to the NAMING-instantiated LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF (FIRST ERROR).

Thanks to the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR the REALITY of the TOWNING in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE (which is ineffable-because-nonlocal and-implicit) is REPLACED by an EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT SUBSTITUTE REALITY which is LOCAL and EXPLICIT.

With this DOUBLE ERROR, we equip ourselves to SWITCH HORSES and move into a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein ‘The TOWN’ is no longer a relational feature in the flow of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE, but is instead a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF with its own (notional) powers of SOURCING and DEVELOPMENT.

WHAT’s THIS SUBSTITUTE REALITY stuff GOT TO DO WITH POLITICAL CORRECTNESS and the story of Rip van Winkle?

Rip van Winkle ‘going to sleep’ inferred that he was not keeping track of the ongoing TRANSFORMATION of the world he was included in, so that he experienced a DISCONNECT on waking up in a world which was continually undergoing transformation, not only of the overall spatial relational continuum, but also in the social behavioural customs.  Formerly acceptable behaviours within the social collective were no longer acceptable and new, replacement behaviours had to be learned.

But this social-behavioural transformation was not INTUITIVE like the need to fashion new clothes as TRANSFORMATION brought with it colder winters or warmer summers.  While INTUITION related to inclusion in the TRANSFORMING dynamics of Nature, RATIO-NAL intellection was called upon to make changes demanded by SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION.

Male-female-social-relational protocols that were RATIONAL INTELLECTION based had been changing while Rip van Winkle had slept; i.e. it was not just new technology related change such as wearing seat-belts.

The fact that the ‘handsome guy’ could get away with being ‘flirty’ while the plain guy had to ‘play by the rules’ invoked a ‘double standard’ that, in one sense, called up the ‘intuition’ which the rule-ordered behaviour had ‘laid to rest’.

For aggressive males, one could bypass intuition and just ‘try on’ an assertive behaviour so see it got an affirming response.  According to the changing social norms, this ‘trying it on’ was not supposed to be attempted in some social situations such as visits to the doctor.  This, of course, put RATIONAL intellection into an unnatural precedence over INTUITIVE intellection.

While the way of the EAST was to continue to develop intuition based social-behavioural-practice, the WEST has been steadily moving towards transferring social-behavioural practice from intuitive governance to intellectual governance.  That’s why Rip van Winkle was ‘shocked’ to be accused of not having the children’s interests at heart by driving them around without them wearing seat-belts.

Like the hockey play who checked his opponent ‘into the boards head first’, he felt he had licence to do this since his opponent was wearing an approved safety helmet which shifted responsibility for the protection from head injuries from the players to their equipment.   Of course, the protection given by wearing the helmet did not guarantee against broken necks and other such subtleties which are available where human intuition is concerned, but the relational sensitivity of intuition is removed where there is a mechanical substitution to ensure safety.

CAN YOU SEE THE GENERAL PATTERN HERE?

THE GENERAL PATTERN IS THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE RATIONAL FOR THE INTUITIVE.

IT IS A WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENCE BASED PROGRESSION.

Soon we will have automatic braking on our motor vehicles.

Like hockey player helmets, this will remove dependence on INTUITION as to whether a move could injure another or not, so that one can just HIT the other player and trust that his protective gear will indeed ‘protect’ him.

Should he ‘chat up’ that girl or not?  Is he or she open to a full-blown relationship or just a physical encounter?  Do they/we know? Can they/we limit their/our own involvement?

HOW FAR DO WE GO IN SUBSTITUTING the RATIONAL for the INTUITIVE in our social relations? Is this a culture-variant balancing?

MY TAKE IS THAT WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS ARE ELEVATING THE ROLE OF THE RATIONAL BY WAY OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF ‘SUBTITUTE REALITIES’.

In order that we can see ‘the TOWN GROWING’ we have to ‘let go’ of the LANDSCAPE TRANSFORMING (wherein there is ‘TOWNING’ which is a reality that is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT, unlike ‘the TOWN GROWING’ which is a SUBSTITUTE REALITY which is LOCAL and EXPLICIT’).

