When I say something to the effect that "We have all been colonized and turned into commodities", I do so in the hopes of shedding light on a system of oppression and rule that has come to replace all other considerations. As I have stated previously, there is no present myth more pervasive and potent than he Myth of Eternal Progress; just as there is no ideology at present that can compete with the ideological force that is the Market. These two forces taken together create a tandem team-stream of high-octane enculturation. From the moment we are birthed into the Westernized Imperialistic standard of the present civilization we are indoctrinated into the representational paradigm of market ideology and progressive mythicality. We are taught to judge ourselves according to the values of the Market, and by the determination of the Myth of E-Progress. If anything goes wrong in our progress or in the production-distribution-consumption cycle, then we are taught to draw on the deep well of societal guilt for having failed to live up the the present standards of this, our representational paradigm. In this collective condition we can no longer entertain the notion of what it means to engage Pure Presentation Itself, let alone live it. For the representational paradigm that is engineered by burgeoning self-aware Bodies becomes so multi-layered, so clustered and thick with representational standards and codes, that Pure Presentation is only faintly recollected in the plaintive howl of a wolf at night. We hear it. And it scares us only because we know how so very far we have traveled, and what the price of all of those travels has been.
We have each lost something by imagining that we could better understand Reality through representations, through maps and symbols. It was as if we couldn't trust our senses anymore, we couldn't trust the impressions that the Pure Presentations of Nature's Economy made on us. We had to develop representations. And then the representations became an ever-deepening fog that we had to feel our way through. No, the Pure Presentations were no longer worthy of our trust. Pure Presentations were only valued if they produced for the Market, if they empowered the notions of progress that the self-aware Bodies increasingly believed was their destiny. The Pure Presentations were dismissed, the representational standard, the image of excellence was valued above the Pure Presentation. The Pure Presentations had value only in being the Primordial Flow or Force of the representations, now managed by those representations, and where those representations are increasingly considered as more authentic signifiers of what is Good, True, and Beautiful than anything a Pure Presentation could have ever expressed. The Pure Presentations are just the roughed-in version of Reality; the presentations which the self-aware Bodies learn to re-present in colonized fashion for self-enrichment and progressive gain, i.e., profit.
We begin in a fallen world... and then we lift it up like Atlas on his shoulders. We improve the fallen world. A fallen world cannot fall any lower. So, we must go up; with representations in hand It is not often considered that a fallen word is a world at one with its own depths, a world that is intimately connected with the Ground of all Being-Becoming-Embodied; the Ground, Ur-Stat, Fundamental Foundation. Nope. No, collectively we desire progress, chase progress, consume progress, and regret any and all regressions. We want to get away from the depths, the Ground, and fly high in abstractness; soaring on representational wings. Yes, there is definitely a stigma around regression --- as if it is delusional, a sickness even. But projecting an ever-receding future is just as delusional as regressing to an ever-retreating past. They are the same tendency, or same motive, only they are projected in what appear to be distinctly opposite directions. But still, while living immersed in a civilizational paradigm that has determined progress is for the godly, we cannot escape the tenacious drive to procure ourselves a progression for the future that never ever comes; that never-ever arrives. We never will catch up to our ideas about how it should be. We never attain the progress we desire. Frederic Jameson wants us to know that this is the way that capitalism and markets work, that the "very unreality and unrealizability" of its goals is "what is real about it". Where Deleuze and Guattari state that "Even the most overt fascism speaks the language of goals, of law, order, and reason. Even the most insane capitalism speaks in the name of economic rationality."
