TO BECOME A PERMANENT THING
May 20, 2008
RICHARD SANSOM:
To Become a Permanent Thing
by Richard Sansom
In youth, the poet writes in the phantasmagoria
of life, since age is over the horizon, beyond the
hills of living, and all there is is the color and fantasy
of the moment, and the passion of its telling, and the love
of its truth. But in age, well past those luscious jungles
of imagined touch, there is memory in place of anticipation, and anxiousness in place of welcomed expectation. Much has already taken place , and the road one is on is all too familiar, as opposed to that path, every turn of which
was fresh, as if there is now a treadmill of sameness that holds each moment in a repetitive grind and informs the heart of tomorrow’s gloss on the ups and the downs that await. There is no new flower, but a thousand old
ones; there is no grand anticipation, but a thousand
de-ja vus, wherein the jumbled pictures of youth are mingled with the slow interregnums of
age and dreams are embraced as a way to make
a voyage back to the leaping, yelping times of youth.
Ah, the poetry of age and aging – it is bound
to be, especially in the hands of the ill equipped, a sad and dilapidated architecture of words, that sings the saddest songs so few will
hear, and fewer still would enjoy. I picture old folks gathering around a large
fire in the woods, the flames casting dancing
shadows, and the group huddled in the camaraderie
of age all remembering the cascading tumult of their
youth and making a chorus to that looming past that rises up in the smoke among the trees as if it is duty to some oracle of faith that all that went before is never lost,
but floats up with the smoke, and mingles
with time and sky to become a permanent thing.
|
RICHARD SANSOM:
At the end of the my poem that you reproduced
you added:
*I have lost my sense of permanence.*
I often have that feeling too, but then something,
probably my little struggling inner self,
takes over and tells me that it is not up
to me – that what we are and have been is
cosmically permanent. And I do not mean something
spiritual or religious, but matter of factly
permanent in the sense that in the time-space-mass
continuum nothing is ever lost. Of what value
that may be is up to the one leaving his
trail of life, accomplishments, regrets and
satisfactions. Lately I have been dwelling
on my early youth in Houston, just before
and at the beginning of WWII. I see my young
eight year old self in his daily life as
if it is a real existing process that does
not exist only in my imagination. I know
this probably sounds silly or extravagant,
wishful and the product of an aging mind,
but I do not care. It is a way of seeing
one’s life as a whole and very permanent
event. Thanks for your comments on the poem…..
Regards, Richard
GARY C. MOORE:
Ever since I met my father-in-law,
now dead,
I have been acutely aware of the utter
waste
of significant human memories by death.
Despite
Marcus Aurelius and his we are all
just a
part of Mother Nature, good or bad
which
reduces the distinction to nonsense
and I
think he is right except for his exception
*for one self*, so many people - maybe
everyone
- has experienced at least one significant
event in their lives that , for most,
dies
with them. For me, the only *significant*
events of my life are my finding the
Basilica
San Piero e Grado about which, at least
in
English, has never been written about
- maybe
very recently but I originally searched
the
web thoroughly and found nothing -
and the
dolphin I found on the Tirranian beach
[I
think my poems about both are buried
somewhere
in Jud‘s site.]. My father-in-law was
a combat
marine at Guam, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa
as
well as embassy guard in Beijing after
the
war. All of that is lost now.
Of what Jud has told me, his experiences
as a soldier in Egypt still stick in
my mind.
I remember your remarks about your
youth
in Japan. If there was a divine providence,
and we probably still subconsciously
think
in this way in hidden forms of abstraction,
no one’s significant memories would
be erased.
Hell, supposedly there is a quantum
providence
that guides evolution through the huge
statistical
improbabilities of life forming at
all and
accounts for many of the sudden jumps
in
evolution whereas simple Darwinian
evolution
- supposedly - would still have life
getting
out of the bacteria stage and seems
to be
supported by what scientists have found
in
the rest of the universe, mere PREDICTIONS
of bacteria or nothing at all, nothing
whatsoever
other than life on this ball of mud.
JUD EVANS:
A great discussion which touches upon
all
the right points that we all share.
Some
of us *get the message* about impermanence
earlier than others. Like you guys
I have
been aware of the brevity of the brief
materialisation
of the stuff that we comprise of since
early
youth. That, BTW, was one of the things
that
got up my nose about Heidegger. To
qualify
as being one of his tiresome *Daseins*
one
had to be aware of *our comportment
towards
death* as if the knowledge of our own
eventual
demise was a blessing only bestowed
by God
or The Philosopher of Nazism on the
loony,
angst-struck transcendentalist, reifying
right.
Antonio is quite right, reification
and the
reifiers are the enemy. The good doctor
exhorts
us to fight them - but how? As far
as I can
see, taking the piss out of them (ridiculing
them) is the only way of getting at
them
they have even infested the White House
and
10 Downing Street - they are so completely
brainwashed it means (for all ontological
purposes) they are as good as brain
dead.
