AUTHOR’S PREFACE: 

 

The NORMAL WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT is NOT going to get the DEEPER MESSAGE in this note (without a special effort) because we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have been psychologically conditioned to believe in an ABSTRACT PSEUDO-REALITY featuring the INDEPENDENT NATION.  THERE ARE NO ‘INDEPENDENT NATIONS’ in THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM aka the WAVE-FIELD aka the Tao.   The REJECTION of the EXISTENCE OF THE INDEPENDENT NATION is NECESSARY for one to be ABLE TO SEE/UNDERSTAND the REAL REALITY of our inclusion in the transforming relational continuum aka the WAVE-FIELD and the Tao.  The point is the MODERN CULTURAL CONDITIONING that would have us believe in the INDEPENDENT NATION, while the EGO can’t let go ot it, is ABSTRACTION based on the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR which IMPLIES (A) the EXISTENCE OF THE LOCAL NATION and (B) ITS OWN GRAMMAR-GIVEN LOCAL POWERS OF AUTHORING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT. The concept of the INDEPENDENT NATION, embellished by the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR, has us THINKING (WRONGLY) in terms of the INDEPENDENT NATION with its OWN POWERS OF LOCAL AUTHORING of actions and developments.

 

The ISSUE concerning RUSSIA’s rejection of the INDEPENDENT NATION status of the UKRAINE, HAS ROOTS WHICH GO MUCH DEEPER AND QUESTION THE LEGITIMACY OF THE VERY CONCEPT OF “THE INDEPENDENT NATION”.  If

If WE CONFINE OUR INQUIRY TO THE QUESTION OF THE LEGITIMACY OF THE UKRAINE’S CLAIM TO SOVEREIGN NATION STATUS, THERE WE SHALL BE MISSING THE NEEDED INQUIRY THAT WILL EXPOSE THE ILLEGITIMACY OF THE CONCEPT OF THE SOVEREIGN STATE..

* * *

It is common for readers to ACCEPT THE NOTION OF THE INDEPENDENT NATION as if it were REALITY (which it is NOT) which leads to social FRAGMENTATION through belief in the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR which implies LOCAL AUTHORING of actions and development (e.g. on the part of the so-called “INDEPENDENT NATION”).

The concept of the ‘INDEPENDENT NATION’ is DELUSION which has nevertheless come to play A FOUNDATIONAL ROLE in our GLOBAL APPROACH to CONCEPTUALIZING “REALITY”, or more aptly, ‘SUBSTITUTE REALITY’.  Our GLOBALLY POPULAR ‘OPERATIVE REALITY’ is this DOUBLE ERROR based SUBSTITUTE REALITY featuring INDEPENDENT NATIONS as LOCAL ACTION and DEVELOPMENT AUTHORING AGENTS.   However, our sense-experience reality is of our inclusion in ONE transforming relational continuum wherein THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ‘INDEPENDENT NATION’.   Modern physics and systems sciences have pointed this out but the HABIT of constructing SUBSTITUTE REALITIES incorporating the ABSTRACTION of INDEPENDENT NATIONS continues to infuse the ERRONEOUS notion of “INDEPENDENT NATIONS” into the MODERN PSYCHE, inducing ARTIFICIAL FRAGMENTATION and UNNECESSARY CONFLICT.

 

The UNCRITICAL acceptance of the CONCEPT of the INDEPENDENT NATION succeeds because of the popularity of the EGO inflation deriving from the ERRONEOUS sense of LOCAL AUTHORING implied by the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR that comes bundled in with that ABSTRACTION of the INDEPENDENT NATION.

 

The QUESTION IS “NOT” … “DOES THE UKRAINE QUALIFY AS A LEGITIMATE “INDEPENDENT NATION”?.  THE QUESTION IS INSTEAD: HOW HAVE WE BEEN HOODWINKED INTO ACCEPTING THE UNREAL ABSTRACTION OF “THE INDEPENDENT NATION”, being as how we live “in a world characterized by global interconnectedness and mutual interdependence?

