How to say this

A Procrustean bed is a classical reference which has come to mean a situation where the facts are forced to fit. Perhaps it also refers to crustaceans? Oh, let's make it fit.

Crustaceans are the order to which lobsters belong. This particular crustacean, was in my mind when I thought how similar were lobsters and binary thought. The lobsters have two front claws to manage their environment. Each claw has a two sided pincher. Just like people, well, okay, just like people's rational mind.

The rational mind is characterized by binary thought, according to the philosopher Jan Cox. Binary thought focuses on the fact words define everything according to an either/or formula. Everything is either this OR that. Whenever you speak, really, you are using binary thought. Cause or effect, everything or nothing, now or never, electron or proton, wave or particle. Oops, that last, is a GOOD example, because that simple polarity refused to fit the scientific bed. And refused to go away, which is what usually appears to happen to facts that don't fit. It is even becoming less tenable now to throw the old bedspread of statistics over the messy reality. Both/and confuses the scientists. Thus their procrustacean logic.

But still the linguistic domination of modern man continues. That ambiguity is intended. Over the preceding several centuries man has become increasingly defined by his linguistic realities, to the point where people who get Oxford appointments can assume, the verbal reality is all that counts. And THIS is like living on the sea floor, and telling the children, there is no such thing as eight tentacled creatures. There is no octopian reality---that is a myth. That there could be, not one explanation for a phenomenon, but eight explanations, in a both/and configuration, is not plausible. For instance, if evolution explains something, there cannot be other explanations which also contribute to understanding an event. Just like stories of cleavers and boiling pots are tales to scare the children.

So I myself AM procrustacean. Otherwise I couldn't really talk.

What if any conclusion is the wrong conclusion?

Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the physicist, is everywhere on the telly it seems. He said something interesting---speaking of the big bang, he said the fact that no one knows what happened prior to this event, is used by religious types as evidence for god.

He is quite correct, and such conclusions are not appropriate. Though Tyson is not aware of why. When you say something is a mystery, when you say something is proof of god---- you are using words to cover your own ignorance--you are not using words to help anyone understand freshly. When something is called a mystery, it is filed away, under the aspect of things categorized, it is treated as evidence, and how could that be? By putting a word on something, you can forget what is under the word, and that is just what the alert do not want. 

Here's another approach, for those concerned to recall that to which  Jan Cox pointed. We have all heard  the story of the scholars studying an elephant, and each had one part of the beast, and assessed the whole animal based on just their own part of the elephant body. This story which has an eastern origin, ntends to portray the limitations of knowledge. Consider this, the real, original story ended without naming the animal central to this story, we do not know what animal the scholars were investigating. 

Jan kept changing the maps to keep us from concluding, anything...

The message on that totebag

You may have heard the phrase, "Every pledge counts," this week: it is
NPR fundraising week. But our point is not radio, it is the
reverberations of the phrase--every pledge counts. In fact, the phrase
makes sense to all, even while it is literally silly. The phrase says
each individual is responsible for the whole; this assertion does not
bear scrutiny. But EPC sounds right to everyone --it has a real
punch-- because it is. in fact, an old old story which supports all
life. EPC is the cellular wall constituent which preserves the
individual, that is, some would say, the human ego. EPC is the
determination of the single persevering ant. Every Pledge Counts
supports a larger organism by insisting on the integrity of the
individual component. Much people call evil, is in fact simply a
reflection of life's necessay constituent organization. There might be
no Humanity if the individual did not insist, and feel strikingly
justified in so insisting, on, its own importance.

The widespread appreciation of this situation would render ordinary
life untenable and nobody wants this base for our joys and efforts
removed. So, forget I said anything. UNLESS you find this exposition
fascinating, in which case, you could reseach Jan Cox at
www.jancox.com.

Rosy Fingered Gong

At times it seems reasonable to point out what may be a deep structural feature of the universe:an astonishing thrift:

that saves each green worm waving

that marches each single spermatazoa to an appreciative haven

that cradles each tulip leaf dropped onto the ground

and it may be so, but one hesitates to label, lose. 

