Western culture is a crazy-maker, as R.D. Laing author of The Divided Self succinctly points out.

The pseudo-reality promoted by Western culture as the ‘operative reality’ is based on the ‘double error’ that is chronic in Western culture thinking, as pointed out by Nietzsche;

First Error: Using ‘naming’ to impute the persisting existence of a thing-in-itself

Second Error: Conflating the first by imputing powers of sourcing actions and developments to the name-instantiated thing-in-itself

This double error of language and grammar conditions the intellect so as to think of dynamics NOT IN TERMS OF RELATIONAL TRANFORMATION as implied by our sensory experience, and as constitutes the ‘reality’ of modern physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Buddhism/Taoism and Advaita Vedanta, … but in terms of ‘sorcery’.

The world experienced through our sensations of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum is ECLIPSED by language and grammar stimulated intellectual construction that reduces reality by means of the double error to synthetic terms of picturable things and the notional actions and developments of these things, eclipsing our sensation based understanding of reality in terms of the all-including Tao or Logos or ‘field’, and substituting in its place, an empty space locally populated by name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’, intellectual abstractions arising by way of the ‘double error’.

Naming makes a powerful impression on the mind.  For example, the name ‘Poland’ (see ‘The Changing Borders of Poland’ ) does not depend on the existence of some explicit entity since ‘naming’ creates, in the mind, the notion of a ‘thing-in-itself’ that can then be used in language and grammar based ‘story-telling’.  The ‘boil’ in the ‘flow’ has us thinking of the ‘boil’ as a real ‘thing-in-itself’ but the boil is simply the way that ‘flow’ appears to us; i.e. the boil is an ‘apparition’.  The same is true for the hurricane and the same is true for the human and for all name-instantiated thing-in-themselves abstractions.

As relational forms in the flow, they are ‘appearances’, but in ‘naming’ them, we impute persisting ‘thing-in-itself’ being to them.   This ‘objectifying’ of relational flow-forms obliges us, intellectually, to come up with a ‘grammar’ to explain their movements and changes.  This has been termed ‘the burden of concreteness’ as arose when, back in 500 B.C., Parmenides’ binary logic concept of EITHER ‘is’ OR ‘is not’ overtook (in Western culture cosmological conceptualizing popularity) Heraclitus’ understanding of reality as ‘everything is in flux’.  Note that Heraclitus logic is the logic of the included middle where, for example, the boil BOTH ‘is’ AND ‘is not’ the flow, whereas Parmenides logic is the logic of the excluded middle where a thing EITHER ‘is’ OR ‘is not.  In the latter case, Instead of the ‘boiling’ as how flow locally ‘appears’, the boiling is objectified as ‘the boil’ that is understood as having separate ‘being’ (thing-in-itselfness) that is distinct from the ‘flow’.

Western culture of today, continues to ‘hang on’ to the Parmenides EITHER ‘is’ OR ‘is not’ understanding of ‘reality’ that features name-instantiated ‘things-in-themselves’ that EITHER exist OR do not exist, obscuring (occluding from our mind’s-eye picturing) the relational understanding of boil-in-flow as BOTH ‘is’ AND ‘is not’.  The “EITHER is OR is not'” logic of the excluded middle is the logic of Newtonian physics and ‘sorcery’ while the “BOTH  is AND is not” logic of the included middle is the logic of modern physics or ‘quantum logic’ as it has been termed by Stéphane Lupasco, its mathematical formulator.  The ‘hologram’ is an example of the ‘BOTH ‘is’ AND ‘is not’ nature of logic of the included middle; i.e. the holographic figure manifests as resonances within the overall medium so ‘the figure’ is not ‘separate’ from the ‘ground’ it is included in [e.g. as in Gestalt psychology].

