|
Most
of us imagine WE do our thinking. This is an illusion. To
orient ourselves in the world we use Kepler’s model of the
solar system, a grid with 3 axes. Relativity teaches us
that unless we make up a centre for our universe there is
none to be had or alternatively it can be anywhere. Astrology
still uses the Earth Centred version. It follows that in
order to communicate ABOUT this with others we use the same
model, but in symbolic format. This means this grid has
a geometric, logical or grammatical and a symbolic mode.
We have kept the geometry and logical version but the symbolic
one was lost somewhere along the line when we shifted communication
into our kind of language.
All this shows up throughout
our knowledge. Knowledge deals with an object located in
time and space. This done we imagine we has said all there
is to say about the object. Journalism uses: Who or What,
where,when, how and if possible why, in that order. Grammar
makes us share an object + an action and a set of locators
for space and time. We use what I call the recipe which
binds together a purpose or goal with an action and a result.
To boil an egg. And we all know that one. In cooking one
has to explain one is an intuitive cook who needs no recipe
book. We are afflicted with doing the right and proper thing.
To suggest one could cook an egg in oil, on a hot car radiator,
a sun heated brick or sheet or a magnifying glass with sunlight
[You better wiggle it around] would, to most people sound
funny or silly. The object is placed at stage centre of
our model of the world just as is earth, sun or wherever.
So too, psychologically, are we led to imagine that our
ego is in charge of our world, with many an expectation
upset when this fails,which it does regularly.
So how does this symbolic
version of the truth work? Rather simple. In order to achieve
this feat archaic man invented a third world alongside the
worlds of time and space. This third world was created by
what he called the gods. Nowadays we would call it virtual
reality. Just as our eye and all our senses place us at
stage centre of the worlds of
Language
is, so to speak, a mind to mind coding system...
space and time so to for this
virtual reality with ego at centre. The symbolic context used
is theory and myth as our social consensus reality we all
share. We all correct others when they fail to comply with
the rules of this game. It is also either nowhere in this
world or anywhere since we all carry a copy in our minds.
Since we now all take this for granted we focus on details
in the foreground. We either ignore or are blind to the grid
which joins up body, mind and spirit for each of us and all
of us together as a community. Chomsky sought for it within
language when he should have researched how language is used.
Carl Jung found his version inside our psyche as the collective
unconscious, Levi Strauss, an anthropologist thought it made
up our basic family unit. They all got it right yet all missed
the boat.
What it does is integrate
body, senses and mind. Before its invention we were at the
animal level, after it we changed into mankind who changed
the face of the Earth. How it works at this animal level
can be observed in children before they speak. A baby not
only uses body language as gestures but symbols as well.
They may present you with a drawing or an object, act something
out. Most adults don't understand so children give up and
learn they live in an isolated world until they acquire
language and do it our way. Children, babies, use synaesthetic
communication, meaning any of our sense or body parts will
do. When we start talking we convert to the mono dimensional
and linear language, in other words, one sense at a time.
We stand in admiration for a mime artist, an actor and any
performer who only does what comes natural before we talked.
The change into language makes a considerable simplification,
but with it we lost touch with our real self.
The trick rests on the invention
of a means or representation, images, sounds and for all
our senses. This includes what we see as ritual dances of
primitive peoples. This works by what is called magic, which
it is not or only and unless one holds language as our only
means of communication, in which case all this is incomprehensible.
It amounts to shared feelings as we still do when dancing
and hugging. Our need for this reduces when we reach our
teenage. Language is, so to speak, a mind to mind coding
system. But so are the other ways, except it is already
built in, whereas language is contrived, artificial. Whereas
with language we can lie and deceive with the other ways
this is trickier. It is also more difficult to retrieve
our natural ways, from within language it is impossible.
Even Emmanuel Kant could not scale the walls that reason
built, with reason.
And Reason is done by what
we call our intellect. Thus alongside the invention of a
human systems of communication comes the Intellect which
data processes this word game. Archaic man invented it and
we inhabit it. It took a long time to do this as that did
not happen until around 6,000 odd BCE when we began to keep
records. Since our society does not accept the private,
personal, subjective domain and allows only the communally
shared this reverts to our unconscious, now so called. But
apart from the built in intellect there is no unconscious
to speak of. All this concerns the issue of whether we think
only in or with words versus other means. It follows from
what artists, inventors, car mechanics, builders and other
practical people do that we can think and imagine without
words, but only some of us. Einstein, for example, thought
with his body. Michelangelo's David is a remembrance of
seeing his Father as a child. He enlarged this image to
match his adult size. From this we could just about work
out how old he was when we saw his Father nude and remembered.
Space locators like here
and there, time locators like now and then abound in language.
But in order to marry or integrate space and time we need
a form in common, which form is artificially contrived.
