Author’s Prologue:

Dear Reader; Imagine for a moment that you have been born and raised in the indigenous aboriginal culture.  You know that you ‘understand reality differently’ than a Western culture acculturated person.  But you also know that modern physics has shown your ‘relational understanding’ to be very much in accord with modern physics.  If you can hold this understanding in your mind, as you read this, and thus remain open to the understanding that there is a relational (modern physics) world view that is more comprehensive than, and which ‘includes’ as a reduced representation, the ‘beings-wiith-powers-of-sourcing-actions and developments based Western Invented Reality, the option will then be available to reflect on which of these ‘realies’ merits primacy over the other.  In fact, if one puts the relational reality in primacy, the being-based reality is still accessible as a reduction of the relational reality, however, if the being-based reality is given primacy, the relational reality is ‘eclipsed’.

My philosophical researches (exploring the philosophical researches of many others) have turned up the following;

-1- Western culture ‘reality’ is nothing like indigenous aboriginal culture reality, which I guess is obvious, but the important point, to me, is this observation by David Bohm in this regard, which my own personal researching affirms (i.e. the foundational role of ‘relations’ as understood in indigenous aboriginal cultures);

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’

-2- Western culture reality in an INVENTED REALITY THAT IS BASED ON LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR

The important [understanding-inverting] point to pick up on here is that Newtonian physics is a simplified construction of reality based on the structures of language and grammar.  NOTA BENE! The point is that Western language and grammar CAME FIRST and Newton extracted his (Newtonian) physics from the structures of language and grammar; i.e. the noun (name) became the basis for ‘thing-in-itself beings’, and the ‘name-verb grammatical contribution because the basis for the concept of ‘thing-in-itself-based sourcing of actions and developments.

That is; the very basic foundations of Newtonian physics have become the foundations of the ‘Invented Reality’ that serves as the ‘operative reality’ of Western culture. Benjamin Whorf studied and compared the mapping between languages and cognitive impressions and came to the following conclusion; i.e. that Newtonian physics, and the Western understanding of ‘reality’ that comes with it, derives from language which first came up with the abstract notions of the existence of things-in-themselves with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments;

“It is sometimes stated that Newtonian space, time, and matter are sensed by everyone intuitively, whereupon relativity is cited as showing how mathematical analysis can prove intuition wrong. This, besides being unfair to intuition, is an attempt to answer offhand question (1) put at the outset of this paper, to answer which this research was undertaken. Presentation of the findings now nears its end, and I think the answer is clear. The offhand answer, laying the blame upon intuition for our slowness in discovering mysteries of the Cosmos, such as relativity, is the wrong one. The right answer is: Newtonian space, time, and matter are no intuitions. They are receipts from culture and language. That is where Newton got them.” – Benjamin Whorf, ‘The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language’ 

Thus, it is not the case that Newtonian physics is ‘capturing’ ‘the way the world works’, … Newtonian physics is capturing the way people talk about the world; i.e. Newtonian physics is constructing an INVENTED REALITY based on the way that Western Europeans ‘express themselves linguistically’.  For example, humans are NOT REALLY things-in-themselves with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments, that is an impression that comes from Western language based ‘talk’ that has been ‘codified’ as (Newtonian physics).   As modern physics informs us there are no ‘things-in-themselves’ with the powers of sourcing actions and developments; … that is abstraction brewed up by language and grammar.

-3- ‘Lock-in-by high-switching costs’ is a common nonlinear dynamic that explains why Western culture, which serves as the dominant culture in the world (indigenous aboriginal cultures and Taoist/Buddhist and Advaita Vedanta REALITIES are not the dominant ‘OPERATIVE REALITY’ in the modern world social dynamic). The ‘INVENTED REALITY’ based on the abstract notions of ‘beings’ with powers of sourcing actions and developments is the globally dominating ‘operative reality’ IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT IT IS THE PRECIPITATE OF EARLY WESTERN LANGUAGE STRUCTURE THAT WAS CAPTURED IN NEWTONIAN PHYSICS AS A FORMALIZED CODIFICATION OF THE SIMPLIFIED/ABBREVIATED WAY THAT WESTERN PEOPLES ARTICULATED THEIR OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIENCES’ i.e. in terms of notional ‘name-instantiated things-in-themselves notionally with the powers of sourcing actions and developments.