Regarding our eventual death and the
loss
of our unique experiences and our memories
of them I dont think it really matters.
I
will qualify that. Obviously it matters
to
us as individuals right now, and presumably
the nearer we approach the end of our
stay
here on earth the more it concerns
us. (I
will not say *death* - or *life* because
neither exist - only the living and
the live
- the dying and the dead exist)
Why say that? Because I think it helps
to
de-reify the Being Here and not Being
Here
bit that the church makes such a fuss
about.
Have you ever thought why the religous
agenda-makers
and the *trannies on the make* make
such
a big deal about death and have statues
of
agonising death hanging all over the
place?
The ghouls even errect then at roadside
shrines
and cross-roads in some countries -
just
to spoil your nice run into the countryside
with the kids. It is their way of trying
to control you - they constantly remind
you
of God for their own evil purposes
and that
is EXACTLY why the reificating runt
Heidegger
was so obsessed with it - it was a
leftover
from his training as a Jesuit control-freak.
Enjoy a good dreamless sleep sometimes?
That
is what "death" is like -
it is
like *nothing* and as *nothing* does
not
exist either, that is both what it
is like
and what it is not like. It is the
*lead-up*
to not being permanently concious that
causes
the concern - not the actual event
of entering
into the *Big Sleep* (ever see the
film?)
Our writings, our photographs, the
souveniers
that the kids keep of us, the things
we made,
the tunes we wrote, the garden gate
we knocked
together, the children we made, the
kisses
we kissed, will all turn to dust. But
while
we are alive *The Death of the Author*
and
creator does not take place - it may
do as
far as some premenstrual post- modernist
freaks are concerned - but it does
not happen
to us.
OK, what is the bottom line? The bottom
line
is do all the things that you really
enjoy
whilst you can. This does NOT mean
adopt
a reckless way of behaving or doing
anything
that will interfere with a comfortable,
secure
and as far as possible pain-free, healthy
way of life. We must cut through the
filagree
of delicate and intricate reificationary
binding that has been fouling up our
lives.
Omar Khayaam was on the right track
but fouled
up by emphasing the grape too much.
Why do
I say that? Well the conversation that
we
are having now is one that I had many
years
ago with my best buddy. WE agreed that
we
would each be a *witness* to each others
lives, in order that at least, for
a time,
a little of our experiences, thoughts
etc
would be stored, recorded in memory
etc -
not only with regard to the possible
death
of oner of us - but so, when meeting
and
being together, we could jolt each
others
memories and tell each other things
about
ourselves that we had forgotten.
Well the grape got him - it has practically
erased all his memories and wiped his
neurological
retrieval-system as clean as a wankers
whistle.
I urge you to read Khayyam as a philosopher
(as well as a poet) of great insight
and
profundity.
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/rubaiyat.htm
Thank you both for coming up with all
these
wonderful perceptivities which are
a joy
to read. It is so comforting and in
a way
reassuring to be priviledged with such
remarkable
peers. Good friends, good books, good
wine
- what more can a man want - lifetime
data-loss
has nothing to offer compared to this?
GARY C. MOORE:
Now, I know everyone, including me,
is very
suspicious at the least of quantum
theory
on this list. However, there have been
many
real physical experiments [there are
also
a number of common everyday machines
purportedly
using quantum theory to operate like
scanners
in stores] with it that have had very
strange
results like the sloted card board
with,
first, light shown through, and then
the
even more disturbing results from the
photon
gun shooting single photons through
the slot
which never seem at all to go in a
straight
line, a single path from an unmoving
source,
which purportedly supports the concept
of
infinite alternate universes. This
is what
Michael Creighton’s novel TIMELINE
is about,
and he explains his version of it very
well,
but I have now read about it in several
other
places. Interpretations of the data
vary
slightly but seem to support a similar
conclusion.
So when you say *that what we are and
have
been is cosmically permanent. And I
do not
mean something spiritual or religious,
but
matter of factly permanent in the sense
that
in the time-space-mass continuum nothing
is ever lost* may have some basis in
demonstrable
fact, however useful or useless it
may be.
CHRIS LOFTING:
There are issues here re interpretations.
QM is a specialist language derived
from
our basic language creation dynamic
that
encodes properties of our methodologies
into
our maps and so if you don't know this
is
going on then your interpretations
of events
can be 'fanciful'.
All of the QM experiments covering
single
and double slits etc (and so covering
the
EPR 'paradox') are in fact examples
of what
you get when you self-reference a dichotomy
in the presence of indeterminacy; and
this
at ANY scale. IOW wave/particle duality
is
a product of methodology - we can in
fact
create the patterns using pen and paper,
see part III of "Categories of
Mediation"
- the section titled:
"Brain oscillations, indeterminacy,
and emergence of the 'particle/wave'
duality"
http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/categories.pdf
IOW our experiment DESIGN is determined
by
our brain structure and methodology
in interpreting
reality. Part of this methodology is
oscillations
and their processing to derive meaning.
