α1 | preamble |
After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. The best that I could write would never be more than philosophical remarks; my thoughts were soon crippled if I tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination. (And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation; For this compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction.)
preamble
Each day the goal of my ramblings appears no closer than before. Overnight my thoughts slip the lines I tie them to, and although diagrams I've drawn along the way show the journey I've been on I was trying to get somewhere else. Words are illusory, maps not territories. And expression is recursive. This was my Red Pill.
Unable to see how culture could trip me up, I arrived in Finland from London, enchanted. I was falling in love. The country felt soft the people seemed kind, and unlike Greek or Chinese I could at least read Finnish. Yet when my love died the society I had been part of died too. Overnight I found I had become not only alone but also incomprehensible.
As a child I was lost. Searching for a world of black and white the simple logic of maths and science became my safe place, and seemed to be the perfect guide. Yet for navigating the everyday its straightforward appearance is misleading, as readily describing chaos as order.
Scientists imagine their facts change the world but only the stories told with them do that, while the investments we've made in the stories we know keep it the same. Facts are unhelpful in themselves. We've not dropped far from the trees. Leaders know bravado, gibberish and violence, sway us as much as reason or courage do — and often much more.
Stumbling over this "wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction", I have ploughed on with my story of stories — on being heard — inspired by the passing virus that killed the Wrath-of-god. Now, approaching its end I find I am changed. The story has rewritten me.
From the preface to: Philosophical Investigations, by its author: Ludwig Wittgenstein; Cambridge, January 1945, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe.
Taking the Blue pill represents submission to psychological enslavement, a commitment to the delusion provided by a prevailing paradigm. The Red Pill represents commitment to engage with whatever is the overarching reality of that paradigm. While continuing to take the Blue Pill feels more comfortable, and safer, as the delusion it generates is ersatz it is ultimately less fulfilling than the reality revealed through taking the Red one.
writing recursions
Like speech, writing appears to be transparent. But meaning is not intrinsic to words, or to any sign; it must be deduced — imagined. For meaning to be established, a context for the signs is required, a conversation of some kind. Computers have no need for meaning, nor for understanding, and so have no need for discussion.
Writing engages both hemispheres of the brain. The conversation between them that then takes place stabilizes and develops a writer's perception — to fight the demons that visited them in the isolation of their cells, monks were advised to write journals.
In February 1941, T.S Eliot began work on his poem 'Little Gidding', but with every draft became increasingly dissatisfied. Despite his fluency, writing was a journey even for him. Realizing the problem was with himself not the poem, in September that year he stopped writing altogether. A year later he began again and completed it.
see: Left hemisphere speech: Parts of the brain involved in speech, healthline.com, May 2019, retrieved: 5 Jan 2022.
and: 'Writing with the right hemisphere', Steven, Rapcsak, Pelagie, Beeson, and Rubens, Nov 1991, in Brain and Language, Elsevier.
contents of n_A1pre_Chaos.php inserted into footnote 'Chaos' in e_Preface_Footnotes.php via PHP-include, - called from e_Preface.php#infoHum and A1-Footnotes.php#A14..
chaos
Chaos refers to the apparently random states of disorder and irregularity exhibited by complex, nonlinear, dynamical systems actually governed by interconnectedness, underlying patterns, and self-organization. While these systems are deterministic, their predictability is limited as it is is impossible to completely know their actual state at any point in time and the smallest difference in this from what has been assessed leads to behaviours that diverge exponentially over time from that foecasted —a characteristic often referred to as the Butterfly Effect.
the wrath of god
Timur, the last great nomadic emperor, known as the 'Wrath-of-God', invaded Baghdad in June 1401. After capturing the city, Timur ordered every soldier to present him with at least two severed human heads. When there were no more men to kill, many warriors killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign, and when they ran out of prisoners many resorted to beheading their own wives; 20,000 citizens were massacred. Scholars estimate that Timur's military campaigns overall caused the deaths of 17 million people. Four years later, in the city that is modern-day Shahrisabz, as the 'Wrath-of-God' prepared to invade China he was killed by a virus.