* * *

SUMMARY:

The above is simply an exploration of the conceptualizing shift that is underway in our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENCY.  What we are calling ‘POLITICAL CORRECTNESS” is just one ARTIFACT of our shift AWAY FROM INTUITION OF TRANSFORMATION to RATIONAL INTELLECTION via DOUBLE ERROR based SUBSTITUTE REALITY CONSTRUCTIONS.  For example, TOWNING is a relational dynamic within the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka ‘the Tao’.  It is like boil-bubble in the transforming fluid dynamic we call boiling wherein EXTRUSION and SUBDUCTION and conjugate aspects of he one dynamic of TRANSFORMATION.

Our talk in terms of ‘the TOWN’ and ‘its growth and its production and development’ is INFORMATIVE, but in the manner of an INFORMATIVE SUBSTITUTE REALITY which we can use for INFERENCE of the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT dynamic of TRANSFORMATION which includes the Landscape, the TOWN and the whole ball of wax (transforming relational continuum).

Our RATIONAL-INTELLECTUAL understanding of ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ could be triggered by play a board-game (CONSTRUCT YOUR OWN TOWN) in the lounge while on the Titanic.  We could put the little pieces of lumber together and fasten the roof on top and if it were a big enough game, we could even ‘occupy the Town’, which might consume the space on an entire deck of the Titanic.

GROWTH of the TOWN seems real enough in this case, and our role in SOURCING the construction of the TOWN also seems clear.  But the shudders as we graze the hidden toots of the icebergs we are passing by SEEM STRANGE in that they are foreign to the SUBSTITUTE REALITY we are constructing,

Are we REALLY capable of CONSTRUCTING A TOWN?  OR, ARE WE INCLUDED IN THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM together with the TOWN we claim to be CONSTRUCTING, such that ‘THE TOWN’ only exists within a mental SUBSTITUTE REALITY?

If I walk down the main street in the TOWN, I can stop off in the pool hall and have a game of pool and all of that seems real enough.  But when the big earthquake comes, it speaks of that larger dynamic world that seems to suggest that what I am operating in, in ‘the TOWN’ is AN INTELLECTUAL SUBSTITUTE REALITY which is being exposed as something less that the REAL REALITY by FORCES OF TRANSFORMATION WHICH INCLUDE THE SUBSTITUTE REALITY THAT WE TALK ABOUT AS IF IT WERE “REAL” ; i.e. the pseudo-reality of the TOWN that is GROWING larger and more populous and productive.

So, it seems clear that THE TOWN  is an element within a SUBSTITUTE REALITY that we conjure up with language and grammar (the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR) and we see this TOWN as either GROWING or SHRINKING or DECAYING or etc. BUT WE CAN’T SEE THE TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE FOR THE GROWING TOWN, because the concept of GROWTH is an absolute concept as applies to a notional (naming-instantiated) abstract LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF.

Is my VISION LYING TO ME?  IS THERE A TOWN THERE THAT IS GROWING, OR NOT?

Maybe my LANGUAGE is LYING to me.

In the realm of sensory experience reality, there is relational transformation and thus there is TOWNING within the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE within the transforming relational continuum.

As Nietzsche points out, it is ‘thanks to’ the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR that we construct in the intellect a SUBSTITUTE REALITY as a SPACE in which we can position things such as ‘the TOWN’. This ‘SPACE’ is imaginary and serves as a holder of notionally ‘real’ things such as ‘the TOWN’, but since the ‘SPACE’ is imaginary, the TOWN that depends for its existence on being in that space must also be, in some sense, imaginary.

The ‘imaginary’ aspect is that it is no longer undergoing continuing transformation as when it is a TOWNING in the TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM.  We have to imagine that PEOPLE are CONSTRUCTING this TOWN and that, what with fires and floods, it is a bit like building a town out of sand on a tidal sandbar.

What keeps it form ‘meltdown’ even as we are saying we are constructing it, is the relative persistence in the mind of language-based impressions.  If the sand-castle town we built is reduced by the incoming tide to a few flattened curvy bulges in the sand, we may still point to it and say that ‘that’s the town of Pleasantville’.

So, at what point does TRANSFORMATION have to advance to RECLAIM its reality from the SUBSTITUTE REALITY imposed by NAMING and GRAMMAR?

That is a question for the MIND to answer since, for example, the name POLAND hung around for a long while when there was no physical ground designated as POLAND.  It was for some centuries existing only as a NAME like the NAME CAMELOT in the legend of King Arthur.  In this sense, the NAME is a place-marker in support of a story-telling.  It doesn’t have to be REAL, it just serves as a base for holding streets and homes etc. that serve as ‘props’ and ‘setting’ for constructing a language-based SUBSTITUTE REALITY.

