Barack Obama ‘On Trial’

Was OBAMA as BAD as conservatives believe or was he as GOOD as liberals believe?

Clue: OBAMA did nothing about the following;

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 Growth of Incarceration in the United States 

But then again, neither did TRUMP.

The salient feature of WESTERN CULTURES, which puts us AT ODDS with MODERN PHYSICS, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta is that WE CULTIVATE AND DEFEND BELIEF IN SORCERY.

By SORCERY, I am referring to what Nietzsche identifies as ‘THE DOUBLE ERROR OF NAMING AND GRAMMAR’ which is also known as “REASON”.

“REASON” is over-simplistic abstraction which is otherwise known as RATIO-NALITY and/or GROWTH.  For example we REASON that ‘the TOWN is GROWING larger and more populous and productive’  (we can ‘smell’ the abstract concept of LOCAL SOURCING in this statement).  In the REALITY of our sensory experience, we understand that we and the TOWN are included in TRANSFORMATION, which is ‘everywhere-at-the-same-time’.

While inclusion in TRANSFORMATION is something our SENSORY EXPERIENCE informs us of; it is NOT capturable in language-based RATIO-based terms such as GROWTH.  RATIO aka REASON which underlies the concept of GROWTH is more convenient a descriptive device than TRANSFORMATION because it GROWTH-based descriptions put a LOCAL spotlight on TRANSFORMATION which is, in reality, NONLOCAL.

We say ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ but in reality, THE LANDSCAPE IS TRANSFORMING and what we are really referring to is the TOWNING that APPEARS within the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.  In using language based constructions such as ‘the TOWN is GROWING’, we are constructing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY.  For example, construction an enlargement to a shopping centre on a middle deck on the Titanic could be described  in the terms that ‘the Shopping Centre is EXPANDING’.   This is exemplary of our use of the abstract concept of GROWTH which implies LOCAL RATIO based expansion.  REASON is essentially our act of extrapolating understanding by way of RATIO, allowing us to AVOID the reality of inclusion in TRANSFORMATION.  “GROWTH” follows from “REASON”.

If it were not for such RATIO-based ABSTRACTION, we would be faced with having to find language to capture a representation of the REAL REALITY of TRANSFORMATION which takes us beyond our shop on the middle deck of the Titanic out beyond the Titanic into the ocean and atmosphere and beyond that into the all-including universe aka Wave-field.  Language that starts with the LOCAL and EXPLICIT can’t ‘deliver’ on such a challenge and that’s why we have to construct a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ rather than acknowledging the REAL REALITY wherein the LANDSCAPE is TRANSFORMING.

RATIO aka REASON is an abstract intellectual PLOY that we use to construct a SUBSTITUTE REALITY that is EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT, .. thus avoiding having to express the reality of our sensory experience of inclusion in the TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM which is INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT.  REASON is RATIO based which is how it delivers impressions of REALITY by way of LOCAL PIECES OF REALITY such as ‘The TOWN that is GROWING’.  The indigenous aboriginal culture and its language design avoids this RATIO-enabled or REASON-enabled PIECE-MEALING by retaining the sense of connectedness in language-based expression; e.g. ‘mitakuye oyasin’, “everything is related” or “I am all my relations”.

As Nietzsche points out, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, because we use language that constructs a SUBSTITUTE REALITY for communications purposes infuse this SUBSTITUTE REALITY with the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.  This is how we are able to render in LOCAL and EXPLICIT terms, the reality of our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka the Tao.  In other words, WE ARE NOT ABLE TO RENDER the REALITY OF OUR SENSORY EXPERIENCE in LANGUAGE, we are forced to come up with a SUBSTITUTE REALITY that our language IS CAPABLE OF.   Instead of giving representation to the transforming relational continuum, which is NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT and thus INEFFABLE, … we switch to representation of a SUBSTITUTE REALITY featuring that which is LOCAL and EXPLICIT.

With this “SUBSTITUTE REALITY” approach, instead of trying to effable-ize our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum; e.g. of the TOWNING in the LANDSCAPE, … we use language to abstractly give the psychological impression of the “LOCAL EXISTENCE” of a “TOWN” that is the LOCAL SOURCE of “its own GROWTH and DEVELOPMENT”.

This LIBERATION of “The TOWNING in the TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM” by using, as Nietzsche points out, the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR, sets up ‘the TOWN’ as a notional ‘LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF’ and gives it ITS OWN POWER of SOURCING actions and developments, hence “The TOWN is GROWING larger and more populous and productive”.

THERE IS A LOT OF LOCAL SORCERY IMPLIED HERE, and it is this LOCAL SORCERY which allows us to psychologically SIDESTEP the reality of the NONLOCAL and IMPLICIT as in the reality of TRANSFORMATION.

Our language-based construction of a SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on RATIO (REASON) is a handy tool for articulating the inarticulable, by way of inventing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY THAT IS ARTICULABLE.

This is where REASON plays the key role in allowing us to construct the SUBSTITUTE REALITY by means of RATIO.  Compare the following two representations;

-1- The LANDSCAPE is TRANSFORMING.

-2- The TOWN is GROWING

In the first proposition, everything is in relational flux as if there is a continual melting down, mountains sagging and becoming rounded, and spilling into and filling lakes and valleys up etc.

In the second proposition, something LOCAL is expanding and becoming more intricate and feature-full like the growth of a crystal with spires rising up and giving domicile to an intensifying busy-ness as in a beehive of activity.

