It is in the nature of certain, specific languages to allow for and gift us with the ability and capacity to manipulate phenomena. Any number of particularly self-chosen ends can be furthered through the manipulation of phenomena via the awareness fostered through specific languages. Geometry is one such specific language that allows for us the potential manipulation of forms in space. Geometry, as a language, is useful for the purpose of ordering and categorizing abstract forms in space (so that not so abstract forms in space may be better understood, and hence, more easily altered in ways that suit the tailor of forms). Mathematics is yet another language --- at times inclusive of geometry --- that allows for a certain ordering and manipulating of phenomena through symbolization and quantification. Mathematics is mainly used for the purpose of ordering, quantifying, and abstracting various phenomena (objects, things, forces, magnitudes) for the purposes of understanding and controlling them. Mathematics is a very powerful language; perhaps the most powerful language humanity has discovered/invented. David Bohm, himself a physicist quite reliant on mathematics, states that his hope is that future scientists would be less dependent on mathematics for modeling reality and would draw on new sources of metaphor and analogy. "We have an assumption that's getting stronger and stronger that mathematics is the only way to deal with reality. Because it's worked so well for awhile we've assumed that it has to be that way." This is something (the mathematical assumption) that is going to be called into question here in this text.

Languages have their limits too. These languaged limits shall surely be made more and more visible and obvious as we continue (if they are not already so).

Through most of the more abstract of languages-such as those mentioned above (mathematics, geometry, physics) --- beings of relationship and bodies of form can be taken out of context and made to be other than what they are in their natural, spontaneously arising context; one which they have been birthed and nurtured within the embrace of. For instance, in mathematics we have the relatively obvious idea that the addition of numbers creates what is called the sum of those numbers. The fact that 1 + 1 = 2 is taken to be an unequivocal truth, right? But if we take a closer look we can see how there is no number of any-thing in an abstract sense. If we are counting in the real world we are counting in context --- we are counting real things that are embedded within a real context in nature. The fingers of the hand can only be "known" as numbers by being fingers within the context of a hand. The same holds true for a hand in the context of an arm, which exists only in the context of a living being --- a whole bodily presence (hopefully).

The numbers of bodies or forms, forces or fields, always exist in the context of a community of beings --- in the context of the Kosmos. To abstract numbers, as being apart from concretenes, from realness, is mere superfluous intellectualization that has extreme consequences --- some of which we have seen all too closely throughout history. Context is a priori for all considerations we make, for all formalizations we create --- langauged or otherwise. Dismissing the concreteness of contextuality has many ill consequences, some of which we will come across later on. For now, let us just state that we extract/abstract from context at our own peril --- which is a loss of understanding in depth, via depth, to depth, for the sake of depth; depth which is consciousness, life, soul.

Originally, I suppose, there was the awareness of the implicit context within which all abstraction was derived. Some of this implicit contextual awareness, from which abstraction takes place, has no doubt been lost in the rush for abstract absolutes. Abstraction, in one sense of the word, has become the 'way' for a majority whom tend to find the concrete a little too messy, irrational, and chaotic for their intellect to get a firm handle on (or their instruments for that matter). Contexts are a little too squishy for instrumental logic. All of the hard data, the well-defined content is extrapolated, abstracted out of the system. (Remember the alchemists?) The result of this extrapolation is often an abstraction of what is understandable on an intellectual level, and can be formally mapped; but which leaves a lot of the messiness that is inherent within the system out of the equation. This messiness is often tossed aside as inconsequential B.S. There are names for it too; messiness is called an "anomaly" or "broken symmetry", as if there are hiccups in the system that we need not pay any heed to at all. So, "Let's just flatten out the messy terrain of depth" seems to have been a prevalent motto.

"Yes, if we can't grasp it, define it, or abstract it into an equation, then it is of no consequence to us."

Many language devotees have not been immune to the false pride of arrogance, as we shall see.

