Transformation and the Implicate and Explicate Order
I have been asked the question; Why belabor my objections to our common use of the PATHOGEN model when it comes up with the same ‘distancing’ strategy as you are getting to with your ‘modern physics’ based (relational) interpretation of what’s up with COVID 19?
My point is that ‘going along with’ the abstract concept of a PATHOGEN distorts our understanding of ‘reality’ so that it ‘departs’ from our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.
There is ‘nothing new’ here; i.e. what I am talking about is that reality is better understood, as Schroedinger puts it, in terms that SUBJECT AND OBJECT ARE ONE. I agree with that view and it is also affirmed by David Bohm in his works and in his endorsement of the indigenous aboriginal understanding of reality, which also gives understanding wherein FIGURE and GROUND are ONE, rather than TWO, as in our common WESTERN CULTURE belief system.
Nietzsche is of the same understanding and points out that it is the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar that puts this FIGURE-AND-GROUND-AS-TWO abstraction into our minds; the FIRST ERROR is ‘NAMING’ which imputes LOCAL thing-in-itself BEING to a relational form (all forms are relational in the FIGURE-AND-GROUND-AS-ONE understanding of reality), while the SECOND ERROR is GRAMMAR that imputes the power of SOURCING actions and development to the NAMING-instantiated LOCAL thing-in-itself.
This DOUBLE ERROR plays a foundational role in our language and grammar based representations of reality. That is; the Wave-field aka ‘the Tao’ is NONLOCAL and beyond the representational capability of language and grammar; or, in Lao Tzu’s words; ‘The Tao that can be told is not the true Tao’.
Ok, my point is that the DOUBLE ERROR is a language and grammar-based TOOL we use to reduce (for intellectual discourse and interpretation) the ineffable-because-NONLOCAL reality of our actual sensory experience of inclusion in the flow (i.e. inclusion in the Wave-field aka the Tao). EXAMPLE: we reduced the purely relational resonance phenomenon of DUNING, by way of the DOUBLE ERROR to ‘the DUNE’ that is growing higher and longer and is shifting to the south.
NOTA BENE! In the physical reality of relational resonance, THERE IS NO LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF; i.e. ‘the DUNE’ comes from the language and grammar based DOUBLE ERROR reduction of the resonance phenomenon of DUNING to the intellectual abstract notion of a LOCAL thing-in-itself. IN THE REALITY OF OUR SENSORY EXPERIENCE, THERE ARE NO LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES! These intellectual abstractions we construct with the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar are NOT affirmed by our sensory experience. In our sensory experience, EVERYTHING IS IN FLUX (as Heraclitus and modern physics affirm).
Our language and grammar DOUBLE ERROR abstracting is a TOOL that equips us for constructing ‘effigies’ that INFER a fluid reality that lies beyond capture by the fixed forms of linguistic representation. For example, the weatherman has a magnetic whirly-form signifying a ‘hurricaning’ (symbolizing a fluid atmospheric rotation) that he can stick on a magnetic ‘white board’ on which a geographical map is being projected, so as to give us viewers the notion that ‘there is some THING there’ (a ‘hurricane’) at the designated LOCATION, … yet,
IN THE REALITY OF OUR SENSORY EXPERIENCE, THERE ARE NO LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES!
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?
What is ‘going on’ is that the reality of our actual sensory experience is of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum (i.e. the ‘Wave-field aka ‘the Tao’) wherein THERE IS NO ‘LOCAL’ ontology since ‘everything is in flux’.
I am not saying anything here that modern physics has not already said and that has been affirmed and re-affirmed by Bohm, Schroedinger, Nietzsche, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoists/Buddhists and Advaita Vedanta adherents.
PRACTICAL PROBLEM! This sensory experience reality, being inherently NONLOCAL is INEFFABLE and thus NOT reducible to language and thus not shareable in language based REPRESENTATIONS.
PRACTICAL SOLUTION! Language and grammar constructions can be concocted to effable-ize reductions of the ineffable; e.g. “FIRE BURNS” exemplies the DOUBLE ERROR reduction as applied to NONLOCAL (and thus ineffable) TRANSFORMATION. Sure, solar and atmospheric influences that INCLUDE material developments such as forests are included in TRANSFORMATION wherein forests are dessicated by solar irradiance and atmospheric leaching of moisture, and ALL THAT IS JUST TOO NONLOCAL AND INEFFABLE TO DEAL WITH LINGUISTICALLY, but we can use the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar to bypass the ineffable complexity of NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION by stating ‘FIRE BURNS’ (Nishitani) or by saying ‘LIGHTNING FLASHES’ (Nietzsche). These are examples of the DOUBLE ERROR that abstractly INJECTS into our language based representations, LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments.