It is easy to forget the distinctions in the above-described two types of reality as we continue to use language in Western culture discussions, and this gets confusing as Heraclitus made note of.  In the following statement, Heraclitus is pointing out that while reality is ‘flow’ aka ‘Logos’ (transformation relational continuum), language and grammar chop the ‘all is one’ flow into separate pieces (in the word-stimulated intellect).  The logos (the transforming relational continuum) is ineffable (beyond capture in words) so that language can only be used to indirectly infer the transformational dynamic that we are included in.  In other words, our private experience, expediently captured in double error terms, is not ‘reality’; i.e. ‘reality’ is the ‘Logos’ or the ‘Tao’, the ineffable transforming relational continuum that we share inclusion in, that Wittgenstein points out lies beyond the reach of the explicit propositions of language;

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 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The problem that characterizes Western culture adherence is that we ‘forget’ that the primary reality of our sensory experience; the experience of inclusion in the transformation relational continuum, is ineffable, and we make the mistake of treating the language and grammar based INVENTED REALITY as if it were the reality of our sensory experience of inclusion in the Tao, WHICH IT IS NOT!

Heraclitus points out this common trap of regarding language and grammar contrived INVENTED REALITY as ‘reality’ and thus occluding/eclipsing the ‘real reality of our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum;

Listening not to me but to the logos it is wise to agree that one is all /all is one.

For this reason it is necessary to follow what is common. But although the Logos is common, most people live as if they had their own private understanding.

Of the logos, which is as I describe it, people always prove to be uncomprehending both before they have heard it and once they have heard it. For, although all things happen according to the logos, people are like those of no experience, even when they do experience such words and deeds as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its phusis (nature / constitution) and declare how it is; but others are as ignorant of what they do when awake as they are forgetful of what they do when asleep.

Those who hear and do not understand are like the deaf. Of them the proverb says: “Present, they are absent.”

— Heraclitus

WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS ARE, AS A SOCIAL COLLECTIVE, STUCK HERE, in regarding our language and grammar based INVENTED REALITY as our intellect-based operative reality and thus ‘eclipsing’, ‘occluding’ and displacing the reality of our actual sensory relational experience, … something like planting a cuckoo’s egg that hatches out and ‘takes over’.  That is, our intellect with its ‘double error’ based INVENTED REALITY is a poor substitute for our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum, but what it has going for it is its explicitness based on the binary [EITHER ‘is’ OR ‘is not] logic of the excluded middle.   The ineffable Logos aka Tao is this innately inexplicit (ineffable) transforming relational continuum (the Tao that can be told is not the true Tao).

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We Western culture adherents have shown ourselves to be addicted to the explicit, and instead of using the explicit as a Wittgenstein ladder jumping off point to get to the innately implicit and ineffable sensory experiencing of the Tao, we have ‘locked on’ to the double error based explicit ‘INVENTED REALITY’ and are using it as our ‘operative reality’.

That is how we come to impute to ourselves and others the double-error based powers of ‘sorcery’ of actions and developments, NOT SIMPLY AS A THROW-AWAY TOOL, AS WITTGENSTEIN AND NIETZSCHE ARE TALKING ABOUT, BUT AS A TOOL THAT HAS RUN AWAY WITH THE WORKMAN, AS EMERSON HAS POINTED OUT.

The Western culture psychological practice of imputing the power of ‘sorcery’ to oneself is what gives rise to the ego which is inflated by the implication of one’s SORCERY of ‘productive’ or ‘destructive’ actions and developments

The word ‘dog’ does not bite, just as the word ‘Poland’ does not produce garlic sausage.  As in ‘The Changing Borders of Poland’, naming holds more importance in our intellect than the reality of there actually being some explicit ‘thing-in-itself’ to ‘back it up’.  The boil in the flow is ‘appearance’ but once we name it ‘Katrina’, we have the ‘stem’ for constructing an intellectually explicit language and grammar double-error based INVENTED REALITY.  This is the ‘tool’ that, as Emerson says; “has ‘run away with the workman, the human with the divine”.  The surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions approaches the divine (transforming continuum) more gently and less obtrusively, slowly moving in towards it without being rude and presumptive.  Wittgenstein speaks of ‘approaching the surface of truth from the outside moving inwards, from ‘what is obviously not the case’ towards ‘what is not so obviously not the case’.