In
the EPR experiments the oscillations
are
manifest in the dichotomies used -
e. g.
left-slit/right-slit etc. This level
presents
the ANTI-symmetric, and the recording
medium
the symmetric where, over time, a pattern
emerges indicating all of the 'dots'
are
linked together. This is a wave interference
pattern that comes out of the design
itself.
This is also present at the classical
level
of our brains where rote learning of
distinctions
will, over time, create the formation
of
a rich associative memory (intuition
feeds
off this).
Simply put, the QM guys have no idea
what
they are dealing with in that they
refuse
to consider their brain make-up and
how IT
determines all meaning. LOCAL context
(consciousness)
will then relabel these meanings to
fit local
conditions and differentiate one locale
from
all of the others (and so create specialist
metaphors that are taken literally
due to
ignorance of brain function.)
GARY C. MOORE:
I am rather retarded in several different
ways but feel your point is important
to
understand. No, to tell the truth,
I do not
know what is going on with Quantum
Mechanics,
but it seems an issue I recurrently
have
to confront. Initially I took Heisenburg’s
indeterminacy principle to mean basically
you cannot do two substantially different
things at once, a common sense approach.
But I have seen the indeterminacy principle
conflated to *prove* indeterminacy
is a real
factor in material reality.
In a common sense, it
is as
*the word is not the thing* or *the
map is
not the territory*, that is, a word
merely
points out some experiences of the
*object*,
even its identity as an *object* instead
of *objects* since any object can be
literally
or figuratively divided into parts
down to
. . . but in no way exhausts all the
information
any object can give. It is merely one
pointer
among many possible pointers. What
I recently
wrote about Umberto Eco, C. S. Pierce,
Heidegger,
and Heidegger’s dismissal of *resistance*
as empirically important [he loathes
Empiricists
in general], or so it seems to me,
to indicate
irrefutably the reality of an *external*
world completely separate from any
and all
words because if something unknown
hits you
in the head that object - or objects
- can
only be *known* as *something that
hit you
in the head*, that it counts as an
irrefutable
material referent for no other reason
than
its resistance to your head and your
head’s
resistance to it, and that as *resistance*
gives whatever real reference the word
has
to reality to the word so that in ALL
cases
the word is always secondary and referential
even if you do not know anything more
about
what hit your head. So essentially
all words,
signs are pointers even if you do not
know
what they are pointing at. That is
all they
are, though they can be *pointers*
in extremely
complex ways.
You have probably explained this elsewhere,
but what exactly is *our basic language creation
dynamic*? I have discussed elsewhere Aristotle
accepting that animals have *kinein* or judgment
or reasoning of sorts, that it is actually
encoded in the physical field of sight, that
is, left, right, up, down, far, near, time
as speed through space, like the Left/Right
dichotomy either you mention here or in the
segment of THE CATEGORIES OF MEDIATION both
of which are way over my head but I tried
to understand. I would like to try to tie
this in, though, with Paleolithic cave paintings,
especially those of France and Spain, where:
A] the cave paintings are NOT done
to be
viewed [if at all, certainly not like
a museum]
since they are placed in highly difficult
if not dangerous viewing points,
B] the ONLY common denominator amongst
all
cave paintings throughout the world
is *therianthropy*,
the changing of animal species into
one another,
C] the use of dots and other
figures
NOT in a decorative way [as is quite
obvious
once one is aware of the problem -
these
are nothing like decorations on pots
whatsoever
though they are like the comments in
Greek
some Greek vase painters made and Etruscan
vase painters imitated meaninglessly
without
understanding Greek], and
D] as the archeologists Jean Clottes
and
Ann Sieveking say, describes *a language
for which we have no vocabulary* for
a cave
painting culture which existed using
these
common elements from 35,000 to 15,000
BCE
- 20,000 years. Sometimes these paintings
with nearby [associated?] dots look
exactly
like pictures with captions. Anyway,
I have
to see my grand-daughter now and would
appreciate
any help in these matters.
There is also the structure
of the gene which, again I have read
in several
places, that seems to record, if maybe
not
specific events, at least stages of
not just
human but all animal evolution since
the
gene itself is around 98% the same
in all
life, including bacteria. And worse,
only
six trigger peptides - there is a specific
name for them I cannot think of now
- govern
what the gene will reproduce, that
is, whether
you become a man or a lobster. And
these
trigger genes are exactly the same
and act
as genetic keys or switches in all
life.
And then there is the mystery of mitochondrial
DNA, an outside introduction of DNA,
present
in all cells from the earliest form
of life.
And there are numerous peptides that
seem
to have no present function, seem totally
unconnected to anything, that sit side
by
side with species forming peptides.