 

A fixed lattice-work of INDEPENDENT NATION grid-cells may be laid over the global interconnectedness and mutual interdependence so that new developments may be labelled according to their grid-cell of emergence.   The fact remains that while those grid cells signify INDEPENDENT NATIONS, this does not mean that developments that emerge through them derive from them’ since we live ”in a world characterized by global interconnectedness and mutual interdependence.”.  In KORZYBSKI’s terms; ‘the map is not the territory”

 

 

* * * end-of-author’s-preface * * *

 

 

 

NATIONALISM, the now GLOBAL game of PRETENDING the “INDEPENDENCE” of “NATIONS” stems from the ABSTRACTION of the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR as Nietzsche has pointed out.

 

If we choose to OVERLOOK THE SCHIZOPHRENIA and PARANOIA in our modern GLOBAL CULTURE that, as Bohm and Nietzsche both point out, is the source of FRAGMENTATION that is both PSYCHOLOGICAL and PHYSICAL and NATIONALISM is part of it.

 

The battle over the STATUS of the UKRAINE stems from the ABSTRACT PROMOTION OF FRAGMENTATION by way of NATIONALISM.

 

There is no such thing as an INDEPENDENT NATION.  The FRAGMENTATION into NATIONS is not grounded in our sense-experience, it is ABSTRACTION that is popularized ONLY by groups of people coming together and AGREEING TO SUPPORT THE UNREAL ABSTRACTION OF NAMING-BASED INDEPENDENT NATIONS.  This is a crazy intellectual abstraction based idea that breeds WARS.

 

Sentient forms in nature do not participate in this ABSTRACT CREATION OF IMAGINARY “INDEPENDENT NATIONS” or “INDPENDENT BEINGS” of any type.  Indigenous aboriginals DO NOT PARTICIPATE in the ABSTRTACT CREATION OF IMAGINARY “INDEPENDENT FRAGMENTS” of SPACE that are DEFINED by IMAGINARY BOUNDARY LINES.   This inventing of INDEPENDENT STATES FRAGMENTS THE PSYCHE and from there it FRAGMENTS the social collective.

 

FRAGMENTATION is ILLUSION.  We live within a transforming relational continuum where FRAGMENTATION DOES NOT EXIST other than in the LANGUAGE STIMULATED ABSTRACTIONS OF THE PSYCHE.    HERE’s HOW THIS FRAGMENTATION HAPPENS,

 

-1-A social collective invents a name such as UKRAINE and associates it with a GEOMETRIC (imaginary line based) CLOSED FIGURE superimposed on a MAP based REPRESENTATION of the EARTH.   This FRAGMENTING of the SURFACE AREA of he earth is PURELY AND SOLELY IMAGINARY IN ITS FOUNDATIONAL ASPECT and the GEOMETRIC AREAL FORMS are simply DECLARED TO EXIST and this is BACKUP UP by FORCE OF ARMS of the SUPPORTERS who are DEFINING the AREA and DECLARING IT TO BE SOMETHING that REALLY EXISTS.

 

-2- The EXISTENCE of these FRAGMENTED land areas is something that is INVENTED BY INTELLECTUAL DECLARATION and is sustained by FORCE by the SUPPORTERS who organizing POLICING INFRASTRUCTURE to SECURE the IMAGINARY FRAGMENTATION that they have INTELLECTUALLY INVENTED.  There is NO OTHER BASIS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF INDEPENDENT FRAGMENTS than INTELLECTUAL ABSTRACTION, but once many people SWEAR OATHS OF ALLEGIEANCE to COMMIT THEIR LIVES TO THE DEFENCE OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE IMAGINARY “INDEPENDENT FRAGMENTS”, we have the system that is now in place that we refer to as NATIONALISM.   It is established by BUTE FORCE as we know from the wars between European COLONIZERS who have been imposing this system around the globe and indigenous peoples who have never agreed to put such INTELLECTUAL ABSTRACT FRAGMENTATION into an unnatural precedence over sense-experience of inclusion in A SENSE EXPERIENCE REALITY OF INCLUSION IN A WORLD CHARACTERIZED BY GLOBAL INTERCONNECTEDNESS AND MUTUAL INTERDEPENDENCE.

