The following are examples of our WESTERN CULTURE linguistic “short-cut” where we substitute GROWTH for TRANSFORMATION because GROWTH implies a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO topology which is easier to express than the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE actual reality.  Henri Poincaré explains our WESTERN CULTURE penchant for simplifying our conceptualization of space as follows;

And just as our Copernicus said to us : It is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round, since thus the laws of astronomy are expressible in a much simpler language ; this one would say: It is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round, since thus the laws of mechanics are expressible in a much simpler language. . This does not preclude maintaining that absolute space, that is to say the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence. Hence, this affirmation; ‘the earth turns round’ has no meaning, since it can be verified by no experiment; since such an experiment, not only could not be either realized or dreamed by the boldest Jules Verne, but can not be conceived of without contradiction; or rather these two propositions; ‘the earth turns round,’ and, ‘it is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round’ have the same meaning; there is nothing more in the one than in the other. “ — Henri Poincaré, ‘Science and Hypothesis’, Ch. VII Relative Motion and Absolute Motion

In other words, this assumption of FIGURE-AND-GROUND-AS-TWO is a CONVENTION that we have BUILT INTO LANGUAGE BASED REPRESENTATION because of the CONVENIENCE of the SIMPLIFICATION it delivers to the ARTICULATION OF REALITY, … ALTHOUGH this simplification introduces a SUBSTITUTE REALITY which DROPS OUT the natural FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE complexity of the REALITY OF OUR ACTUAL SENSORY EXPERIENCE.

THUS, FOR EXAMPLE, in the SUBSTITUTE REALITY we construct with the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO simplified language representation of reality (it is SIMPLIFIED because we can talk about the FIGURE as if it were ‘moving’ and ‘growing’ IN ITS OWN RIGHT within an absolute empty and infinite containing space, wherein in the REAL REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE, any change in the FIGURE implies a CONJUGATE change in the GROUND as in TRANSFORMATION which is actually affirmed by our sensory experience of inclusion therein.

So, while it is SIMPLER and thus more CONVENIENT to employ language which reduces the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE to a notional FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein the FIGURE is FREE to move about and to GROW, SHIRNK, or CHANGE as if IN -ITS-OWN-INDEPENDENT-RIGHT, … that is just the SUBSTITUTE REALITY representation, while the REAL REALITY remains the FIGURE-and-GROUND-is-ONE reality of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING IN THE REAL REALITY AS ‘THE TOWN THAT IS GROWING’, … that is a NAMING and GRAMMAR based DOUBLE ERROR, as Nietzsche points out, which gives forth a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO COGNITIVE IMPRESSION, which is NOT REAL, but which contributes to a SUBSTITUTE REALITY that we talk about and employ AS IF IT WERE REALITY.  Instead of understanding, as in indigenous aboriginal languages, as also in the Tai/Chi FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE topology of TRANSFORMATION, we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS embrace a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein THE TOWN IS “SEEN” as GROWING as if it had an INDEPENDENT EXISTENCE within an absolute empty and infinite space, whereas IN REALITY, THERE IS TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-ARE-ONE.

This means that it is NEITHER TRUE that the “HURRICANE STIRS UP THE ATMOSPHERE” NOR that “The ATMOSPHERE STIRS UP THE HURRICANE” since both of these impressions imply a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO SUBSTITUTE REALITY (thanks to the abstraction of absolute space) that may seem to ‘work’ in our rational psychological apparatus which is capable of abstraction that is not constrained by ‘sense-experience reality’.