So Lamarckian
evolution is STILL not dead and completely
out of the running and maybe you are
permantly
imprinted somewhere on the universe.
I, for
one though, simply do not feel so.
CHRIS LOFTING:
It is a factor in the realm of the
asymmetric.
Our brains derive asymmetry from mediation
dynamics across part/whole, anti-symmetric/symmetric,
interactions. This realm of the asymmetric
is a realm of perpetual transcendence
through
the use of language - the issue of
course
is that it is never ending and so incompleteness
is a property of language creation.
The confusion
overall is of mapping system vs territory.
OUR meaning territory is grounded in
symmetry
and its distortion through ratio analysis
(parts, LOCAL differences). Consciousness
has emerged from the 'middle' of the
part/whole
(1/X, X/1) dichotomy and uses self-referencing
(Recursion) to derive categories that,
if
done deep enough, generate enough categories
to be used as analogies in fleshing
out finer
details of each category - and so we
can
transcend meanings through 'adding
a dimension'
to increase our categories and so give
us
finer distinctions to play with. This
PROCESS
allows for a finite dynamic to generate
a
infinite number of labels to map a
finite
set to unlimited local contexts.
Since consciousness comes out of the
asymmetric
so its reflections on reality, if done
through
ignorance of its own dynamics, can
confuse
properties and methods of the mapping
system
with what is being mapped.
For example, quantum mechanics is a
metaphor
applied at a specialist level to describe
that level using specialist labels
that represent
the ONE set of possible categories
as derived
from a self-referencing neurology.
As such,
as neuron-dependent beings, we all
have a
sense of 'wholeness' but what it is
applied
to is determined by local contexts.
This derivation of basic categories
through
self-referencing comes out of what
is call
the 'chaos game' where any containment
of
noise, at any scale, will elicit spontaneous
order through self-referencing.
This process stems from symmetry where
we
'cut' the 'universe of discourse' in
that
any such universe is interpreted as
a thing,
as a closed system and with that come
properties
of closed systems - conservations laws,
metaphor
creation (all is basically same and
metaphors
allow for differentiating 'same' in
different
contexts to give local differences)
Since we work off instincts/habits
as primates
so our basic nature is grounded in
symmetry.
This is an issue in that the universe
is
obviously NOT symmetric, only aggregations
bring out symmetry such that the local
realm
is anti-symmetric moving into asymmetric
(expressed in the uniqueness of consciousness).
Uncertainty is a property of the asymmetric.
Language comes out of the asymmetric.
Confusing
the expressions with what is expressed
is
confusing map with territory. That
said,
at the base level of our being our
neurology
is 1:1 with reality and as such is
the perfect
map! BUT it lacks precision in the
context
of consciousness, of mediation dynamics
such
that we exaggerate, amplify, to get
precision
that is communicatable and so overlay
the
basics with countless labels.
GARY C. MOORE:
You have probably explained this elsewhere,
but what exactly is *our basic language
creation
dynamic*?
CHRIS LOFTING:
... the asymmetry of brain oscillations
in
attempting to derive meaning - we have
a
precision scale that takes us from
the oracular
to the explanatory to understanding.
Science
will focus on the explanatory and as
such
is one step away from generating understanding.
To get understanding requires knowledge
of
the source of meaning in the form of
communications
in the form of languages.
The development of consciousness stems
from
mediation dynamics and in ancient times
that
would cover analogies to local contexts
-
i. e. what the animal forms in their
LOCAL
context manifest overall in the form
of feelings
(power (anger, sex), acceptance/rejection
etc)
Reason is not limited to humans, in
the brain
of all neuron-dependent life forms
there
is development of reason as we move
'up'
the hierarchy and anthropomorphism
is common,
even today ;-)
Awareness is not limited to humans,
what
IS is awareness of being aware
(consciousness) and that varies by
degree
from apes to us. Full blown consciousness
requires high levels of differentiating
and
so precision. These dynamics equate
with
frontal cortex and pre-frontal cortex
where
such are very well developed in humans
and
are trainable to a level of eliciting
a sense
of SELF after about 24 months of life.
From
there on it is all training, finer
differentiating
etc that lets us surpass our chimp
cousins
(who are adults after age 4).
An essential feature in art is cultural
symmetry
- thus the art covers a topological
dynamic
where distortions are possible but
no symmetry-breaking.
It is from symmetry we gain our sense
of
aesthetics and so our sense of perfection
etc. If the cultural symmetry includes
tight
integration with local context and
so life
forms, then those life forms can symbolise
properties of symmetry (e. g. 'all
is connected'
etc and so allowing 'sharing' of space
between
humans and animals, especially in ancient
times where the ties were strong).
Innovation OTOH 'breaks' symmetry or
at least
offers a distortion so extreme that
it can
elicit change overnight - a single
word can
do that as well.