That’s why, when we say ‘the TOWN is GROWING’, we are not dealing with the reality of our sensory experience but only with DOUBLE ERROR based intellectual representations.

YES, THE TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE of our sensory experience, REMAINS THE ‘REAL’ REALITY while the TOWN that GROWS implies an absolute ‘containing space’ that does not participate in the GROWTH of the TOWN.   This imputed ABSOLUTE SPACE is and expedient ABSTRACTION that makes LOCAL GROWTH possible, and LOCAL GROWTH allows us to bypass the problem of the limitations of language wherein language cannot capture formings in a continuing flux wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE as in the Wave-field.

So, we have developed language capable of constructing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO, such that we can SPEAK OF ‘the FIGURE’ moving about in, and growing within, ‘the GROUND’

THAT SOLVES THE PROBLEM of the ineffable character of the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE Wave-field reality wherein there must be a conjugate SHRINKAGE of the GROUND in relation to the GROWTH of the FIGURE.

INTELECTUALLY (i.e. ABSTRACTLY) liberating the FIGURE from its inclusion in the GROUND and giving the FIGURE its own powers of ACTION and GROWTH with GRAMMAR fashions for us a SUBSTITUTE REALITY that is EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT; e.g. ‘the TOWN is GROWING’.

* * *

The DOUBLE ERROR is a COOL TRICK and a different approach than that taken by indigenous aboriginal cultures who opted for a relational language that avoided hard dependency on absolute beings (‘Dances with Wolves’ in place of ‘John Dunbar’).

The only problem is that we must not forget that ‘the NAME is NOT designating a THING-IN-ITSELF’ as it may seem’.   For example, the NAME KATRINA given to a relational form in the flow (a Hurricane) coupled with GRAMMAR, infers the LOCAL SOURCING of actions and development of the NAMED THING-IN-ITSELF but in reality there is no such thing, there is only relational TRANSFORMATION in which the relational form termed ‘KATRINA’ is included.  This is what makes REALITY INEFFABLE since TRANSFORMTION is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT.

THE WEST has developed a ‘work-around’ based on constructing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR as in ‘the TOWN is GROWING’.

The EAST has developed a ‘work-around’ based on constructing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY based relational webs as in a SHARING CIRCLE wherein the participants share their heartfelt (sensory) experiences, which, when brought into connective confluence, gives a sense of reality in a holographic context. This SUBSTITUTE REALITY is NOT PICTURABLE since it comes as a sense of awareness of inclusion within it.  This preserves the primacy of INCLUSION in TRANSFORMATION such that the GROWTH of the TOWN would only be seen in the relational context of a TOWNING within the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.

Note that the HOLOGRAPHIC awareness of INCLUSION in the transforming relational continuum stimulated by the indigenous aboriginal SHARING CIRCLE is not something that can be explicitly articulated, but can only be inferred through relational articulations that develop webs of relations that we can INTUITIVELY draw understanding from.

* * * TO CONCLUDE:

The title of this commentary; Rip van Winkle, Max Planck, and Political Correctness seeks to bring three differing understandings into connective confluence.  The Rip van Winkle inference reminds us how we live within a TRANSFORMING reality which is known by us INTUITIVELY but which is continually being reduced to language-based RATIONAL-INTELLECTUAL SUBSTITUTE REALITIES; e.g. TOWNING involves continual ‘arrival and departure’ whether horizontally (gathering and scattering) or vertically (birthing and dying) and is thus a RESONANCE FEATURE, while statements such as ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ impute LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments.

The Rip van Winkle reference alludes to how we are continually INTELLECTUALLY UPDATING our popular conceptualizations and associated value systems.

The Max Planck citation alludes to how society’s understanding of reality is particular to one’s situational experience which is very different for those arriving and departing into differing situations (eras, geographic locations etc.).

The Political Correctness inference refers to the WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT belief in relational formings in the TRANSFORMATION such as TOWNINGS and HUMANINGS, in the ‘reduced-to-language’ by way of the DOUBLE ERROR approach of NAMING and GRAMMAR which constructs a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein ‘the TOWN’ and ‘the HUMAN’ are represented as LOCAL, NAMING-instantiated THINGS-in-THEMSELVES, notionally with their own GRAMMAR-given powers of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments.