The ‘Lock-in’ comes from incorporating in the social dynamic, for example, the rewarding and punishing of people or nations or organizations based on seeing them as ‘beings’ (things-in-themselves) with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments.  This is language-instantiated madness!   But it is the ‘INVENTED REALITY’ of Western culture that has been implemented as the ‘operative reality’ in Western social dynamics.  What this has produced is; (a) a comprehensive positive hierarchy of people elevated in social status and showered with honours and rewards [those perceived as beings whose powers of sourcing have given rise to actions and developments perceived in a favourable/exceptional light], and; (b) a comprehensive negative hierarchy of people demoted in social status and dumped on with abuse and punishments [those perceived as ‘beings’ whose powers of sourcing have given rise to actions and developments perceived in an unfavourable light.]

The ‘elevating’ of favoured people into positions of power and influence over changes to (evolving of) the social system and the dis-empowering of disfavoured people so as to remove their influence on changes to the social system constitute ‘lock-in’ that perpetuates the deploying of an archaic language-based ‘Invented Reality’ as the ‘operative reality’ of the Western culture social dynamic.

As ridiculous and ‘psychosis-inducing’ as this Newtonian physics based (early Western language-based) Invented Reality is, it continues to be the globally dominant ‘operative reality’ because of the massive lock-in it enjoys. People are elevated to positions of authority on the basis of their proficiency in ‘sourcing actions and developments’ deemed ‘beneficial to society. But in modern physics, there is no such thing as ‘beings’ with the power of ‘sourcing’ actions and development!     

One can thus see lock-in in terms of having given higher authority or even veto power to those who are most benefiting from the policies of elevating people like themselves.  The emperor does not want to hear that ‘the new clothes of Emperorship that he is wearing’ are ‘all in his head’.  In other words, the basis of his being rewarded and elevated in social status; i.e. his independent-being-based sourcing of actions and developments, …  is ‘imaginary’].  The concept of ‘being-based sourcing of actions and developments is the imaginary cognitive construct of language and grammar, as becomes evident in the relational view of modern physics and indigenous aboriginal cultures.  However;

We’ who explore such topics, cannot easily share them because (a) they do not fit into the typical dinner conversation format of our present culture, since to express them takes a lot of relational connections that can’t fit into a rapid-fire repartee, and (b) because the humanism  implicit in trying to share them is not seen as “a humanism of real worth” since it undermines, besmirches or topples the esteemed icons, pillars of society, founding fathers, and celebrities of the culture-in-place.  – Henri Laborit, ‘La Nouvelle Grille’

To conclude this Author’s Prologue,

If we can summon up the audacity to consider it, Western culture has ‘piled up’ a massive ‘lock-in-due to high switching costs’ which is preserving the Newtonian physics based ‘Invented Reality’ featuring belief in name-instantiated ‘beings’ with powers of sourcing actions and developments.  The dimensions of this ‘lie’ that the Western social collective tells itself have grown so big that it would be unthinkable to acknowledge it.  It is like the ‘big lie’ described by Hitler in ‘Mein Kampf’ that is so big that most people don’t have the audacity to question it.  That is, there are no ‘beings with powers of sourcing actions and developments’, … such mind-hijacking grammatical fabrications are abstract reductions of the transforming relational continuum of our included experience. The boil and the flow are one and NOT two.

* * * * * * * * * * END OF PROLOGUE * * * * * * * * *

 

The concept of binary opposites (life and death being an exemplar) are the abstractions of language and grammar that the Western culture psyche tends to employ as a foundational ‘logical truth’ in its ‘Invented Reality’.  As Benjamin Whorf has shown, the ‘truth’ of binary opposites is not something that goes on in nature that we express with language, but something we express with language that contributes to our Western culture ‘Invented Reality’;

“It is sometimes stated that Newtonian space, time, and matter are sensed by everyone intuitively, whereupon relativity is cited as showing how mathematical analysis can prove intuition wrong. This, besides being unfair to intuition, is an attempt to answer offhand question (1) put at the outset of this paper, to answer which this research was undertaken. Presentation of the findings now nears its end, and I think the answer is clear. The offhand answer, laying the blame upon intuition for our slowness in discovering mysteries of the Cosmos, such as relativity, is the wrong one. The right answer is: Newtonian space, time, and matter are no intuitions. They are receipts from culture and language. That is where Newton got them.” – Benjamin Whorf, ‘The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language’ 

Modern physics does not see the ‘boil’ in the ‘flow’ in terms of binary [action=reaction] opposition as Western culture with its aberrant ‘Divided Self’ does [i.e. where language splits apart ‘habitat’ and ‘inhabitant’ as with ‘human’ and ‘environment’.  The distinction between ‘boil’ and ‘flow’ is RELATIONAL APPEARANCE and not BEING-BASED.   The DIVIDED SELF of Western culture is the product of language and grammar; it is a corollary to the language and grammar based binary opposite of ‘life’ and ‘death’.