Note that FIRE BURNS is a DOUBLE ERROR that introduces the abstract concept of LOCAL SOURCING that has a Cuckoo’s egg like effect, hatching out and taking over a nest that was designed for other things, in this case, TRANSFORMATION. TRANSFORMATION is intuitively understood as ‘reality’ but it ‘kicked out’ of our language-based representation, because it is NONLOCAL and thus ineffable (transformation as in a Wave-field is ‘everywhere at the same time’; i.e. it is where FIGURE AND GROUND ARE ONE).
The above discussion sets the stage for how we use the DOUBLE ERROR to construct the abstract concept of PATHOGEN. That is; ‘PATHOGENS KILL’ is the same LOCAL SOURCING implication built into its DOUBLE ERROR structure as FIRE BURNS.
LOCAL SOURCING is what renders the INEFFABLE-BECAUSE-NONLOCAL, … EFFABLE-BECAUSE-LOCAL.
This is ‘the tool’ that Emerson points out is, among WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, ‘running away with the workman’, … meaning that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have come to think of ourselves in these DOUBLE ERROR terms as LOCAL, INDEPENDENTLY EXISTING THINGS-IN-OURSELVES WITH OUR OWN POWERS OF SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS.
Such abstraction, if mistaken for ‘reality’, is a CRAZY-MAKER, and it has become so popular as to generally characterize WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENT ‘reality construction’.
WITH THAT BACKGROUND IN PLACE, …WE CAN RETURN TO OUR DISCUSSION OF ‘COVID 19’ AS A ‘PATHOGEN’; i.e. the concept PATHOGEN is a DOUBLE ERROR based conceptual abstraction. To say that PATHOGENS KILL is like saying FIRE BURNS.
The Effability Benefits of Localizing the NONLOCAL
The DOUBLE ERROR is a language and grammar representational ‘trick’ or ‘expedient tool’ for reducing the NONLOCAL to a notional LOCAL and thus reducing the INEFFABLE (TRANSFORMATION) to the EFFABLE (LOCAL sourcing of actions and developments).
As modern physics (and indigenous aboriginals etc.) would understand it, reality is the INEFFABLE-BECAUSE-NOLOCAL transforming relational continuum aka ‘Wave-field’ aka ‘the Tao’, which is impossible to express (without some sort of reduction) in EFFABLE-BECAUSE-LOCAL terms. The reduction technique is the DOUBLE ERROR (as discussed earlier and repeated here);
… the FIRST ERROR is ‘NAMING’ which imputes LOCAL thing-in-itself BEING to a relational form (all forms are relational in the FIGURE-AND-GROUND-AS-ONE understanding of reality), while the SECOND ERROR is GRAMMAR that imputes the power of SOURCING actions and development to the NAMING-instantiated LOCAL thing-in-itself.
EXAMPLES of this technique for EFFABLE-IZING NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION by DOUBLE ERROR based LOCALIZING: …. “FIRE BURNS”… “LIGHTNING FLASHES”.
Evidently, we can use this DOUBLE ERROR reduction to render the IMPLICIT-because-NONLOCAL in EXPLICIT-because-LOCAL language and grammar representations.
HERE IS WHERE THE EAST ALONG WITH MODERN PHYSICS, as contrasted with THE WEST ALONG WITH NEWTONIAN PHYSICS, split into two very different ways of ‘understanding reality’.
THE EAST: NONLOCALITY IS REALITY; I.E. REALITY IS INEFFABLE.
THE WEST: THE LOCAL IS REALITY; I.E. REALITY IS EFFABLE.
How this relates to the concept of PATHOGEN (as already alluded to).
The reality of our sensory experience is of inclusion in TRANSFORMATION,
The reality of we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS is in the DOUBLE ERROR terms of LOCAL things-in-themselves with notional powers of SOURCING actions and developments. ***NOTE that this effable-izing TOOL is also employed by the EAST and by modern physics as a tool of INFERENCE as in the ‘SURPRISE VERSION OF THE GAME OF TWENTY QUESTIONS’ where we use it to weave a web of relations to INFER the INEFFABLE-BECAUSE-NONLOCAL;
The following excerpt from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus describes this relational INFERENCE based approach to conveying the NONLOCAL wherein a relational network of explicit propositions are employed merely to INFER the IMPLICIT/NONLOCAL;
6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)
He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.