While the notion of NAMING-instantiated “LOCAL BEINGS” with their own (GRAMMAR-given) powers of “LOCAL SOURCING” is intellectual abstraction used to construct a SUBSTITUTE REALITY, this SUBSTITUTE REALITY is being deployed by us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS as our OPERATIVE REALITY.

This is where the Conservative-Liberal polar split is coming from and the rising incarcerations of “CRIMINALS”.  These “CRIMINALS” are understood to be LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES with their own POWERS of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments, … that are ‘maybe-good, maybe-bad’. 

For example, yesterday’s “Oil Finding Hero” is today’s “Pollution-promoting Villain”.

In REALITY, there is no such thing as LOCAL SOURCING, there is only TRANSFORMATION which, because it is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT, led us to invent an EFFABLE-because-LOCAL and EXPLICATE SUBSTITUTE REALITY as a ‘go-by’ to allows us to use language to INFER the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-EXPLICIT (the transforming relational continuum).

We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are now infusing dysfunction into our social-environmental dynamics because we are using this SUBSTITURE REALITY as our OPERATIVE REALITY.

“The TOWN IS GROWING” is a lie.  The reality is that “The LANDSCAPE IS TRANSFORMING”.

How much trouble can this deployment of the lie as if it were reality get us into?

By orienting to GROWTH when what is really going on is TRANSFORMATION is having us convert land to agricultural mono-culture and to industrial complexes without taking into account the CONJUGATE REDUCTION of the Wilderness.  That is, GROWTH is not REAL, the reality is TRANSFORMATION wherein the RATIO-NAL concept of GROWTH blinds us to the CONJUGATE reality of the REDUCTION of Wilderness.  GROWTH is a FLAT-EARTH based ABSTRACTION.  That is, as Bohm has pointed out, and also Nietzsche, what RATIONALITY and REASON delivers as REALITY.

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.

The ‘BOTTOM LINE’ is that GROWTH is an artificial concept that allows us to bypass the fact that TRANSFORMATION is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT.   GROWTH is abstraction, but it is is EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT and it serves as a ‘cover’ for TRANSFORMATION.

GROWTH is EFFABLE because it is only ONE SIDE of TRANSFORMATION (EXTRUSION) and the OTHER SIDE, SUBDUCTION, goes ‘missing in action’ when we employ the concept of GROWTH AS IF IT WERE REAL.  But the PHANTOM CONJUGATE of LOSS is always lurking in the shadow.  SOMETHING GOES MISSING WITH THE GROWTH OF THE TOWN, BECAUSE THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ‘GROWTH’, THERE IS ONLY TRANSFORMATION, BUT WHAT IS IT THAT ‘GOES MISSING’?  The Wilderness?

The volcanic EXTRUSION implies a conjugate SUBDUCTION but we DON’T SEE IT because it is the COMPLEX CONJUGATE of EXTRUSION, and the EXTRUSION is not LOCALLY SOURCED and neither is the SUBDUCTION LOCALLY CONSUMED.  These TWO are conjugate aspects of the one dynamic of TRANSFORMATION.

In other words, NEITHER EXTRUSION NOR SUBDUCTION ARE REAL, … TRANSFORMATION IS REAL.   That is, NEITHER GROWTH NOR SHRINKAGE (DECLINE) ARE REAL. TRANSFORMATION IS REAL.

However, TRANSFORMATION is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT.

We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, by pursuing what we say is GROWTH, are instead stirring up TRANSFORMATION. That is what Richard Heinberg is alluding to in his above quote.

But GROWTH is presumed REAL by the RATIO-NAL intellect and inflates the EGO  in its belief in LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments.  ‘GROWTH’ is the ARCHETYPE of ‘LOCAL SOURCING’.  TRANSFORMATION is the REALITY.

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APPENDIX:

SUBSTITUTE REALITY THAT IS EFFABLE CAN  BE BUILT IN TWO WAYS: EAST and WEST

It is impossible to capture the REALITY of our actual sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum (‘Wave-field’, ‘the Tao’) in words (language) since the reality is that ‘everything is in continuing flux’, as Heraclitus and Modern physics have pointed out.

Thus, our language based REPRESENTATIONS are not really REPRESENTATIONS OF REALITY, they are REPRESENTATIONS OF AN EFFABLE SUBSTITUTE REALITY, and there are two main approaches to the construction of SUBSTITUTE REALITIES that are loosely termed EAST and WEST.