It may be messy, and there may be more variables that we have to deal with and take into account, but still let's try and remember that the abstract has no meaning and significance unless it relates to the concrete, and that means contexts --- not contextless flights of intellectual formalities. Mark Slouka, in his book War of the Worlds --- which is a critical examination and analysis of cyberspace --- asks the question "When did we start accepting abstractions for the real thing?" He points to the beginning of the twentieth century as a critical juncture in our journey towards increasing abstraction; "technology... was the real force behind our journey toward abstraction.... the pace and pattern of daily life" was forever altered, which "meant the loss of two things that had always grounded us: our place within an actual community and our connection to a particular landscape... As everyone knows unreality increases with speed." And technology is mostly concerned with speed --- speed and efficiency via abstraction and the leveling of depths so that flatland will = high speed. Amp up the pace of life and the flow of information and abstraction becomes more and more of a necessity. The messiness just slows us down. The hills and curves of Life are not as sleek and as fast as they "should" be. Why? Because speed = efficiency = increased production.

Instrumental logic = Technology + The Market =Money. Science + Technology = Money + The Market = Speed.

Hang on!!

With speed everything becomes blurry. Everything bleeds into everything else. Now, to some this may sound good, like a movement to increasing unity and oneness, right? It can also lead to borderline psychosis. For what is real when everything is equally fuzzy and the curves of reality and the former edges are undermined due to the extreme g-forces that we face. With ever increasing "escape velocity" our techo-transcendence of the messy particularities of Life-in-Context leaves us blurred like surreal images of depthless impressionism? Speed kills. Depth transcended via velocity increase.

The slipperiness of organic life eludes our reductions. Dag Blastit organics!! The emergent faculties and capacities of the Living cannot be abstracted out of the Ground from which they arose. Emergent properties are embedded within the always already ground out of which they have emerged --- that is why they are emergents! It is a fallacy to assume that one can abstract patterns out of a system and replicate these patterns apart from where they had emerged and been nurtured. Yet some of the worlds brightest minds believe in such hyperbole; that we can extrapolate patterns and abstract emergent contents from contexts. Douglas Hofstadter is one such extoller of abstract brightness. He states that "For me the substrate is irrelevant; the patterns that the substrate allows to come into being are all that matter."

"What is the substrate?" you might ask. The substrate is everything and anything that is not the abstract patterns; which of course includes bodies, emotions, feelings, and the like. In other words, the abstract "patterns that the substrate allows to come into being are all that matter". The contexts from which those patterns are deduced from are irrelevant, of no concern or consequence to Mr. Hofstadter. The pattern is all that matters, which reminds me a lot of Plato's Ideal Forms in a new artificial intelligence, or a "techo-gnostic", dress.

He goes on to state further, that "surely aliveness is even more a pattern, even more abstract, even less dependent on the substrate in which phenomena are embedded". Apparently, for Mr. Hofstadter, the quality of aliveness, as we know it, is "even less dependent on the substrate in which phenomena are embedded". What does this mean? It means that the body and the superfluous substrate have no role in intelligence, consciousness, or thought. The susbstrate is irrelevant to consciousness. But, and here is the clincher: Consciousness and intelligence arose out of that substrate. Duh! So, let me ask Mr. Hofstadter a question, "Is the stem or the roots of a flower irrelevant in relation to that flowers blooming?" Of course not! The stem and the roots of the flower allow for the blooming of the blossom. We can map the pattern of the flower in an abstract sense, but in no way does this signify that the mapped pattern of the flower is an actual flower. I fear Mr. Hofstadter has been seduced without regard to the blindspots in his philosophy. He is far from alone in that.

Shall we continue? Good.

In order to point out the limits of abstraction and the separative dissociations it can lead to, I would like to go back to the alleged unequivocal nature of the notion that 1 + 1 = 2. Let us concretize those numbers within a context, i.e., bring them back down to Earth. As we do so, we find that 1 + 1 very seldom is equal to 2. And in certain instances 1 + 1 can even add up to Infinity! (Hang in there. I'll explain.)