Geologists will tell us that the understanding in (1) is a ‘reality’ that is endlessly ongoing while historians will tell us that the understanding in (2) is a ‘reality’ that is continually coming and going like turning the pages and passing through the chapters of a story book.

Which of these depictions is the REAL REALITY?

There is a cultural tradition-based choice herein some cultures prefer to believe that ‘we are included in something greater than ourselves’ so that we are relational features within that ‘something greater’ as with extrusion and subduction within a flow, … while we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS popularly believe that we and other forms are ‘independent’ ‘LOCAL THINGS-in-THEMSELVES’ that ARRIVE and DEPART, the ‘from whence’ and ‘to where’ being the problematic ‘great mystery’.

The modern physics “all-inclusive” TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM aka the Wave-field aka the Tao ‘makes sense’ to many people but the popularity of the WESTERN CULTURE reality is LOCKED IN by HIGH SWITCHING COSTS because it comes with the abstract notion of LOCAL SOURCING which not only INFLATES or DEFLATES the EGO, depending on what WORKS OF SORCERY are attributed to the individual by the social collective.

Of course, in Modern Physics as in indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, the abstract concept of LOCAL SOURCING, which owes its existence to the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR is not a part of reality.  The reality of Modern Physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta is a relational reality without the abstraction of DOUBLE ERROR based LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments.

We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS sustain a culture that is based on belief in SORCERY; i.e. the DOUBLE ERROR based abstraction of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments.  This gives rise to EGO and those can lay claim to, or are given credit by the social collective, to LOCAL SOURCING (authorship) of actions and development commonly assessed as BENEFICIAL to the ‘common good’ are given rewards and respect as well as status and influence over the evolving social practice.  Thus it is those who have risen into positions of social influence by the perception of having ‘SOURCED’ beneficial works, who have increased the rewards for the ‘chief ‘SORCERERS’ (leaders and managers) in WESTERN CULTURE communities from a ratio of about TEN-TO-ONE over the average person, to about ONE-THOUSAND-TO-ONE, over the past ‘generation’.

This SORCERY based rewards and recognition system of WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS is distinguished from that of POTLATCH cultures where there is no assumption of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments, but instead, as also in MODERN PHYSICS, the assumption of NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION.  That is, the LOCAL SOURCING concept does not even arise in indigenous aboriginal cultures because LOCAL SOURCING is a concept that originates in the NAMING and GRAMMAR “DOUBLE ERROR” structure of WESTERN CULTURE languages, as pointed out by Nietzsche.

Our WESTERN CULTURE languages furnish us with such language based constructs as ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ which is constructed with the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING (TOWN) and GRAMMAR (GROWING).  The REALITY of TOWNING as a relational dynamic within the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE is simply DISCARDED as the SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on the DOUBLE ERROR is embraced.

There is, meanwhile, a PHANTOM PRESENCE that creeps in with this DOUBLE ERROR and that is ‘the ghost of the departing Wilderness since no amount of talk about the GROWTH of the cultivated land, the TOWN, the Industries SPEAKS to the disappearance (by way of TRANSFORMATION) of the Wilderness flora, fauna, LANDSCAPE.

GROWTH as also REASON, is ONE-SIDED ABSTRACTION that cannot and does not comprend and deal with the CONJUGATE LOSSES associated with the GAINS of GROWTH, THESE TOW CONJUGATES BEING BOTH “REAL” aspects of TRANSFORMATION.

“Reason” in language!—oh what a deceptive old witch it has been! I fear we shall never be rid of God, so long as we still believe in grammar.  – Nietzsche

The title of this note; Western Culture’s Dysfunctional Belief in Sorcery employs the ‘no-no’ word ‘SORCERY’ which has and continues to lurk in the dark corners of WESTERN CULTURE THINKING, because it persists as an active player in the WESTERN CULTURE psyche and comes into play as EGO.  That is, we keep repeating to ourselves over and over again, the notional REALITY of LOCAL sourcing, every time we use the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING-and-GRAMMAR.  For example; ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ is exemplary of THE DOUBLE ERROR.  Our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum informs us that there is TOWNING just as there is HUMANING within the Wave-field aka the Tao wherein EVERYTHING IS IN FLUX, as Heclitus observed and as Modern Physics has reaffirmed.

Sure, in order to effable-ize the ineffable-because-nonlocal we have developed a language-based technique of constructing a SUBSTITUTE REALITY REPRESENATION that IS EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT.  But that is just for crudely sharing our INEFFABLE sensory experience of inclusion in the Wave-field aka the Tao.

In this SUBSTITUTE REALITY, we re-cast a HUMANING in the FLOW as a LOCAL HUMAN THING-IN-ITSELF, notionally with its own GRAMMAR-given powers of SOURCING actions and developments.  As Emerson warns us, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are falling into the dysfunctional habit of letting our language-and-grammar abstractions-of-convenience ‘run away with our understanding of who we are’; thus as Emerson puts it; “The tool runs away with the workman, the (local) human with the (nonlocal) divine”

We are not REALLY “LOCAL BEINGS” with our own powers of SOURCING actions and developments.  That IS the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.

But nevertheless, in embracing the use of the DOUBLE ERROR, its GOODBYE to TRANSFORMATION and HELLO to LOCAL GROWTH; i.e. its GOODBYE to REALITY and HELLO to REASON-BASED SUBSTITUTE REALITY.

This SUBSTITUTE REALITY FEATURES LOCAL SOURCING aka RATIO aka REASON aka CREATION as the basis of REALITY.

“Reason” in language!—oh what a deceptive old witch it has been! I fear we shall never be rid of God, so long as we still believe in grammar.  – Nietzsche

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