expansions
misc.
λ |
literal error |
language and meaning
1.1. Communication is primitive and fundamental; in the primordial soup some wriggling thing unknowingly spoke, and in some manner its environment replied. 1.2. In the beginning was the word; just not a word we recognize. 1.3. Every being merely by engaging with its environment communicates with others; each in their way responding, however unconnected they might seem and irrespective of whether they understand what may be meant.
2.1. Striving for fulfillment life requires awareness to make the choices needed to survive; how else could it be. Only this essential singularity sets beings apart.. 2.2. Bootstrapped from inherited codes, beings use prior experience to assess current sensations, converting whatever they can then recognize into some measure of significance in regard to which they can then act. 2.3. Every psychological expression requires a biological correlate; and every biological expression requires a psychological correlate, the meta-biology emerging from the biology of the being. 2.4. The ineffable can only be expressed virtually.
It is just as correct as incorrect to say that hormones create love as it is to say that love creates hormones.
3.1. Through literal and metaphorical reference frames, languages express concrete descriptions and abstract concepts in parallel — the body, the mind, and the soul, for instance. 3.2. Words and concepts are not innately twinned; colour does not exist yet obviously it does, the mind does not exist yet obviously it does. 3.3. Every statement is an expression of a perspective on a totality; it is necessarily therefore incomplete, and partial. Contrary statements might not be contradictory; they do not necessarily conflict with one another. 3.4. From the intrinsic isolation of individual awareness differing reference-frames inevitably arise. The common frame required for meaning to be cooperatively constructed and shared must then be negotiated. 3.5. To manipulate social behaviour, reference-frames are routinely muddled to establish category-mistakes. Making nonsense seem reasonable, these appear to accommodate conflicting beliefs while fostering false ones, fragmenting meaning and factionalizing debate.
4.1. Words are easy to get lost in; as we listen we seem almost helplessly to suspend disbelief. Although it can often be hard to see the point they make, our actions are increasingly guided by the maps they appear to present. 4.2. As literacy has displaced native, phrasal languages, words have become more powerful. Now they are engaged with as if they were the things themselves. 4.3. Words delight us. And we revere them. Disorientated by our conflation of scripture and wisdom, those less literate, are rendered dumb and powerless.
5.1. Words are just noise, or marks on a page; the only meaning they have is that which we give them. 5.2. Labeling the perceptions that emerge from the frames of expression our ontogenies imprinted on us, words map those things we find important. They are personal and ambiguous. 5.3. To communicate what we wish to, meaning must be negotiated, recognizing the unique 'maps' that are in use and addressing the nuances these give to our expression.
6.1. As literal interpretations became grammars and laws, scripture cloaked the universe and the dream of a heaven on Earth was annexed. 6.2. Nations were drawn around feudal states by force, not through enlightenment, and in their ruins, their hopes crippled by wars, a new faith, scientism, has taken root. 6.3. There is no place for faith in science. It is simple; and disengaged. Neither human nor divine, faith only corrupts it.
7.1. Whatever chemistry life first stepped through, matters of meaning remain, distinct from the temporal struggles of biology and extending beyond any boundaries of conception or death. 7.2. The belief that words can enchain the ineffable contaminates meaning, and is exploited as a tool to order society and justify the exertion of power. Whether in universities or mosques, temples or churches, literalism and fundamentalism coextend. 7.3. No matter who speaks them, the words of Man are not the Words of God; Tao called Tao is not Tao; words are not the things they represent; the map is not the territory.
8.1. meaning is a personal perception, encoded in expression by the reference-frame of language learned in ontogeny. 8.2. If choices in social debate are not to be misguided the different reference-frames that are inevitably used need to be recognized and reconciled. 8.3. Only when the understandings required to grow in a sustainable manner are developed in common can a society do so in practice. 8.4. It may be assumed that locusts have had no ability to direct their species' development, but we will choose to use or pass up that which we have to direct ours.