Unless we are willing to place arbitrary contextual boundaries around and on the Vast, we come to find out that 1 + 1 = whatever. Or stated another way, what 1 + 1 = is dependent upon what we are referring to in our equation. For example, 1 thug + 1 victim = not 2, but a mugging. 1 man + 1 woman = not a couple, but a potential family --- a burgeoning tribe, a new born child, a fight over finances, passionate sex, siblings, a looming crisis, or a restrained resolution. 1 + 1 can also equal 1 nation + 1 arch rival nation, which = not two nations, but a war, with all that a war implies --- millions of deaths and unleashed feats of new modes towards mutually assured destruction. How about 1 tree + 1 ax? This = not two things or objects, but many potentially warm fires. So, we can surely see that the arbitrary constrictions that are oftentimes placed on "life as context" by the process of over-abstraction merely serves to diminish and undervalue the primacy of context; and what contexts always already implies (which is most likely more than we can equate and/or bargain for!).

1 + 1 = whatever, sometimes 2, but not always. Or, rather, very seldom does 1 + 1 = 2. 1 + 1 = whatever, depending upon the context and the content therein that we are accounting for.

The arbitrary notions that are implied in elementary math are severely limiting, and also severly limit the holistic contextual awareness of those who are exposed and indoctrinated into those schools of thought. It serves to eliminate the context-bound nature of all quantification, and furthermore how that quantification is never, ever isolated --- even in the lab. Results are unleashed in the world of no boundaries. Context is primal.

I would even go so far as to state that this belief that 1 + 1 = 2 is no more than an abstract intellectual illusion. This illusion has been fostered as just so, when in fact, contextually speaking, 1 + 1 very seldom = 2; that is, when we account for the context of what we are attempting to sum up we find that 1 + 1 = whatever --- sometimes 2 sometimes not 2.

It appears to me that abstracting, as a mode of 'Being-in-Existence', can even lead us to becoming increasingly dissociative; where it is even noted that a sort of dissociative framework is unto what we educate our children in. It may be high time that we return our abstractions back to the concrete contexts that all "do exist in". Which means that we still educate children in arithmetic, but do so with the awareness of the limits of abstraction and what those limits imply, along with the effects that abstraction has on consciousness. It doesn't pay any longer to deem abstract intellectual feats as some sort of superhuman call to the Divine. And it surely doesn't pay to make it appear to our children, and each other, that abstraction somehow brings us closer to the Truth. It is one way of intellectually understanding parts extracted form their context, and that is all. It is a way to isolate principles and processes, simple as that. We still live in contexts, and our intellectual feats of formulated flight should always be born with this in mind.

We live, move and have our being in Context.

 

4

Reductionistic tendencies do not, and cannot, exist --- not without the ability and capacity for abstraction; for to abstract is to separarte out or from, with no particular relation to concreteness. Abstraction is, then, a tool employed by the various sciences of reduction so as to understand partness, and how partness realtes to wholeness. Those languages that are birthed and created so as to allow for a more manageable and manipulable reduction of the All into constituent partness, ad nauseam, carry that very reductionsitic intent behind their inception. And once we have taken a lifeworld a-part, through abstracting, the question remains as to whether or not we can put one that is as vital and as rich back together again. Science writer John Horgan calls this the "Humpty Dumpty Dilemma".

"With all of the king's horses and all of the king's men... No one could put Humpty Dumpty back together again."

It is, without question, that there is certainly much we have understood via the processes of abstraction. By taking the 'apparent' parts from out of the whole of their context, we are able to understand distinct functions and relationships of said parts within that context. But context does not just end at the arbitrary borders that we assign for purposes of applying our knowledge. Relationships of parts/wholes extend throughout all of space-time. And we seldom like to turn and look at the negative consequences that sometimes inevitably follow from our limited understanding of how contextually embedded parts really are. Like some of those that flow in the wak of excessive abstractions. Like, once Humpty Dumpty is in abstract pieceness, can we then find the right relationship of piece to piece? Or, in regard to Douglas Hofstatdter's notion that the substrate is irrelevant: Once we have abstracted the "alchemical pattern" of consciousness from the inconsequential substrate, what will we do with the substrate, the left over chunks of matter, the remnants of embodiment --- the grossly overrated Body?

