SOCIAL DISTANCING: and how it recalls Bumper Cars, Brownian-Motion, Nonlocality, and Relativity
If we are ‘social distancing’, our movements are relative to others, and they are no longer ‘our own movements’. Maybe they never were? Maybe we have always ‘been distancing’ and living in a ‘Bumper Car’ reality (imagine ‘Bumper Cars fitted with electrostatic bumpers that repulsively avoided contact in the same manner as ‘social distancing’). We have experienced situations in which we felt that we have been ‘given a push’ to do something, and then again, felt as if we have been ‘held back’ from achieving what we are capable of achieving, so does it ‘make sense’ to speak of ourselves in the DOUBLE ERROR (Nietzsche) terms of ‘NAMING-instantiated LOCAL, independent beings’ (first error) with ‘our own GRAMMAR-given powers of sourcing actions and developments’ (second error)? Is that so-called ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ not an ‘abstraction’ that allows us to REDUCE our ineffable-because-NONLOCAL Bumper Car reality to an effable-because-LOCAL self-start reality?
In a Bumper Car Reality, we could continue to speak of our movements in the ‘first person’ as in the DOUBLE ERROR language and grammar construction, where we claim to be the full and sole author of “our own actions and achievements”, … departing from this tack only when these actions fail to meet with approval, rewards and recognition, in which case we resort to complex explanations involving ‘extenuating circumstances’.
This is where LOCAL sourcing of actions and developments gives way to NONLOCALITY and this FLIP is a double edged sword; i.e. our EGO likes to take credit for SOURCING actions and developments generally recognized as GOOD while avoiding being seen as SOURCING actions and developments recognized as BAD. In reality, there is no such thing as SOURCING since everything is in a relational flux. That is, in a Bumper Car Reality, there is NO explicit AUTHORSHIP as gives rise to EGO.
My uncle may give me access to his vegetable garden and orchard and I may profit by that (my bumper car gets a push forward), and the crows may beat me to the cherries (my bumper car gets pushed backwards, AND STILL I TALK ABOUT MYSELF IN THOSE DOUBLE ERROR TERMS… I did this, and I did that, … even as I might in the ‘Brownian motion’ of participation in a bumper car session.
As Schroedinger (in the same vein as Nietzsche) points out in ‘What is Life?’, … we persist in using language and grammar to RE-PRESENT our sensory experiencing of actions in DOUBLE ERROR based terms; e.g. I accelerated, turned left, then braked a bit to pass into an opening, accelerated again, and all of this is describing a bumper car session where movements are purely relative and NOT absolute, yet the language and grammar representation I am constructing makes it sound as if I am the full and source of ‘my actions’ and my developing ‘story’ or ‘history’.
Let’s be real! We are pushed forward and held back or knocked back and sideways, … and then we construct our representations of this using the DOUBLE ERROR, saying: “I skillfully wove my way through the crowd so as to get where I am today. WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THOSE HELPFUL BUMPS FORWARD AND ALL THOSE UNHELPFUL BUMPS BACKWARDS?
How can a bumper car driver articulate what REALLY goes on? And if we decide to just ‘tell it as if we were the authors of our own actions and developments’; i.e. as is what happens when we employ the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar, … what does this do to THE EGO? We know that in this bumper car reality, there will be those that ‘make great advances’ and those that ‘get mired down and stalled’, and that our system of language and grammar is unable to capture what is REALLY going because its SOURCING is NONLOCAL and that makes it INEFFABLE.
Imagine the challenge if we were charged to give the narration of the unfolding dynamics in a bumper car session. Even if each bumper car was clearly named, we could not rely on announcing their movements as THEIR MOVEMENTS due to the reality that the movements of the bumper cars are like BROWNIAN MOTION of molecules, rendering language and grammar constructions in the usual terms such as; “CAR 47 moved this way and then that way” which usually (in our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT assumption) implies that such actions are LOCALLY SOURCED, as if by the ‘driver’ of the vehicle, but in this case are NONLOCALLY sourced which is what makes reality INEFFABLE, or at least only CRUDELY EFFABLE, by a ‘work-around’ as in modern physics ‘Surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ or as Wittgenstein describes;
6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)
He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.
7.0 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
–Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus
If you or I are driving in a bumper car session, even if we are being bumped forward and backwards and sideways, our natural reflex will nevertheless be to speak of our movements in the first person; I moved forward, then to the left, then braked and then accelerated, as if ‘I’ were the SOURCE of my own actions and what developed from them; e.g. as if I were the author of my attaining ‘my desired destination’. Others may congratulate us on ‘our achievements’ or berate us for our ‘poor performance’, even if life as it really is is like a bumper car session where NONLOCALITY rules (where ‘everything is relative’ as is the modern physics understanding).
In my own life-experience, from the time I was a teenager, I found the custom of attributing LOCAL sourcing of actions and developments TO ME when it was obvious that I was getting bumper-car pushes from parents and friends, ridiculous. Just because language and grammar is a TOOL that allows us to simplify ‘NONLOCAL bumper car dynamics’ to LOCAL sourcing based representation, making the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL …. EFFABLE-because-LOCAL, … does not mean that we have to LET THE TOOL RUN AWAY WITH THE WORKMAN, THE EFFABLE RUN AWAY WITH THE INEFFABLE, as Emerson pointed out.
Sure, when we are in that bumper car action, we can say stuff in FIRST PERSON terms like; I am moving quickly forward now (something just bumped me from behind), and am veering to the left (someone just sideswiped me) and slowing down (someone is backing into me and trying to push me backwards). That is, as a ‘driver’ my FIRST PERSON BUMPER CAR NARRATIVE can’t possibly capture the NONLOCAL relational dynamics that I am situationally included in, … and that’s why my ‘driver’s narrative’ is a first person based narrative wherein I present myself as the full and sole author of my own actions and developments.