So, NO, it is NOT TRUE that ‘the HURRICANE GROWS LARGER’, and NO, it is NOT TRUE that the TOWN GROWS LARGER.  These are just abstract SUBSTITUTE REAITIES fabricated with the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR that serves up FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO abstraction.  In our sense experience reality, FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE, and from a language architecture point of view, this is difficult (impossible) to capture, hence, our language architecting fall-back position is to SUBSTITUTE an-easier-to-articulate SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO and thus where IT MAKES SENSE (but only within this SUBSTITUTE REALITY!) to fabricate pseudo-realities such as; ‘The TOWN is GROWING’, an abstraction that invokes a notional empty and infinite “CONTAINING SPACE” which ignores the conjugate relation between the notional “GROWTH” of a DEVELOPED AREA, and the “CONJUGATE SHRINKAGE” of the UNDEVELOPED ‘WILDERNESS AREA”.

That is, the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR facilitate the language based construction of representations in FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO abstraction, a SUBSTITUE REALITY wherein we ‘speak of’ and thus ENVISAGE the notionally INDEPENDENT GROWTH of a notional NAMING-instantiated LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF such as ‘the TOWN’, conjuring up in our psyche a SUSTITUTE REALITY that REPLACES the impossible-to-linguistically capture REAL REALITY of TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE.

THIS FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO SUBSTITUTE REALITY simplifies our language-based representation of reality; i.e.

It is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round, since thus the laws of mechanics are expressible in a much simpler language. – Poincaré.

NOTA BENE: After employing our simplified language based representations such as ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ (which substitutes for the more complex ACTUAL reality wherein the LANDSCAPE IS TRANFORMING), we must not fail to remember that the SUBSTITUTE REALITY that we construct using the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO simplification, which allows us to SPLIT OFF the FIGURE and talk about it as if it were moving about and developing within an ABSOLUE EMPTY AND INFINITE SPACE, … which is abstraction that ‘buys us’ the simplification of being able to talk about the FIGURE as if were INDEPENDENT of the GROUND in its movements and developments, WHICH IS IT NOT!   The TOWN is “NOT” independent of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE since, in the reality of our sensory experience, FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE.

THAT IS; TRANSFORMATION OF THE LANDSCAPE WHICH INCLUDES “TOWNING” is the reality and it is a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE REALITY, .. while GROWTH of the TOWN is a DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR based ABSTRACT SUBSTITUTE REALITY.  So, to paraphrase Poincaré

It is more convenient to suppose the TOWN GROWS, since thus the laws of mechanics are expressible in a much simpler language.

How do we express in language-based representations, the ‘mechanics’ of TRANSFORMATION wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE?  Every time we address change in the figure, there is a simultaneous conjugate change in the ground.  No wonder, from a language based representation point of view, someone thought up the ploy of inventing an imaginary empty space of infinite extent that could serve to LIBERATE the FIGURE within an abstract FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO SUBSTITUTE REALITY.  Now we can speak of the GROWTH of the TOWN rather than being encumbered with TOWNING as a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE.

NOTA BENE: WHAT HAPPENS IF/WHEN WE FORGET THAT OUR DOUBLE ERROR NAMING AND GRAMMAR, FIGURE-and-GROUND-as TWO INVENTION of CONVENIENCE is only an INVENTION OF CONVENIENCE AND COMMENCE TO EMPLOY IT AN ‘OPERATIVE REALITY’?

ANSWER: WESTERN CULTURE IS BORN.

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EPILOGUE:  

It can be useful to keep reminding ourselves of our WESTERN CULTURE ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ as Nietzsche calls it, of NAMING and GRAMMAR which is what REDUCES the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE reality of our sensory experience (which is INEFFABLE because everything is in flux) to the more convenient because simplified SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO.

That is, it can be useful to keep reminding ourselves of the ARTIFICIALITY of the SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein we use language-based abstract representations that impute LOCAL AUTHORSHIP of actions and developments, and  use these abstract LOCAL AUTHORED actions and developments and the language-based SUBSTITUTE REALITY we construct with them to do an END RUN around the impossible-to-explicitly capture-in-language REAL REALITY of the transforming relational continuum.

One may ‘conceive of this construction of a SUBSTITUTE REALITY’ in terms of reducing FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE reality, to a SUBSTITUTE REALITY wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO; i.e.

It is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round, (implies figure and ground are two).