 

-3- The problem of the UKRAINE begins with the problem of INTELLECTUAL FRAGMNTING of our sense-experience of INCLUSION IN A WORLD CHARACTERIZED BY GLOBAL INTERCONNECTION AND MUTUAL INTERDEPENDENCE as is the fining of ‘systems scientists’ and as is the finding of indigenous aboriginals and ANYONE who opts for the NATURAL understanding of the world wherein our sense-experience is kept in a natural precedence over our intellectual abstraction.  As David Bohm and Nietzsche have pointed out, LANGUAGE of a certain type has given us the habit of construction SUBSTITUTE REALITIES based on BINARY LOGIC.  This SUBSTITUTE REALITIES FEATURE the SPLITTING APART of FIGURE and GROUND using BINARY LOGIC  by way of the DOUBLE ERROR (Nietzsche) of NAMING and GRAMMAR.  Once we popularize language usage such as POLAND is GROWING in POPULATION and is continuing to advance in its DEVELOPMENT and PRODUCTION of goods and services, this “DOUBLE ERROR OF NAMING AND GRAMMAR” inserts into the INTELLECT, the MISTAKEN CONCEPT OF “LOCAL AUTHORING” of actions and development.  Thus the language based popular usage of POLAND does this and that or ‘the UKRAINE does this and that’ builds a matrix of related propositions that impute support for the LOCAL EXISTENCE and LOCAL AUTHORING POWER of the IMAGINED ENTITY associated with the NAME in the DOUBLE ERROR combination of NAMING and GRAMMAR; e.g. “The TOWN is GROWING, DEVELOPING and PRODUCING goods and services” is a DOUBLE ERROR based SUBSTITUTE REALITY that takes shape IN THE INTELLECTUALIZING MIND even though the world of our sense-experience continues to be one of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

 

-4- The UKRAINE DOES NOT EXIST.   The notion of its LOCAL EXISTENCE of a NATION derives from the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR and THE NATION takes on a notional LOCAL EXISTENCE by popular usage of this NAMING and GRAMMAR based (DOUBLE ERROR BASED) construction of an INTELLECTUAL ABSTRACTION BASED SUBSITUTE REALITY.  In other words, the NATION OF POLAND (or etc.) ONLY EXISTS IN THE LANGUAGE-STIMULTATED  INTELLECTUAL ABSTRACTING MIND.   This technique of INVENTING NATIONS with notional LOCAL AUTHORING POWERS  using the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR is unique to the COMMON AVERAGE EUROPEAN LANGUAGE ARCHITECTURES (which includes the RUSSIAN language) and DOES NOT INCLUDE indigenous aboriginals whose language is FLOW BASED and does NOT give itself up to the trickery of FRAGMENTATION by way of the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.  For example, Bohm’s RHEOMODE language was designed to AVOID FRAGMENTATION and the indigenous aboriginal languages also have this design, thus, for example, one would say the equivalent of THERE IS TOWNING IN THE TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE, where WE, with our Common Average European LANGUAGE ARCHITECTURE would say ‘the TOWN is GROWING, DEVELOPING and PRODUCING products and services, IMPLYING LOCAL AUTHORING POWERS, which, as already noted, the systems scientists have exposed as DELUSION since our sense-experience affirms OUR SENSE EXPERIENCE REALITY OF INCLUSION IN A WORLD CHARACTERIZED BY GLOBAL INTERCONNECTEDNESS AND MUTUAL INTERDEPENDENCE.

THERE ARE NO INDEPENDENT NATIONS IN OUR SENSE-EXPERIENCE REALITY, as the animals of the world understand and as our own animal nature understands, , the CONCEPT of he INDEPENDENT NATION stems from the ABSTTRCTIONS of LANGUAGE; i.e. from the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR which creates the ILLUSION of a LOCAL AUTHOR of actions and development, which simply DOES NOT EXIST in our sense experience world of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum aka the WAVE-FIELD aka the Tao.

