The ORCHARD and the LANDSCAPE open the door of language-based understanding to TWO possibilities; i.e. the ORCHARD that we say ‘grows larger’ as implies the LOCAL and EXPLICIT existence of the ORCHARD and ascribes to it the DOUBLE ERROR based powers of GROWTH, … or, quite differently, … the LANDSCAPE which is continually TRANSFORMING which steals and diffuses the spotlight from the ORCHARD with its notional LOCAL thing-in-itself existence with its endowment of powers of SOURCING actions and development including it’s locally incipient GROWTH.  While it is common to hear language-based conceptualizations featuring the GROWTH of the ORCHARD as if it were a LOCAL and EXPLICIT thing-in-itself as if FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO, …  we also hear language-based conceptualizations featuring the transforming LANDSCAPE in which the ORCHARD has been cast in the manner of a boil in the flow wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE.

If we START by imputing the existence of a LOCAL thing-in-itself (the ORCHARD) that we say GROWS larger OVER TIME, we are making use of RATIO-NAL INTELLECTION.  If we, on the other hand, start with the concept of the transforming LANDSCAPE,  we are appealing to RELATIONAL INTELLECTION which is purely relative and has no absolute foundation as in the case of RATIO which implies that SOME LOCAL-THING-in-ITSELF that was smaller has GROWN into a larger version of ITSELF.  This conceptualizing has no dependence on influences coming from beyond the notional LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF; i.e. the implication is one of GROWTH in the sense of RATIO of its present larger state from its prior smaller state. On the other hand, the term LANDSCAPE implies something that is in a continual condition of TRANSFORMATION in which the ORCHARD is included, NOT as a local thing-in-itself but as a relational form in the fluidity of the transforming relational continuum.

In terms of language-based sharing of visual and other sensory experience, TALK in terms of the ORCHARD as if it were a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF with its own (GRAMMAR-GIVEN) powers of SOURCING ACTIONS and DEVELOPMENT such as GROWTH (of a local thing in space that ratios up over TIME), gives us a LOCAL FOCUS that is ABSTRACT but nevertheless LOCAL and FINITE and far easier to capture and share in language than the transforming LANDSCAPE which is unbounded in spacetime as are the relational features in the transforming relational spacetime continuum.

It is evident that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have opted in our reductive language-based conceptualization of reality NOT for that which is most true according to our sensory experience (the transforming LANDSCAPE) but for that which is most easy in our intellectual sharing (the local ORCHARD that grows larger (ratios up) over TIME).

In general, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS use RATIO based concepts to render TRANSFORMATION that is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT in the SUBSTITUTE terms of the EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT, thus we speak of NON-realities such as GROWTH (and its shadow DECLINE), PROGRESS (and its shadow SETBACK) and IMPROVEMENT (and its shadow DETERIORATION).  These are NOT REAL (there is only TRANSFORMATION) but, the thinking they induce has emotional impact for us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS.

While the RATIO-NALIZING of TRANSFORMATION delivers up abstract snapshot PICTURES that, in the culture of the EAST, only qualify for use as tools of INFERENCE of the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT, … these RATIO-NALIZATIONS that are EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT are employed by us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, as the basis of our OPERATIVE REALITY.

 A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. –-Wittgenstein – Philosophical Investigations.

* * *

 

 

 

This note opens up a view to why our WESTERN CULTURE is cultivating social dysfunction that is continuing to intensify.  The problem is our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT orientation to RATIONAL INTELLECTION aka REASON as a FIRST ORDER tool for UNDERSTANDING REALITY.

As David Bohm, Nietzsche and others have pointed out, we have INTELLIGENCE-and-INTUITION which orient to TRANSFORMATION which is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT, and then we have RATIONAL INTELLECTION which orients to GROWTH which is LOCAL and EXPLICIT

What is going wrong on the scale of an entire CULTURE is that our WESTERN CULTURE has put RATIONAL INTELLECTION as is capturable in explicit language (BECAUSE it is a reduction to the LOCAL and EXPLICIT) into an unnatural precedence over INTELLIGENCE and INTUITION with attunes to TRANSFORMATION which, because it is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT is NOT CAPTURABLE in explicit LANGUAGE.  The title of the ORCHARD (local and explicit) and the LANDSCAPE (nonlocal and implicit) was chosen to highlight this difference in our modes of understanding; RATIONALITY which is informed by the abstractions of LOCAL and EXPLICIT and INTELLIGENCE/INTUITION which is informed by the sensory experience of the NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT.