Forgiveness is a backhanded way of implying TORT where one thing AUTHORS harm of another thing (no bumper car game here) (this implies figure and ground are two)

GROWTH of local things-in-themselves is deemed real (implies figure and ground are two and substitutes growth for figure-and-ground-as-one-transformation)

Movement of matter in space (implies figure and ground are two)

Production (implies output and input are two (figure and ground are two rather than one as in transformation)

Guilt or Innocence (non-Bumper-Car-reality) implies independent AUTHORING of action/development of a figure as in figure-and-ground-as-two.

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ALL OF THE ABOVE SUPPORT THE ABSTRACTION THAT SPACE is EUCLIDIAN (an empty and absolute container of infinite extent).  As Poincaré explains, the assumption THAT SPACE IS EUCLIDIAN simplifies our language-based representation of the world dynamic that, while ‘more convenient’, is abstraction that is NOT supported by sense experience.

And just as our Copernicus said to us : It is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round, since thus the laws of astronomy are expressible in a much simpler language ; this one would say: It is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round, since thus the laws of mechanics are expressible in a much simpler language. . This does not preclude maintaining that absolute space, that is to say the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence. Hence, this affirmation; ‘the earth turns round’ has no meaning, since it can be verified by no experiment; since such an experiment, not only could not be either realized or dreamed by the boldest Jules Verne, but can not be conceived of without contradiction; or rather these two propositions; ‘the earth turns round,’ and, ‘it is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round’ have the same meaning; there is nothing more in the one than in the other. “ — Henri Poincaré, ‘Science and Hypothesis’, Ch. VII Relative Motion and Absolute Motion

 

THE ABOVE IS A CULTURE-SHAPER; i.e. IT IS THE BASIS OF WESTERN CULTURE’S SUBSTITUTE REALITY THAT REPLACES TRANSFORMATION WITH NOTIONAL GROWTH of “LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES” (the FIGURES) that NOTIONALLY SHARE INCLUSION IN AN EMPTY SPACE OF INFINITE EXTENT (the GROUND).

AUTHOR’s POSTSCRIPT TO:

WESTERN CULTURE’S SUBSTITUTE REALITY THAT REPLACES TRANSFORMATION WITH GROWTH

How do WE, who have been acculturated so as to semi-automatically switch into the SUBSTITUTE REALITY behaviour-shaping mode REMEMBER that this language based simplifying tool of DOUBLE ERROR based language has us serving up ‘pseudo-realities’ (SUBSTITUTE REALITIES) to ourselves as a simplified ‘GO-BY’  that IS NOT FIT to be confused for REALITY and ACTUALLY USED AS AN OPERATIVE REALITY?   That is, it is easier to say that ‘the TOWN is GROWING’ and that “IT” is PRODUCING more valuable goods and services, but such language stimulates IMAGERY that makes us FORGETFUL of the REAL REALITY of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE which COMPREHENDS not only the abstraction of the GROWING TOWN but also the conjugate SHRINKING OF WILDERNESS, these two complex conjugates together constituting the REAL REALITY of the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE in which “TOWNING” is an “APPEARANCE” and there is no LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF as tagged by the NAMING and GRAMMAR “DOUBLE ERROR” that is ‘actually’ GROWING.

THE MENTAL VISUAL IMAGE OF A GROWING TOWN “HIJACKS” the PSYCHE and puts us INSIDE a SUBSTITUTE REALITY featuring notional LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES, notionally with THEIR OWN POWERS OF AUTHORING actions and developments, ‘the TOWN’ being one of these notional things, to which we impute the powers of GROWTH and PRODUCTION, as part of our intellectual enterprise of constructing a WORK-AROUND to avoid having to deal with INEFFABLE REALITY of NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION, the REALITY OF OUR SENSE EXPERIENCE OF INCLUSION THEREIN.