 

WHAT WE COMMON AVERAG EUROPEAN LANGUAGE USERS DO IS, WE ENGINEER THE LANGAUGE-BASED ILLUSION OF THE “EXISTENCE” of LOCAL ENTITITIES WITH THE DOUBLE ERROR OF NAMING AND GRAMMAR.  Thus, ‘THE TOWN IS GROWING, DEVELOPMENT and PRODUCING products and services is a DOUBLE ERROR CONSTRUCT that we CAE language users employ to fashion a SUBSTITUTE REALITY in place of the NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT ‘there is TOWNING in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE’ representation of the FLOW-based language architecture such as the indigenous aboriginal language architecture.

 

* * *

 

SUMMARY:  the concept of the INDEPENDENT NATION is INTELLECTUAL ABSTRACTION based on the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR which ‘works’ to bring about shared understanding, NOT OF ANY REPRESENTATION OF REALITY, but by way of the CONSTRUCTION OF A SUBSTITUTE REALITY that is common to the CAE LANGUAGE USER GROUP.

 

The NAME POLAND existed while people were fighting to establish a popularly agreed upon IMAGINARY LINE BASED OUTLINE of where POLAND was said to EXIST but the PURPORTED EXISTENCE OF AN UNREAL IDEA A LOCAL PRESENCE FLOATED AROUND IN IDEA SPACE while the effort was underway to organize a large enough group of SUPPORTIVE BELIEVERS who would have sufficient influence on public agreement to support the NOTIONAL EXISTENCE OF THE NATION OF POLAND since there is NO OTHER BASIS OF SUPPORT FOR THE NOTIONAL EXISTENCE OF THE ABSTRACT INDEPENDENT NATION STATE “OTHER THAN POPULAR AGREEMENT IN THE STATE’S EXISTENCE”.    In the case of POLAND, the imaginary line borders had to undergo numerous adjustments before the POULAR AGREEMENT ON THE EXISTENCE OF POLAND could be established and POPULAR AGREEMENT OF THE EXISTENCE OF A NATION IS THE ONLY BASIS FOR SUCH EXISTENCE BECAUSE THERE IS NO SENSE-EXPERIENCE SUPPORT FOR SUCH EXISTENCE.  That is, after the intellectual support for the imaginary INDEPENDENT STATE is SECURED, that material evidence can be manufactured after the fact, such as BORDER MARKERS and NATIONAL HISTORY BOOKS written, MAPS printed etc. as BACKFILL for the purely intellectual abstraction based INTELLECTUAL NOTION of the NATION’s EXISTENCE.

 

* * *

 

Whatever group does the best job of TALKING UP THE NOTIONAL EXISTENCE of the NATION, using the NAME in everyday speech in DOUBLE ERROR based constructs which make it sound as if the NATION is a LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF with its own powers of AUTHORING actions and developments, as with statements such as “POLAND’s population IS GROWING, DEVELOPING and PRODUCING many  goods and services.   This sort of language construct imputes LOCAL AUTHORING POWERS to the IMAGINARY LOCAL EXPLICIT THING established by IMAGINARY LINE BOUNDARIES that ignores the mix of tribal communities within the intellectual abstraction based FRAGMENT of land which is not initially visible to the observing eye, and only becomes visible as the supporters of such INDEPENDENT EXISTENCE continue to erect border markers and install checkpoints to impute the actions of ENTERING and DEPARTING from the NOTIONAL INDEPENDENTLY EXISTING NATION which, as status, EXISTS ONLY BY VIRTUE OF HAVING A SUFFICIENT QUORUM OF SUPPORTERS OF SUCH ABSTRACTION, support which is commonly recruited by giving potential supporters a “piece of the action” i.e. an ownership stake in the language and grammar based SUBSTITUTE REALITY that is BEING INVENTED.by the quorum of supporters, often by their having to swear an oath of willingness to “give their lives, if necessary, in defence of the PSEUDO-EXISTENCE of the NAMING and GRAMMAR based ABSTION of the purported “INDEPENDENT NATION”  which is purported to exist smack in the midst of the transforming relational continuum aka the WAVE-FIELD aka the Tao.

