“The tool runs away with the workman, the human with the divine” – Emerson

The reality of our actual experience is of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.  This has been called ‘the Tao’, and since it is innately in flux, ‘the Tao that can be told is not the true Tao’.

Where language presents an explicit picture of reality, it is not the reality of our actual experience, it is an intellectual INVENTED REALITY.

Western culture has adopted language-based INVENTED REALITY as the social ‘operative reality’ and this is the craziness that we know as Western culture. Nietzsche points out that Western culture INVENTED REALITY is constructed from the double error; the first error is using ‘naming’ to impute abstract thing-in-itself existence to the named ‘dorm-in-the-flow’.  The second error conflates the first, using grammar to notionally (in the abstracting intellect) endow the name-instantiated thing-in-itself with the notional powers of sourcing actions and development.  These are the language and grammar abstractions that trigger in the intellect, the impressions described in ‘the double error’.

In our EXPERIENTIAL REALITY wherein we, and everything, are ‘in flux’; i.e. where we and everything are relational forms in the flow, there is no way to capture this fluid reality in LANGUAGE THAT EMPLOYS NAME-INSTANTIATED THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES THAT ARE CONSTRUED AS HAVING PERSISTING BEING’.

In other words, language’s ability to condition our psychological impression of ‘reality’ in terms of name-instantiated things-in-themselves with grammar-given powers of sourcing actions and developments (the ‘double error’ pointed to by Nietzsche) allows us to INVENT REALITY that is in terms of ‘EXPLICIT THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES AND WHAT THESE EXPLICIT THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES DO’.

In modern physics, this won’t do because ‘everything is in flux’ (the dynamics of field/flow are the primary reality), and this understanding of reality is also embraced by indigenous aboriginal culture, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta.

However, the INVENTED REALITY employed by Western culture as the dominant ‘operating reality’, even though it is a ‘crazy-maker’, is enjoying ‘lock-in-by-high-switching-costs’.   It is not difficult to see how this is happening; i.e. belief in the double-error based INVENTED REALITY is a belief in ‘sorcery’.  We Western culture adherents are taught to understand ‘reality’, NOT FIRSTLY IN TERMS OF OUR RELATIONAL EXPERIENCE OF INCL;USION IN THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUM, … but FIRSTLY, in terms of the INVENTED REALITY  based on the ‘double error’ which has us accept the language-and-grammar based ‘existence’ of ‘things-in-themselves with powers of sourcing actions and developments’.

WATCH OUT!  This explanation gets tricky because we are, right now, communicating through the use of language whose built-in-communicating capability IS BASED ON THE DOUBLE ERROR!  The challenge of understanding an ‘everything-is-in­-flux’ reality using language and grammar that uses the abstractions of ‘naming’ to invent ‘things-in-themselves’ and grammar to animate these things-in-themselves in intellectual visual mental constructions (thoughts) is, as Emerson and Nietzsche observe, ‘the tool that is running away with the workman’.  That is, we are NOT REALLY independent beings with powers of sourcing actions and developments; … that is the ‘double error’ exposed by Nietzsche.  However, THAT IS THE CRAZY-MAKER FOR US WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, WHO LIVE IN INVENTED REALITIES BASED ON THE ‘DOUBLE ERROR’.  That is, as Heraclitus observes, ‘Listening not to me but to the logos, it is wise to remember that all things are one’.  Listening to Western language and grammar-based depositions can be hazardous to one’s mental health, for people who are relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.  That’s why avoiding using explicit constructs in language is of essential importance; e.g. that’s why indigenous aboriginals use relational naming such as ‘Dances with Wolves’ and why modern physics uses the (Geoffrey Chew and John Wheeler suggested) ‘Surprise version of the game of Twenty Question’, so as to preserve the ‘implicit order’ characterizing physical reality and not fall into the trap of mistaking ‘the explicit order’ of intellectual rhetoric for anything  As W other than an INVENTED REALITY, the utility of which is simply to infer the purely relational reality that is beyond capture in intellectual constructs of language and grammar.  As Wittgenstein says in his final two sum-up statements in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus;

6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

7.0 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

What can we say about the practice of Western culture adherents, of using language and grammar LITERALLY as if ‘names’ REALLY DO signify ‘things-in-themselves’ and as if ‘grammar’ really does describe ‘the actions and developments authored by those name-instantiated things-in-themselves’.