The reason why ‘life’ should appear in a ‘dead universe’ has never been established by (Newtonian) science (the ‘science’ that is popular in Western science continues to be Newtonian science).  In modern physics, there is no such binary division between ‘the living’ and ‘the dead’ since the understanding is that ‘forms’ are relational features in a transforming relational continuum.  Modern physics affirms the world view of Heraclitus wherein forms are continually gathering and being regathered within the flow (the transforming relational continuum).  In other words, the forms we see and engage with, since they are relational forms in the all-including flow (energy field), are ‘appearances’ or ‘apparitions’.

‘Apparitions’ may sound ‘spooky’ to us, but that is only because of where we are ‘coming from’ in our mind, which has been culturally conditioned by living in a Western culture that employs language and grammar that treats absolute binary opposites as ‘real’, employing them as such in Western ‘Invented Reality’ that is in terms of name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’ (‘inhabitants’ as in the binary opposite ‘inhabitant’ – ‘habitat’ dichotomy).  In the ‘new reality’ of modern physics (which replicates the ‘old reality’ of indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism, Advaita Vedanta), purely relational ‘field’ is the basic reality and the flow forms that come and go within the transforming relational field-continuum only take on (in our psyche) the abstract condition of ‘being’ by way of psychological inference that associates with ‘naming’ (the imputing of persisting being to a relational form in the transforming relational continuum).

 

The language and grammar-based construction of an ‘Invented Reality’ follows from the reduction of relational flow-forms to abstract, notional ‘things-in-themselves’.  Western culture has been obliged, in the wake of the first abstract assumption of ‘being’ to construct a language and grammar based system that explains the ‘sourcing’ of the actions and developments that are, in this Invented Reality’, necessarily ‘sourced’ by ‘name-instantiated beings’ (these include the abstractions termed ‘human-BEINGS, ‘nation-BEINGS, ‘corporation-BEINGS etc.)   The language and grammar based ‘Invented Reality’ is a psychological construction that, while it could be employed as a useful ‘Wittgenstein ladder’ to aid us in making the leap’ to a purely relational understanding, is used ‘literally’ in Western culture ‘Invented Reality’.

That is, the binary opposites of ‘life’ and ‘death’ (‘being’ and ‘non-being’), ‘inhabitant’ and ‘habitat’ etc. stir understanding in the psyche in the form of an ‘Invented Reality’ which Western culture adherents employ as their ‘operative reality’.  This leads to aberrant understanding such as imputing to name-instantiated ‘beings’ the notional powers of sourcing actions and developments.  Thus, in the Western culture ‘Invented Reality’, the name instantiated ‘nation’ is credited with the powers of sourcing actions and developments.  In the same manner, the name-instantiated ‘human being’ is credited with the powers of sourcing actions and developments.  And again, the ‘corporation’ and ‘organization’ are name-instantiated psychological ‘beings’ with the notional powers of sourcing actions and developments, and used as foundational elements in the language and grammar construction of an ‘Invented Reality’.

The foundational element (abstraction) in this Western culture language-and-grammar based ‘Invented Reality’ us the abstract  concept of the ‘being’ with powers of sourcing actions and developments.  This foundation of ‘sorcery’ is usually ‘set up’ by a quasi-religious ‘ceremony’ such as ‘Baptism’ or ‘Christening’ or ‘Incorporation’ (a ceremony that declares the instantiation of ‘being’ of a ‘thing-in-itself’ by way of ‘naming’).  This is all culture-invented ‘hocus-pocus’ (sorcery) that has become such a common part of Western culture ‘Invented Reality’ that it’s bizarre abstract nature is now as commonplace in Western culture as water to fish; i.e. we look right through it without seeing it.  For example, we can’t see the habitat while we are focusing on the inhabitants.