On the other hand, and as already mentioned though it bears repeating, the ‘double error’provides us with a means of using language and grammar to ‘invent truths’ as in ‘sorcery’ which hatches explicit actions and developments by (first error) using ‘naming’ to impute thing-in-itself being and conflating this with a second error of imputing powers of sourcing actions and development to the first error.

WE HAVE ALL THE INGREDIENTS WE NEED, IN LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR THAT EMPLOYS THE DOUBLE ERROR, TO CONJURE UP A SORCERY-BASED INVENTED REALITY.

THIS IS A TOOL THAT WE SHOULD NOT ALLOW TO “RUN AWAY WITH THE WORKMAN” BUT THAT IS WHERE WESTERN CULTURE PRESENTLY IS.

Belief in the power of sorcery is the basis of Ego; i.e. ‘ego’ comes with this double error based belief in ‘sorcery’.  Wherever we use this combination of naming that implies the existence of a thing-in-itself together with grammar that imputes to the thing-in-itself powers of sourcing actions and developments, we have the ‘makings’ of ‘ego’.   Thus ego may associate with individual humans, nations and human organizations, … in all cases, coming from the intellectual double error based abstract that uses naming (to impute thing-in-itself being) coupled with grammar that imputes to the thing-in-itself powers of sourcing actions and evelopments.

SO, THE DOUBLE ERROR TOOL OF LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR HAS RUN AWAY WITH THE WORKMAN AND HAS BECOME THE BASIS OF WESTERN CULTURE ‘INVENTED REALITY’ WHICH WE ARE COLLECTIVELY USING AS OUR ‘OPERATIVE REALITY’.

This crazy-making development has been further complicated by its being ‘locked in by high switching costs’.  The abstract concept of sorcery has generated ‘lock-in’ within the Western culture by its having motivated the Western culture collective to reward and esteem and give more than average powers over social change, to those deemed to have demonstrated greater than average powers of sorcery of actions and developments.  Those who Western culture has celebrated and esteemed in this fashion have more than average influence over the retaining of basing rewards and recognition on an individual’s ‘powers of sorcery’.

More than this, those who would draw attention to this false ‘sorcery’ [double error] basis of rewards and recognition, tend to be ‘put down’ by Western culture social collective wherein the norm is ‘belief in sorcery’.  The added complication is that belief in ‘sorcery’ has become locked in as the ‘norm’ because it is a very simple concept and therefore hard to dislodge since the actual reality of our experience of inclusion in an ineffable relational transformation is much harder to articulate ; e.g. as Henri Laborit observes;

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

The ‘bottom line’ is that while modern physics, indigenous aboriginal, Taoist/Buddhist and Advaita Vedanta cultures are, by their nature, ‘onboard’ with the ineffable nature of reality, Newtonian physics and Western culture are ANCHORED to language and grammar double error-based (sorcery-based) INVENTED REALITY that is a crazy-maker.  ‘Ego’ which comes as part of this crazy-making Western culture ‘double error’ based ‘belief package’ is part of the lock-in-by-high-switching costs (the ego inflation and social status that is based on powers of sorcery is a balloon inflated by nothing other than misconception, that will collapse with the collapse of the [double error] misconception).

SUMMARY OF WESTERN CULTURE DOUBLE-ERROR BASED MISCONCEPTIONS:

#1 MISCONCEPTION: ‘Sorcery’ aka the ‘Producer-Product Relation is language based delusion.

The ‘double error’ delivers the impression of ‘sorcery’; it is the combination of using ‘naming’ (first error) to instantiate the existence of a persisting thing-in-itself conflated with ‘grammar’ to impute the power of sourcing action and development (second error) to the name-instantiated thing-in-itself.

This #1 misconception constructs an intellectual INVENTED REALITY that is in terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ with ‘powers of sourcing their own actions and developments’ (i.e. inventing reality) creates, in the intellect, an explicit articulable reality that occludes or ‘wallpapers over’ the ineffable reality of our sensory experiencing of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

Since this sensory experiencing reality (inclusion in the Tao), while are continually sensing it, cannot be explicitly, linguistically told (“the Tao that can be told is not the true Tao” – Lao Tzu).  While our experience of inclusion in the Tao is beyond the articulable capability of language, language can be used to make oblique reference to our ‘in-the-Tao experiencing. For example, ‘The surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ is a modern physics approach to at least ‘make inferences’ in regard to the Tao, the transforming relational continuum aka ‘field’ that is all-including.

