If anyone reading this can dispute the following, or qualify it, this would be of interest to me because all of my inquiry, and, as discussed herein, the inquiry of Nietzsche and Bohm and Wittgenstein and Emerson and others I have cited EVIDENTLY support these findings.  What I am talking about is the ‘delusional’ basis on which Western culture social collectives divide into opposing political camps termed ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ (e.g. ‘Republicans’ and ‘Democrats’).  This antagonistic dichotomy, is based on a ‘delusion’ which is popularly referred to in Western culture as ‘cause-effect’ and ‘producer-product’.  Nietzsche has exposed such ‘local sourcing of action and development’ as a language-and-grammar based ‘double error’.

These grammatical ‘double-errors’ start with ‘ourselves’ in that we use language and grammar to psychologically ‘reduce’ our experience of inclusion as relational forms in a transforming relational continuum by way of two intellectual errors; the first error is to use language to ‘name’ relational flow-forms and thus, psychologically-intellectually impute ‘persisting thing-in-itself existence to the named form (whether an obviously non-independent relational ‘boil’ in the fluid atmosphere [hurricane etc.] or a not-so-obvious non-independent relational form such as a biological system within an ecosystemic suprasystem).  The psycho-linguistic device of ‘naming’ makes it easy for us to (psychologically) isolate and extract a relational form in the flow (e.g. hurricane) as a notional thing-in-itself, and the compounding artifice of grammar makes it easy to ‘re-animate’ the new (psychologically instantiated by ‘naming’) ‘thing-in-itself’ as if it were the source of actions and developments.  This ‘double error’ establishes an intellectual INVENTED REALITY’, the ‘operative reality’ of Western culture, that now ‘stands in front of’ and obscures/occludes the ‘relational reality’ of our actual experience.

 

In short, Western culture employs the ‘double-error’ within the artifice of language and grammar to construct an intellectual ‘pseudo-reality that we use to ‘over-ride’ (and occlude) our relational experience-based reality.  That is, we use language and grammar to capture an inherently ‘dynamic’ relational ‘appearance’ (such as a ‘forming’ in the ‘flowing’) as a name-instantiated ‘psychological thing-in-itself’.  This use of language to reify a relational forming-in-the-flowing as a notional ‘thing-in-itself’ [ is the first error in the Nietzsche-described ‘double error combination].  The second error is a conflation of the first error wherein grammar is employed to notionally endow the name-instantiated psychological ‘thing-in-itself’ [error 1] with the power of sourcing actions and developments [error 2].

 

Thus, instead of understanding the ‘boiling’ in the ‘flowing’ as the way relational dynamics ‘appear’, language and grammar deliver both ‘boil’ and ‘flow’ as intellectual-name-instantiated psychological ‘things-in-themselves’, setting up the psychological ambiguity as to whether the ‘boil’ is ‘sourcing the flow’ (conservative ‘reality’ where individual behaviours source the behaviour of the collective; i.e. ‘one rotten apple/individual sources rotting of the whole barrel of apples’) or whether the ‘flow’ is sourcing the ‘boil’ (liberal ‘reality’  wherein ‘it takes a whole community to raise a child [as a good or bad individual]).

 

Meanwhile, modern physics is grounded in relational experience wherein ‘relations are all there is’ so that the ‘boil’ and ‘flow’ separation into ‘two things’ is only ‘appearance’ (in the reality of relational experience, transformation manifests as an apparent multiplicity of relational forms-in-the-flow).  Nature’s innate relational-unity  is confirmed in modern physics and supported in indigenous aboriginal, Taoist and Advaita understanding.

 

In this relational understanding, the abstractions of ‘things-in-themselves’ [first error of the ‘double error’] imputed by ‘naming’ does not arise, and neither does the ‘second error’ arise [to conflate the first error] wherein the ‘thing-in-itself’ invented by ‘naming’ is, thanks to the grammar-based ‘second error’, notionally endowed with powers of sourcing actions and developments.  This was formerly known in Western culture as the power of ‘sorcery’ and it has not ‘gone away’ but has been ‘dressed in new language-and-grammar clothes by Newton, and persists in modern Western culture.