The concern expressed in philosophers such as Nietzsche and Alan Watts is a concern that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are taking the crude tool of RATIONALITY aka REASON as a substitute conception of REALITY.   REASON can inform us on the LOCAL EXPLICITS of the ORCHARD but it CANNOT inform us on the NONLOCAL IMPLICATIONS of LANDSCAPE TRANSFORMATION.    The misplaced precedence given to RATIONALITY (GROWTH of the ORCHARD) over INTELLIGENCE (the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE) and how this leads to a dysfunctional sense of ‘reality’ is the focus of this essay.  REASON aka RATIONALITY which abstractly splits out the FIGURE from the GROUND (e.g. the ORCHARD from the LANDSCAPE) and constructs a reality oriented to the GROWTH, DEVELOPMENT and QUALITIES of the FIGURE as if INDEPENDENT of the GROUND, can lead to an abandonment of INTELLIGENCE.

In the reality of our sensory experience, FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE as in the LANDSCAPE which includes the ORCHARD.  RATIONALITY is language-based abstraction that allows us to INTELLECTUALLY split out the FIGURE from the GROUND; i.e. the ORCHARD from the LANDSCAPE and treat of it as if it were a separately existing thing-in-itself with GRAMMAR-given powers of sourcing its own GROWTH and development.  This is described by Nietzsche as the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.

Despite the intellectually-convincing power of RATIO as in the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR that serves up a pseudo-reality within our intellectualizing thought that is in terms of LOCAL EXISTENCE and GROWTH of the ORCHARD, … substituting this RATIO-NAL REALITY of the LOCAL ARCHARD and “ITS GROWTH” for the sensory-experience reality of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE which is IMPLICIT and NONLOCAL.

The tool of RATIO-nalizing achieves what we needed to open up language-based sharing among ourselves; i.e. RATIO-nalizing substitutes the ORCHARD and its GROWTH, which can be captured in language by employing the abstractions of NAMING and GRAMMAR which serve up replacement concepts that are LOCAL and EXPLICIT.  These concepts are EFFABLE substitutes for the INEFFABLE fluid reality of TRANSFORMATION that is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT.

As Emerson observes, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are letting this substitute reality infusing tool run away with the workman, the human with the divine.   In other words, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are letting the EFFABLE-IZED reality substitute for the INEFFABLE reality as in the case of the ORCHARD and its GROWTH (the LOCAL and EXPLICIT) substitute for the LANDSCAPE and its TRANSFORMING (the NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT).

This WESTERN CULTURE error, which amounts to the substituting of RATIO-NALITY (the LOCAL ORCHARD and its LOCAL GROWTH) for INTELLIGENCE/INTUITION (the LANDSCAPE and its NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION) is Bohm’s way of making this point; i.e. by contrasting RATIO-NAL INTELLECTION and INTELLIGENCE or INTUITION.

Nietzsche’s formulation;

“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

Zen Author Alan Watts formulation from ‘‘The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are’)

“This book explores an unrecognized but mighty taboo—our tacit conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are. Briefly, the thesis is that the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East—in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man’s natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction.”

The point of this note is to observe how language makes possible a crude articulation of our sensory experience by reducing the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT (as in TRANSFORMATION) to the EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and EXPLICIT (as in GROWTH).  The example used here is the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE which includes a GROWING ORCHARD wherein preserving reality requires that we present the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE as the primary reality that we reduce to a silent backdrop as we home in on the ORCHARD and use RATIO-nality to impute to it its own LOCAL growth and development out of the context of the transforming LANDSCAPE in which it is innately included.

* * *

The ORCHARD and the LANDSCAPE (the EXPLICIT and the IMPLICIT)

The ORCHARD (so we say) is LOCAL and EXPLICIT and GROWS (i.e. GROWTH is the RATIO between earlier and later [TIME-based] spatial extension)

The LANDSCAPE is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT (so we can’t explicitly say but can only imply) and undergoes TRANSFORMATION per our INTUITION)

THE GROWTH of the LOCAL thing-in-itself named ORCHARD is a RATIO-NAL CONCEPT that builds on the abstract concept of LOCAL EXISTENCE given by NAMING it ‘ORCHARD’ which establishes ‘a base’ of LOCAL BEING which can be said, with GRAMMAR, to GROW over TIME.

TRANSFORMATION of the NONLOCAL LANDSCAPE is everywhere ‘at once’ (it does not transpire ‘over TIME as in ‘a sequence of small local developments’)

SUMMARY: The ORCHARD GROWS (is our ratio-nal thought construction), while the LANDSCAPE TRANSFORMS (is our sensory experience).  While GROWTH is LOCAL and EXPLICIT (as our intellectual abstraction based conceptualization affirms), TRANSFORMATION is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT (as is the reality which our sensory experience of inclusion in the Wave-field aka the Tao informs us, and as is he nature of the Wave-field aka the Tao).