The smooth relational ‘flow’ of freeway traffic may be disturbed by a crossing dog or deer or sudden unexpected move of a driver so as to give rise to a long succession of braking and swerving which may or may not culminate in a collision.  In the event of a collision, a person ‘responsible’ for ‘causing’ or ‘sourcing’ or ‘producing’ the collision will be identified and held ‘responsible’.  Others who were involved in the long chain of swerving and braking will not be implicated due to concept of ‘sorcery’ which presumes the existence of an initial responsible ‘cause’ or ‘source’, as Newtonian physics which was a formalizing, by Newton, of alchemical (sorcery-based) thinking.   Similarly, in basketball, a Kawhi Leonard may be identified as the ‘sorcerer’ of the team’s winning of the championship.  This notion of sorcery has been escalating in Western culture.  The ratio of the CEO’s wage to the average ‘team player wage’ has been rising from 7:1 in the 1950’s to over 500:1 in 2019, in parallel to the rise in public crediting of the star player (Kawhi Leonard example) as the ‘source’ of a winning ‘outcome’.

This type of thinking derives from the ‘double error’ of language and grammar which, as Nietzsche describes, ‘break up’ the relational continuum by imputing the existence of name-instantiated independent things-in-themselves with notional powers of sourcing actions and developments.  THIS IS JUST A LANGUAGE BASED (LIMITED) MEANS OF EXPRESSING AN INNATELY RELATIONAL EXPERIENTIAL REALITY.  THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ‘SORCERY’ OR THE ‘PRODUCER – PRODUCT PHENOMENON in the REALITY of our actual experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum; i.e. THE CONCEPT OF SORCERY IS LANGUAGE-AND-GRAMMAR BASED “DOUBLE ERROR” ABSTRACTION.

#1 SUM-UP OF MISCONCEPTION -1- ‘Sorcery’ aka the ‘Producer-Product Relation is language based delusion.

There is no such thing as ‘sorcery’, otherwise referred to as the ‘producer-product’ development. There is only relational transformation.  Sorcery is intellectual abstraction based on a double error of grammar.

 

#2 MISCONCEPTION  Ego as Western culture delusion deriving from belief in powers of sorcery

The #1 misconception; i.e. ‘sorcery’ (which derives from a double error of language and grammar) gives rise to ‘ego’ in the sense of a ‘false belief’ in ‘local authorship’ of unfolding actions and development.  There is no authorship in dynamics as we experience them, as inclusion within a transforming relational continuum.  The concept of ‘authorship’ aka ‘sorcery’ is the abstract (artificial) intellectual-conceptual product of language and grammar by way of the ‘double error’ (Nietzsche) where we (first error) objectify a relational form in the flow (Tao) such as a human form, by ‘naming it’ (first error) and conflate this first error with a second error by imputing to the name-instantiated thing-in-itself, with grammar, the power of sourcing actions and developments (second error).   Thanks to this ‘double error’, language and grammar is able to ABSTRACTLY/NOTIONALLY reduce the Tao (the transforming relational continuum) to mechanistic terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ notionally with powers of sourcing actions and developments, giving ‘believers’ a false sense of their own innate powers of ‘from-scratch’ ‘sorcery’ (of actions and developments).  This misconception is chronic in Western culture and it breeds ‘ego’ that can ‘inflate’ in proportion to value of the ‘sorcery’ that is attributed to the self-perceived (and Western culture collective perceived) ‘sorcerer’.  Ego keys to a notional ‘name-instantiated thing-in-itself’ and thus can associate with a ‘human’, a ‘nation’ or ‘corporation’, all of which are psychologically perceived as name-ordained things-in-themselves.