 

That is; ‘sorcery’ is an older (medieval) word whose same meaning persists in today’s Western culture language and grammar usage, conveyed by different words such as ‘causality’ (‘cause-and-effect’) and ‘production (‘producer-and-product’).  In the reality of our actual experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum, there is no ‘sorcery’, no ‘causation’ and no ‘production’, and thus there are no ‘causal agents’ or ‘producers’ deemed ‘responsible’ for ‘authoring’ or ‘delivering’ material outputs or results.   The concept of ‘sorcery’ aka ‘causation’ aka ‘production’ is intellectual abstraction that simplifies, for intellectual convenience, discursive capture of relational transformation wherein ‘everything is in flux’ (as affirmed by Heraclitus and confirmed by modern physics).

 

We can speak of volcanoes in the ‘double error’ manner as ‘producing lava flows and volcanic rocks and such language-and-grammar based description ‘matches’ the impression we get from our limited field of vision (we cannot see ‘out in front of us’, the transforming relational continuum we are experiencing inclusion within).  Likewise, we may speak of an avalanche or ‘landslide’ in terms of massive movement of soil and rock from regions of greater elevation to regions of lesser elevation.  When this occurs, there is a loss of peak-based mass from the higher elevations of the approximately spherical surface of the earth and a correspondingly opposite buildup of valley fill-in.  In other words, these two effects, which can be seen by visual observation and captured in language and grammar as two effects, are in reality, the single phenomenon of ‘relational transformation’.

 

In the same sense, if one considers the earth as a relatively more dense feature within the overall energized flow aka spacetime-continuum, we can’t isolate what is going on to ‘just the earth’ as if the ‘earth’ were a ‘thing-in-itself’ as Western language-and-grammar would have us psychologically conceive it.  To do so would recall the systems sciences warning of the psychological trap that leads to ‘suboptimization’ ‘The Name of the Devil is Sub-optimization’ where we trick ourselves with language and grammar to conceive of a relational form in the transforming relational continuum as if it were ‘independently-existing’, and thus seek to enhance or eliminate it as if it were a thing-in-itself.  Since all forms are relational forms in the transforming relational continuum, our actions as relational forms induce relational transformation and the notion of ‘suboptimizing’ a particular form as if it were a thing-in-itself, as in the language-and-grammar based ‘double error’, is impossible in the ‘real’ reality of our experience as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum.

 

We can put our relational experience into first precedence in shaping our behaviour, while using our abstract powers of language and grammar-based (double-error based) intellection as a supportive tool, or we can fall into the trap of elevating our language-and-grammar based (double-error-based) intellection into an unnatural precedence over our relational experience;

 

A man’s wisdom is to know that all ends are momentary, that the best end must be superseded by a better. But there is a mischievous tendency in him to transfer his thought from the life to the ends, to quit his agency and rest in his acts: the tools run away with the workman, the human with the divine. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘The Method of Nature’

 

The ’double error’ is the basis of ‘ego’; i.e. first we use naming to impute ‘independent thing-in-itself existence’ to a relational form (relational forms are all there is) and we conflate this error with the second error of imputing to the language-created thing-in-itself, the notional powers of sourcing actions and developments.  This is Emerson’s point; man is included in the transforming relational continuum and therefore included in ‘God’ or however we would like to refer to the overall reality.  Man, as it is with all of nature’s forms, is an agent of relational transformation within the transforming relational continuum, and how we move within the flow-continuum influences the continuing unfolding of the flow-continuum.

 

The Psychological Origin of the Political Divisions; Conservatives & Liberals

 

SUMMARY

 

The division within Western culture, into ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’ is, in both cases, based on the ‘illusion’ or ‘delusion’ of ‘sorcery’, as described as ‘the double error’ by Nietzsche.  This delusion deriving from Western language and grammar based ‘double error’is also the basis of ‘ego’.  (Note: re the ‘double error’ and its ‘illusion’-giving influence: —‘illusion’ becomes ‘delusion’ when we mistakenly accept and act on it as ‘reality’.)

 

The first error is where we use ‘naming’ to impute ‘independent thing-in-itself existence’ to a relational form (relational forms are all there is in reality understood as a transforming relational continuum as in modern physics).

The second error is where we conflate the first error by imputing to the language-created ‘thing-in-itself’ abstraction, ‘its own powers of sourcing actions and developments’.