TRANSFORMATION is the REALITY of our sensory experience while GROWTH is based on the abstract concept of RATIO or RATIONALIZATION which derives from the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.

As philosophical inquiry has discerned, the all-including relationally transforming continuum, which includes us, precludes us from being an OBSERVER of what is going on since we cannot get outside of it to visually capture it.  We are a sensory EXPERIENT but we cannot be an OBSERVER of what we are included in, therefore, if something is visualizable, IT IS NOT REALITY.

TRANSFORMATION is NOT VISUALIZABLE because it is everywhere at the same time which is the nature of the Wave-field that we and everything share inclusion in.

We are thus in  a situation where visualization can only infer a reality that lies beyond the visualizable.

When we speak of the LANDSCAPE, we speak of something that continues on over the horizon beyond the limits of our VISUALIZING capability, begging the supportive assistance of our INTUITION to go beyond the reach of our limited VISUALIZATION capability.  We have to employ INTUITION to deliver understanding of living on the spherical surface of a TRANSFORMING sphere.

As far as we can SEE, the volcano is extruding magma ‘LOCALLY over here’ and the subduction zone is devouring the hardened magma ‘LOCALLY over there’ and it takes INTUITION that must go beyond visualization of the local and explicit to deliver up the nonlocal and implicit concept of TRANSFORMATION.

In this ORCHARD and LANDSCAPE discussion, or rather, interrogation/inquiry, it is possible to INTUIT (although not ‘SEE’) that the REALITY that agrees with our sensory experience is the reality of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE that we can INTUIT but NOT ‘SEE”, which understanding implies that the “REALITY” (quote/unquote) that we can SEE … IS NOT REALITY, … but is RATIO-NAL ABSTRACTION which starts by conceptualizing in the abstract terms of LOCAL thing-in-itself existence (e.g. the ORCHARD) and employs RATIO-NAL extension to develop an expansion of the LOCAL in terms which are DISCURSIVE and VISUALIZABLE and which never hit the point of a HORIZON beyond which the VISUAL has to stop.

One might therefore say that our VISUALIZING CAPACITY is unbounded so long as it never reaches a LIMITING HORIZON beyond which the terrain is visually unknowable (the ‘terra incognita’ which early map-makers labelled with the warning of “THAR BE DRAGONS”).

It is, for us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, more comforting to stick with the abstract LOCAL and EXPLICIT notion of ‘THE GROWTH OF THE LOCAL AND EXPLICIT’ as in the GROWTH OF THE ORCHARD, than to flip from the RATIO-NAL into the INTUITIVE concept of the transforming LANDSCAPE which is NONLOCAL AND IMPLICIT.

While we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS nominally accept that the LANDSCAPE of the surface of the sphere of the earth is not directly and fully accessible to our VISION, rather than employing LANDSCAPE as the base for what we conceptualize as REALITY, which puts such REALITY into the realm of the NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT, we have constrained ourselves to RATIO-NAL abstraction which builds outward by extending the LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT so that we would speak of the GROWTH of the ORCHARD even though that is DOUBLE ERROR abstraction based and substitutes in our mind for the NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT reality of the LANDSCAPE that is TRANSFORMING.

This is where the TOOL (or RATIO-NALIZING) runs away with the workman, the human with the divine, as Emerson points out.  The LANDSCAPE that is TRANSFORMING is metaphorical rather than rational and would put us in the position of having to conceive of reality as implicit/metaphorical rather than as explicit.

“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a meta phor” – McLuhan et al

Modern physics affirms the Wave-field nature of reality as relational TRANSFORMATION which exposes the insufficiency of language that is based on the LOCAL and EXPLICIT and suggests a flow based language as was suggested by Bohm’s ‘Rheomode’, and/or by the indigenous aboriginal language architecture;

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’

Language is NOT capable of capturing sensory experience but reduces our sensory experience to concepts conveyable in language.  These come in TWO FLAVOURS as exemplified by;

The ORCHARD and the LANDSCAPE (the LOCAL and EXPLICIT and the NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT)

It is not possible for the ORCHARD TO GROW without the LANDSCAPE TRANSFORMING, but it is possible to employ language in the DOUBLE ERROR mode of NAMING and GRAMMAR to, for example, establish the ORCHARD as a local thing-in-itself by NAMING and conflate this with GRAMMAR that imputes to the NAMING-instantiated thing-in-itself its own local powers of GROWING and DEVELOPING, all of this being told, in language based RATIO-NAL representation, as if someone (GOD?) ‘LOCALLY SEEDED’ the ORCHARD and from that point on it was seen as a LOCAL and EXPLICIT entity that commenced to GROW. No mention in such NAMING and GRAMMAR constructs of its ‘inclusion’ in the LANDSCAPE.

