All my life I have had an awareness of the non-existence of abstraction, and the pitfalls of formulating profligate general concepts by abstracting common properties of instances. This knowledge provides an equanimity of spirit and comforting reconciliation with life as it actually is, and the inevitability of death that no vulgar religion or transcendentalist makeshift irrational belief-system arising from ignorance or fear can furnish.

Furthermore because transcendentalism, being so little evolved from the characteristics of mans earlier ancestral type of unrefined philosophical primitivism, and being such a coarse and risible a comedy that it presents to the eye of accomplished anti-abstractionist experientialist, it introduces a relaxing and consolatory dimension of merriment into one's stumbling sashay towards Golgotha, which eases the burden of the rood-tree of reality, though the paroxysms of laughter may cause one to stumble and lose one's balance on the slippery cobbles of materiality. Anti-abstractionalism allows one to see the reificatory abstractor’s buffoonery for what it really is, and to obtain amusement from it - and even rejoice in it as a pantomime without which life might be more lacklustre without its amusements. I jest of course or rather my language is jocular - but you get my drift.

Gary:

We have come to the point where we both realize abstraction is an irresolvable problem. Abstractions do not exist. Yet abstractions as a vehicle transporting the connections of a word from one point to another that, first and foremost, one desires to be connected, is the very definition of language.

Jud:

Only an observation – but the word IS the vehicle for the thought, and the word can never be as synchronic or as comprehensively descriptive of feeling as the thought.

As opposed to thought there is a sad crudity about language – though it is no doubt one of the crowning glories of the human evolutionary accomplishment.

Gary:

Now, human beings, being far more fallible on the basic level of living and enjoying life than the despicable animal is -- that is, being truly finite and limited in every possible way, or, better yet, disabled, born always already broken, and generally incompetent and proud of it, needs abstraction not only to survive in its squalid status as mass animal, each totally incapable of living on its own and dependent on its fellow incompetents to simply stay alive, but to gain power, actually, political power over each other or at least to the point of simply sustaining oneself in ones meaningless existence and over the environment, a very nice political word to be bandied about with meaningless, and therefore logically unaccountable, ease and over animals which actually can enjoy life in-and-of-itself (But life is an abstraction too! Good point, Jud, and one you brought home to me once again I’m a slow learner I too still need people, i. e., suck their blood to stay alive when you said you do not believe in existence but only existents to which I had wanted to reply, But that is what I have always believed! And really thought I was expressing! But I realize I once again fell into the soft and easy trap of abstraction, and, through political right-by-might that abstraction gives them -- but only as a society, a group, or, more properly, a mob, -- abuse, kill, and eat, both for actual practical use, as a mere pastime, or for pure enjoyment.

Jud:

The reason for the distresses of humanity that you so eloquently describe, FOR ALL OF THEM, is of course a reliance on abstractionalism, and an inability to see through political and religious reificationalism.

Without reificationalism governments, the religions of the world and possibly the whole of human society would collapse and break up into fractionalized units of a few accordant individuals or into the individuate anarchism which you refer to later on down in your piece. The question is not so much whether it is possible to educate people about the evil of abstractionalism, but whether they are capable of handling it [as we are] if by some miracle we could manage to make them aware of it, and whether it is perhaps better to leave well alone and let them continue to fight and fart in the foul stinking trough and smouldering ruins that transcendentalism is making of the world?

Gary:

Now, I agree with you that anarchism as such and the anarchistic dreamland of no government that Marx and Lenin dreamed of in the distant future to justify whatever they did now is totally impractical and absolutely irrational in the combined contradiction of state and freedom. This, to me though, merely points up one of the many contradictions to be found in the contradiction abstraction itself. You cannot have mathematics or science or, even more, politics without abstraction. And yet abstractions, just like God, the biggest abstraction, do not exist.