GARY C. MOORE
Dear Chris, I greatly appreciated you comment
in your letter last letter
QUOTE
*Reason is not limited to humans, in
the
brain of all neuron-dependent life
forms
there is development of reason as we
move
'up' the hierarchy and anthropomorphism
is
common, even today ;-)
Awareness is not limited
to
humans, what IS is awareness of being
aware
(consciousness) and that varies by
degree
from apes to us. Full blown consciousness
requires high levels of differentiating
and
so precision. These dynamics equate
with
frontal cortex and pre-frontal cortex
where
such are very well developed in humans
and
are trainable to a level of eliciting
a sense
of SELF after about 24 months of life.
From
there on it is all training, finer
differentiating
etc that lets us surpass our chimp
cousins(who
are adults after age 4).
EXCEPT could the real fundamental difference
be the teaching of language and the
ability
to use it - at this point seemingly
a unique
human ability beyond five or six hundred
words in an apes sign language vocabulary
- that is mostly potentiated by greater
memory
power either built physically into
the brain
[but why? how?] or potentiated by the
memorization
structure [like Mateo Ricci's Memory
Palace]
inherent in linguistic structure itself
as
taught?
GARY C. MOORE:
Dear all including Antonio.
More - but I am running out of brain
cells.
JUD EVANS:(earlier)
This can be evidenced
by the
very fact that God said to Moses, I
AM who
I AM and thus you shall say to the
children
of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.
He did
not say (triadically) Tell them WE
ARE sent
you. Only changing objects that are
constantly
becoming slightly different versions
of themselves
with each passing instant could ever
exist.
GARY C. MOORE:
This is interesting. Have you studied
the
original Hebrew of this passage in
EXODUS?
In GENESIS, amongst several minor traditions,
scholars have delineated two major
traditions,
the Elohist and the Jawist. The Jawist
text
reflects the writing and expressions
of the
book of EXODUS. But the Elohist tradition
refers to God as *El [singular] Elohim
[plural]*
or *That Particular Lords or Gods*,
an uncouth
and awkward expression if there ever
was
one which shows the value of extremely
conservative
textual traditions that brings us such
puzzling
expressions.
JUD EVANS
I suppose that when such a monotheistic
*turn*
takes place in any society, for example
when
Saxon Britain was Christianised, or
when
Cyril and Methodious Christianised
the Slavs
and suddenly there was only one God
in place
of many, there is bound to be a bit
of confusion
at first? On a longish car trip to
a Christain
conference in Durham recently (North
west
to North East) my companion ( a bible
scholar)
said that some bible buffs can detect
exactly
where Genesis-writer (A) begins and
Genesis-writer
(B) stops. Of course, at the time of
the
Moses-God confrontation Jesus was not
around
- not even a gleam in his Fathers all-seeing
eye, so the *son* element in the terrible
trio was not available for spiritualist
accountancy
or metaphysical muster purposes.
GARY C. MOORE(earlier)
Therefore the conceptualisation of
Being
is an illegitimate heteron
***
GARY C. MOORE:
How about binomial computer language?
The
old cards with their punched square
holes
to let through light and register positive
response versus unpunched surface registering
nothing -001111000110? ***Nothing ***
JUD EVANS:
The zero or noll feature developed by the
Indians was a comparitive late-commer as
a useful fiction. As an eliminativist all
of number is a conveniently human-created
fiction including the Johnny-come-lately
zero. Only *that which is numbered* exists
as with *time* only *that which is timed*
exists. The fact that mathematicians and
science extrapolated *number* or *time* away
from its numbered or timed material objects
(abstracts *number* and *time* and calculates
such abstractions with the brain or in a
programmed computer constructed to operate
like the brain does not mean that the numbered
or calculated abstractions then exist - it
simply means that mentating, numbering and
timing humans and their computers exist.
GARY C. MOORE:This accords with what
Eco
and Pierce say on pp. 33-34 of KANT
AND THE
PLATYPUS. Everything and anything can
only
be known at all through strings of
positively
indicative statements so that to say
*There
is nothing* indicates a positively
indicative
statement in whose context it is an
answer,
not the indicative of a thing called
*nothing*. This was mentioned in my
letter
*Unwelcome*.
JUD EVANS:
Eco is right, although he does not put it
the way an eliminativist would, which
in
my view based more upon principles
of parsimony
and simplicity. Following Plato and
his critique
of Parmenides (who claimed that anything
that did not exist could not even be
referred
to or mentiuoned) the Heideggerians
claim
that as a heteron *nothing* exists
as the
opposite of *being*.
The Indo-European Mother
Language
(the language of Ur) 16S anskrit has
an unbroken
historical record of about 3000 years.
So,
beginning with any of the modern Indo-
Aryan
languages (like Urdu and Hindi), one
should
in principle be able to reconstruct
where
and how complex predicates originated.