Alternatively, one might understand the LANDSCAPE wherein the primary reality is TRANSFORMATION that is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT.

WHICH REALITY-CANDIDATE DO WE PUT FIRST?  the LANDSCAPE which is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT or the ORCHARD which is LOCAL and EXPLICIT?

One thing about it, language, which is based on NAMING and GRAMMAR is well suited for conveying that which is LOCAL and EXPLICIT such as the ORCHARD and “ITS GROWTH”.   On the other hand, language based on NAMING AND GRAMMAR has to do somersaults to convey LANDSCAPE which is undergoing continual TRANSFORMATION as in continual flux which is unbounded in spacetime.

WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are taught (teach ourselves) to use language based RATIO-NAL constructions which represent things like ‘the ORCHARD’ in LOCAL and EXPLICIT terms which is far easier, linguistically, than dealing with the transforming LANDSCAPE which implies the NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT and thus demands an endless matrix of relational inferences.  In other words, it is far easier, as far as reduction of experience to language goes,  to go with the ORCHARD instead of with the LANDSCAPE, as has been demonstrated by our established social practice.

“As regards the academies, they are established in order to regulate the studies of the pupils and are concerned not to have the program of teaching change very often: in such places, because it is a question of the progress of the students, it frequently happens that the things which have to be chosen are not those which are most true but those which are most easy. And by that division in things which makes different people form different judgements, it so happens that certain people are in error contrary to their own opinion.” – Johannes Kepler, ‘Harmonies of the World’

Our WESTERN CULTURE representations of reality by way of RATIONAL INTELLECTION are IN ERROR contrary to our understanding of reality by way of INTUITIVE INTELLECTION.  This is what Nietzche and Bohm and Alan Watts are concerned about.  No doubt that the TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM will continue on as the TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM but the ‘devil is in the details’ as one says, because we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are cultivating a major ‘rocking of the boat’ where the casualties will be accommodated in the continuing TRANSFORMATION as we push on in the RATIO-NAL belief that we are the SOURCE of continuing GROWTH and DEVELOPMENT.

* * *

PHILOSOPHICAL COMMENTARY ON THE ABOVE ARTICLE:

 

This article is a critique of where our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENCE is taking us which is seen by EASTERN culture adherents as ‘a direct path to Hell’, so to speak.

I agree with the ‘gist’ of that metaphor and with David Bohm’s and Nietzsche’s similar ‘warnings’ that our WESTERN CULTURE is taking us to very dysfunctional and CRAZY-MAKING reality construction.

My latest essay tries to capture and share this in the simplest terms I can think of, and it can be found here; https://goodshare.org/wp/the-orchard-and-the-landscape/

I feel it is important to point out that while the indigenous aboriginal culture and the Taoist/Buddhist and Advaita Vedanta cultures, while they may have ‘their problems’, are not afflicted with this same CRAZY-MAKING infection that our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENCY is.

Also, if a few of us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS get lost in the wilderness together with a few indigenous aboriginals, Taoists and Advaita Vedanta adherents, there is a goodly likelihood that we will ‘get along’, because the problem with the WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENCY arise in connection with large-scale organization, as is the topic of the essay.

By the way, philosophical investigators like Bohm, Nietzsche and Zen scholar Alan Watts vary in the directness of their criticism of WESTERN CULTURE, but this may be a question of how best to get ‘pickup’ on what they are saying which is, in all cases a deep critique of our WESTERN CULTURE BELIEFS and PRACTICES (particularly our large scale social practices).

Bohm warns that we are putting RATIONALITY into an unnatural precedence over INTELLIGENCE/INTUITION while Nietzsche warns that we are mesmerized by the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.  Alan Watts bluntly says that we are making the mistake of thinking of ourselves as “AN EGO ENCLOSED IN A BAG OF SKIN”.   In all three cases, the MISTAKE that is identified is in using language to boil down relational complexity as in TRANSFORMATION (which is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT) to a kind of CONSTRUCTIVISM that is LOCAL and EXPLICIT.

This DIFFERENCE is akin to difference between talking in terms of a ORCHARD as a LOCAL and IMPLICIT thing that is GROWING on the side of a hill, versus talking in IMPLICIT and NONLOCAL terms of a TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.