Jud:

The whole point about abstractionalism is its usefulness. It is very utilitarian to humans for purposes of cognition and communication. The very language that I am using as I type is littered with abstractions. Because of the communicative need for it and the fact that human language has developed in this way PROVES that there is a NEED for it [nature is never profligate] I have no alternative but to employ abstractionist and reificationalist language – in fact I rejoice in it and to a certain extent have mastered it rather than [like the transcendentalists] having allowed it [like alcohol sometimes does] to master me. The secret is to use it - but not allow it to use you – to be constantly aware that the gerundial abstractions used in human discourse do not REALLY exist. As for science and abstraction they tend to employ abstractions in a much more circumspect and responsible manner – a more pragmatic and cynically materialist way. Believing as they do in the worst of human nature and motives; and having a sneering disbelief in the selflessness or veracity of others, they are constantly aware of the possibility of the possibility of the falsification of data and other abuses. This is why scientific theory is usually subjected to such a rigorous process of examination – because they too are deeply suspicious of abstractions and wishful reificationalism.

For them abstractions are disposable tools and recognised as such. My point has always been that it is perfectly satisfactory to employ these abstractions in order to be understood, as long as one is not lulled into the self deception that what the terms represent ACTUALLY EXISTS out there in the real world as separate elements. "Love will NOT find a way!" Only the lovers will find a way, and it is not "map-making" which puts the maps on the shelves of your gas stations, it is the map-makers, and the men and women who make the pens and the paper, and the ink and the chairs the map-makers sit upon, and the driver who delivers the finished maps, and the assistant that stacks the shelves blah, blah, blah.

Gary;

In fact, as the point was raised recently, there cannot be a God to go toward even if one does not assume its existence as an existent -- because, as I think you brought out, that would be proceeding towards a point that does not exist, therefore does not have a place, has no position whatsoever to go toward, has no possible manner or way in which to be identified, is unmappable, etc., etc., and, in general, when the so-called concept God is really examined even as an abstraction is utter nonsense because there is no it to discuss and, though necessary for forms sake in discussion, really makes absolutely no sense to say God does not exist since it makes absolutely no sense to say that God does exist even as a proposition to refute.

Jud:

People may wonder why I have singled out Heidegger as the miserable target for my anti-abstractionalistic malice? After all why settle on this spineless unreliable creep whose plagiaristic opera comique with its unhappy ending is so patently preposterous?

The reason is that amongst all modern philosophers he is the most blatantly and unapologetically abstractionalist of all, and in being so has been seized upon by the struggling world transcendentalist community. Heidegger presents a last minute lifeline cast upon the glacial waters of a burgeoning materialism as the transcendentalist Titanic tub of religion strikes the iceberg of materialism.

Gary:

Now, my real point and problem is, and I thoroughly realize I am necessarily boxing myself in here through defining my own contradiction as contradiction, i. e., I am using words, abstractions, to say words, abstractions do not exist, exactly the same that applies to God applies to abstractions. There out there OR inside, another unfindable, unmappable, and undiscoverable place on no chart, -- exist no abstractions. You can point to things, but pointing itself does not communicate.

Jud:

Precisely! I agree with all that you say, though I still maintain that “accompanied pointing” is always and will forever be far superior to any language. It may well be that accompanied pointing AUGMENTED by language is even groovier, but sometimes the “voice-over” or “commentary” can be diverting and misleading as well as helpful and cognitively concatenating as one points to an entity and apprises, and another [or others] perceive and apprehend.

Gary:

Now, I think that word communicate is one key to the problem. In fact, everything depends upon our assumption, our belief, our faith, than REAL communication occurs. We tell someone Stop! and they stop. Or as a policeman under the former Shah of Iran would say, DIR! and you dired or he blew you the hell away. There is good reason to consider stopping if someone says, Stop! But has anything communicated passed as a real thing from one person to another?

Jud:

The word “STOP!” yelled out by a policeman who suspects you of a crime, or a mother to a child who is about to step out in front of a speeding truck conveys or communicates to you or the child the desire of the speaker that you should remain motionless or desist from your planned action. The REASONS for such a command often only become apparent after the act of stopping. If you ignore the policeman and he shoots you, the facts that provoked his command may well never be communicated to you in full – because he would shoot you and you would be dead.