* * * * *

EAST: The ‘EAST’ approach to language-based SUBSTITUTE REALITY CONSTRUCTION is RELATIONAL/IMPLICIT and in close agreement to MODERN PHYSICS.   For example, ‘DANCES WITH WOLVES’ is a language construct that seeks expression in a form that is dynamic and relational in agreement (by inference) with the understanding that ‘everything is in flux’ (Lao Tzu, Heraclitus, modern physics) so that, as compared to the WEST, the abstractions of LOCAL BEING and LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments are avoided and the language-based representations of reality are intrinsically relational.  Nevertheless, these relational representations such as ‘Dances with Wolves’ only give SIGNALS in such a manner as will not conflict with the overall fluid nature of reality.

* * *

WEST: the ‘WEST’ approach to language-based SUBSTITUTE REALITY CONSTRUCTION is MATERIAL/EXPLICIT and follows the strategy of NEWTONIAN PHYSICS which, as Benjamin Whorf has shown, derives from early WESTERN language which uses NAMING to impute LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF EXISTENCE to relational forms in the transforming relational continuum (the Wave-field aka the Tao), and couples the abstraction of LOCAL THINGS with GRAMMAR to impute the power of SOURCING actions and developments to the NAMING-instantiated THINGS-in-THEMSELVES.   Hence, ‘JOHN DUNBAR is the HUMAN BEING with the local, self-initiated capability of DANCING WITH WOLVES’.  This form of representation constructs a SUBSTITUTE REALITY where the animation is LOCALLY SOURCED, notionally by LOCAL (Naming-instantiated) THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES.

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Neither of these two SUBSTITUTE REALITIES can actually REPRESENT the REAL REALITY of the transforming relational continuum (Wave-field, the Tao) wherein ‘everything is in flux’, since the EAST makes use of LOCAL FORMING such as TOWNINGS in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE, while WEST makes of LOCAL FORMS such as ‘the TOWN that is notionally endowed with LOCAL (GRAMMAR-GIVEN) POWERS of GROWING larger and more populous and productive.

In the EAST representation of reality, ‘TOWNING’ is innately included in the overall transforming relational continuum in a FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE sense.  The indigenous aboriginal ‘mitakuye oyasin’ (we are all related) underscores this overall dynamic relational unity.

In the WEST’s representation of reality, ‘The TOWN’ stands alone and separate and independent of the transforming relational continuum in a FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO sense.  The WEST’s ‘DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE’ point to the RATIONAL decision to use NAMING to declare INDEPENDENT EXISTENCE of the relational form that is NAMED.  This, in turn, sets up the EGO in the sense of a BELIEF in the NAMED ENTITY having its own LOCAL POWER of SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS per what Nietzsche describes as the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.  Nietzsche points to this belief in LOCAL SOURCING POWER as the origin of EGO.

The EGO is the GRAMMAR-triggered rational-intellectual reason-based emotion that associates with the abstract concept of  LOCAL SOURCING or LOCAL AUTHORSHIP of actions and developments.  This REASON-triggered emotion of EGO can easily become INFLATED by NAMING-and-GRAMMAR structures so that the relational form (the ‘spirit’ or however we capture in language a relational form in the transforming relational continuum) is imputed to be the LOCAL SOURCE of action and development.  We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS construct our language-based SUBSTITUTE REALITY with the aid of BINARY LOGIC based REASON.  This approach, as Nietzsche points out, involves reality constructions based on the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.

NOTA BENE: Thanks to this DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR, our representation can JUMPSTART or INSTANTIATE LOCALLY.  This is the KEY DIFFERENCE in the architecture of WESTERN LANGUAGE, which enables the IMPRESSION of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments in the WESTERN SUBSTITUTE REALITY constructions.

FOCUSING this here discussion NOW ON THE WEST.

REASON plays a key role in the language architecture of the WEST and REASON is based on RATIO, as Bohm has pointed out.  GROWTH follows from RATIO, and in both cases the impression is only of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and development.  For example, ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ imputes a LOCAL RATIO based expansion of a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF, and the understanding of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE is DROPPED or LOST in our psychological ‘picking up’ of this new SUBSTITUTE REALITY triggered by ‘the TOWN is GROWING’.   WHAT IS IMPLIED by this statement is ABSOLUTE SPACE as a CONTAINER for this LOCAL, GROWING, THING-in-ITSELF.