Ego goes hand-in-glove with the belief in sorcery.  Since ego is language based abstraction ungrounded in actual experience, the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ syndrome comes into play and, as mentioned, the CEO who believed he was 7 times more responsible than the average employee (team player) for the ‘sorcery’ of a company’s profits has grown to 500 – 1000 times, in parallel with the basketball star player example.  This is a Western culture psychological aberrance arising from the double error and ‘ego’ (inflation and deflation) associates with it.  Not only wages and rewards for ‘positive sorcery’ are tied to this psychological aberration, but also fines and punishments for ‘negative sorcery’.

In modern physics, as in indigenous aboriginal cultures, there are only relational dynamics as in relational transformation; there is no ‘sorcery’ and thus no system of sorcery-based ‘rewards’ and ‘punishments’.  The relational ethic is, as in nature, based on the cultivating and sustain of relational harmony and the starving out of relational dissonance.   There is no concept of ‘sorcery’, nor its byproducts ‘ego’, ‘guilt’ and ‘innocence’, there is only ‘mitakuye oyasin’ (everything is related), as in the ‘Potlatch culture.  That is, the understanding of one’s inclusion as a relational form in the transforming relational continuum eclipses the double error based concept of the individual thing-in-itself-with powers of sorcery, as expressed in the following statement of Nootka chief Maquinna;

“Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house; they told me it was a bank and that the white men place their money there to take care of, and that by-and-by they got it back, with interest. We are Indians and have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by-and-by they return them, with interest, and our hearts feel good. Our potlatch is our bank.” [for the full letter and associated context (jailing of first nations people for continuing with the potlatch tradition) see ‘First People First Voices’, edited by Penny Petrone, University of Toronto Press, 1991]

In the indigenous aboriginal culture, consistent with modern physics, even if self-esteem derives from giving to others, this does not imply the aberrant belief that the giver is the source of the abundance that he is redistributing.  In other words, when one believes that the dynamics of nature are such as to channel abundance through oneself, there is no ‘double error’ assumption of ‘sorcery’ and thus no ‘ego’ that becomes ‘inflated’ (or deflated ) in proportion to the channelling of abundance [a channeling that accords with one’s inclusion in nature, that is aberrantly converted to ‘sorcery’ where the individual is recast as a ‘sorcerer’ thanks to the ‘double error’)

The Western culture ego associates with pride in the power of sorcery, at the level of the double-error version of the human individual, the double error version of the nation, the double error version of the corporation or etc.  The double error imputes jumpstart powers of action and development to a name-instantiated thing-in-itself.  Ego comes with this intellectual double error and has emotional impact as ‘inflation’ and ‘deflation’ as people gather around you to celebrate your (positive) sorcery achievements or to condemn your (negative) sorcery achievements.

#2 SUM-UP OF MISCONCEPTION -2-  Ego as Western culture delusion deriving from belief in powers of sorcery

Ego derives from belief in ‘sorcery’.  In other words, ‘sorcery’ is the ‘artificial wellspring of’ ego.  The discussion of sorcery in #1 exposes its ‘double error’ based psycho-linguistic origin. Although ego arises from delusion, it is nevertheless a powerful influence on Western culture social attitudes and behaviours, in both an emotions-inflating and depressing sense.  Western culture feminism is often an attempt to match the male ego by bolstering the female ego rather than coming to grips with the reality that ‘ego’ as attached to sorcery is psychological aberrance.

(El Salvadoran poet Claribel Alegria, in saying; ‘my father was a famous engineer, my mother had no name’, was not advocating for ‘equal credits for equal feats of sorcery’, but to draw attention to the illegitimacy of the concept of sorcery as the basis, in Western culture, for rewards and recognition).

 

#3 MISCONCEPTION as in EITHER ‘Guilty’ OR ‘Innocent, deriving from logic: EITHER  ‘is’ OR ‘is not’  instead of BOTH ‘is’ AND ‘is not’. 