Diachronic linguist Miriam Butt of
UMIST
in her The Light Verb Jungle, reminds us:
Vedic is generally dated until about 600
BCE. Epic and Classical Sanskrit
fall into
the time from 600 BCE to 200
CE. Together
with Vedic, these are referred
to as Old
Indo- Aryan. It is generally
agreed… that
the ancestral construction of
the modern
V-V complex predicate is the
Sanskrit gerund
or absolutive in -tv¯a(ya), or
-ya/y¯a.[8]
(Butt. 2003.
7.1) * |
GARY C. MOORE:
Now even conservative scholars date
the RIG
VEDA back to 1500 BCE.
JUD EVANS:
You are perfectly correct but Butt
was refferring
to vedic being dated UNTIL not FROM
about
600 BC from which Epic and Classical
Sanskrit
are then dated to fall into the time
from
600 BCE to 200 CEas the quote makes
plain
GARY C. MOORE:
Many people date it back much further
because
of the descriptions of the stars in
the heavens
when they rose in the sky along with
the
conjunctions with the planets. Also,
the
so-called Aryan invasion of India has
been
shown to be a myth,..
JUD EVANS:
As Dravidian historians of south India
and
Sri Lanka voriciously claim.
GARY C. MOORE:...
a deliberately induced myth by English/European
scholars to justify Aryan racial superiority
[this comment is evoked by your *the
language
of Ur* which, until I looked up note
16,
I thought referred to the *Ur of the
Chaldees*
of Sumer and the Bible]. As far as
I know
the provenance of Sumerian has not
been found
and is only translatable to the extent
a
Semitic language like Akkadian has
delivered
correspondences.
JUD EVANS:
Edo Nylands *Origin of Sumerian* is worth a look on my website at: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ling_sumerian.htm
GARY C. MOORE:
The hieroglyphs of Mohenjodaro and
Harrapa
and elsewhere of the Indus valley culture
still resist translation since, unless
cognate
texts giving correspondences are found
in
the Tigris-Euphrates Valley [which
is possible
because there is archeological evidence
of
commerce between the Indus culture
and Sumer
both ways], there is no Rosetta Stone
for
the Indus culture. That is, unless
. . .
Now the original English archeologist
who
excavated Mohenjodaro SPECULATED massive
massacres of the original inhabitants
in
the Indus valley culture because no
evidence
of a non-Aryan language in that culture
survives
in any form or fashion.
The whole Aryan invasion theory was
postulated
back in 1788 when the relation of Sanskrit
etcetera was discovered and, of course,
could
not have been the language originated
by
those dirty brown savages that actually
live
there. No such massacres occurred though.
There is no evidence for an Indo-European
invasion until the Portuguese under
Admiral
Albuquerque, the Dutch, the Danes,
the French,
and the British East India Company
showed
up. Admiral Albuquerque, with a human
hunting
license like the English of South Africa
[with enthusiastic Afrikaner support]
from
the Mughal Emperor Arangjeb [spelling],
massacred
Hindus gleefully as the most atrocious
of
heretics in both Christian and Muslim
eyes
[even the Jews of South India were
persecuted
which Mateo Ricci protested against].
The
British East India Company enjoyed
blowing
Indians out of their cannons in 1857.
But
nothing of the sort happened around
1500
BCE or anywhere thereabouts in the
Indus
valley. So common sense says Sanskrit
and
related languages were already spoken
in
India when Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa
were
mighty commercial centers. Or they
were Dravidian
related which is a non Indo-European
language.
But still no vast massacres to prove
Ayran
racial prowess, and there is a Dravidian
language island in the middle of Baluchistan
[in separatist revolt against Pakistan
right
now] whereas most of the 200,000,000
speakers
live in southern India. I thought it
was
related to Tamil, an Indo-European
language,
but it seems it is not. Dravidian has
no
better claim than Sanskrit to be the
language
of the Indus valley culture. But it
sure
the hell is not anything else unless
someone
has some surprising news. I do not
know if
any attempt to relate it to Sumerian
could
even be attempted.
JUD EVANS:
I also have a complete deconstruction
or
rubbishing of Sanskrit by an Indian
scholar
*Dead Sanskrit was Always Dead - The
Anti-Sanskrit
Scripture* by Shyam Raohere: here:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/sanskrit_exposure.htm
GARY C. MOORE:
Anyway, nothing of Sanskrit literature
was
ever written down until a thousand
years
ago because of the on slot of the Muslim
holocaust that exterminated the Jain
scriptures
altogether. Everything including Panini
was
memorized. Quite a vast undertaking
that
says a great deal about the potential
of
human memory rarely used nowadays.
Something
worth investigating all on its own.
JUD EVANS:
I remain in awe of the people who memorised
such texts. Every Moslem must commit
at least
12 vs. or lines of the Qur'an to memory
and
even today there are people who have
managed
to commit to memory the whole of the
Koran.
Thanks for the stimulating observations
and
comments Gary.