As for the dead child, run-over by the vehicle, the mother’s reason for shouting: “Stop!” would never be known to it. So you are quite right that no [or very little] communication has taken place between the policeman and you or the mother and child, but what little communication there has been makes all the difference between life and death. If there had been more time, then perhaps the policeman would have said something like: ”You fit the description of a man wanted for a crime that took place in the Jung Wah Supermarket earlier today, and I am therefore arresting you on suspicion.” Or the mother would have explained to the child the imprudence of rushing into the road without looking to see the ten-ton truck that was heading her or his way.

Gary:

Of course not. This is what is observed. This is common sense, or rather; there is no common sense because that is just like God. One, and I use that word with all the strange ambiguities Damascius has taught me, has learned a certain jumble of reactions to others (les autres) one tries to systematize in order to survive because such an abstraction is very beneficial to survival.

Jud:

One hopes that we and the child have drawn the same conclusions if we reacted correctly to the useful abstraction of the policeman’s and the mother’s command?

Gary:

When the Iranian policeman says, DIR!, you dir or you die. Simple as that. It does not mean any thing has been communicated. No thing has been transferred from one person to another. I express gratitude to you, Jud, because, when you plainly and forthrightly said you do not believe in existence but only existents, you were the Iranian policeman shouting, DIR! and now I am trying my best to stop.

Jud:

My reason for shouting; “STOP!” (to a continuing faith in abstractionalism) is for:

1) The satisfaction I would derive if my ideas were seen to be understood and vindicated.

2) A genuine affection for you and a desire for you to be happy and freed from the despair that abstractionalism and reificationalism drags in its wake.

3) An altruistic realisation that only a turn to anti-abstractionalism can save humanity from mutual destruction.

Gary:

Now, to currently cut short my letter since many of the children listening to my tale are sleepy and need to go to bed,

Jud:

It is not that they are just sleepy, but more like they NEED constant supplies of abstractionalism as a narcotic to shut-out their uneasiness with the real world.

So they retreat to nursery philosophy and seek out the narcissistic nipple of existentialism.

Gary:

My point is leading to this and from what I have said you of all and possibly only people will see the connection. If abstraction is the same nothing as God, then abstraction, however useful it is to science, politics and ordering people around anarchism as a state may be absurd but it is still the only way to be free, whatever that is, but later is merely the useful part of sympathetic magic carried over in whole but in a disguised fashion as only a vehicle to carry practical thoughts into connection with each other from our superstitious ancestors whose superstition we still share and have never escaped from simply because we call it by different words.

Jud:

You put things so well [as always.] Even in an imagined successfully responsible and individuate anarchistic world there would still remain the inter-individuate tensions flowing from differences of perception due to experientialist background and influences of nurture, plus of course the diachronic legacy of genetical architecture.

Gary:

Now my reading assignment for myself is to finish THE ART OF INDONESIA which, once again, got me connected to this line of thought which I am obviously been trying to avoid and evade all my useless life, Francis M. Cornford's FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY: A Study of the Origins of Western Speculation on starting to re-read this Victorian Plato scholar, I am finding this man is extremely sharp witted and fascinatingly subtle, and whose phrasing of words must be dealt with carefully and Martin Heidegger’s unpublished review of Ernst Cassier's second volume of PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS which was MYTHICAL THOUGHT which I guess I am going to have to break down and that read also.

Jud:

I haven’t read Cornford and will be delighted to hear your opinions about him.

Gary:

PART 2

Will involve---

A=A ---

A does not equal A ---

The exact same shovel in the left hand manufactured immediately on the assembly line after the shovel in the right hand is NOT the same ---

This is not that ---

I am not you

I am not I but (I) am you ---

Abstractions still do not exist ---

Jud:

I look forward to reading Part Two with mounting pleasure and expectation.

Warm regards,

Jud Evans.