Also, by creating dilemmas and challenges, just so that the appearance of progress can persist... the "appearance" of Progress does "appear" to persist. In other words, a new problem comes along so that we are forced to Progress and surmount that problem, and then another new problem comes along so we are forced to Progress so as to surmount that latest challenge. An established pattern begins to operate here, as a collective habituation to seeking out dilemmas. Problem. Solution. Reward. Just like school, we get a problem; we find the solution; we get a reward. Capitalism at its finest. Educated in the public domain and the parochial hallways. Let us even imagine a problem, an insurmountable limit if you will. We end up solving this problem and how long does this last? We immediately project a new problem before us. And it is not even as if it is actually there. We go searching. We have to solve problems, because it is our mode of production. It is who we have re-presented ourselves. As the problem-solvers of the Universe. We can even see, in actuality, how the dialectic of progress is our own invention. For whatever reason we are bent on progress. For progress is now a well established recursive loop of signification infecting the minds of billions. So, we are continually projecting "outward", in "future tense", solutions to problems that are often created by the Being-humans in the first place. We have to move. Progress is our only hope. There are just too many challenges confronting us. We cannot afford to rest now. Certainly established collective habits are harder to break out of than individual habits --- and we all know how hard personal habits can be to breakthrough! What we find in the global capitalization of the Earth are many examples of such collective habits playing themselves out on a vast scale --- heretofore unseen. Profiteering, gain, greed, selfishness for me and mine; problem consciousness and solution seeking; a reign of desires created by producers of goods. The whole scale of the global-economic catastrophe is of such an order as to astound even the most worldly of persons You thought you have seen it all? Just wait... We are just getting started. Whereas progress is representational and ideological, the pure presentations are merely pure presentations of Nature's Economy --- not wholly representable. Whereas progress is goal-directed and based upon a representational standard that determines whether or not the notion of progress has been met or not, pure presentations, by preceding representational standards, circumvent ideology and representation. "It just is." "They just are." There is competition between representations, between ideologies. In a manner of speaking, the representational paradigm that has been brought about by the ever increasing presence of self-aware Bodies, will culminate in what is destined to be the least entropic representation of Reality possible. In other words, the representational paradigm is focused upon the manufacturing and creation of ever more refined and complex representations. The self-aware Bodies are the judges of their own representations and the representations that pass for being considered communal. Also, the self-aware Bodies are on the scene to re-present the Present, to map the moment, to express the impressions, to manufacture the message. The self-aware Bodies comment on the representations that are offered up as the most exquisite example of representation with respect to the pure presentations of Nature's Economy. The best simulation wins, is the least entropic; meaning, has left out the least bit of the Real. Or, said differently, the least entropic simulation is the one that draws the most attention, thereby becoming the one with the most libidinal force; the most displaced libidinal surplus as captured gain in trade for a trip through the representational "looking glass" is the prized booty being sought. Imagine the self-aware bodies as growing their members outward in prosthetic fashion, so as to gather feelers about the codes that are swimming all around them. The felt-impressions are amalgamated in an inner storm of horrific proportions as neurons blaze in synaptic fury. This inner storm is conducive to being a manic imposition; frequent applications of residual overdrives that belittle the membrane of self-hood. Overwhelmed by the data-flux streaming inward through the prosthetic senses: The eye of TV screen and computer monitor; the long-distance gaze of telescopic vision into deep space; the eye of microscopic accuracy in electron-beam detail. Hyperrealism confounds. The self implodes. The subject fragments due to data shrapnel from the technologized hand-grenades dropped like media bombs on the senses. The flows-man. Out-flows in. In-flows out. The electromagnetic hurricane encircles the Globe; fights it out within cerebration as the paths are continually chosen. What representation do you choose? What image do you claim? Where does your subjectivity align with the data storm; the info-flux; the schizoid terminality of beinghood; as participant in the postapocalyptic holocaust of the subject? Of course, maybe the notion of choosing is obsolete now? Maybe you are one who imagines choice not so much as a choosing, but as the interpretive coding of incoming communal flux, bestowing upon you both a blessing and a curse as who you are now in the culture-pond, global sea of Being. Yes, a culture-drop; this, the subject: A drop of dew in the cultural morning that evaporates with the dawning of first light. Impermanence. Interdependence. Emptiness. Buddha deconstructing self-hood through technology. Prosthetic senses reaching out beyond the Body. Awareness transcending space, leaping across time; bounds of ego both smashed and reinforced. The narcissistic endeavour to associate ego with Stars and Supernovae, quarks and Planck's Length. Just like me! Song of the Universe. Sung throughout Starry Heavens and Darkened Depths. Just like me. The ego is splashed all over the Cosmos just as that same ego is leaping beyond former bounds of space-time. The ego leaps over the walls of the nationalistic city-state and goes global, hence cosmic. Just like me! The telescope takes "me" there. Ego-swell counters postmodern deconstruction of the subject. Now, unconscious interpretive hazing rituals as self-hood. Free will is to be our next object lesson in framing the post modern. What we are, have been, and will be languaging, is given consideration in a short summation below before we cross the bridge into conscious/unconscious determination of self-hood.