Well, we could say, as Nietzsche, Emerson and Wittgenstein do, that the ‘double error’ allows us to INVENT REALITY in the intellect based on name-instantiated explicit things-in-themselves with grammar-given powers of sourcing actions and developments.

Language and grammar give the psyche the means to INVENT REALITY IN THE IMAGINATION THAT NEED NOT BE GROUNDED IN EXPERIENCE.  For example, the radio transmission, by Orson Welles, of a dramatization of the fiction ‘War of the Worlds’ caused widespread panic and had people fleeing to hide in the hills, illustrating what can happen when language-stimulated intellectual abstraction is put into an unnatural precedence over our actual sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

BUT THAT’S WHAT LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR DO, CONSTRUCT INVENTED REALITIES.  The reality of our actual experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum CANNOT BE TOLD, that’s the point of the Tao te Ching and Lao Tzu, and that’s because ‘everything is related’ (mitakuye oyasin).  Our use of language and grammar in the ‘double error’ allows us (in the intellect) to notionally break the relational down into abstract parts; i.e. notional explicit ‘things-in-themselves’ with notional powers of sourcing actions and developments so as to INVENT REALITY in those ’double error’ terms.  Examples of those intellectual abstractions include ‘humans’, ‘nations’, and ‘corporations’.  These are all ‘double error’ based psychological impressions that, however useful for INVENTING REALITY (in terms of language and grammar articulable abstraction) THAT IS SHAREABLE (and therefore potentially contagious), is nothing more than just that, INVENTED REALITY scenarios that, when we act upon them as if they do constitute a usable ‘operative reality’, are driving us crazy.

That is, this confused belief in double error-based reality as reality, by ‘wallpapering over’ the inarticulable relational reality of our actual experience, has us ‘tilting at windmills’.   That is, there is no ‘sorcery’ in the relational reality of our actual experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.  Thus, our Western culture practice of rewarding sorcerers of good, and punishing sorcerers of bad, is insanity that in turn cultivates social dysfunction.  Not that the popular euphemizing of ‘sorcery’ as ‘producer-product’ dynamics does not dissolve the ‘double error’ dysfunction.  That is, the middle age concept of ‘sorcery’ persists, psychologically, beneath these new word-clothes, and the ‘poets’ (the keepers of the relational understanding of reality) remain ‘sidelined’ by the dominating popularity of explicit-logic in Western culture social collectives, wherein the double error is used to construct INVENTED REALITY for use as the popularly preferred ‘operative reality’.

HOW TO SUM-UP this above-described situation;

Western Culture Madness: Elevating the Head over the Heart

“The tool runs away with the workman, the human with the divine” – Emerson

-1- Language and grammar used in ‘double error’ mode is the problem since it engenders in the psyche the impression of ‘beings’ with powers of ‘sorcery’, whether ‘humans’, ‘nations’, or ‘corporations’.  ‘Ego’ follows from this ‘double error, displacing the relational form of activation termed ‘inspirations’.  (Ego swells the intellectualizing head, while inspiration fills the relationally sensitive heart).

-2- Western culture uses the ‘double error’ to construct INVENTED REALITY in which name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’ are seen as the ‘sorcerers’ of actions and developments that may be judged ‘good’ or ‘bad’.  Note that relational transformation does not involve local sourcing; i.e. ‘local sourcing’ is abstraction of the intellect, coming from the ‘double error’.

-3- Experiential reality cannot be captured in explicit language.  Modern physics, as well as indigenous aboriginal cultures, Buddhism/Taoism and Advaita Vedanta understand the reality of our actual experience in terms of ‘flow’ (Tao); a reality that cannot be captured with language (the Tao that can be told is not the true Tao). Language, insofar as it is used in attempts to articulate ‘reality’ that is the experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum, can only employ language in indirect inference mode since, in reality as flow, ‘everything is related’.  As Heraclitus also says; ‘Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to remember that all things are one’.

