expansions
misc.
λ |
literal error |
language and meaning
1.1. Communication is primitive and fundamental; every being, merely by engaging with its environment, communicates with others, however unconnected they might seem, and whether understanding what is meant or not, each in their way responds. 1.2. In the primordial soup some wriggling thing unknowingly spoke, and in some manner, its environment replied. 1.3. In the beginning was the word, just not a word that we recognize.
2.1. Striving for fulfillment, life needs awareness to make the choices needed to survive; how else could they be. Only the essential singularity of it sets beings apart.. 2.2. Bootstrapped from inherited codes, every being uses prior experiences to assess current sensations; converting whatever it can recognize into a measure of significance regarding which it can then act. 2.3. meta-biology emerges from biology — the psychology of some form; every biological expression must have a psychological correlate just as every psychological expression must have a biological correlate. 2.4. Of that which is ineffable, little ahould be said.
It is just as correct as it is incorrect to say that hormones create love, as it is to say that love creates hormones.
3.1. Words and concepts are not innately twinned. Colour does not exist, yet obviously it does; the mind does not exist and yet obviously it does. 3.2. A statement simply expresses a perspective on a totality; it is necessarily incomplete and partial. Contrary statements, therefore, may not be contradictory; they do not necessarily conflict with one another. 3.3. Within literal and metaphorical reference frames, languages express concrete descriptions and abstract concepts in parallel — the body, the mind, and the soul, for instance. 3.4. Differing reference-frames inevitably arise from the intrinsic isolation of individual awareness; negotiation is needed to establish the common frame that social meaning requires. 3.5. Reference-frames are commonly muddled in order to establish category-mistakes. By fragmenting meaning, debate can be factionalized; beliefs can misleadingly be accommodated and false ones created.
4.1. As literacy displaced native, phrasal languages, words became increasingly powerful. Now they are engaged with as if they were the things themselves. 4.2. Words are easy to get lost in; nonetheless, we suspend disbelief and revere them, our beliefs and actions increasingly dependant upon the maps that they represent to us. 4.3. Although it can often be hard to clearly see their point, words delight us; meanwhile, disorientated by the 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 you and I give them. 5.2. Labeling the unique perceptions that have emerged from the frames of expression that our ontogenies have imprinted on us, words map those things we find important. 5.3. Words, therefore, are personal and ambiguous. If we are to communicate what we wish, their meaning must be negotiated, recognizing the 'maps' we use and addressing the nuances these give to our expression.
6.1. As literal interpretations became grammars and laws, scripture cloaked our universe and the dream of a heaven on Earth was annexed. 6.2. Nations were drawn around our feudal states by force, not through enlightenment, and in their ruins, with their hopes crippled by wars, the new faith of scientism, took root. 6.3. Science is simple, yet disengaged. It has no place for faith. Neither human nor divine, faith only corrupts it.
7.1. Whether in universities or mosques, temples or churches, literalism and fundamentalism coextend. 7.2. Contaminating meaning, the belief that words can enchain the ineffable is exploited in societies as a tool to gain power. 7.3. Whoever speaks them, the words of man are not the Words of God. The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. The word is not the thing; the map is not the territory. 7.4. 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.
8.1. meaning is a personal perception, encoded in our expression by the reference-frame of language we learned in our ontogeny. 8.2. The different reference-frames that are inevitably used in social debate must be recognized and reconciled if choices are not to be misguided. 8.3. Only when the understandings required to achieve a sustainable direction are developed in common can a society adopt it in more than just words 8.4. In the end we choose whether we have more ability to direct our species' development than, for instance, locusts have had in directing theirs.
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 that we use to communicate are not acquired through the learning of letters and grammars. Individual expression is acquired through the repeated use of increasingly lengthy and complex word-blocks (from words to phrases, sentences, and paragraphs) learning the concepts and laws of a language in 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 they reside in.
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.