What does it matter?  The sense of LOCAL SOURCING comes from EGO so the implication is that we WESTERN CULTGURE ADHERENTS are constructing reality based on EGO (local sourcing of actions and developments) which Nietzsche’s ‘DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR and Bohm’s substituting of RATIO-NALITY for INTELLIGENCE, … all three of which ‘boil down’ to the very same ‘complaint’.  In Alan Watt’s words in introducing his book; ‘‘The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are’

“This book explores an unrecognized but mighty taboo—our tacit conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are. Briefly, the thesis is that the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East—in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man’s natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction.”

As already stated, we are unlikely to see this difference, in any full-blown sense, in a mix of WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, indigenous aboriginals, Taoists/Buddhists and Advaita Vedanta adherents, because our WESTERN CULTURE FORMAL ORGANIZATION isn’t always evident in a ‘family environment’.

While Western families differ on this, many of us prefer to use the binary judgement of right and wrong and use this for reward and punishment, but only on a very loose basis, and we are more interested in restoring relational harmony.   In the case of the indigenous aboriginal cultures etc. the belief is that there is no way to establish LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments, and by the way, modern physics is of the same understanding, which is why philosophers such as Bohm see the indigenous aboriginal culture as already having assimilated modern physics.  This is why Bohm’s fellow researcher, F. David Peat, entitled his book on this topic ‘Blackfoot Physics’ as it elaborates on the equivalence of modern physics and indigenous aboriginal ‘science’ as follows;

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’

 

But, Bohm and Nietzsche are not holding their breathe in an anticipation of a wave of “I get it” affirmations, since there is a paradigm shift involved here which is akin to undergoing a conversion from a WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT to an indigenous aboriginal culture adherent.

But what can be said is that the paradigm shift in understanding is pointed to in the title itself; The ORCHARD and the LANDSCAPE, since if we accept that there are such things as ORCHARDS that can GROW larger or get re-absorbed into the Wilderness, we demonstrate that we can put our minds into FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO mode where RATIO and RATIONALITY prevail which leaves as an open question whether we can ‘shift paradigms’ and re-ground our understanding in terms of the transforming LANDSCAPE which includes, implicitly, the ORCHARD, not as a separate thing-in-itself but as a relational expression within the transforming relational continuum.

One might ask oneself if one can still ‘see’ the ORCHARD and its RATIO based GROWTH (e.g. as a LOCAL thing-in-itself that GROWS from 1 acre to 3 acres) if one is observing the LANDSCAPE as it undergoes continual TRANSFORMATION in an overall sense where relational dynamics prevail over LOCALLY EMERGENT LOCAL GROVES that can DOUBLE in size and later SHRINK as our RATIONAL INTELLECTION likes to SEE such things (and as our RATIONAL language likes to articulate such things, which is made possible by the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.

Evidently, GROWTH is NOT something we can actually SEE, it is the intellectual abstraction that our imputing of RATIO manufactures since the FIRST patch of wheat etc is NOT a LOCAL thing-in-itself and neither is SECOND patch of wheat a LOCAL thing in itself so that taking the RATIO of two things that are NOT REAL does not generate a NEW THING called GROWTH that IS REAL.

Vision does not affirm GROWTH, but RATIO does and RATIO is a mathematical derivative, which Bishop Barclay rebuked Newton for INVENTING in his treatise – ‘The analyst: or a discourse addressed to an infidel mathematician’;

“And what are these fluxions [derivatives]? The velocities of evanescent increments. And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them ghosts of departed quantities?”  — George Berkeley

These mathematical ‘time derivatives’ or ‘fluxions’ as Newton coined them are based on the abstract notion of FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO, which Benjamin Whorf has shown derives from our WESTERN CULTURE language usage which employs the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.  Modern physics has shown us, along with indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, that FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE, as in the Tai-Chi symbol which implies yin/yang Wave-field energy.

FINALLY, what is written in this note simply reaffirms what Bohm, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Emerson, Watts and others have already said.

Just as all that has been said, including the warnings of Bohm, Nietzsche and Watts as to our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERING social dynamic putting ourselves on a ‘bus trip to hell’, the overall WESTERN SOCIAL DYNAMIC is incredible SLOW TO SHIFT because the PARADIGM we need to SHIFT OUT OF, is the paradigm that would have us believe in LOCAL SOURCING which is where EGO comes from.