While our Western culture adherences has us conforming to the use of EITHER/OR logic in our language absed ‘reality constructions’, modern physics and indigenous aboriginal cultures employ  BOTH/AND logic.  While the former logic assumes ‘sorcery’, the latter logic assumes relational transformation.  For example; the ambiguity arises in Newtonian physics as to whether the ‘boil’ sources the ‘flow’ or whether the ‘flow sources the boil’.  This ambiguity is the source of the division of Western culture political perspective into conservative reality (one bad apple sources spoilage of the whole barrel of apples) and liberal reality (It takes a whole community to raise a [good/bad] child).  Note that both of these Western culture options on reality are assume that ‘sorcery’ is ‘real’.

In modern physics, as in indigenous aboriginal cultural viewing of reality, there is no ‘sorcery’; i.e. there is only relational transformation.  ‘Sorcery’ is a double error of language and grammar.  It does not exist in the reality of our actual experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

The ‘boil’ in the ‘flow’ is ‘the way flow appears’; i.e. the ‘boil’ is an ‘apparition’.  The flow (Tao) is ‘real’ the forms in the flow are ‘appearances’ or ‘apparitions’ that we perceive and then proceed to perform our ‘double error’ language and grammar magic on, to ‘name’ them and thereby make them over into (in our psyche) ‘things-in-themselves’, adding in some grammar to conflate the first error, to notionally endow the first error based creation with the powers of sourcing actions and developments.  Voila!  not only is the ‘boil’ no longer an appearance, but now a name-instantiated thing-in-itself, we have endowed it (with grammar) with its own powers of sourcing actions and developments.

In other words, we have applied language and grammar to our observing of ‘how flow manifests or appears’, creating two words ‘boil’ and ‘flow’ which, thanks to grammar, we can endow (to both) the power of sorcery, giving rise to the ambiguity as to whether the ‘boil’ sources the ‘flow’ (conservative option for viewing sorcery) of whether the ‘flow’ (the ‘boil collective’) sources the ‘boil’ (the liberal option for viewing sorcery). Not only does this entrench in the mind the pseudo-(intellectual) reality of ‘sorcery’, it introduces an unresolvable ambiguity, within this abstract intellectual invented reality, as to whether the boil sources the flow (conservative) or whether the flow sources the boil (liberal).  Again, the dichotomy is a false dichotomy since ‘sorcery’ is unreal abstraction born of language and grammar.

Nevertheless, Western culture adherents are brought up believing in ‘double error’ based ‘sorcery’, and it is this double error belief in themselves that is the source of ego (their own powers of sorcery) and thus an exposure to ego-inflation and ego-deflation.

OUT OF EGO, come the concepts of binary logic of ‘EITHER’ ‘is’ ‘OR’ ‘is not’.  For modern physics and for indigenous aboriginal cultures, the boil in flow is ‘appearance’ (the boiling is how flow appears) as supports the BOTH ‘is’ AND ‘is not’ logic of the included third aka ‘quantum logic’ (Stéphane Lupasco).

So, if we pose the question; ‘Is the boil the source of the flow’ or if we pose the question ‘is the flow the source of the boil’, we are, in both cases, assuming the reality of ‘sorcery’.   The double error and ‘sorcery’ are one and the same abstraction, and they are the basis of the logic of ‘EITHER’ ‘is’ ‘OR’ ‘is not’.

Given that the boil is how flow can appear; i.e. the boil is ‘appearance’ or ‘apparition’, the only reality is the flow (the Tao) and the flow, being a transforming relational continuum, is infeffable. Which brings us back to the present where it is clear that WE DO USE LANGUAGE TO TALK ABOUT REALITY, which therefore implies that we are necessarily taking some liberties or shortcuts with how we use language to treat of reality.  As it turns out, while the indigenous aboriginal culture employs, as their form of guile in using language, the ‘sharing circle’ which is like the ‘surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions, in that it gather into connective confluence a multiplicity of views of the same transforming relational continuum, allowing the observer to tune into the ‘coherencies’ in the connective confluence and let these coherencies serve as the understanding of the reality that is inherently ineffable, being the transforming relational continuum aka ‘the Tao’ or ‘the Logos’ (Heraclitus).