Once I start using this WESTERN CULTURE language and grammar TOOL of reduction of the NONLOCAL to the LOCAL, … I may be tempted to lay claim to the AUTHORSHIP or SOURCING credit that such language and grammar fabricates in reducing the INEFFABLE-BECAUSE-NONLOCAL to the EFFABLE-BECAUSE-LOCAL. I have to be careful once I start doing this, because if I claim authorship for being pushed forward, for logical consistency, I should accept authorship for being pushed backwards or stalling. Our pride-based acceptance of the former and shame-based rejection of the latter is why indigenous aboriginals have described the WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS as people who ‘speak with forked tongue’, and for good reason!
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION:
We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS in our UNDERSTANDING OF REALITY depart from MODERN PHYSICS, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta in our intellectual handling of REALITY in that we regard the (language and grammar) DOUBLE ERROR based reduction of NONLOCALITY to notional LOCAL things-in-themselves with notional powers of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments to be our surrogate OPERATIVE REALITY.
In MODERN PHYSICS as also in indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, NONLOCALITY is understood as the PRIMARY REALITY but since NONLOCALITY is INEFFABLE in the manner of the bumper-car dynamic, an effable RE-presentation requires some sort of REDUCTION of the NONLOCAL (which goes on without limitation in space-time as with the all-including Wave-field of modern physics).
If we think of the reality of our actual sensory experience in terms of a bumper-car dynamic (a kind of macro-Brownian-motion), we can see that while it is natural for us to articulate our involved participation in ‘first person’ language and grammar terms as if we are ‘in charge’ of our own movements, the reality is that our movements are NOT on-the-whole self-authored, but are the result of a lot of pushing and shoving and ‘on-the-fly’ opening and closing of relative-passageways.
Even though, in our bumper car experience, the collective ‘we’ cannot be split apart into two separate realms of FIGURE and GROUND since everything is in relational flux, our intellect that is wielding the tool of language and grammar can nevertheless capture what is going on in FIRST PERSON DRIVEN TERMS. Of course, if I claim to be authoring movements of going forward, sideways or backwards, even though I am in fact being banged forward, bumped sideways and backwards, … language and grammar nevertheless allow me a FIRST PERSON ACTION-AUTHORING REPRESENTATION. Ok, maybe it was my wealthy and influential uncle that got me the great job that gave me a ‘great bump forward’, … it is simpler for me to give myself credit and say ‘I GOT this great job’.
In our manner of constructing language and grammar REPRESENTATIONS, WE CAN MAKE THE BUMPER CAR REALITY DISAPPEAR, by using the DOUBLE ERROR to attribute our actions and developments fully and solely to ourselves.
I can say; ‘I built my own home’ and while I may have ‘architected’ a ‘house’, the reality is that the entire countryside is like a bumper car arcade with logging over here and sawmilling over there and quarrying for gravel for concrete over there and mining of minerals for cement over there and smelting ore for metal beams over there, … or in other words, what is going on is NOT the CONSTRUCTION of a LOCAL thing-in-itself that is imputed by NAMING (‘this is a house’), what is going on is relational TRANSFORMATION which is all inclusive and unbounded in space-time and therefore INEFFABLE.
We live in a BUMPER CAR REALITY that is INEFFABLE due to the unending matrix of relational dynamics involved, but, as the driver of one of those BUMPER CARS who is equipped with language and grammar based tools of REPRESENTATION, we can come up with a FIRST PERSON VOYEUR NARRATIVE even as we are being pushed from behind and sideways so that it sounds as if we are the author of our own actions.
That is, … it is ‘true’ to say ‘I am moving in a Westerly direction’ even if some guy in a bulldozer is THE REAL AUTHOR of our bumper car dynamic.
The BUMPER CARS metaphor re-establishes NONLOCALITY in the language based representation and illustrates how it could be that we, as drivers within a BUMPER CAR DYNAMIC can continue to speak, misleadingly, in FIRST PERSON, DOUBLE ERROR BASED TERMS which give the impression that WE are the full and sole authors of “OUR OWN” actions and developments.
MEANWHILE, as drivers in the bumper car collective who are being pushed forward, then sideways and backwards, we still have language and grammar that allows us to express our movements in FIRST PERSON terms aka in DOUBLE ERROR terms where we use NAMING to impute thing-in-itself BEING (first error), conflating this with GRAMMAR to impute to the NAMING instantiated notional thing-in-itself, its own notional powers of SOURCING actions and developments.
My first real big BALK at buying into this delusional reduction of the NONLOCAL to LOCAL was in being taught HOW TO WRITE MY OWN RÉSUMÉ and thinking —‘What a CROCK!’
My inclusion in the BUMPER CAR REALITY does not support the writing of a personal résumé, without ‘selling out’ to the bullshit game of WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENCE.
If the above observations sound harsh and judgemental, it is not really the case because I do not believe that the ‘system’ that I am critiquing actually exists, so it is not possible for me to critique members of a non-existent system.
‘SOCIAL DISTANCING’ is a technique that ‘relativizes’ one’s movements in a manner suggestive of BUMPER CARS and BROWNIAN MOTION where movement is NONLOCAL and RELATIVE.
Even though our bumper car movements are ‘relative’, our language and grammar nevertheless afford us the DOUBLE ERROR constructs wherein we present ourselves as the LOCAL AUTHORS (sources) of our own actions and developments.
REALITY (the reality of our actual sensory experience rather than the pseudo-reality of language and grammar DOUBLE ERROR representations) is better captured by the BUMPER CAR representation due to its NONLOCAL SOURCING nature.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.