Nothingness (an absence of objects)
could
not exist - because if nothing existed
(or
did not exist) then nothing would be
in a
state of non-existence, and to be in
any
state at all - of whatever nature -
is to
exist in that state, and to exist in
a state
is NOT not to exist. 12 or wrongful
ideational
mirror image of the Greek instantiation
to
mae on (that which is not.) Interestingly
in the case of both Being and Nothing
the
concepts are particular modes of the
human
neurological system when it selects
the words
as nominals bereft of any denotatum
in an
attempt to denote the presence or absence
of some unspecified entity or entities.
The
cognitive intellections Being andNothing
are ALWAYS used as non-existent others
(heterons)
for purposes of differentiating occupied
rather than unoccupied space.
CHRIS LOFTING: (addressing The General Theory of Reification)
"Nature acts this way.."
! Natural
selection favours aggregation of bits
into
instincts/habits. This will FORCE the
NATURAL
emergence of symmetry. With THAT has
come
the anti-symmetric in the form of parts
analysis.
A MINDLESS artefact of making distinctions
is in border creation and so the letting-loose
of what lives on borders - complexity/chaos
dynamics (and so self-referencing and
the
containment of noise). This will NATURALLY
elicit fragmentation of the whole and
so
the emergence of discretisation, objectification,
and associated dynamics. With that
comes
the NATURAL oscillations across the
part/whole
dichotomy and from THAT, given enough
neural
complexity, comes consciousness as
an agent
of randomness/mediation. There is no
INTENT
necessary, what had come has come out
of
basic, mindless, evolution processes
where
natural selection gives way to conscious
selection
(genetic engineering etc) but at the
LOCAL
context.
Hancock makes just this point for his
own
thesus on therianthropy. The World
As I Found
It Perfect example of real ontology,
solipsism
that negates its own category because
there
is nothing to really compare solipsism
to.
*** What you say about God fits in
perfectly,
or seems to, with what Umberto Eco
says clearly
and Heidegger very obscurely, that
*God*
as a concept is subordinate to language
as
primary. *In the beginning was the
word*,
not God, unless you literally equate
God
with language.
The link here is to asymmetric mediation
skills of the neurology out of which
comes
our language. The current version of
Categories
of Mediation bring out 'sameness' in
mathematics,
emotions, and linguistics in the ground
of
the generation of Mathematics as a
language.
The relevant section is pasted below:
"Ash and Gross define Mathematics
as:
"The logical study of patterns:
Patterns
of numbers . Patterns of permutations
. Patterns
of points . Patterns of systems of
solutions
to .. equations. We use the term "pattern"
in its broadest sense, to mean any
arrangement
of things that follow some orderly
rule,
allowing for prediction and contemplation"
(p233 Ash & Gross 2006)
With the focus of this current text
we take
a more generic analysis where the moment
we focus on 'bit' forms of representation
so emerges considerations about logic
and
mathematics and so "patterns".
Of special interest here is the ease
in which
we can derive the properties of Mathematics
from the identified basic categories
of mediation
and so from pattern matching in the
form
of analogy-making. This demonstrates
the
ease in which a language is formable
from
basic self-referencing.
The basic types of numbers cover: Whole
Numbers
Irrational Numbers Rational Numbers
Imaginary
Numbers
Mapped to our set of basic categories
of
meaning we have:
Wholeness - focus on whole numbers
(where
this category still reflects differentiate/integrate
in the form of prime vs composite numbers)
Partness - focus on rational numbers
(harmonics)
Static relatedness - focus on irrational
numbers (sharing of space with another/others,
invariance)
Dynamic relatedness - focus on imaginary
numbers (sharing of time with another/others
- morphic/cyclic change)
Real numbers are made up of whole numbers,
rational numbers, and irrational numbers.
Complex numbers are made up of Reals
and
Imaginary.
Neurologically our mapping of intervals
is
highly manifest in the processing of
sound.
Our ears respond to sound logarithmically
(frequency ratios, not differences,
determine
musical intervals and mathematical
form is
in idealised numbers that are in fact
simplified
ratios, 2/1 become 2, 56/1 becomes
56 etc
and so ratio is objectified into a
constant)
When this response format is generalised,
partness brings out this focus on intervals
as measured as ratios where such form
the
foundations of the harmonic series
and so
of rational numbers but also of discreteness
in general (working backwards we move
from
rationals to wholes and so reflect
the transformation
of continuous to discrete).
Of note here is this basic dimension
of meaning
derived from self-referencing is logarithmic
in form, covering a spectrum where
each category
covers an arithmetic series as it does
a
geometric series (and so a focus on
octaves
overall - the arithmetic series is
the harmonic
series, the geometric series is the
octave
series)
The focus on PARTNESS is a focus of
the realm
of the anti-symmetric that covers differences
WITHIN sameness where that includes
'null-sameness',
aka the unique. With the language of
the
neuron being in frequencies, wavelengths,
and amplitudes we can see the harmonics
processing
of partness where harmonics are 'partial'
waves. Overall we see here the links
of music
with emotions and mathematics in that
the
latter two specialist realms show their
roots
in self-referencing and part/whole
dynamics.