How do we, as a social collective, since we as individuals are all coming from different experiencing of reality, determine ‘which reality’ is the TRUE REALITY?  Nietzsche pursues this investigation as follows;

“What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms — in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors – in moral terms, the obligation to lie according to fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all…” – Nietzsche  (On truth and lie in an extra-moral sense’)

In other words, we have our own personal sensory experience but that does not mean that there should exist a ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL “TRUE REALITY”, although we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS support such an abstraction, which induced Giordano Bruno’s comment, as he was being taken to be burned as the stake in 1600; ‘the Majority has no monopoly on the truth’, anticipating Nietzsche’s later observation;

“  to be truthful means using the customary metaphors – in moral terms, the obligation to lie according to fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all…”

The BIG LIE in our WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENCY is the EGO-BREWING concept of LOCAL AUTHORSHIP which stems from the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR based on the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO abstraction.

TRANSFORMATION is NON-EGOTIST-because-AUTHOR-NONLOCALIZING-INSPIRATION that is BEYOND EXPLICIT LANGUAGE BASED REPRESENTATION as is the nature of FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE REALITY.  Yet, as Schroedinger points out, the NONLOCALIZING of the SELF implies ONENESS with EVERYTHING, a sense of SELF that does not spring from a notional LOCAL AUTHORING POWER, but from INCLUSIONAL “ONE-NESS” IN THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM.  As Schroedinger expresses this;

… In Christian terminology to say: ‘Hence I am God Almighty’ sounds both blasphemous and lunatic. But please disregard these connotations for the moment and consider whether the above inference is not the closest a biologist can get to proving God and immortality at one stroke.

In itself, the insight is not new. The earliest records to my knowledge date back some 2,500 years or more. From the early great Upanishads the recognition ATHMAN = BRAHMAN (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world. The striving of all the scholars of Vedanta was, after having learnt to pronounce with their lips, really to assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts.

 Again, the mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God).

To Western ideology the thought has remained a stranger.  – Erwin Schroedinger, ‘What is LIfe’, ‘Epilogue: On Determinism and Free Will’

 

An UNDERSTANDING of why this DEUS FACTUS SUM has remained a stranger among us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS is implicit in Nietzsche’s observations on how we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are mesmerized by the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR whereby we make ourselves out to be the LOCAL AUTHORS of actions and developments, giving to ourselves a kind of MINI-GOD status of the LOCAL SORCERER who is now the AUTHORING FIGURE of amazing developments in the GROUND in the sense of FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO, as SUBJECT with the power of changing the OBJECT, … thus abandoning our FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE REALITY as captured by MITAKUYE OYASIN.

“The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.” – Erwin Schroedinger

The tile of this note: Western Culture’s SUBSTITUTE REALITY that replaces TRANSFORMATION with GROWTH points to the WESTERN CULTURE use of the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR to SPLIT APART FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE and recast it in FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO terms which involves the SUBJECT-OBJECT splitting addressed by Schroedinger, Nietzsche, Bohm and others, a SUBJECT-OBJECT splitting that not only leads to the construction of a SUBSTITUTE REALITY based on the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO topology, but which ‘talks us into’ seeing ourselves as an OBSERVING SUBJECT that is looking out into an OBJECT WORLD that we are no longer part of, that we have been ‘banned from’ like the ‘sinning angels’ in Christian theology, awaiting ‘redemption’ wherein the banishment order will be ‘lifted’, or where we can overcome the impression that there has been a banishment, as in the view expressed in the early (later disavowed) Christian ‘Gospel of Thomas’;

Again when Jesus saw infants being nursed by their mothers he said, “These infants being suckled are like those entering the Kingdom.” And the disciples asked, “Shall we, then, as little children, enter the Kingdom?” He answered them, “When you make two one, and when you make the inside the outside and the outside the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and female one and the same…then you will enter (the Kingdom).” —The Gospel of Thomas

Or, in other words, when we trade out FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO for FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE, we will become ONE with TRANSFORMATION, that all-including transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka the Tao, and, evidently, aka ‘the Kingdom’.

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