7.0 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
–Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus
With the above as background, we can put the linguistic signifiers ‘COVID 19’ and PATHOGENS in general, in cognitive perspective. PATHOGENS DO NOT EXIST, but are devised in the same DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar manner as FIRE BURNS so as to NOTIONALLY (in the intellect) LOCALIZE inherently NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION (i.e. the nonlocal dynamics of the transforming relational continuum).
Understanding what we are ‘dropping out’ with the DOUBLE ERROR reduction, as in FIRE BURNS, gives us some cognitive leverage to infer what we are ‘dropping out’ with the DOUBLE ERROR of PATHOGENS KILL; i.e. we are dropping out TRANSFORMATION (the primary reality).
Evidently the burning fires are how TRANSFORMATION, which is innately NONLOCAL manifests; i.e. the physical phenomenon of TRANSFORMATION is NONLOCAL but IS SOMETIMES MANIFEST, LOCALLY. Surtsey pops up as a ‘new island’ LOCALLY but the underlying phenomenon is innately NONLOCAL and INEFFABLE. DO WE MIND? No, our intellectual representation focuses right down and in on SURTSEY as if it were a LOCAL thing-in-itself’ with its own LOCAL powers of SOURCING actions and development: ‘Surtsey is rising up and growing larger and is developing its own floral and faunal ecosystems’.
The inherently NONLOCAL thus gives way to the intellectually constructed LOCAL, and it is the latter becomes the accepted ‘reality’ among us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, although modern physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanat adherents continue to regard the ineffable NONLOCAL as the primary reality, and see the DOUBLE ERROR reduction as a ‘tool of inference’ as expressed by Wittgenstein in his 6.54 proposition cited above.
If we take the DOUBLE ERROR literally, we are dropping out our acknowledging of TRANSFORMATION; i.e. to repeat for emphasis what was just stated above;
Understanding what we are ‘dropping out’ with the DOUBLE ERROR reduction, as in FIRE BURNS, gives us some cognitive leverage to infer what we are ‘dropping out’ with the DOUBLE ERROR of PATHOGENS KILL; i.e. we are dropping out TRANSFORMATION (the primary reality).
There are practical implications of ‘the dropping out of TRANSFORMATION’ and the substituting of DOUBLE ERROR based PATHOGEN, not only in regard to how we conceive of COVID 19.
In trying to explain the relational dynamics of society NOT IN TERMS OF relational TRANSFORMATION but in the binary hero/villain terms of SOURCES OF POSITIVE actions and development and SOURCES of NEGATIVE actions and developments, a system of rewards and punishments has been evolved. This system is based on EGO, the DOUBLE ERROR based belief in one’s own LOCAL powers of sourcing actions and developments. This is a pivotal intellectual archetype that underpins the concept of PATHOGEN (and its counterpart BENOGEN).
Wherever the belief in ‘producer-product’ logic is strongest, so also is EGO based belief in one’s own LOCAL powers of sourcing actions and developments, for which the sorcerers of GOOD are rewarded and respected and the sorcerers of BAD are punished and defiled. One would expect this differentiation to be most strongly developed where the EGO-based belief in the PRODUCER-PRODUCT abstraction is greatest; e.g; this shows up where relational dissonance is reduced to binary terms that differentiate ‘the sorcerers of GOOD from the sorcerers of BAD’
The U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world’s prisoners are held in American prisons. The U.S. rate of incarceration, with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is 5 to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies. The U.S. prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation’s population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, and poorly educated. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work preparation or experience.
This example illustrates the gradations of interpreting relational excess and deficiency in an abstract LOCAL SOURCING producer-product context (rather than in a relational TRANSFORMATION context).
In Western Medicine, which embraces the PATHOGEN concept as a substitute concept in place of relational dissonance, the microbe ‘c. difficile’ that proliferates when relational balance in the microbial assemblage is disrupted by administering of anti-biotics (e.g. for some routine minor surgery or etc.), is identified as a PATHOGEN (i.e. when one’s only tool is a binary hammer, everything looks like a nail).
The WESTERN CULTURE MEDICAL THEORY ADHERENT thus responds by identifying ‘c. difficile’ as a PATHOGEN that must be defended against, hence the administering of MORE AND STRONGER ANTIBIOTICS which can drive the microbial assemblage deeper into unhealthy imbalance.
This is analogous to the actions taken against humans perceived-as-pathogens in the WESTERN CRIMINAL JUSTICE system. This contrasts with modern physics and with EASTERN (aboriginal, Taoist/Buddhist Advaita Vedanta) cultures which understand health in terms of the sustaining of relational balance or ‘resonance’.