As Bohm points out, there is self-deception in such language-based conceptualizing based on RATIO aka REASON.  This self-deception is not missed by Nietzsche who observes;

“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

THIS IS A KEY POINT WHICH EXPOSES PITFALLS IN OUR LANGUAGE BASED SUBSTITUTE REALITY CONSTRUCTION

For example, in saying ‘the TOWN is GROWING’, we create a new ‘absolute being-based’ SUBSTITUTE REALTY and GET RID OF THE REALITY OF ‘THE TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE’ which is ‘the more basic reality as associates with the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka the Tao’.

REASON aka RATIO is abstraction that allows us to THINK in the ABSTRACT terms of GROWTH which is LOCALLY SOURCED.  IN the REALITY of our SENSORY EXPERIENCE of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum, THERE IS NO SUCH THING as “LOCAL GROWTH”.   IT IS “NOT THE CASE” that ‘the TOWN is GROWING”, … but it is instead the case that ‘the LANDSCAPE is TRANSFORMING’ and within the TRANSFORMATION there is TOWNING.

The point is that the SUBSTITUTE REALITY we are constructing by invoking the visual pictures of successive snapshots of ‘the TOWN’, …”AS IT GROWNS”, … is DECEPTION that takes our mind away from the more fundamental reality of TRANSFORMATION.

[[ In fact, the very words I have used ‘snapshots of ‘the TOWN’ are already part of the deception since my snapshots are of the continuing TRANSFORMATION wherein everything is in flux and it is only my words that construct a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein ‘the TOWN’ is a separate THING-in-ITSELF that ‘sets up’ the NOTION of this THING-IN-ITSELF undergoing ‘GROWTH’.  Likewise the BOIL in the flow of the river as it rounds the bend, will, after a rainfall, VISIBLY “GROW” as the runoff increases, but the SOURCE of the GROWTH is NONLOCAL (coming from the sky) and thus cannot be attributed to the LOCAL BOIL, although language and grammar formulation may imply that GROWTH in a LOCAL SOURCING sense.  We cannot understand what is going on by taking local snapshots of the BOIL and speaking in terms of “ITS GROWTH” while the understanding as to what is going on lies overhead in the atmosphere and all round, rather than in what I PICTURE IS GOING ON IN FRONT OF ME.  Of course language (NAMING AND GRAMMAR) along with visual pictures in a time sequence allow me to construct a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein the BOIL-local-thing-in-itself evidently AUTHORS ITS OWN GROWTH.  If we don’t look up in the sky, we won’t make the association between the surges in rainfall and the GROWTH of the BOIL which would point to a NONLOCAL reality instead of spatial-relational TRANSFORMATION rather than the simple LOCAL reality of GROWTH.  In other words, GROWTH has a LOCAL APPEARANCE which steals the REALITY SPOTLIGHT from NONLOCAL REALITY. Like the drunk who is searching for the wristwatch under the streetlamp even though he lost it on a dark stretch of the road, ‘because there search conditions are better here’, … the conditions for explaining what is going on with the BOIL in the river bend are better than having to deal some ongoing dynamic that involves the four elements of earth, air water and sun as further complexified by their inclusion within a transforming relational continuum.  Let’s face it; It is easier to formulate explanations based on LOCAL SOURCING that we can SEE going on ‘out there in front of our eyes’, than to have to deal with the full complexity of relational transforming which, as is known is modern physics and in indigenous aboriginal cultures, is EVERYWHERE AT THE SAME TIME]]

OK, TRANSFORMATION is INEFFABLE-because-IMPLICIT-and-NONLOCAL, so as Wittgenstein and Lao Tzu and Heraclitus and others have pointed out, “7.0 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. (“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen”),

Ok, WE CAN’T CAPTURE REALITY IN LANGUAGE BECAUSE IT IS TRANSFORMIATION AND TRANSFORMATION IS A REALITY THAT IS IN CONTINUAL FLUX.   THAT’s why we are right now discussing how our SUBSTITUTE REALITY CONSTRUCTION is working for us, and the problems we are having with it.

The PROBLEM we are now discussing can be found in exploring the SUBSTITUTE REALITY we set up with DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR based SUBSTITUTE REALITY constructions such as ‘the TOWN is GROWING’.  This is RATIO based ILLUSION which becomes DELUSION when we start using it as our operative reality and forget that it is a ratio-based intellectual SUBSTITUTE REALITY.