 

THE UKRAINE was in the process of being HATCHED as a REALITY which means that the popular agreement as to ITS EXISTENCE was being engineered through the use establishing a COMMON USAGE and ACCEPTANCE of WHAT THE NAME UKRAINE SIGNIFIED, THERE BEING NO OTHER DEFINING BASIS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF AN ABSTRACT ‘INDEPENDENT NATION’, OTHER THAN COMMON BELIEF AND COMMITMENT, AND WHERE THERE IS DISAGREEMENT OVER WHAT EXISTS AND WHAT DOESN’T EXIST, THERE IS NO SOLID REFERENCE BASE TO APPEAL TO BECAUSE WE ARE MAKING IT ALL UP AS WE GO ALONG, SO THE REALITY AS TO WHETHER AN AREA OF LAND FALLS IN ‘THE UKRAINE’ AS DEFINED BY ONE GROUP OR INTO OTHER NAMING-INSTANTIATED STATES AS DEFINED BY OTHER GROUPS, HAS NO BASIS FOR ARBITRATION “IN SENSE-EXPERIENCE REALITY” BECAUSE THE NOTION OF ‘THE NATION” IS INTELLECTUAL ABSTRACTION, WHICH IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR COLONIZERS OF THE LAND, AS THE INDIGENOUS ABORIGINAL PEOPLES DISCOVERED TO THEIR DISMAY.

 

This DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR is the technique we CAE folks use establish the new REALITY based on the existence of the INDEPENDENT NATION.  It is important to GET IN THEIR FIRST SO AS TO EXTABLISH THE NAME, BECAUSE THE NOTION OF ‘INDEPENDENT EXISTENCE’ FOLLOWS THE NAMING WHICH GETS PICKED UP AND REPREATED AND BECOMES PART OF THE NAMEING AND GRAMMAR BASED SUBSTITUTE REALITY;

 

The current news reports say;

 

“Putin says he sat down and said he’d taken a long-needed decision to recognize the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. And immediately he met with separatist leaders, who were suddenly in Moscow for a signing ceremony at the Kremlin, and it was all done.”

 

This NAMING is psychological trickery that has become part of the modern WESTERN CULTURE TACTICS for controlling what goes on in the world.  These TACTICS include the FRAGMENTING of sense experience reality so as to construct an INTELLECTUAL ABSTRACT SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on the FRAGMENTATION into INDEPENDENT NATION STATES,  which are based on the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR which imputes LOCAL AUTHORING POWERS to the NAMING instantiated (imaginary) LOCAL NATION THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES.  The IMAGINARY ABSTRACTION comes first with the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR which is then BACKFILLED with all kinds of HISTORY of alleged LOCALLY AUTHORED ACTIONS where we speak in terms where POLAND did this and POLAND did that and building up this illusion of POLAND as an AUTHOR of actions and developments (the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR abstracting device).   Once a QUORUM of people are talking in this manner, the PSEUDO-REALITY of the POLAND as a LOCAL AUTHOR OF ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT takes shape in the social collective that is supporting this POLAND-infused rhetoric that builds up the notion of LOCAL AUTHORING POWERS which is what MAKES REAL whatever NAME one wants to stick in terms, there ‘the UKRAINE’ or ‘POLAND’.

 

The WESTERN ALLIANCES such as NATO constitute a powerful based for getting these NAMES OF INDEPENDENT NATION STATES ESTABLISHED in the world press and thus in the world language rhetoric.  It is a kind of CHESS GAME and PUTIN has just made to use the NAMING TRICK to establish LOCAL BEING by way of NAMING by promoting a NEW NAMING based local substitute reality with the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics

 

* * *

Is there any reason that these names, and perhaps more are coming, should TAKE PRIORITY over the name ‘the UKRAINE’?    there is no NATURAL precedence here because NAMING that establishes LOCAL BEING and LOCAL AUTHORING IS PURELY INTELLECTUAL ABSTRACTION THAT HAS NO NATURAL GROUNDING IN SENSE-EXPERIENCE REALITY, it is dependent on POPULAR ACCEPTANCE as established where ‘the UNITED STATES’, ‘CANADA’ and ‘MEXICO’ picked up more popular usage than TURTLE ISLAND or simply avoiding the abstract imposing of FRAGMENTATION by way of NAMING on the sense-experience reality of the transforming relational continuum.