Are you gong to tell ‘your boss’ that his actions are NOT HIS OWN LOCALLY SOURCED ACTIONS but that, instead, he is included in a web of relations through which influences flow, kind of like driving within a huge traffic flow where one’s current local swerving and braking may derive from a dog having run across the freeway at some distance in space-time, or three different dogs such that the whole dynamic is really like a game of bumper cars where one’s movements are attempting to sooth out a dynamic that came from ‘who the hell knows where’; i.e. from ‘chaos theory’.

Is it really any different for ‘your boss’?  One thing we know we’re good at is constructing RATIO-NAL breakdowns of dynamics but these are based on the abstraction of FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO which underpins NAMING-and-GRAMMAR based constructions of reality, also known as DOUBLE ERROR based reality constructions.  I once had a boss who really lived the ‘FIGURE HEAD’ example and when he died suddenly, a member of the stuff suggested that we have him STUFFED and seated in his chair so that operations could continue on in their successful fashion.  I am not saying that there are no good contributors in the management positions, only that if you are managing a condom factory when the AIDS epidemic comes along, crediting the person currently in the management slot may nor really support the usual LOCAL SOURCING interpretation.

IN REALITY, FIGURE AND GROUND ARE ONE in which case we cannot say whether the Hurricane is sourcing the stirring up of the atmosphere or whether the atmosphere is stirring up the Hurricane, because there is no such thing as local SOURCING, there is only TRANSFORMATION.

If we circulate a questionnaire as to whether it is the individual that is the root source contributor to our WESTERN CULTURE ECONOMY we identify the conservative, and if we ask whether it is the social collective that is the root source contributor to our WESTERN CULTURE ECONOMY, we identify the liberal.  And if we get back the answer NEITHER because there is no such thing as the LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments, then we know that the respondents are NOT WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, but are more likely indigenous aboriginals, Taoists/Buddhists or Advaita Vedanta adherents.

There is good reason for the pessimism of Alan Watts, Bohm and Nietzsche, and it is not going to be washed away by ‘who gets elected President’ because it is the understanding of REALITY where the basic crossed wires dysfunction comes into play.

* * *

 

SECOND PHILOSOPHICAL COMMENTARY ON ABOVE NOTE

A NOTE on the PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTION  OF BINARY OPPOSITES

Binary abstraction is an enabler of articulation (effable-izing) the ineffable by way of a  kind of cartoon-like representation in a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO abstraction, that is SUGGESTIVE of the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE fluid Wave-field aka ‘the Tao’ which manifests as TRANSFORMATION within the field which is everywhere at the same time.  This binary abstraction is like the Tai-Chi symbolizing of the the Yin/Yang FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE fluid dynamic aka TRANSFORMATION.

The notional splitting into FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO which invents the abstractions of (a) the LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF and (b) a SPACE for it to occupy, brings forth the additional abstractions of TIME and GROWTH to ‘materialize’ and ‘mechanize’ the fluid dynamic that is undivided in the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka the Tao.

This abstract invention of FIGURE and GROUND as TWO separate ontological entities is the enabler of rendering EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT a SURROGATE PSEUDO-REALITY  as INFERENCE of the Wave-field reality aka ‘the Tao’ aka ‘the transforming relational continuum’ that is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT.

A ‘forming’ which is in the continual course of transformation wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE but which implies TWO even though there is a continuing ambiguity as to what we can attribute to FIGURE and what we can attribute to GROUND, as in the case of the hurricane-and-atmosphere transformation may be ambiguously captured in FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO term simply by alternatively imputing to the FIGURE, and again to the GROUND, the DOUBLE ERROR based powers of LOCAL SOURCING.

That is, REPRESENTATIONS using the binary FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO abstraction made possible by (the DOUBLE ERROR of) NAMING and GRAMMAR have, among WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, taken on a ‘life of their own’  and are being used NOT JUST FOR INFERENCE of the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT fluid Wave-field reality, but as the OPERATIVE REALITY, employing the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO abstraction as if it were ‘reality’.  For example, we can say that (1) the atmosphere is transforming, (2) the atmosphere is sourcing the stirring up of a Hurricane, or (3) the Hurricane is sourcing the stirring up of the atmosphere.  While (1) sees the dynamic as NONLOCAL transformation where FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE where there is NO LOCAL SOURCING (e.g. as in solar radiance induced turbulence), if we choose to impute LOCAL SOURCING to explain the HURRICANE in FIGURE and GROUND as TWO terms, we have the AMBIGUOUS BINARY OPPOSITE options of thinking in terms of the FIGURE sourcing the stirring up of the GROUND or the GROUND sourcing the stirring up of the FIGURE.