NO! THE TOWN IS “NOT GROWING”.  Such an assertion is a RATIO-based ABSTRACT NOTION; i.e. it is a REASON-based ABSTRACT NOTION.

“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

THERE IS NO SUCH THING as GROWTH, there is only TRANSFORMATION.  GROWTH is an abstraction that is only possible in an ABSTRACT SUBSTITUTE REALITY, and is impossible in the REALITY of our sensory experience in the transforming relational continuum.  GROWTH comes form abstract RATIO-based language aka ‘REASON’ and NOT from sensory EXPERIENCE.

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The abstract concept of GROWTH sets up a SUBSTITUTE REALITY within which, the abstraction of GROWTH ‘works out’ because it works together with the abstraction of ABSOLUTE CONTAINING SPACE so that FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO separate abstractions and thus GROWTH can appear to be something undergone by an INDEPENDENT FIGURE and to occur IN ITS OWN RIGHT on a RATIO basis (REASON basis);

STEP ONE: We proposed the LOCAL existence of a FIGURE THING-IN-ITSELF

STEP TWO: We propose the existence of an ABSOLUTE CONTAINING SPACE to serve as a separate GROUND that accommodates the INDEPENDENT ACTIONS AND EVELOPMENT (GROWTH) of the NAMING-instantiated FIGURE-THING-IN-ITSELF.

Now, with these TWO STEPS,  we have constructed a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein we have LIBERATED FIGURE from GROUND and we have GRAMMAR to impute to the FIGURE ITS OWN ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT within the SEPARATE AND INDEPENDENT GROUND.  This FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO ABSTRACTION sets up for us a new ‘psychological reality playground’ aka SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein we have, for example, GROWTH in the sense of a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF-RATIO-ING UP like a balloon.

Of course, the ‘growth’ of a balloon or even a zone of warm air within cooler air is a relational flow phenomenon that is NOT LOCALLY SOURCED but is inherently NONLOCAL as in a relational feature within the TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM.  Whereas, the GROWTH of a TOWN is a ONE-SIDED kind of GROWTH wherein FIGURE and GROUND are seen as TWO.

This WESTERN CULTURE CONFUSIG OF GROWTH FOR SOMETHING REAL has us thinking in terms of FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO wherein the FIGURE is INDEPENDENT of the GROUND.  This is useful in that it gives us our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS means of rendering the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT in terms that are LOCAL and EXPLICIT; i.e. we can say ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ (FIGURE AND GROUND ARE TWO) whereas the REALITY is TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE, but this latter reality is INEFFBLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT.

Ok, our construction of the SUBSTITUTE REALITY opens the way for us to use language to talk about and share SOME SEMBLANCE of our sensory experience, whereby we portray ourselves as FIGURES within a SEPARATE GROUND, FIGURES that are GRAMMAR-endowed with powers of LOCAL action and development INDEPENDENT OF GROUND.  In this SUBSTITUTE REALITY, we can say ‘The TOWN is GROWING and is PRODUCING a variety of products and services’ and/or ‘The HUMAN is GROWING’ and is GROWING and is PRODUCING a variety of products and services’.

This LOCALLY SOURCED PRODUCTION is ILLUSION that is given representation within a language and grammar bases SUBSTITUTE REALITY and it is a ‘rough tool’ but a very useful foot (if not misinterpreted by confusing it for reality) which works by constructing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY’ THAT “IS” EFFABLE-BECAUSE-LOCAL-AND-EXPLICIT.

If we say to each other that ‘The TOWN is GROWING’, we are free to ‘take that literally’ or we can do as the indigenous aboriginal will surely do, and understand it in terms of a relational development within the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.  ONLY ONE OF THESE “APPARENT” ‘REALITIES” can be assumed to be the REAL REALITY.

YES, OUR INTUITIVE UNDERSTANDING IN TERMS OF the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE does indeed deserve to have priority in understanding REALITY over our REASON-based or RATIO-based  ABSTRACTION of “GROWTH” as REALITY.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “GROWTH” in the REAL REALITY of our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.  THERE IS ONLY GROWTH in the SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on the ABSTRACTION of FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO wherein the FIGURE can be ‘understood’ as SEPARATE AND INDEPENDENT OF THE GROUND.