#3 SUM-UP OF MISCONCEPTION -3- as in EITHER ‘Guilty’ OR ‘Innocent, deriving from logic: EITHER  ‘is’ OR ‘is not’  instead of BOTH ‘is’ AND ‘is not’

The binary logic of EITHER ‘is’ OR ‘is not’ is intellectual abstraction that is not grounded in our natural relational experience.  It is logic that underpins ‘sorcery’ as when we use binary logic to distinguish between the ‘boil’ and the ‘flow’ as if they were two separate things-in-themselves, rather than the ‘appearance’ of two in the one, as in Mircea Eliade’s ‘Mephistopheles et l’Androgyne’.  In our experiencing of nature (our experiencing of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum), the boil and the flow are ONE, and only by visual appearance concretized by language and grammar (by the ‘double error’) are reduced, in the psyche/intellect, to two separate things-in-themselves, both notionally equipped, by grammar, with powers of sorcery.

Is it the collective that induces the sourcing of violent behaviour within the individual or is it the individual that sources the rise-up of the collective in violent behaviour?  Does the man make the times or do the times make the man (e.g. Hitler, Churchill).  Reflection will affirm the Taoist view that such ambiguity is abstraction that arises with belief in the double-error abstraction of sorcery.

 

#4 MISCONCEPTION.  The ‘Miner’s Canary allusion wherein the sensitive miner’s canary’s behaviour (due to aberrance in the ambient dynamic in which it is situationally included) appears aberrant relative to the (statistical) ‘normality’ of the social collective.

As Ronald Laing observes, Western culture ‘normality’ is ‘unnatural’ because of its language based ‘double error’ which abstractly splits the relational form out of the transforming relational continuum, giving rise to a ‘Divided Self’;

What we call ‘normal’ is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience.” – R. D. Laing, author of ‘The Divided Self’;

At the same time, we can seen the alternative interpretation wherein it is the collective behaviour that is instead aberrant.  However, to ask ‘which is the source of which’ invokes the concept of ‘sorcery’ which has been shown, in the above psychological investigation, to be an unreal abstraction.  Nevertheless, the inherent ambiguity in the origins of sorcery in the individual or the collective points to a still deeper non-sorcery based understanding (relational transformation).  That is, the boil in the flow may be how flow ‘appears’ rather than being understood as two different things-in-themselves; i.e. language based ‘naming’ imputes thing-in-itself existence to the named form although in the Tao (the transforming relational continuum), relational forms in the flow (appearances) is the only possibility.

As Giordano Bruno said before he was taken to be burned at the stake in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome in 1600, for the heresy of ‘relativity’ in physical dynamics (obviating the need for ‘sorcery’), … “The majority has no monopoly on the truth’.

Of course, as we Western culture adherents know from our inclusion in Western culture belief rhetoric,  the majority DOES HAVE A MONOPOLY ON THE “OPERATIVE TRUTH” and in this case, the operative truth (within Western culture society) is the double error based truth which grounds the dynamics of ‘reality’ (our Western culture ‘operative reality’) in a belief in ‘sorcery’.   That is what comes from the ‘double error’ of language and grammar.

Investigation of this ‘double error’ abstraction is thus on the path to understanding such phenomena as rampant aberrance among Western culture adherents.  The suggestion is that the aberrance of the sensitive miner’s canaries derives from their immersion in an aberrant Western culture social dynamic, … an aberrance that traces back to Western culture belief in ‘sorcery’ which feeds the (abstract sorcery based) ‘ego’ which induces conflict within sensitive individuals who understand creativity in terms of inspiration as in ‘channelling’ rather than as local internally incipient ‘sorcery’, a differentiation captured in the expression Ego swells the head; inspiration fills the heart’. 