 

The ‘double error-based illusion/delusion:  These ‘naming-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’ notionally with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments include;

 

‘humans’ (name-instantiated relational complexes which the double error recasts as independent things-in-themselves with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments),

 

 ‘nations’ (name-instantiated relational complexes which the double error recasts as independent things-in-themselves with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments),

 

‘corporations’ (name-instantiated relational complexes which the double error recasts as independent things-in-themselves with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments),

 

The above language-and-grammar instigated psychological concepts are the basic abstract ‘building blocks’ used for constructing an INVENTED REALITY  that serves Western culture as the ‘operative reality’.  In Western culture, this INVENTED REALITY is deployed as the ‘operative reality’ occluding the ‘real relational reality’ of our actual experience as relational forms within the transforming relational continuum.

 

Because this INVENTED REALITY is sorcery based, ambiguity arises as to whether the sorcery is of the one-to-many topology (conservative) or the many-to-one topology (liberal).  It is only due to the aberrant belief in ‘sorcery’ (cause-effect, producer-product), which ‘eclipses and occludes the reality of relational transformation, that the conservative-liberal split arises.

 

The understanding of reality arising in modern physics is consistent with the understanding of reality in indigenous aboriginal cultures, Buddhism/Taoism and Advaita Vedanta wherein the Western culture abstractions of ‘sourcing of actions and developments (‘sorcery’, ’cause-effect’, ‘producer-product’) do not arise.  In other words, the language and grammar instigated psychological ‘double error’ that gives rise to ‘sorcery’ and its counterpart ‘ego’, does not appear in the relational reality of indigenous aboriginal, Buddhist/Taoists and Advaita Vedanta culture.

David Bohm found that his modern physics ‘relational’ understanding of reality’ was a layover to indigenous aboriginal understanding of reality.  Schroedinger had made the same discovery with respect to modern physics and Advaita Vedanta.  These discoveries support Nietzsche’s ‘double error’ finding which exposes the Western language and grammar based ‘cover-up’ of relational reality, by way of psychological mis-impressions of reality based on notional (name-instantiated) things-in-themselves [error 1], notionally with powers of sourcing actions and developments [error 2],

 

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’

 

As has been elaborated on elsewhere within this Aboriginal Physics Newsletter, the ‘lock-in’ to Western culture’s ‘double error’ based INVENTED REALITY is huge since Western culture has been preferentially allocating power and influence over ‘changes to the Western culture decision-making/operating system’ to those who are viewed as ‘superior sources of actions and developments’.  However, the modern physics supported revision to such ‘off-base’ psychology that is now waiting in the wings for approval, is awaiting approval by those who have ‘most to lose’ by approving it. That is, those who have been given greater than average influence over social change are those whose endorsement is being sought for a change in understanding that will undercut their own privileged status and influence arising from a ‘sorcery’ based view that is ‘illusion’ based on a ‘double error’ of grammar.

 

As with the Buddhist parable of ‘flag and wind’ (which is sourcing the movement?), so it is also with ‘boil and flow’ (which is sourcing the movement?).  The Western culture belief in the necessity of ‘sourcing’ gives rise to these insoluble ambiguities (they are insoluble since ‘sourcing’ is pure abstraction.   The notional ‘East is East and West is West’ division, that associates with reality as relational ‘appearance’ (Heraclitus) versus reality as binary abstraction (Parmenides) comes into play here.  Western culture’s use of double error based language and grammar is the equivalent of using binary abstraction as the foundation of ‘reality’

 

 

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FOOTNOTE: … Our Western language and grammar allow us to ‘reduce’ the relational transformation of our full-blown experience, that includes everything, to intellectual ‘thing-in-itself’ based concepts since language allows us to ‘name’ relational forms, whether hurricanes of mountains, regardless of their being only prominent visual features within the transforming relational continuum.  Thanks to ‘naming’, and thanks to ‘grammar’ (i.e. thanks to our Western culture brand of language), we are able to construct intellectual ‘effigies’ of visible portions of the continuum and use language and grammar to share a certain type of understanding of them, as if they were ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves’ (the intellectual impression given by ‘naming’ a relational feature in the flow).

 

Nothing wrong with that, … it makes a lot of sense even if we acknowledge that the world is a transforming relational continuum; i.e. such a world is impossible to capture in language based on words employed to ‘name’ visual forms and features, since by ‘naming’ a form or feature, we psychologically impute ‘persisting existence’ to it.   Meanwhile, our visual sensing experiences have great potential for sharing our experiences and thus building understanding.  Language affords us a ‘piecemeal’ means of sharing experience.  Of course, we cannot capture in language that which is in continual flux as Heraclitus and others have pointed out, but we can capture patterns in the flow that persist for some time, and that can therefore serve to share the visual aspect of our experiences with one another (the key issue being whether multiple observers know they are orienting to the ‘same form or feature’).