 

That is, in WESTERN CULTURE, the FRAGMENTING INTO NAME-BASED “INDEPENDENT” NATION STATES IS AN ABSTRACTION BASED CHESS GAME that is backed up by MILITARY VIOLENCE.  THERE IS NOTHING “NATURAL” ABOUT IT, although those notional INDEPENDENT STATES that ACCEPT ONE ANOTHER’S ABSTRACT “INDEPENDENCE” (which is pure unreal abstraction supported only by the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR) do well by cultivating balance in their relational dynamics with the language based ILLUSION (DELUSION) of their INDEPENDENT EXISTENCE, this notion of INDEPENDENCE “FLYING IN THE FACE OF … OUR SENSE EXPERIENCE REALITY OF INCLUSION IN A WORLD CHARACTERIZED BY GLOBAL INTERCONNECTEDNESS AND MUTUAL INTERDEPENDENCE.

 

The indigenous aboriginal people have long ago GIVEN UP on trying to convince our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS of the existence of the REAL REALITY that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have WALLPAPERED OVER WITH OUR ABSTRACT SUBSTITUTE REALITY, THE REAL REALITY CORRECTLY CAPTURED BY CHIEF SEATTLE AND OTHERS;

 

This we know, the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”— “Chief Seattle”

 

Of course, how we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS come to where we are today, has not only PHILOSOPHICAL and SCIENTIFIC BUT ALSO RELIGIOUS IMPLICATIONS.   Nevertheless, Chief Seattle’s view is supported by Modern Physics  and by way of that understanding, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are putting ourselves on a REALITY FRAGMENTING BUSTRIP TO HELL and the current conflict re the UKRAINE underscores our CONFUSTION coming form our deploying of the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR a FOUNDATIONAL ROLE in a SUBSTITUTE REALITY CONSTRUCTION, embraced not because it is MORE TRUE but because it is MORE SIMPLE, but such SIMPLIFICATION is ending up by COMPLICATING our UNDERSTANDING as when we sow confusion by using our SIMPLIFIED SUBSTITUTE REALITY as our OPERATIVE REALITY which is where the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR comes in.

 

WELCOME TO THE DYSFUNCTIONAL INDEPENDENT NATION-INVENTING CHESS GAME, .. LUHANSK and DONETSK PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC!   WILL YOU BECOME FULLY FLEDGED NEW PLAYERS IN OUR DOUBLE ERROR OF NAMING AND GRAMMAR GAME?  WE SHALL SOON SEE!  PUTIN seems like he has a good handle on CHESS PLAY..

 

* * *.

 

 

 

 

FOOTNOTE:

 

Children of the Magic Kingdom Montréal, December 4, 1999

http://rampages.onramp.net/~emlumley/kingdom.htm

~^~ Once upon a time, in the universe of Then, … on the surface of a fertile terrestrial sphere, there was a magic kingdom presided over by a kindly king. the king cared greatly for his people, nurturing their growth and welfare and soon his citizens grew very prosperous and plentiful in number, … and thus, each year the kingdom walls were brought down and moved further outwards. And the king, like many kings, knew his kingdom well by the properties of its people, its streets, its buildings and monuments and all things in it, and also by the behaviours of his citizens and his soldiers and the traffic and commerce which ensued as they pursued their livelihoods. the king knew his kingdom well even as it grew larger and larger.

One day, he heard an angry voice and went to a balcony on the side of his castle that looked out over the wall of his kingdom to the wild country beyond, … and when he looked down, he saw an angry young hermit, who seemed to be representing the collection of wild animals which were gathered around him, as the hermit yelled and pointed all around, … and the king could not understand what on earth the hermit was going on about. But, … all of a sudden, when the king raised his eyes to the horizon, he realized he could now see the walls of his kingdom directly opposite him, … and as he scanned the horizon, he further realized that he could see, without any break in continuity, … the whole exterior wall of his kingdom, … and that all of the lands external to his kingdom could now be seen from his balcony. and what the hermit and the animals were complaining about was that the kingdom wall built to keep alien creatures out, was at the same time a wall which kept alien creatures in, and they no longer had room to run and play as before, nor were there, any longer, passageways to the sea, where they had habitually swam and fished.