Not being able to see the habitat while we are focusing on the inhabitants translates, in ‘systems theory’ to the fact that the we can’t understand the ‘suprasystem’ by investigating a ‘system’ that is included within it. Systems theorists such as Russell Ackoff acknowledge that the understanding of a ‘system’ is enhanced by understanding the suprasystem it (and other systems) are included in, however, systems scientists ‘split’ on whether the relationship between system and suprasystem is mutually inclusive (‘boil-in-flow’ as ‘appearance’) or mutually exclusive (‘boil’ in ‘flow’ as two separate things; one thing-in-itself included in another ‘thing-in-itself’).   Modern physics assumes the former while Newtonian physics, and Western culture ‘Invented Reality’ assumes the latter.

Ok, back to the title of this note;

Western Culture Belief in the Binary of Life and Death is Psychosis Inducing.

This is the ‘binary’ that serves as the foundational ‘archetype’ for the construction of the Western culture ‘Invented Reality’, and it comes from language and grammar.  To repeat the key portion of the earlier quote from Benjamin Whorf;

Newtonian space, time, and matter are no intuitions. They are receipts from culture and language. That is where Newton got them.” – Benjamin Whorf, ‘The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language’ 

Western Culture Belief in the Binary of Life and Death is Psychosis Inducing.

I am repeating the title proposition so that it doesn’t keep ‘slipping away’ from our psyche’s retention as it re-cloaks itself in the habits of being-based cognition.

There is no ‘life and death’ in a transforming relational continuum but there is relational transformation which explains how it is that ‘forms’ become manifest in appearance (outwell within the flow) and then rejoin the flow (disappear as in being subsumed within the flow).  This ‘transformation’ is continuously ongoing whether or not someone invents ‘language’ to capture impressions of what they are seeing and experiencing [since we are included in it, we can’t get outside of it to see it in an ‘overall context’].

Different cultures have approached the challenge of intellectual capture and articulation of something that is innately beyond capture/visualization by a relational form that is included within the transforming relational continuum.  That is, we cannot get outside of it to snap a picture of it; i.e. we can certainly snap pictures, and gazing at these pictures gives us the impression that we are observing ‘reality’ but how can we observe a ‘reality’ that includes us?  Right, there is no way.  It is impossible’  All we can do, as Nietzsche points out is to bring into connective confluence many different visual perspectives and harvest them for connective confluences, something that happens in the mind, and is beyond visual presentation, since what the mind understands are the relational coherency in the connective confluence.

However, pictures induce in us psychological (flatspace) impressions of the ‘reality’ we are included in and we tend to mistake these ‘impressions’ for ‘representations of reality’, thence comes the ‘Invented Reality’ wherein we ‘name’ forms in the pictures, using language and grammar to psychologically impute to the name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’ powers of sourcing actions and developments.

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

These ‘pictures’ of what is going on out there, are innately capable of capturing what we are included in, in the manner of a ‘boil-in-flow’ wherein ‘everything is in flux’ (Heraclitus).  But these pictures do hold clues to the dynamics of the transforming relational continuum in which we are included relational forms.  Approaches to gleaning an understanding of our inclusion in a transforming relational continuum include (A) ‘The surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ suggested in modern physics by Geoffrey Chew and John Wheeler and by (B) Nietzsche’s omni-perspectival viewing and by (C) Wittgenstein’s ‘ladder’ approach; all methods aimed at conditioning the mind for understanding that is purely relational, even if it is using language-based ‘things-in-themselves’ to develop the webs of relations [i.e. the ‘coherencies’ that form from relational interference of multiple perspectives transcend the ‘sum of the individual picture based impressions’ by delivering holographic understanding].

 

-A- [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.”

.

-B- 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

.

-C- 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’s final two propositions in ‘Tractatus Logico Philosophicus)

 

These above three understandings point to the deficiency of the Western Culture ‘Invented Reality’ based on the binary abstraction of the life-and-death of‘beings’ notional ‘things-in-themselves’ notionally equipped with the powers of sourcing actions and developments.

These archaic Western culture concepts (psychosis inducing mis-understandings of reality) persist due to the ‘complex’ (complexity theory) concept of ‘lock-in’ due to ‘high switching costs’.  That is, the abstract (unsupported by experiential reality) assumptions of the existence of ‘independent beings’ with the powers of sourcing actions and developments leads to the Western culture Invented Reality wherein individuals are rewarded and esteemed by the Western social collective on the basis of their having ‘authored’ (sourced) valuable actions and developments, yet there is no such thing as ‘local authoring (sourcing) of actions and developments in the real relational world of our actual experience.  The abstract concept of ‘beings’ with the powers of ‘sourcing’ actions and developments comes from language and grammar, and it is on this basis that Western Invented Reality is constructed and lodged in the collective Western culture psyche.