Languaging arises: The felt impact of a moment, wherein a pure presentation is all that is known, becomes the re-presenting of that immediacy through expressed sign --- vocal or otherwise. We have come so far, as a peoples, as self-aware Bodies; we have grown out of the mediums of a former age or ages past. Now we are both representations as and pure presentations of. We are a duality, neither above nor below the fray, neither One nor Many. Dual Natures abide within us. One a representation of the Other. And our languaging of the lifeworld we inhabit tells us so, as the speech of the world is not without significance.
---Jane Roberts The expression of experience, perception, and insight can be framed in multiple ways, manners and styles. 'Each language is indeed a kind of song'... a way of singing the world. We can re-present a pure presentation in any number of ways. From music to poetry, mathematics to metaphysics, each particular language allows for a uniquely framed and articulated perspective (perhaps each one even being a unique perspective of a singular experience). For instance, languages give us the capacity to interpret data and stimuli in various manners --- with each language offering the gift of a unique hue and shade with which to colour our lifeworld (again, even of a singular experience). Music, as a language, gifts us with the ability to 'hear' more readily the music of the teeming worlds we embody and imbibe, as well as the bone-jarring industrial cacophony that now accompanies much of the creature singing that goes on as burbling brook and bustling breeze. Music is a language that informs and reforms. Becoming more intimate with the languages of music allows us to become more intimate with the cultures behind the music as well as the experiences behind the songs or compositions. Music is a way of languaging the world. Sometimes it is easier to sing it than to say it; to play it as a way to convey it. The languages that we employ to articulate ourselves in relations with others are translated and interpreted across cultures --- from English to French, for instance --- and so, too, is there also translation and interpretation occurring within, in regards to our subjective experience and how that experience is in-formed by perception. Tor Norretranders states in his book, The User Illusion, that "We do not see what we sense. We see what we think we sense. Our consciousness is presented with an interpretation, not the raw data." Further, Norretranders also states that "We do not experience the world as raw data. When our consciousness experiences the world, the unconscious discarding of information has long since interpreted things for us." Language, then, acts as an internal referencing filter, an interpreter --- and most often an unconscious one at that. We are only conscious of the gestalt that is revealed to us; that our "self" perceives. We are not, however, aware of the cognitive processing of the raw data that makes up the revealed perceptual gestalt. We get the picture, approximately speaking. Some of the details need to be left out for economic reasons discussed below. It turns out that the language that we are indoctrinated into at a young age-in our formative years --- wires up certain neurological translative processes. Say for instance, if we grow up in an English speaking family, and even if we become multi-lingual at a later date, still the formative language that filters all of our perceptions, will be English in this case. Yes, we are flexible, i.e., cognitive processes can be re-routed and re-wired. At the same time, there are formative developments that are like the infrastructure of conscious self-hood, of the self-aware Bodies that cannot, as of yet, be totally overhauled as such. These neurological infrastructures are in many respects fundamental. Like the bridges and roads, along with the industrial machinery of the modern era, one cannot just expect to produce the goods with good ideas and no infrastructure to back it up --- to actually allow for the fruition of the ideas. So much the same for our neurological infrastructure. If we learn another language, later in life, that newer language is weighed against the standard of the formative language, which is the basis of our interpretations of the world as "raw data". There is comparison, contrast, translation, filtering. Word-concepts in the new language are referred to the older, more formative language for confirmation and/or contra-indication. The French word for coffee, café would draw upon all of the English langauge associative terms --- such as milk, cream, and sugar. When learning a second langauge, the new terms are in a position where they are necessarily being forced to be funneled through the associative network of linked terms in the more formative language. Or, let's say that a word in French has no equivalent referent in English, then how can we relate to that (what is being referred to) which underlies the word-symbol itself? In other words, if there is no material signifier, no direct correspondence like café to coffee, then how do we conceptually weave 'meaning' in relation to that word-concept in French that has no equivalent in the English language? It appears to follow, then, that there is a rule of approximation that develops, which states: In order to translate effectively we must be able to draw associations, make connections with the closest approximations, even if these approximations are not always equivalent to that which we are attempting to translate. Philosopher Peter Spader shares a similar sentiment when he writes, "Language must in some way 'capture' within itself whatever it refers to. Language must in some