An additional factor here, in the context
of meaning derivation, is the formant,
associated
with frequency it maps to vowel production
and so an element of precision in communication
(the vowel determines, for example,
hot from
hat) - generalised to information processing
it covers precision in meaning extraction
in general and equates to the emotional
content
of a word
- see part IV where is presented the
linking
of emotions to the same methodology
of self-referencing
as we have here with Mathematics.
The development of cardinality reflects
a
grounding in the symmetric and with
that
grounding comes symmetric 'laws' (associative,
commutative, distributative). With
the development
of ordinality (AFTER cardinality and
in tune
with the development in our brains
of hippocampus
activities focused upon sequencing)
comes
a focus on vectors - we add to scalars
a
sense of 'direction'. There is still
symmetry
in the sequence in the form of repetition
and cycles but the higher the required
precision
the more asymmetric we get.
Thus the development of finer and finer
levels
of precision shift a focus from the
symmetric/anti-symmetric
to the asymmetric. We see this in the
classification
of numbers from real into complex,
complex
into quarternions, quarternions into
octonions.
There is also the general movement
in Mathematics
from the geometric forms of representation
(dimensional) to algebraic forms of
representation
(dimensionless).
Thus a focus on mediation elicits a
mediation
tool-kit of specialist languages to
be used
in dealing with reality. The origin
is in
the simple difference of '1' as compared
to the introduction of sameness through
'2'
onwards. With this comes the qualitative
difference seeding number in the form
of
the positive/negative dichotomy.
The conjugate requirement of complex
numbers
mean they reduce to sets of real 'pairs'
thus:
Real - (a, 1) Complex - (a, b) Quaternion
- ((a, b),(a, b)) Octonion - (((a,
b),(a,
b)),((a, b),(a, b)))
This reduction to pairs brings out
a dynamic
grounded in self-referencing a dichotomy
where such will bring out pairings.
On the other hand, we find the same
generic
qualities come out when we focus on
the fight/flight
dichotomy and its self-referencing
to bring
out the categories of basic, primary,
emotions;
as such we find equivalence between
mathematics
representations and emotional representations
where both perspectives are derived
from
the asymmetric but linked to symmetry
and
as such to a realm that is dominated
by issues
with the aesthetic and 'perfection'.
We note that current Mathematics is
grounded
in Set Theory and so is grounded in
group
concepts and the realm of the symmetric
(where
such a realm is riddled with patterns!).
On the other hand, the complement to
set
theory is the area of the mereological
and
so includes coverage of the unique
through
a focus on parts and the individual
(e,.
g. Simons, 1987) - what we will find
overall
is that the origins of Mathematics
are in
the realm of mediation and so the autological/paradoxical
realm of the asymmetric where we develop
the toolkits for representing reality
through
our mediations with reality. There
is a price
for doing this - incompleteness, as
discovered
by Godel but at a time ignorant of
the findings
of neurology that map mathematics to
our
mediation realm (the asymmetric) and
so the
realm of representations/mediations
rather
than what is mediated/represented."
There maybe interesting but rather
useless
speculation about carrying this idea
out,
but once again, as with every dedicated
theology,
it ultimately trivializes the concept
*God*
to being a mere metaphor acting just
like
the way you say *Being* acts, it is
not existing
but points to a material structure
that does
exist.
Emotionally there is a tie to symmetry.
Matte-Blanco's
work on symmetric thinking brings this
out
Matte-Blanco, I., (1975,1991)"The unconscious as infinite sets"
... and his work is utilised in such
as:
Bomford, R., (1999) "The Symmetry of God" FAB
Neurologically there is a tie to a
sense
of 'bliss' being elicited by the brain
areas
covering symmetry (e. g. right hemisphere
bias that can also elicit depression).
Of
note is that symmetry goes nowhere
- there
is aesthetic determinations but static
and
this equates with idealised beauty
etc being
'eternal'. This also equates with symmetric
perspectives being closed systems,
self-referencing,
all-encompassing, all-conserving and
so on.
RICHARD SANSOM:
It has been shown, from early histories,
that our species invents and believes
in
some kind of life after death. As thinking
organism, it seems only natural to
wish ourselves
into a painless and benign future,
especially
for most of us since life often is
hard,
unrewarding, dangerous and painful.
I suppose
that my own take on the matter is simply
more of the same, but grounded in something
I consider at least vaguely plausible
– depending
on ones belief in Time, Space, Matter
and
Motion – with a tincture of Einstein
thrown
in for scientific foundation. There
is no
succor in my theory since I cannot
conceive
of any way to access that time-space-mass
continuum, and further, there is no
real
blessing to its existence. It is simply
an
occasionally useful poetic fantasy.
|