‘Lock-in’ with ‘high switching costs’ is a well-known ‘nonlinear dynamic’ which explains why Western culture adherents are having a hard time ‘moving on’ in the wake of the ‘de-bunking’ of the Western culture ‘Invented Reality’.   It is clear that those who believe they are the personal source (sorcerers) of their positive fortunes are going to want to keep the ‘Invented Reality’ as it is, since society credits them with being ‘special beings’; ‘exceptional performers’ who ‘contribute more than most’ to the welfare of society in general.  This is all Western language-and-grammar hatched abstraction that is not found in cultures such as the indigenous aboriginal cultures where ‘mitakuye oyasin’ (everything is related).  However, because it has become a common belief in Western culture ‘Invented Reality’, those who have been enjoying elevated social status and special privileges on that basis, supported by others that ‘are working on getting themselves into that elevated status, … are not likely to help bring in a new understanding ‘framework’ that does away with the notional inventing of ‘beings with the notional powers of sourcing actions and developments’.  It is ‘human nature’ that this new relational framework of reality will have trouble getting endorsement by a social collective whose acculturated behaviours have been shaped by the pursuit of achieving privileges and admiration on the basis of common cultural perception of humans as name-instantiated things-in-themselves with powers of sorcery of actions and developments.   Henri Laborit speaks for many Western culture non-believers on this problem of ‘lock-in’ with ‘high switching costs’;

We’ who explore such topics, cannot easily share them because (a) they do not fit into the typical dinner conversation format of our present culture, since to express them takes a lot of relational connections that can’t fit into a rapid-fire repartee, and (b) because the humanism  implicit in trying to share them is not seen as “a humanism of real worth” since it undermines, besmirches or topples the esteemed icons, pillars of society, founding fathers, and celebrities of the culture-in-place.

  – Henri Laborit, ‘La Nouvelle Grille’

Closing Note:

It all comes back to the proposition in the title

Western Culture Belief in the Binary of Life and Death is Psychosis Inducing.

Western culture is ‘stuck’ where it is for two principle reasons; (1) From the ‘lock-in’ by ‘high switching costs’, as described in the last few paragraphs, and by the misleading concept of the ‘nature-nurture’ dichotomy.  The nature-nurture dichotomy is like a false lead as Western culture adherents search for the source of social dysfunction that is, meanwhile, coming from the belief in a language-and-grammar based Invented Reality.  The nature-nurture distraction has been compared, in Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift) to a social collective that became angrily divided over the question of whether a boiled egg should be opened from the pointy end of the rounded end.

This manifests in Western culture as the conservative – liberal dichotomy.  It is delusional in that both of the opposing options in the dichotomy are based on the assumed existence of ‘beings’ with powers of sourcing actions and developments, an abstraction that comes from language that is unsupported by modern physics.  It is akin to a division arising among people on the basis of whether the ‘boil’ sources ‘flow’ or the ‘flow’ is sourcing the ‘boil’.  In physical reality, there is only the ‘appearance’ of two things that is abstractly concretized in the psyche by assigning ‘names’ that differentiate between the two different ‘appearances’, as in the case of ‘inhabitant’ and ‘habitat’.  There is the ‘appearance’ of two separate things, which would be only a ‘distinguishing’ without noun and verb language to concretize it, but in using our language based intellection (in precedence over our natural relational experience) as has become the Western culture ‘intellection-first, experience-second’ habit, we accept this binary splitting as having a foundational role in our ‘operative reality’ (our language-based Invented Reality).

By the same token, ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ as binary opposites applicable to notional ‘things-in-themselves’ are the product of Western language and grammar that are given a foundational role in Western culture ‘Invented Reality’.  This splitting apart of the ‘part’ and ‘whole’ is often challenged within Western culture; e.g.

“God is that whole of which we consider ourselves to be a part” – Tolstoy

However, even though it remains the foundational understanding of modern physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, it is has not made that much of an inroad into Western culture because of the huge ‘lock-in-with-high-switching-costs’ therein. Influence over changes in Western culture understanding has been predominately in the hands of those deriving disproportionate influence on the basis of persisting common acculturated belief in Invented Reality.