way 'resemble' and 'correspond' to what is represented." Language is not necessarily 'the thing-in-itself, yet it must somehow represent that thing, that state, that condition or else the thing in itself remains incommunicable. Here we see how language is meant to refer to, in some way, what is actually being presented. Through likeness and approximation, through near-equivalence language is translated across the language boundaries and borders. No approximation, no similarity, no likeness = no 'correspondence to what is represented' = lack of communication; a failure to translate effectively. The lack of likeness and similarity in conceptual terms makes it more difficult to translate the terms ands symbols being used. When there is no direct material which we can refer to, when all we have are wispy and airy concepts, then the task of translation becomes increasingly difficult. When we translate from French to English, such as when we are speaking of fire, the difficulty is not as great as when we are talking about a less concrete and more abstract aspect of Being-in-Existence than fire. We could state, as a rule, that the more distant a language grows from direct correspondence and material reference to the Earth and embodied being, then the more difficult it becomes to translate that language into understanding and comprehensive terminology. Just ask anyone who has tried to understand a real abstract tongue --- as is often employed in philosophical discourses --- and you will know how difficult cognitive translation can be for subjects taking part in such discourses. It is precisely because there is no direct reference, no material signifier to point to, to say "This means that", which makes it all the more difficult to convey the less concrete aspects of Being-in-Existence through languaging. In those instances where there is no direct material referent to be noted, then we may begin to rely on metaphor and analogy, symbolism and approximation. And when we come to find out that this is precisely how we function in regards to subjective interpretation of even the material world --- what we have taken to be inviolable and totally objective --- then we realize that direct correspondence has been an illusion. Correspondence with reality, in a direct manner, is subjective / intersubjective dependent. It is relationship. And, likewise, prone to all the difficulties that communication presents in any relationship. Our relationship with Reality is subjective / intersubjective dependent. Which begs the question: If Reality is a relationship, then who's relationship is most true, most real, most authentic. Who's got right relationship with Reality!?! Hang on... This may take us awhile... As there are some non-Westernized notions that will serve to illuminate the foregoing question. The first of these non-Western notions, as taken from Hwa Yen Buddhism is that of mutual penetration; where what would appear to be distinct and separate elements of Existence are actually seen to be penetrating each other in a mutual fashion without negation. In other words, the elements of existence are mutual, and also penetrate each other without canceling each other out. C.C. Chang uses the example of water in his book The Buddhist Teaching of Totality. For instance, water can be seen as a solvent in which to dissolve a concentrate of some sort; a beverage which can be used to quench a man's thirst; an aggregate of elements (H2O); or as that which caused a child to drown. Each of these interpretations of water are real. And yet, not one of these views, or interpretations, cancels out the others. Certainly, as subjects we can only witness one thing at any one time. We, as mere subjects, are mono-focal in that sense. Yet, for Reality, for the Flow of Being-Becoming-Embodied, there is no prescribed definition of water, per se, that one must accommodate. Many suggested interpretations of water can co-exist at once; such as the interpretation of water for a Common Loon, a Rainbow Trout, a Drowning Man, a Mollusk, or a Desert Nomad. Each interpretation of water is equally real --- and equally partial. And, again, the various interpretations of water are allowed to co-exist without canceling each other out. The truth of one does not make for the falsehood of the other. Chang puts it like this, in describing the challenges of being-human; "Since men tend to see things from one particular viewpoint, thus becoming partial and arbitrary, they are liable to forget the totalistic integrity of reality. The observation of this principle (mutual penetration) can, therefore, remedy partiality and narrowness on the one hand, and augment men's perspective of the totalistic reality on the other." It is so much the same for languaging the world. There are indeed languaging practices that would seek to rigidly define and chaeracterize the world in a totally objective and for all time sense. Those very languaging pursuits are the main threat to our awareness of such existential facts of life as "simultaneous mutual co-arising", where two partial truths can co-exist simultaneously without canceling each other out --- (unlike the Being-human who oftentimes wants nothing more than to cancel out the so-called "conflicting view" by canceling out the conflicting viewer, i.e., death). The other principle, or non-Western notion taken from Hwa Yen Buddhism is that of mutual identity; which we could just as easily state as the One behind the many faces of reality. Or, taking interpretation as our analogy, we could state that all interpretations stem from the same Source, refer to the same Primordial Substance, or Suchness. We all look at the same Ocean, and yet we each interpret that