This ABSTRACT IMPRESSION OR SUBSTITUTE REALITY WHEREIN “FIGURE-and-GROUND-ARE-TWO”  is what Nietzsche points out is a DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR (e.g. ‘the TOWN is GROWING’), which sets up IN THE PSYCHE, a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein the inherently NONLOCAL dynamic of the TOWNING IN THE TRANFORMING wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-is-ONE, … is RE-ENGINEERED within a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO.

The FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO “REALITY” is NO LONGER “THE REALITY OF OUR SENSORY EXPERIENCE” but is a “SUBSTITUTE REALITY” which achieves EFFABILITY because the FIGURE has been ‘liberated’ from the GROUND and is now LOCAL with its own INDEPENDENT BEING and equipped with GRAMMAR-given powers of SOURCING actions and developments.

If I am ‘repeating myself’ it is only because I have become familiar with the ‘elusiveness’ of this understanding that our WESTERN language habit ‘works’ by constructing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO so as to present the TOWN as if it were capable of ITS OWN GROWTH out of the context of the REAL REALITY of TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE..

OK, ALMOST DONE… just to tidy up the WEST-EAST difference in reality constructing approach.

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SO, the EAST does not fall into the trap that the WEST does, of confusing the SUBSTITUTE REALITY for SENSORY EXPERIENCE REALITY, since the EAST does not go so far into abstraction as using NAMING to impute LOCAL THING-iN-ITSELF-BEING.

For example ‘DANCES-WITH-WOLVES’ does not go so far into abstraction as the LOCAL BEINB BASED SOURCE of actions and developments such as ‘JOHN DUNBAR’

In the WEST, when ‘something goes right or wrong’, the search is on for the LOCAL SOURCE of the favorable or unfavorable emergence (e.g. the HERO or the VILLAIN).

In the EAST, as in MODERN PHYSICS (e.g. David Bohm’s example of the death of Lincoln) there is no way to get to the bottom of the unfolding matrix of relational dynamics that underlies the continually emerging REALITY.  That is, there is no such thing as LOCAL SOURCING in MODERN PHYSICS as also in indigenous aboriginal and WESTERN culture ‘reality’.

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’

So, the EAST and the indigenous aboriginal cultures, have not fallen into the trap that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS HAVE, of employing our SUBSTITUTE REALITY; i.e. a  REDUCED-TO-EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-end-EXPLICIT PSEUDO-REALITY, as our OPERATIVE REALITY! … NO, NO, NO!  The SUBSTITUTE REALITY is only good for INFERENCE of our sensory experience reality, it is not competent for use directly as an OPERATIVE REALITY.  For example, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “GROWTH’ that is LOCAL and EXPLICIT (e.g. the Town is GROWING) in the REAL REALITY of our sensory experience, there is only TRANSFORMATION which is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT (e.g. there is TRANSFORMING as manifests as the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE).

The popular but mistaken belief in GROWTH as something real, among WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, is driving us NUTS! because it is obscuring the REAL REALITY of TRANSFORMATION so that all the while that we are thinking that we are working on GROWTH of the economy etc., we are instead stirring up TRANSFORMATION.  This like watching the boil in the river-bend growing and shrinking and speaking and thinking of it as a local thing with its own local powers of sourcing its growth, without making the connection that just after it rains heavily, the BOIL GROWS and just after the rain subsides, the BOIL SHRINKS suggesting that the phenomenon is NONLOCAL, but what a pain in the ass if we can’t just go with ‘the BOIL is GROWING and are stuck with explaining the history of the universe instead, because those relations go on forever, as Bohm explains with his example of the Death of Lincoln.  Why not save a lot of time and effort and just say ‘the BOIL is GROWING LARGER’ as if the BOIL were its own LOCAL AUTHORNG SOURCE.   This is what RATIO based intellection is all about and it gives us the opportunity for LOCAL SOURCING our explanations, and thus avoiding having to deal with the unending story of relational transformation.  Using RATIO as the basis of our SUBSTITUTE REALITY construction is like looking under the streetlight for what went missing in the dark unlit territory. Thus we focus on the land we are cultivating and leave in the darkness the Wilderness that is the conjugate reality, the two being co-participants in the REAL REALITY of TRANSFORMATION.   The POINT BEING that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “GROWTH” there is only TRANSFORMATION”.

While the following note by Richard Heinberg falls short of pointing to the overall misconception built into WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENCY, it does single out GROWTH as being a source of relational dysfunction.

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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