IN SUM, … the concept of “PATHOGENS HARM/KILL” follows the abstraction of FIRE BURNS in infusing the abstract concept of LOCAL SOURCING as a substitute for RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION given that RELATIONAL TRANSFORMATION is NONLOCAL and thus INEFFABLE whereas the DOUBLE ERROR reduction to LOCAL SOURCING renders the INEFFABLE-BECAUSE-NONLOCAL … EFFABLE-BECAUSE-LOCAL.
The strong promotion of belief in the PRODUCER-PRODUCT abstraction in the U.S. leads to the equally strong REWARDS for SOURCING of positively perceived actions and developments and PUNISHMENTS for SOURCING of negatively perceived actions and developments.
So, what are the downsides of responding to COVID 19 as if it were a PATHOGEN being that it is relational dissonance which is how relational imbalance manifests in a TRANSFORMING relational dynamic?
One might refer to the experience with c. difficile wherein the attempt to correct relational imbalance seen in the over-simplistic terms of the proliferation of pathogens can exacerbate relational imbalance rather than restoring it. In effect, the so-called PATHOGEN, being a system of relational imbalances, is merely driven UNDERGROUND. E.g. the eliminating of a Robin Hood or a Jean Valjean, whose ‘rebalancing’ (rebel) behaviours were cast, by way of the DOUBLE ERROR, as PATHOLOGICAL, resolve only the OVERT rebalancing actions while rebalancing, which is the REAL need, may resume in less overt relational forms, and/or in a continual rise in overt actions as suggested by the above-cited statistics on criminal convictions in the U.S.
HOW “TRANSFORMATION” HAS GONE “UNDERGROUND”
While TRANSFORMATION is the reality of our sensory experience of inclusion within it, … such experience is INEFFABLE, thus the language and grammar based REPRESENTATIONS that we have developed and are using ‘talk about it’ (we can only use language to imply or infer the fluid reality of our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum) IS NOT IT.
*So here we are, in this language-reducing representational mode; i.e. this is where our intellectualizing minds are, right at this moment*
We have to… ‘back out of where we are right now’… in our language based intellectualizing mode, in order to get back to our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum (the Wave-field, the Tao).
From ‘FIRE BURNS’ we have to ‘back out’ through our experience of inclusion in the NONLOCAL dynamic of TRANSFORMATION. The climatic summer heat of insolation is an energy-field we and the forests are included in, and while we humans are good at sustaining our water flow-through that keeps our body water content at roughly 60% across the weather and climate variations, trees, in drought conditions, may shrink and shed needles and leaves to lower evaporation losses. (Note that I am ‘anthropomorphizing’ trees since the transforming relational continuum, which includes humaning and treeing other organizing is the primary reality).
Since the DOUBLE ERROR is a reductive process designed for breaking the ineffable NONLOCAL continuum down into effable pieces, it can only go in one direction like ‘differentiation’ in calculus. The search for understanding TRANSFORMATION going in the opposite direction; i.e. starting from the DOUBLE ERROR of “FIRE BURNS” or “FORESTS are BURNING” and going in the INVERSE DIRECTION of ‘what brought this on’, … is inexact and can only be based on implicit inference (e.g. ‘what brought his on’ may include the insolation related desiccating and shedding of leaves and needles of forest trees etc.)
This is like the problem in mathematics in ‘integrating’ after ‘differentiating’; i.e. there is missing ‘low-frequency’ information; e.g. our differentiation can capture the profile of the ‘mountain’ but our understanding of whether it is a mountain on a flat plane or on a large sphere or on some other topology has gone missing’.
As Wittgenstein says in his final comment in TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS, … “7. “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen” (“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”)
The point is, that when we are in DOUBLE ERROR language-and-grammar-REDUCED representation mode, as we are in our language exchanges like this, … the dropout has already occurred and we can’t get it back. This means that when we talk about our sensory experience of inclusion in TRANSFORMATION, because we are using language and grammar reduction, we have already dropped out essential meaning/understanding in our reduction of the NONLOCAL to the LOCAL which means from the INEFFABLE to the EFFABLE.
HOW these observations relate to understanding COVID 19
-1- We are included in TRANSFORMATION; i.e. in a transforming relational continuum (the Wave-field, the Tao) and this is ineffable
-2- Our language is already DOUBLE ERROR reduction based, so all of our intellectual discussions and representations are limited by the ‘reduction to effable’.