At the bottom of this aberrant concept of ‘ego’ is the concept of ‘sorcery’ aka ‘local jumpstart authorship’ in place of ‘channelling’, the latter as would be the corresponding dynamic within a flow-continuum (the Tao).  Should we be anthropomorphizing relational flows as in an electrical field flow (lightning), using language and grammar to transform an energy flow into abstract sorcerer-sorcery (producer-product) based phenomenon?  The danger lies in our forgetting that we have injected the abstract simplification of sorcery into our language and grammar based INVENTED REALITY, and then using this over-simplistic INVENTED REALITY as our ‘operative reality’.   Nietzsche issues this warning as follows;

“Our judgement has us conclude that every change must have an author”;–but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say “lightning flashes,” I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, “is” and does not “become.”–To regard an event as an “effecting,” and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.” – Nietzsche, ‘Will to Power’, 531

“In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego. In the beginning there is that great calamity of an error that the will is something which is effective, that will is a faculty. Today we know that it is only a word.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’

#4 SUM-UP OF MISCONCEPTION -4-.  The ‘Miner’s Canary allusion wherein the sensitive miner’s canary’s behaviour (due to aberrance in the ambient dynamic in which it is situationally included) appears aberrant relative to the (statistical) ‘aberrant normality’ of the social collective.

As in Claribel Alegria’s comment; ‘My father was a famous engineer, my mother had no name’, the Western knee-jerk interpretation is in terms of ‘sorcery’ wherein the mother is not being given proper credit for her sorcery while society is giving her father’s sorcery disproportionately larger credit.  The problem is thus seen in terms of error in giving of equitability in allocating credit for sorcery.  The real issue is the imputing of ‘sorcery’ since sorcery is abstraction that derives from the double error of language and grammar.

Within an indigenous aboriginal culture, sorcery is NOT assumed and ‘mitakuye oyasin’ suggests instead that everything is related, as within a transforming relational continuum, as is consistent with modern physics.  The other way to look at the aberrance in sensitive miner’s canaries is, instead, to see their environment-induced disturbed condition as arising from their innate orientation to relational channelling which associates with dissolving of the ego in the sense of a swollen head, and the embrace of inspiration in the sense of a full heart.

The miner’s canary’s ‘collapse of the ego’ is correctly ascertained by caring Western culture adherents, but the appropriate healing will be by way of the social collective doing likewise and dissolving the ego in the sense of a swollen head and embracing inspiration in the sense of a full heart.  For an indigenous aboriginal displaced within a Western culture collective and manifesting the ‘miner’s canary aberrance’, the ‘cure’ would be for that person to be restored to inclusion within a social collective where inspiration in the sense of a full heart prevails.  Within a Western culture social collective, however, the remedy is seen as the ‘restoring of the ego’.   While the troubled ‘miner’s canary’ will make a recovery in the psychiatric ward where she is likely to be included in, and inspired by an empathic collective of ‘birds of a feather’ (such inclusion being the naturally healthy condition), and inspired and ‘healed’ by the flow of empathy.  Once she is considered ‘healed’ by the Western culture criterion (which sees the social environment induced revival of her inspiration in the misplaced terms of her having recovered a strong and healthy ‘ego’) she will be ‘discharged’ back into a Western culture ‘normal’ social dynamic where having a strong ego is equated with ‘healthiness’ and ‘normality’.

The following is an extract from my conversation (inside a psychiatric hospital) with ‘Patty’, a ‘miner’s canary’ in the wake of her sixth suicide attempt which this time, had put her into a two week long coma.;

“Every time, after a few weeks in here, they say I am cured. Sure I am cured, for living in a highly empathic society such as the psychiatric ward tends to be, but I am not cured for going back into society which is a rat race made even tougher by my being marked as a defect and a loser. See, this bus pass is marked ‘handicapped’. I tried to get off handicapped and go on ordinary welfare even though it was $300. less but they wouldn’t let me.” She also expressed the view that society was moving in the opposite direction of ‘more empathy’.

Patty’s Western-culture labelled ‘abnormality’ lies in her natural sensitivity and her natural orientation to ‘inspiration’ rather than to aberrant ego-based sorcery.  Her healing comes from changing out the ambient culture she is situationally included in from a culture that considers social orientation to ego-based sorcery to be ‘normal’, to a cultural ambiance based on inspiration that fills the heart rather than ego that swells the head, wherein ‘sorcery’ (the ‘producer-product dynamic) is exposed as intellectual abstraction termed by Nietzsche, the ‘double error’.

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