The irony behind the views of someone like Hofstadter is that it tends to take on a religious flavor. It is as if they have discovered some absolute secret that we will all fall head over heels in love with once we have thoroughly understood the implications of their technotic dreams. Pure transcendence; consciousness riding free of the messiness of Eden, right here, get your tickets on the next fast train out of Dodge. We'll just plug you into our pattern deduction device, extraploate that pattern onto tiny bits of silicon and off you'll go for an Eternal Dance, free of the extraneous substrate that held you back for so long.

Yeah, and such scientists as those like Hofstadter are free of myth, eh? So, what's that about blindspots?

The seductive voice of reduction in science must be en-chant-ing, for much as been sold out for it. The devil at the crossroads and Kid science seeking to make a name for himself. Certainly it --- abstraction --- is all-good, and there is much to be thankful for because of it. Be gratfeul. Just bow down and present your offering, your substrate is all that we ask for. And you get a pattern in return.

There is such a techno-idyllic view born of this 'seduction of reduction'; one that fails to acknowledge the necessary death that must come about for abstraction to take place. For, to remove Life from the context It arose in is to kill that Life. Aliveness is not a pattern, if this where so then Euclidean geometry would be up and walking by now, conversing with you as we speak. But this just goes to show the extent of reduction; reductionists believe so much in reducing and distilling essence down to a pattern that they assume that the reduced/deduced pattern will include the whole of Aliveness. It all borders on alchemical superstition.

"Sorry, but we'll have ta throw ya in the boiler, so we can reduce ya down to yer essence. It'll only hurt for a wee bit; then ya won't remember a thing. I promise ya. Ya won't remember a thing. You'll wake up the pattern that you truly are."

In order to abstract the neurons, in whole, from the context of your brain, you must be dead. And out of this dead state we are going to understand you better! This is so ludicrous when we see what is actually going on with certain tendencies to "abstract reduction" as the means to total understanding. Apparently a sort of tenacious abstracting is supposed to lead us to wisdom? Or so the assumption goes? Let me ask, "Did you get a vote?"

Maybe the idea of wisdom will not turn out as one would suppose, but may perhaps resolve into the wisdom to know that reduction can never account for what we will always most cherish and admire; for when does Love only know parts to the exception of the whole? When do nuts and bolts describe the whole, the meaning of the fitting? When does Love only know parts to the exclusion of the whole? What Gestalt of Life is born truer in radical partness? I know of none.

The tendency to abstract is most often centered upon the notion of Ideals. Of one sort or another, Ideals are the power-source for the engine of abstraction. Webster defines abstraction as a "removal", the "formation of an idea by mental separation from particular instances or material objects". Abstraction, then, is at its best, a contextless affair --- a grand notion, empowered ideals, and the engine of totalitarian states --- political or ideological. By definition, abstraction is not meant to relate to anything concrete, but to 'ideas formed by mental separation from particular instances or material objects'. "Mental separation"? Sounds like a boatload of dissociation to me. This also sounds like the Western technological dream --- the abstracting of Life right out of Its Living Context, and calling that progress, calling that glory and destiny and all of those loaded terms that seduce the masses with abstract propaganda.

Manipulation just breeds more of the same. Propaganda sells what it wants to be heard.

Powered by the ability to abstract,
The piecemeal approach to Life continues
As the simultaneous remaking and dis-enchantment of
The living from the living.
Right out of the Context we leap
With our abstractions fastened to our waist
Like the dead weight they have become.

We are sure to fall now;
Abstracting just left
The net fragmented.
Where's the security in that?

Can we abstract our way out of this?
Or is it a tendency we might have to learn to surrender?

There is a notion in business that what works at one stage of development becomes a detriment at another stage of development. The same applies in relation to developmental psychology. The dependence of the child on their parents serves a useful function when that child cannot fend for itself, but becomes a detriment to autonomy in later stages if carried too far. There are stage-specific applications, and culturally speaking, abstraction may be a culturally stage-specific era whose time has passed.