The shapes of words

Rather than the shapes of words, perhaps we have to say, 'the shape of words.' All words, one shape. It is quite possible that all words are -- rectangular. That is, they must be arrayed, spoken, so that reality itself, is NOT glimpsed. Does this seem harsh?  Would not progress on a mystical path be signified in,-- to continue the metaphor-- the amount of grass you could see between the verbal paving stones? 

And if words are not, totally opaque, if words convey something, then perhaps they are circular, so that in a speech, they fit together so that there are breaks in the pattern of the patter. Holes, where a glimpse may be had....an objective picture. 

The reason I like the metaphor of words as opaque rectangles, though, is that it enforces the reality that whatever words do, they do NOT convey reality. Perhaps the words of some few ARE more circular, but --- that does mean the words themselves are less opaque, that does not mean that what you see between the words is mediated BY the words.

My story for today may sound unbelievable, all these worlds, all these words, and the point of words is not to convey knowledge? Okay, regarding the external world--the exclamation, oh look, there's a hawk!, if you understand the phrase 'external world.' That phrase has an obviousness you can trust. Most people however, have no idea what the phrase 'external world' even means. 

You cannot believe this, perhaps. All the words, written by the smartest people, and they do not convey --- knowledge of reality???

Well, what did you think the eastern phrase, 'there is no truth in words' ---- what did you think that meant??

And the phrase of great teachers -- of course here I mean Jan Cox, as the only example one can confidently put forward -- "I can teach you nothing,"  he said. What after all, do you think that meant??

Can thought be -- superluminal

First tests showed neutrinos were measured, by some teensy fraction of a second, as faster than the speed of light. These results ran counter to over 100 years of  research in the natural sciences. There was a predictable amount of clucking in the professional community and sure enough, new test results throw doubt on the first measurements.

Regardless of whether neutrinos are really "superluminal" there is the possibility that thoughts can be. Superluminal thought is even rarer than scientific law anomalies. Much rarer. My picture is of words as -- light. And then the "super" luminal would be a glimpse of the border between the speed of thought and that into which thought speeds...Superliminal thought would be beyond words.

Thought then can be superluminal, in our picture, and understanding the rareness, not rareness of superluminal thought itself, but the rarity of focusing on this aspect of reality, distinguishes a few figures in the history of reality. How, after all, do you illuminate that which is faster than -- thought. 

Keeping the past to grow the future

So quoting the Bible is a big fad now. It used to be just the atheists quoting ridiculous stuff to discredit they think one of the world's major religions. Now I see a new twirl: on a friend's facebook page -- the text from Leviticus 19:27

Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. 

 and also the same day another friend posts a quote of Deuteronomy 22: 20-21.

...if this thing be true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the damsel;... then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones.

 My friends have a subtler purpose than most recent quoters. And I read these quoted words with interest. 

I myself am thrilled to recall this evidence of where I came from -- to be able to read some approximation of the words of my fathers and get a sense of where their center of gravity was millenia ago and be astonished at how diligently and brilliantly they analyzed the major questions -- of origin, of purpose, of how we go about living. 

It is interesting how with change all about, a whirling chaos then, when the people were writing, and now, their children, often unable to imaginatively grasp that with different cultural boundaries for the arguments, there might be results that seem strange, even perverse. This whirling of all into everything, is minimally, disquieting often, and so disturbing that words are very popular among humans: words seem to profess a stability that makes the words always misleading if they are taken too seriously. Yet we must, take the words-- as the whole story, at some point. It was called by Gurdjieff, being asleep, that is assuming words can point to something stable when really words must always be tools, be partial. Both Gurdjieff and Jan Cox pointed out you must go to sleep, as part of the process of growth. 

Back to my main point though, she said -- we have this book called a Bible, and apparently all these smart people, think it is one solid thing, when of course, it was written over many centuries by many people. A variety of insights, things observed, preserved in one place, in some editorial process, for which I am so grateful. And who knows, maybe some of the things that seem crazy to us, were kept with the mostly astounding record, to give people a poke, a clue that they -- the readers -- have to think for themselves. That after all is where the words of the Bible came from. People understanding that the truth is a result of Real Work. 

So many ways to go from here -- maybe next time. In fact I have been planning a little essay on --- how there is no god, so to speak. So stay tuned.