With a foreign tongue I can barely speak here, but even in silence language is inescapable. This is not madness. The brain, reflecting on the information the senses provide, asleep or awake anticipates a future space, integrating experience into an internal model, and testing this through thought and conversation.
It is not necessary to ask whether soul and body are one, just as it is not necessary to ask whether the wax and its shape are one, nor generally whether the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter are one. For even if one and being are spoken of in several ways, what is properly so spoken of is the actuality. Aristotle, 350 BC
It is as correct, as it is incorrect, to say that hormones create love, as to say that love creates hormones.
complementarity
Niels Bohr, who received the Nobel Prize for his foundational work on Quantum theory, conceived the Principle of Complementarity —that singular items could at the same time possess apparently mutually exclusive properties— after realizing that light behaved like both waves and particles. His motto became: "Contraria non contradictoria sed complementa sunt", meaning: contradictions are not contradictory but complimentary.
On words and meaning, he wrote:
phrasal language
Languages we use to communicate with are not acquired through learning letters and grammars. Individual expression is acquired through the repeated use of increasingly lengthy and complex word-blocks —of words then phrases, sentences, and paragraphs— learning the concepts and laws of a language through real, and virtual, social interaction.
While 'primitive' peoples even today are still able to express themselves routinely and seamlessly in more than half a dozen languages, with the establishment of nation states it has become normal for the majority of a people to speak only the official language of the state that they reside in.
The Tao Te Ching cannot be exactly translated into another language, as its Translator's Preface [1] so clearly explains. They have represented the six, symmetric characters it opens with as: Tao called Tao is not Tao. Korzybski, on the other hand,[2] details the issue with mathematical precision — Words are not the things they represent; The map is not the territory. It surely should go without saying that the words of Man, no matter who speaks them, are not the Words of God, and yet somehow it still appears that it cannot.
words and maps
In the paper 'A Non-Aristotlean System and its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics', presented to the American Mathematical Society in 1931, Alfred Korzybski made two observations: 'A map is not the territory', and 'Words are not the things they represent' (here highlighted in bold; italic emphases by the author).
inclosure
During the Middle Ages —the 5th to 12th centuries— the Latin word feudum was used to refer to freehold property; however, it was only in the 17th century, in order to create an historical narrative of European nation states, that historians coined the term feudalism.
Local lords had, from the Middle Ages, expanded the territories subject to them and intensified their control over the peoples living there. In the 17th century, creating property rights over land previously held in common, Inclosure Acts began to be passed. In England and Wales, between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 such Acts enclosed around 28,000 km2 of open fields and common land. Tenants and their descendants were evicted from their homes, displaced from the countryside and forced to look for employment in cities and factories. The poem: The Goose and the Common, by an unknown 18th century writer, protests the injustice:
They hang the man and flog the woman Who steals the goose from off the common Yet let the greater villain loose That steals the common from the goose. The law demands that we atone When we take things we do not own But leaves the lords and ladies fine Who take things that are yours and mine. The poor and wretched don't escape If they conspire the law to break This must be so but they endure Those who conspire to make the law. The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common And geese will still a common lack Till they go and steal it back.
For the history of the Inclosure Acts in the UK see e.g: Enclosing the Land, published on the British Government website, and: Inclosure Acts, on Wikipedia.
The total land area of England and Wales is approximately 151,000 km2. The Inclosed land represented nearly 20% of the total land area of the combined countries.
reconciling difference
Societies are founded on the reconciliation of differences. Winning the peace is a contradiction in terms; war just increases social entropy, turning back the clock, extinguishing evolved social knowledge, and regressing society to a more primitive state.
Wars are colonial endeavours to replace social forms; those fought by colonialists to establish themselves in other countries, for instance, or by established interests to exploit industrialization or virtualization. Destruction is their common goal.
Leaving the majority stripped of rights, wars recycle their assets, converting them into investments for those with power. The advice, attributed to Baron Rothschild, "When there's blood on the streets, buy property", only applies to those with the power to retain their assets.