The concrete world is calling us all. Every time a child goes hungry, the concrete world is speaking to us of its need. Every time one of our brethren goes without what we can all consider to be a necessity of Life, the concrete world is calling to us. "Leave. Leave these abstractions. The world is dying under their weight. Leave these abstractions; these mental separations from particular instances and material objects."

But we have hope of safety and comfort in our abstractions. Abstractions don't sting like the concrete world. An abstract snake carries no venom. An abstract example never hurt no one; that is, unless abstraction leads not to sins of commission, but to sins of omission. Sins of omission do hurt; concretely they hurt very much so. Sins of omission may not appear to touch us directly but they do affect great numbers of people; our living relations can be stung by our sins of omission.

 

5

If we were to weave a thread it would be possible to connect up most of the Western minds greatest triumphs and greatest failings without having to stretch the imagination too f ar. We would found woven together the threads of our search for the Absolute; through the heights of abstraction; via the objectification of the "Other" under study; leading to the increasing technologizing of the lifeworld. All converge at the headwaters of the Western Mind. The Absolute can be found through our technology, beginning with our microscopes and our scalpels. The technology is empowered by the objectification of the "Other", where we can use/abuse the "Other" for knowledge / profit / gain. We would not subject the "Other" to such inhumane practices as we have, and still do, if the "Other" were not so easily objectifiable and manipulable via our technologies; technologies which are born of abstraction and the separation of content from context, and nurtured by the drive to divine the Absolute from the subjective and all too, too relative.

Each branch of the Western mind-stream converges around a singular theme: To overcome Nature and discover the Absolute while doing so, i.e. Transcendence of self and world in theory and praxis.

What is ever sufficient? Nothing? What is ever good enough? What is ever just right? How many just right moments has humanity known? The whole of the Western doctrine is to "get beyond". Get beyond Nature. Get beyond via technology. Get beyond via absolutizing the particulars of life. Get beyond be "mental separation", by abstraction. Just get beyond!

Such is still the song sung in this age of self-help and self- improvement, self-alteration and self-transformation. James Hillman, along with Michael Ventura, in a book by the same title, says "We've Had A Hundred Years Of Psychotherapy And The World Is Getting Worse." Hillman also states "The fantasy of growth is a romantic, harmonious fantasy of an ever-expanding, ever-developing, ever-creating, ever-larger person --- and ever integrating, getting it all together." This is the same fantasy that is played out on a collective scale as well. The individual fantasy merely reflects the collective fantasy --- and vice versa. "We are going to get it all together. Just a little more abstraction, a lot more objectivity, a dash of newly discovered absolutism and we'll all be set to ride into Zion; for a New Jerusalem awaits the improvers of Self and Other around every bend.

Countering the Western march of progress is the Eastern origin-tone of the Tao-te-Ching, written by Lao Tzu over 2500 years ago. The Tao-te-Ching voices a cautionary tone when it comes to progress and the road to eternal improvement.

When the will to power is in charge,
the higher the ideals, the lower the results.
Try to make people happy,
and you lay the groundwork for misery.
Try to make people moral,
and you lay the groundwork for vice.

West and East appear to clash once again. One says "March on!". The other says progress comes with an unsupecting toll; the exact contrary of what is being sought.

My personal suspicion is that it is because we want the world to match our abstract ideals; that this is why we encounter so many obstacles, and also why the world never meets our expectations. Because the world is not designed to meet our expectations! The abstract is not the concrete. The Real is not the Ideal. Why is this not shocking? And why do we still persist in vanity, attempting to alter that which is inherently self-governing, self-arising, and self-referential? Why the illusion of progress at any and all costs?

Because we think we haven't tried hard enough to make our abstractions come true? We haven't worked our fantasies enough yet? More discipline? More ingenuity? More craftiness? More innovation? These have never worked before, though --- not in whole anyway.

Being that the fundamental condition is unalterable, where fighting against it only makes matters worse, which means we fight harder, which makes matters worse, which means we fight harder, which makes matter worse... which means progress 'appears' to be more of a necessity than ever... which makes matters worse, which.... Is fast becoming a cycle that is self-reinforcing, iterative, and diabolical --- simply because we are unaware of it.