In other words, if we want to reduce the relational dynamic of TRANSFORMATION which is NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT and capture it instead in terms that are LOCAL and EXPLICIT as is possible if we impute FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO, rather than as ONE, we can do this, but in so doing, the AMBIGUITY arises as to whether the FIGURE sources the GROUND or whether the GROUND sources the FIGURE.  This AMBIGUITY is the price we pay for our reducing the NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT to the LOCAL and EXPLICIT.

Meanwhile, IF, instead of TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE, we employ NAMING and GRAMMAR to enable the abstraction of FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO, we can have construct representations wherein NEW FIGURES keep popping out of the GROUND and previously established FIGURES keep getting SUDUCTED and re-assimilated into the GROUND as in the abstractions of BIRTH and DEATH.    These entries and exits serve up a binary reality based on FIGURE and GROUND are TWO, supplemented by GROWTH and DECLINE which preserves the notion of the independently-existing thing-in-itself FIGURE that persists separately from the GROUND as in the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO representation.  GROWTH and DECLINE are like ramping up the emergence from BIRTH of the FIGURE from the GROUND into EXISTENCE and ramping down the EXISTING FIGURE back into the GROUND.  Note that this gives a representation that avoids having to deal with TRANSFORMATION with its linguistic-representation-eluding FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE dynamic.

In PLAIN TERMS, reducing FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE TRANSFORMATION to FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO MECHANICS leads to the use of DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR REPRESENTATIONS of TRANSFORMATION, or in other words, LANGUAGE-based REPRESENTATIONS of TRANSFORMATION.  Of course such DOUBLE ERROR based REPRESENTATIONS of TRANSFORMATION come at the price of a ‘dumbing down;’ of the natural phenomenon of TRANSFORMATION.

That is, we use the DOUBLE ERROR to pass from the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT resonance phenomenon of ATMOSPHERIC HURRICANING to the EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT mechanical abstraction of the LOCAL HURRICANE which we impute to be SOURCING a stirring up of the atmosphere, … OR IS IT THE ATMOSPHERE THAT IS SOURCING THE STIRRING UP OF THE HURRICANE?  Evidently, the use of the DOUBLE ERROR introduces AMBIGUITY  because we have replaced TRANSFORMATION with LOCAL SOURCING which is a two-sided FIGURE-and-GROUND coinage.

Now that EITHER FIGURE OR GROUND can serve as SOURCE points of GRAMMAR-given actions and development, we can argue over which SOURCING agency to use in our imaginary DOUBLE ERROR based LOCAL SOURCING mock-up of reality.  If you opt for the FIGURE as the active agent that sources the stirring up of the GROUND, you will fall into the category of ‘conservative’ while if you opt for the GROUND as the active agent that sources the stirring up of the FIGURE, you will fall into the category of ‘liberal’.  OF COURSE, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LOCAL “SOURCING”, that concept being an invention necessitated by the trickery needed to render EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT, … so this split into TWO VIEWS OF SOURCING that divides people into conservative and liberal, is purely psychological abstraction that has no grounding in our sensory experience based reality.  One might say that the split is EGO based, since both options imply belief in LOCAL SOURCING, and that some people (in the WESTERN CULTURE that believes in LOCAL SOURCING) prefer to think that the individual is the root source of the social dynamic while others prefer to think that the social collective is the root source of the social dynamic.

As one can imagine, the purely relational transformation that is the basic reality is not something that language can deal with, even with language’s DOUBLE ERROR system of NAMING and GRAMMAR that OBJECTIFIES A LOCAL FIGURE by NAMING IT (FIRST ERROR) and conflates this by using GRAMMAR to IMPUTE to the NAMING-instantiated FIGURE, it’s own POWER of SOURCING ACTIONS and DEVELOPMENT (SECOND ERROR), overcoming the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE aspect of fluid forms in the TRANSFORMATION with this FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO binary abstraction, made possible by the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.

To complete this BINARY substitute reality which avoids the continual flux of the transforming relational continuum, we invent the concepts of GROWTH and DECLINE to apply to the FIGURES in our FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO conceptualization.   While GROWTH and DECLINE are IMPLICIT in TRANSFORMATION, our BINARY LOGIC based EXPLICITIZING in FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO terms obliges us to introduce the notions of GROWTH and DECLINE as well as BIRTH and DEATH.

This is an awkward reconstruction of a fluid reality but it had to be done to come up with an EFFABLE and thus linguistically SHAREABLE representation (albeit radically reduced representation) of the reality of our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

Having divided out relational forms from relational flow, the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT is now (within this DOUBLE ERROR based scheme of abstraction) replaced by a substitute pseudo-reality that is EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT.