-4- Western culture adherents were given notice, by Lao Tzu, Heraclitus, Buddha and other philosophical investigators in the later era (Nietzsche, Bohm, Schroedinger, Wittgenstein, Emerson), that the reality of our experience within the flow, being purely relational, cannot be captured in terms of explicit material entities notionally with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments.  As Nietzsche pointed out, the INVENTED REALITIES based on this ‘double error’ of language and grammar, while reconciling (hanging together) within themselves, create INVENTED REALITIES that, while psychologically consistent within themselves, were ungrounded in (and in conflict with) our experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.  The example of Orson Welles dramatization of War of the Worlds is exemplary of aberrant thinking wherein language-triggered intellection is put into an unnatural precedence over relational sensory experience, a dysfunction that is endemic in Western culture.

-5- The inverting of natural precedence which puts language and grammar based INVENTED REALITY into an unnatural primacy over the ineffable reality of our experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum has become the dominant shaping influence of Western culture social dynamic, hence Emerson’s ‘the tool runs away with the workman, the human with the divine’.

-6- The ‘troublesome gap’ continues to deepen, from the Western culture substitution of language and grammar double error based INVENTED REALITY for the ineffable sensual experiential reality of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum .  A major confusing distraction has arisen among the ranks of Western culture believers in ‘sorcery’ over the question of whether sorcery is inside-outward asserting (conservatives; ‘one bad apple spoils the barrel’) or ‘outside-inward inducing’; (liberals; ‘it takes a whole community to raise a [good/bad] child’).    As Western culture adherents continue to wage political war with themselves over which of these two understandings of ‘sorcery’ is the ‘true mode of sorcery’, the point is missed that ‘sorcery’ is illusion and neither side is right (the argument is spurious).  The dynamics of reality are not ‘sorcery’ based, a in ‘the double error’, they are relational transformation.

-7- Extracting ourselves (Western culture adhering social collectives) from this ersatz INVENTED REALITY of our own (double error) invention is troubled by ‘lock-in by high switching costs’; i.e. ‘sorcery’ is illusion (there is only relational transformation in the reality of our actual sensual experience), however, Western culture continues to construct its INVENTED REALITIES by rewarding ‘sorcery’ of good actions and developments (with elevated/positive status and esteem) and punishing ‘sorcery’ of bad actions and developments (with reduced/negative status and disesteem)., and, furthermore, giving greater authority over any changes to this good and bad attribution scheme, to those deemed ‘superior sorcerers of good actions and developments’.  We are thus locked in by high switching costs to  the currently operative sorcery-based rewards and punishments scheme of our own making;

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’  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Laborit

DISCUSSION:

The innate unnatural dysfunctionality of Western culture in its current mode of operation has been described above, as well as the mechanism of its ‘lock-in’ by ‘high switching costs’.

Those that are ‘faring well’ within the Western culture system and given the greatest rewards and recognition as contributors to its functioning (as distinguished from those with artistic and thus sentient-emotional aesthetic contributions)  are also given the most influence over changes to the system as it currently operates.

Even people who are poor ‘nobodies’  because of the ‘sorcery’ based rewards tend to support the status quo by exalting the ‘superior sorcerers’ and loving them for their charity and benevolence.  There are questions, of course, like the question of the poet Claribel Alegria who observes; “My father was a famous engineer, my mother had no name”.   She is questioning more than society ingrained ‘gender inequality’, she is questioning the concept of ‘sorcery’ as a poet would, since she sees herself not as the ‘source’ of her works, but as a ‘sentient channel’ within the relational flow.  The artist and/or her work is not the ‘source’ of the resonance that animates those moved by her works, resonance is innately relational and is not ‘sourced’.  ‘Sorcery’ arises from the language and grammar based double error concept in the guise of a ‘thing-in-itself’ with powers of sourcing actions and developments.  If we ‘say’ that someone is the ‘source’ of some affect, such as music inspired emotion, then we are invoking the double error of language and grammar, and substituting ego for inspiration as in “ego swells the head (of the notional jump-start being with powers of sourcing), inspiration fills the heart” (of relational forms in the common flow).