The king was suddenly angry, with himself, … and also with his wizier, einfelsen, who had some time ago, offered to contract for the maintenance of the kingdom wall at a fixed cost, in spite of the rising cost of labour, an offer which the king had quickly accepted, praising einfelsen for his benevolence and community spirit.

At the same time, the king was saddened, for he had not intended to impose upon the creatures of the outer wilds, but realized now, that by thinking of the world only in terms of his kingdom ‘in its own right’, … it had slipped his mind, that when one inhabits the finite, unbounded surface of a sphere, … one’s identity is not fully determined by one’s own properties and behaviours, but is equally determined by one’s ‘reciprocal disposition’, … by one’s geometrical relationship with respect to one’s containing space, and that one’s movements and controlling occupation within that space, at the same time, reciprocally determine the ‘topography of opportunity’ for all occupants of the overall containing space.

The king immediately summoned his wizier, einfelsen, showing him how the kingdom wall had now reduced in perimeter and transformed itself into an enclosing circle when viewed from the outside, .. asking einfelsen how this could be, … and what could be done about it.

Einfelsen, though he realized that his response might well determine whether or not he would have to repay the windfall profits from his wall maintenance contract, … resolved to be fully open and truthful to the king. He reminded the king that when one lived on the surface of a sphere, … when one lived in spherically curved space, …every ‘thing’ not only had an ‘identity’ in its own right according to its properties and behaviors, but also had a ‘reciprocal identity’ determined by its geometric ‘place’ with respect to the disposition of the full ensemble of things in the space in which it was contained, and that he, einfelsen, had mentioned this some years ago to the king, referring to it as ‘the theory of relativity’, but that the king had not ‘tuned’ to the impact of it, … and that he, einfelsen, instead of continuing to work on the king’s ‘prise de conscience’ of the full implications of the theory of relativity, … had instead been tempted by the commercial opportunities which were opened up by the king’s persisting unawareness.

einfelsen moved quickly on from this admission, so that the king would not dwell on this betrayal of trust, … informing the king that in order to avoid this problem, it was important not just to look out at the world and describe things by their properties and behaviours, .. but to, at the same time, imagine how those things that we looked out on, themselves see the world.

Einfelsen reminded the king how he had rebuked his anthropologists for studying the aboriginals within the kingdom, terming them ‘les sauvages’, and looking out at them “with the detachment and the indifference which naturalists bring to the study of insects rather than with the intelligent empathy of the interpreter”, and einfelsen remarked that it had, indeed, been this wise comment of the king’s, which had led him, einfelsen, to discover the ‘theory of relativity’.

The king was well pleased by this remark, since his wizier was much admired in the kingdom for his exceptional gift of reason, and he looked out once again upon the outer surface of the wall, now covered with graffitti which articulated a long history of complaints brought against the kingdom by the hermit and the animals, … against the non-relativistic encroachment of the kingdom on the spherical space which they saw as a commons, … and after only a moment’s reflection, the king proclaimed that the wall would be brought down immediately, and that henceforth in his council, … he would have representation of all the different perspectives in his kingdom so that they as a collective would ‘know’ the world they shared, not merely from their own perspective looking outward, but by looking, at the same time, through the eyes of all co-habitants of their spherical containing space, … they would henceforth see themselves from a ‘field of view’ rather than their own ‘points of view’, … from the ‘many eyed field’ of their containing space, … looking in on themselves as they reciprocally related to and engaged with the ensemble of ‘otherness’ which contained them as participants.

Einfelsen congratulated the king on his wise decisions, observing that while most kings define themselves in their own right, …. by their own properties and behaviours, … he would go down in history as a king who had distinguished himself by defining himself also, and at the same time, …by his reciprocal co-relationship with all of the constituents of his containing space, making him truly a leader, of, by and for, not only his own people but all of the constituents of shared space-time.

As the walls came down there was much celebrating and the deer and bears and other animals who had been encircled and emprisoned by the wall of non-relativity, ran through the streets to greet their brothers and cousins they had long been separated from. soon after, the hermit and the king’s daughter married and over the years had many children, … all of whom grew up remembering the story of einfelsen, their grandfather-king and the coming of relativity, …remembering the need to forever observe the empathic topology of relativistic curved space-time.

* * *