To review the above, … the flow-forms that, once NAMED and thereby split out of the flow and imputed to have their own persisting existence are, by invoking the abstraction of GRAMMAR, imputed to have their own powers of SOURCING actions and development. This FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO substitute-reality is an EFFABLE substitute reality that meanwhile comes with a few confusing shortfalls or ‘birth defects’ relative to the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE REAL REALITY.

For example, GRAMMAR now serves to mobilize the NOW REDUCED-TO-LOCAL and EXPLICIT forms of the TRANSFORMING relational continuum which are newly portrayed as being located within a separate and empty space as befits the new FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO conceptualization, so a HURRICANING IN THE FLOW in a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE reality is now mocked up as a HURRICANE in space in a FIGURE-and-GROUND as TWO abstraction, the GROUND being the ATMOSPHERE.  This splitting into TWO  and THEN using GRAMMAR to ‘add back  in’ the power of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and development, opens the door to using GRAMMAR to animate EITHER the FIGURE OR the GROUND, introducing an AMBIGUITY as to whether the HURRICANE is sourcing a stirring up of the ATMOSPHERE or whether the ATMOSPHERE is sourcing a stirring up of the HURRICANE.

In understanding reality as TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE, we never had this ambiguity, but we did have the issue that FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE TRANSFORMATION is INEFFABLE so the synthetic impression of AMBIGUITY that is putting WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS into polarized opposing camps is the artefact of substitution the binarized-to-make-it-effable FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO representation of reality.

WAIT A MINUTE!  EASTERN CULTURES don’t appear to be confused and polarized against one another by this AMBIGUITY!  HOW’S THAT?

The EASTERN CULTURE does not use the REPRESENTATIONS of binarized language that convey reality in terms of FIGURE and GROUND as TWO as the OPERATIVE REALITY, the DOUBLE ERROR constructions are INSTEAD only used as INFERENCE of the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT reality that lies beyond reach of the LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT.  As Wittgenstein points out, we can only use our explicit propositions to generate a matrix of relations to simulate the fluid reality so that the ‘take-away’ is what the matrix of relations conjures up in our INTELLIGENCE (as distinguished from our RATIO-NAL INTELLECTION).  As Wittgenstein observes in his final two propositions in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus;

 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. (“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen”),

–Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

What Wittgenstein is talking about is a method of representing, …or better, … inducing the understanding of something that lies beyond the capabilities of representation (because it is in continual flux), … a fluid reality.   This technique for understanding fluid reality is also known as BOOTSTRAPPING.

Geoffrey Chew]: “when you formulate a question, you have to have some basic concepts that you are accepting in order to formulate the question. But in the bootstrap approach, where the whole system represents a network of relationships without any firm foundation, the description of our subject can be begun at a great variety of different places. There isn’t any clear starting point. And the way our theory has developed in the last few years, we quite typically don’t know what questions to ask. We use consistency as the guide, and each increase in the consistency suggests something that is incomplete, but it rarely takes the form of a well-defined question. We are going beyond the whole question­and­answer framework.”

This approach is necessitated when pursuing a means of understanding a relational feature within the transforming relational continuum.  There are no LOCAL and EXPLICIT answers.  Bohm this in terms of the ‘holographic universe’ wherein THERE ARE ONLY RELATIONS and no THINGS that are RESPONSIBLE FOR RELATIONS.  Instead, the relations are responsible for things.

THINGS have a LOCAL presence whereas relations do not need a local presence.  A relational world dynamic is thus an INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT relational continuum.

As David Bohm observed in explaining the modern physics of Wave-field reality; “no single cause-and-effect relationship was ever really separate from the universe as a whole.  The ‘cause-and-effect’ relation is another example of the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR which is invented to imput LOCAL SOURCING of actions and development.  We avoid TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE by way of BINARY ABSTRACTION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO, opening the door to basic BIPOLAR AMBIGUITY  as the “price” of replacing the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT with the EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT, hence the unambiguous HURRICANING is replaced by the ambiguous HURRICANE and ATMOSPHERE as TWO combination where the conservative view is that the HURRICANE sources the stirring up of the ATMOSPHERE while the liberal view is that the ATMOSPHERE sources the stirring up of the HURRICANE.  In treality, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “SOURCING” (aka locally incipient ‘cause-and-effect’), there is only relational TRANSFORMATION.

“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.” – Michael Talbot, ‘The Holographic Universe’.

This is a problem created by the reducing of the transforming relational continuum which is ineffable-because-nonlocal-and-implicit to terms that are effable-because-local and explicit, thanks to the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.

 

* * * * * * *