Western culture ‘runs on ego’ coming from the ‘double error’ of language and grammar.  Ego is culturally cultivated and not in our basic makeup which is relational as in the ‘undivided self’;

To the infant’s developing mind, topology comes before geometry. In general, deeper and more fundamental logical operations are developed earlier than more specific rules and applications. The history of mathematics, which is generally taken as a process of moving towards deeper and more general levels of thought, could also be thought of as a process of excavation which attempts to uncover the earliest operations of thought in infancy. According to this argument, the very first operations exist at a pre-conscious level [i.e. ‘pre-intellectualizing’ level in the conscious and intuitive infant] so that the more fundamental a logical operation happens to be, the earlier it was developed by the infant and the deeper it has become buried in the mind.” – F. David Peat, ‘Mathematics and the Language of Nature’

 Finally, it is not hard to see how intellectual language-based abstraction can outstrip relational empathy in its pace of distribution, as has been amplified by electronic communications.  There is an authenticity in the experiencing of a physical embrace that transcends that which can be captured in language and grammar.  It is the ineffable sensation that transcends capture in intellectual language and grammar terms.  The young well-educated virgin can be the authority on sexual embrace as to the physical workings, but the sensations of relational experience transcend capture in language (i.e. carnal knowledge cannot be captured by intellectual knowledge).

In the modern era where electronic communications are busily constructing INVENTED REALITIES, the sensation-based reality of our actual experience tends to be ‘left behind’.  It is the reason for the ‘learning circle’ approach in indigenous aboriginal societies, where one passes the talking stick, ‘speaking from the heart’ and ‘not from the head’.  In the circle, the speaking from the heart is something ‘felt’ moreso than ‘heard’ and in fact where words fail emotional sharing the message can nevertheless come through, perhaps even more powerfully, without the words.

My experience has been that everyone feels the difference of sharing what happens within a ‘sharing circle’ versus ‘remote’ sharing by means of language and grammar within electronic communications-based exchanges.  But, as with Orson Wells electronic transmission of H.G. Wells ‘War of the Worlds’, INVENTING REALITY in a decomposed double error based format so that it can be electronically forwarded and RECONSTRUCTED elsewhere, in many places at more or less the same time, can be an expedient means of putting a multiplicity of listeners into a common mental framework or ‘double-error-based INVENTED REALITY.

Our experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum cannot be directly captured in either language or picture form since ‘everything is in flux’.  This is why the devices of ‘sharing circles’ are employed, in an attempt to share experience that cannot be explicitly stated or pictured but can only be understood ‘intuitively’ as by inference (the coherence in relational connection) as cultivated in the ‘sharing circle’.

 “The more eyes, different eyes, we know how to bring to bear on one and the same matter, that much more complete will our ‘concept’ of this matter, our ‘objectivity’ be.”  — Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality

 Meanwhile, the ‘double error based INVENTED REALITY commits our intellect to the ‘device’ of ‘beings’ with ‘powers of sorcery’, which, in its false explicitness, wallpapers over and ‘occludes’ the inherently ‘relational’ reality of our actual experience.   This language-and-grammar intellection-based ‘occlusion’ of our natural sensory experiencing of reality is a Western culture predilection.  The continuing dominant influence of this crazy-making double-error based INVENTED REALITY is held in place through ‘lock-in-by-high-switching-costs’.

Where language presents an explicit picture of reality, it is not the reality of our actual experience, it is an intellectual INVENTED REALITY. 

All of the ‘wonderful (material) things’ that Western culture claims to have achieved, are ‘achieved’ within the INVENTED REALITY and expressed through the ‘double error’ which abstractly casts us as ‘sorcerers’ of actions and developments,, and when we step back from this language and picture stimulated mental ‘viewing screen’ as our ‘reality delivery basis’ and resynch with our sensual experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum, we begin to feel the incongruity between our intellectual Darwinist claims of human transcendence and mastery OVER ‘the rest of’ nature, and the more sensually (sensibly) supportable impressions of our ineffable inclusion, as relational forms, WITHIN the transforming relational continuum.

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