 

The reality is, that capturing our experience as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum is impossible since it cannot be reduced  to ‘individual experience’.  The hurricane is an easy-to-see-and-understand example of relational phenomena that we nevertheless DO employ language to speak about as if it were an ‘independently-existing thing-in-itself (with ‘its own’ developmental and action-sourcing experience).  This happens through the ‘double error’ of using ‘naming’ to impute persisting thing-in-itself existence and conflating this with grammar to impute the power of sourcing actions and developments to the naming-instantiated (notional) ‘thing-in-itself’.

 

Language and grammar, in combination with visual sensing, allows us to share a simplified  facsimile of our experience so that individuals within such group sharing can develop understanding that goes beyond what they have personally acquired.  The difference in this language-extended knowledge from knowledge that derives from personal experience is indicated by the term ‘carnal knowledge’, and the joke that parents sending their child to ‘school’ to learn ‘the facts of life’ must know the difference between ‘sex education’ and ‘sex lessons’.  The young virgin teenager may ‘know’ far more about sex than her experienced parents, just as the young Ph.D. business graduate newly appointed as ‘manager’ may ‘know’ far more about business than the salty-dog ‘manager’ that ‘worked his way up’ from ‘the shop floor’, however, as Heraclitus put it; ‘the knowledge of many things does not teach understanding’.  [experience-based understanding is ‘inclusional’ rather than ‘visual perspective based’]

 

All of this points to a profound difference between ‘experience’ (which is experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum), and ‘knowledge’ (which is intellectual learning that is grounded in visual sensing).   There is experiential understanding that cannot be reduced to visual representation.  This is the case with our experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.

 

However, the indigenous aboriginal ‘sharing circle’ is a ‘design for evolution’ that serves to bring a multiplicity of visual representations into connective confluence in the mind so as to extract coherencies from the manner in which the shared language-based visual impressions interfere constructively and destructively.  This has been termed ‘bootstrapping’ by modern physics investigators such as Geoffrey Chew and John Wheeler.

 

‘Bootstrapping’ can give us a sense of what it’s like to experience inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.  It has the same interferential topology as ‘holography’.

 

Wittgenstein refers to such ‘holographic’ synthesizing based on an interfering network of rational propositions in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus as follows;

 

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.

 

 

There is no problem in employing words that connote things with persisting existence, as a means of sharing our visual sensing experiences through linguistic discourse.  That is, there would be nothing wrong with that, provided that we did not ‘lose track’ of the fact that our vision-and-language capability only works by ‘chopping into parts’ the transforming relational continuum, so that by basing understanding on ‘the parts’ we are at the same time ‘building a debt’ with respect to the need to psychologically ‘reunify’ what our vision-and-language combination has been breaking into parts; i.e. mountains and valleys are not really ‘things-in-themselves’ but visualizable features within the transforming relational continuum. To say that ‘land slides down mountainsides and infills valleys, … gets the point about transformation (crudely) across, so long as we remember that such statements are ‘Wittgenstein ladders’ that infer a reality based in relational transformation that lies beyond the explicit visual imagery that is conveyed by our words.

 

There is a problem (of psychological confusion) in Western culture in that we are in the habit of interpreting such language ‘literally’, and this is where the concept of ‘sorcery’ by way of the ‘double error’ arises.  Sorcery is not ‘real’ but it can be used in language and grammar to ‘conjure up’ understanding of reality that is innately relational. The sharing circle of indigenous aboriginal culture wherein a diverse multiplicity of language-based visual images can be brought into connective confluence in the mind, … serves to bring on understanding that is holographic; i.e. an understanding of a ‘reality’ that is not ‘out there’ but that we are included in, and that transcends visual perspectives of ‘what is going on out there’.

 

There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing’; the more affects we are able to put into words about a thing, the more eyes, various eyes we are able to use for the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘concept’ of the thing, our ‘objectivity’.– Nietzsche

 

The Psychological Origin of the Political Divisions; Conservatives & Liberals explores just one of the psychological aberrations that derive from Western culture’s chronic susceptibility to the ‘double error’.

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