-3- “PATHOGENS KILL” (or “COVID 19 kills”) is an expression like “FIRE BURNS”, a DOUBLE ERROR which reduces ineffable TRANSFORMATION to effable terms of NAMING-instantiated LOCAL things-in-themselves with GRAMMAR-given powers of SOURCING actions and developments.
-4- WHAT GOES MISSING in language and grammar-based reductions-to-effable, such as in this narrative I am herewith writing, is the fullblown ineffable sensory-experience. That is, no matter now well one could express themselves in language, the ineffable experience of inclusion in the Tao cannot be expressed and shared in language. “The Tao that can be told is not the true Tao” – Lao Tzu.
-5- The ‘Learning circle’ is essentially a process for bringing a multiplicity of relational experiences into connective confluence so that a holographic understanding can form from the coherencies therein. This allows our intuition to channel the ‘ineffable’ (transforming relational continuum aka Wave-field aka Tao) in which we share inclusion.
*** CLOSING COMMENT ***
Language and grammar communications on the topic of REALITY are limited by the fact that REALITY is INEFFABLE (it is NONLOCAL as in the experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum).
Language and grammar allow us to articulate ‘the fact’ that ‘FIRES BURN’ and ‘PATHOGENS KILL’, but these are DOUBLE ERROR based reduction of the NONLOCAL to LOCAL; i.e. reductions from the TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM aka the Wave-field aka the Tao. That is; the over-riding reality is TRANSFORMATION and it is NONLOCAL and INEFFABLE.
If we share with one another stories of LOCAL events such as ‘the FIRE IS BURNING’ or ‘COVID 19 IS KILLING’, we are really constructing a SURROGATE LOCAL PSEUDO-REALITY that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTs are plugging in as an EFFABLE SUBSTITUTE REALITY for the INEFFABLE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM REALITY.
We ‘understand’ that the summer heat is transforming the vegetation into explosive materials that may be detonated by some small triggering influence. This hangs over us silently, ominously and threatens us as a potential that has not yet made its entry into ‘reality’ because it is a NONLOCAL potentiality and thus is INEFFABLE. Nevertheless it shows itself to us by the brownness and dryness and shrivelling of the leaves, but initially all of this signage is NONLOCAL and we can’t deal with it because it is NOT LOCAL. Soon, LOCAL FIRES will erupt and these we can capture and point to and address.
* * *
FOOTNOTE:
A lot of our understanding is in this form of an awareness of NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION. NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION recalls David Bohm’s ‘IMPLICATE ORDER’ akin to the nonlocal transformation which is like a NONLOCAL pregnant potential from which LOCAL ‘EXPLICATE ORDER’ such as FIRE BURNS can develop. The following excerpt from F. David Peat’s ‘Blackfoot Physics’ illustrates this relationship between the NONLOCAL-IMPLICIT and the LOCAL-EXPLICIT and ties it to holography.
Comments on the Implicate Order by F. David Peat pivoting from conversations with indigenous aboriginals;
“Sa’ke’j Henderson opened up yet another aspect of the meaning of medicine when he told me that the plants, herbs, pieces of bone, feathers, and fur found in a medicine bag allow people to come into contact with a much wider reality that includes the various animating spirits within the world. He gave the example of a piece of bone from a particular animal that allowed a person to enter into a relationship with the Keeper of that animal. On another occasion he explained how a certain gourd contained the whole world.
Here it is possible to make connections between indigenous science and some recent ideas in Western science. In the 1960s the physicist David Bohm began to develop what he called the implicate (or enfolded) order. Bohm has argued that while the classical physics of Newton described what could be called the surface of reality, by contrast, quantum mechanics has forced us to move to deeper levels of perception of the world.
Bohm suggested that, in its deepest essence, reality, or “that which is,” is not a collection of material objects in interaction but a process or a movement, which he calls the holomovement — the movement of the whole. This flowing movement throws out explicit forms that we recognize through our senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. These explicate forms abide for a time and we take them as the direct evidence of a hard and fast reality. However, Bohm argues, this explicate order accounts for only a very small portion of reality; underlying it is a more extensive implicate, or enfolded, order. The stable forms we see around us are not primary in themselves but only the temporary unfolding of the underlying implicate order. To take rocks, trees, planets, or stars as the primary reality would be like assuming that the vortices in a river exist in their own right and are totally independent of the river itself.
For Bohm, the gourd that [a native] carries is the explicate or surface manifestation of an underlying implicate order. Within that implicate order, the gourd enfolds, and is enfolded by, the entire universe. Thus, within each object can be found the whole and, in turn, this whole exists within each of its parts.
— F. David Peat, ‘Blackfoot Physics’
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