This ranges from myths and theories or paradigms
to models, images and word. This is not how we sense naturally
so we attach names or labels
to our raw observations: This is an apple.
|
We seldom
ask what kind of apple so the actual and often different
apple we see is replaced by a general kind of apple which
fits all apples as a category. We recognise they all taste
different but words ignore that. Language here uses an apple,
any old one, versus the apple, the one we want. Words like
data, which can be anything at all, indicate how words generalise
our experience. The union of space and time as form works
otherwise. Here we combine an object with an action or use
noun and verb. I've always wondered why we need these parts
and this explains it. While numbers deal differences by
degree or gradients, the temperature is 36 Centigrade, word
name unique and crucial differences like the ears of a rabbit
or the tail of a pig. The part signifies the whole. Aristotle
defined man as having broad, flat nails. This is quite true
Our
senses detect anomalies or differences in our environment
where our mind stores a map or model of what is normal,
familiar or comfortable about our world...
but another crucial
difference is whether he is creative. So we can latch onto
a variety of such differences.
Huyghens calls us Homo Ludens, the self who plays. Commerce
and the Government treat us like Homo Muggins.
We park all this on the three
axes, Horizontal for space and time, vertical for the difference
between no form or reality and below as form or appearance.
Space comes apart as here and there, time as now and then
for opposites. A more abstract set is whole and part or
context and centre, analog, digital and series or parallel
for arrangements in space. The major difference and change
in our lives is brought about by a shift in our paradigm
from continuous into digital or pulsed energy. This is matched
to our body as head and feet,
left and right, front and back Symbolically it comes as
Success and Failure or Growth and Decay with right, wrong
and good and bad outcomes. This is the reason we are near
obsessed for progress as we seek to bias things towards
success, into right and good. This is also how myths and
theories are made up. From the six opposites he can use,
in any context or frame, only three. Of these three one
acts as a fixed background or context while the other two
do their thing in the foreground since we think of time
as action and energy and for space we have objects and fixed
locations. This is also the reason why we focus on detail
in the foreground and take context as theory and myth for
granted.
The entire gimmick is geometrically
constructed as a whole or context, representing our world,
part or here and object, as what we observe or experience
and the three axes as the relation between them. This is
the minimum needed to locate everything. We use the same
gimmick all over again to construct images and actions.
It is, so to speak, a scale free pattern. It begins with
the speck or infinite point which can move is any direction
so must be tamed with rules that act as chains or fences
and limits on this. We also apply it as an algebra, logic
and grammar by which the verb acts, the noun as object is
acted upon to change it and we usually add: who or what
orders this.
For myths this is the gods, personified, whereas in science
it s random action or no body does it, it just happens.
This we can use in a creative, destructive and maintenance
manner to confer stability on our worlds. Another recent
and major paradigm change is away from the old eternally
stable world into the new every changing. This makes up
the difference about whether we park our ideas with space
the boss versus time, which last we use now. Altogether
we can have it as; Space and Time separate, Space-time conjoined
as for, which is unimaginable to our senses but intuition
can handle it. Next we get it as Space-time or space-time
by whichever plays leader. All together it comes as Reality
versus Appearance. Current Science use it as Timespace or
action first but still models it in its maths as particles.
For our feelings it works
the same way all over again just so we know where it itches
or pains and whether it is a sensation in the tum like hunger
or in the head as an idea or for the heart is like and dislike.
This is the way we use it as symbol and metaphor. To be
in a blue funk means to be scared whereas being in the brown
study has us depressed. To work properly of course it all
has to match or be consistent. Our senses detect anomalies
or differences in our environment where our mind stores
a map or model of what is normal, familiar or comfortable
about our world. Hence we are also interested in gossip
to tell us about action at a distance we cannot observe,
although this is taboo in science. Our entire society is
based on hearsay since we cannot know it all nor be everywhere
at once. We collectively do know it all or so we pretend,
but not as individuals.
Part of the problem children
have in learning our language is to work out the rules and
ways of this grid. Children begin with what comes naturally,
the one word sentence which names it as a script or unit
of action. Mama means everything to do with Mama. As the
two word sentence arrives it turns into Mama and Me or me
and the world. By the time the adult three word sentence
shows up the child has mastered its ways. This happens around
age four to five odd when the child begins to act on its
world and add more and more detail. At first the child is
a ritualistic but by around age ten or so it can change
and vary its ways. This also shows up by the way we walk
to start with to change into the graceful gyrations of teeners
at play.
Gain wonderful insights into your own mind by
purchasing
an e-mail version of Adrian's book 'The Glue and Solvent of the Universe' for $79NZ ($45US).
Adrian can be reached by writing A. F. van der Meijden, Meremere RD2, Mercer, New Zealand,
or by phone: 064 09 233 6620
or email adrf -at - kol.co.nz.
|
Perceptions
Awakened Perceptions