The irony is that we imagine we are on the right track, when, in essence, we are running farther and farther from Eden... faster and faster... farther and farther... progressing like Prodigal Sons and Daughters.

 

6

Apparently it is physics that is going to provide us with the grand map of existence. Matter/energy interactions from the micro level to the macro all explained away --- the spacetime continuum no longer mysterious as it once was. We will understand all matter/energy interactions through the so-called "Theory of Everything". Our computations will be flawless.

Yeah, and Disneyland is just like real life!

Physics, as a language, has evolved and been used for the purpose of ordering phenomena and phenomenal forces-from electromagnetic frequencies to thermodynamic exchanges of matter-energy. The language of physics is now broad and deep enough that it can encompass micro-exchanges on the scale of quanta and quarks, to macro-exchanges on the scale of quasars and starry spectral bursts of millions of mega-tons. ( yet still with no bridge to connect the two, micro to macro).

Through the language of physics we are, potentially at least, allowed to understand matter-energy-fields in all forms and forces. This allows us the opportunity to be able to control and construct a lifeworld that shall be more within the range of a group of more or less desirable parameters (ideals). Potentially, that is. Ideally, that is.

The first applications of quantum physics were quite destructive if I recall correctly. Does the atom bomb sound familiar? I don't necessarily know what that means --- that means and ends are indeed one, seamless, indivisible, and whole? God I hope not! Not in this case! Anyways, what we have with quantum physics is an ability to manipulate environments and the beings that live in those environments like never before imagined. The forces we are able to play with are immense, with the nuclear arsenal the world over being as sure an indication of that as any I could offer. Not only is quantum physics capable of unleashing a Power that is God-like, so too are the new gene pool revolutions and nanotech constitutions. Our ability to manipulate phenomena is growing like wildfire.

In many ways we can sense how, at present, our ability to utilize power is inversely proportional to our ability to know what to do with that power. At present, that is. Let us hope and pray that this changes very quickly, for we cannot afford to be caught napping with respect to the gene pool revolutionaries and their nano-tech counterparts.

At times we seem to grope in the dark, lost to our own untapped and dormant wisdom. Circumstances drive us; we react to the basest level of our humanity, and set about utilizing great and terrifying forcessin ways that make every mother shiver in fear for what is about to come when frightful powers collide.

Manipulation breeds more of the same, and the will to power knows no end except its own destruction. The grandiosity of some physicists is no more aptly portrayed than by their imagining that they can reduce all phenomena to a mathematical equation that says all we need to know about all there is to know, about all there will ever be to say.

How much has to be discarded to the flatland mono-theology that states one language and one language alone can portray Nature in all of Her Elegance and Majesty? Do you or I fit into the equation? Are we not reduced to globs of energy-matter so we can be ready subjects to be popped into an equation and spit out the other side as further proof that this new Unified Theory of Everything explains it all! It's a pomposity of the highest order. Brazen and brash. Bold and inconsiderate of copnsequences.

This also means that the ideology of scientific explanations rules the psyche of these matter energy bullies. Naomi Oresekes, Kenneth Belitz, and Kristin Shrader Frechette point out that "A model, like a novel, may resonate with nature, but it is not a "real" thing." Indeed. And as ought to be clear by now, mathematical models allow us to formalize forces and factors so that these may be manipulated --- first and foremost in the modeled system, and then later on "out there", in the "real" world.

But the model cannot account for all this is "of" the real world. There is a computation problem that bears down on all models. They cannot account for an Infinite ream of data, which is what Reality Is. There are always factors in the "real" world that cannot be a part of the mathematical model. Such a sentiment goes unappreciated by some of the most ardent devotees of reductionism. There are aspects of the "real" world that cannot be accounted for and interconnections that would be far too extensive to include in a mathematical model. In fact, without approximating and abstracting, generalizing and reducing down, the variables would be Infinite (as stated above). This all serves to shoot a fatal arrow into the heart of all maps and models of Reality. It is understood by most --- for the most part; still the dice are rolled and consequences be damned, we forge ahead with our Nietzschean protocol --- the "will to power".