Ocean in a distinct manner according to our subjective / intersubjective positioning. The interpretation does not affect the Ocean (unless and until we act on that interpretation) Likewise, and in a manner of speaking, the Fundamental Reality just Is, an Isness which we interpret in a unique and figurative manner. This is much the same as saying we each re-present the pure presentational nature of reality. The pure presentational nature of reality just is "what" we represent life as, i.e., our interpretation being a representation of that reality in part. When we limit and specify we also block out and negate from our awareness mutually arising elements of existence. When I, for instance, call myself a man, I am stating a truth. For I am indeed a man. But I am not just a man. I am man plus. Or I am a man minus even! But I am not just a man. So, in the same way that we can each set limits on what "reality" is, so too can we set limits on what we take ourselves to actually be. By defining and stating unequivocally, we also set limits on what we can engage in and with. If I am only a man, just a man, then I am a very shallow creature indeed. One view does not do any of us justice. One language is not nearly rich enough to relate the world. And one interpretation is not nearly large enough or inclusive enough for all beings. In this way the "Grand Unified Theories" and "Theories of Everything" will always be partial truths. No matter what physicists or scientists might say. Illusion, eh!? You mean we've been fibbing to ourselves all along? You make it sound as if we each make it up as we go along. I mean, if there is no singular truth, then how do we decide anything for that matter? Well, perhaps, the partial truth with the most votes wins! That is how we know. The best simulation of the Real walks away with the most invested libidinal surpluses. And thereby becomes the collective dream or drama; the nationalistic pride or team slogan. "Sounds good to me. It looks real. Seems to be the case. I'll buy that!" Therefore, another investment is secured. An investment of belief, hence, more libidinal surplus is given over to that best definition of reality one could find. "I'm in!" secures the partial-truth of having a greater influence over the Being-human. We join in the party and are forced to play by those rules. Consent builds culture. James Carse writes in his book, Finite and Infinite Games, that, "Since a culture is not anything persons do, but anything persons do with each other, we may say that a culture comes into being whenever persons choose to be a people. It as a people that they arrange their rules with each other, their moralities, their modes of communication." Culture can then be considered to be a group of persons, or a peoples that orders their actions according rules of conduct and modes of communication that define that group as a peoples. In this way we can get a sense of how "cultures" exist along a scale of inclusiveness. In a global sense we are a "market" peoples, but in a national sense we may be a "democratic" peoples. Each level of inclusiveness determines what culture we are of, or against for that matter. For instance, there is a popular culture that includes regional cultures, and a market culture which includes both the regional cultures and the popular culture which includes those regional cultures. And if we recall the Hwa Yen Buddhist notion of mutual penetration we realize that these cultural levels of relative inclusiveness do not negate each other in any way whatsoever. In other words, a more or less inclusive culture does not negate, but can mutually co-exist with other cultures. Sort of? A culture is not, without persons to empower and call forth that culture through belief and participation. So, it stands to reason that certain cultures do and will fade in time as the cultural participants find "better descriptions of reality" (or if one culture is overwhelmed by another more powerful one). This very scenario is being played out with the discovery that the 'objectivist' stance of direct correspondence, and of 'things-in-themselves', is in question. The stalwarts of the modern era --- and even from the time of Platonic philosophy --- are increasingly being called into question by the discoveries of cognitive scientists and neurophysiologists who are studying the processes of the human brain. Along with these scientists there are also the postmodern philosophers, the literary critics, and the anthropologists, who are also casting doubt and dispersion in the direction of the Enlightement notion of "objective certainty". These new cultural forces, taken as a whole --- and within the embrace of the cybernetic and information revolutions that are sweeping the globe in full frontal assault --- we are coming to find out that a total re-interpretation of what it means to "know" is underway. These emergent cultural forces are fostering a revolution in epistemology, in the "ways of knowing", of how we know what we profess to know. Hence, an age of doubt is upon us. The new cultural emergents are casting a pall of doubt upon the old ways of knowing. The 'objectivist' gaze and its brood are called to trial by a heretofore new swell subjective/intersubjective dissent. And there is a not so subtle irony here: it is that some of these cultural emergents are the very children of the "objectivist-style" doctrine, which those children are now questioning with increasing fervor. The sons and daughters are rebelling against their mothers and fathers. Nothing new there. What is new is the light that this revolution and revolt against extreme objectivity is casting in the direction of "how we have come to know what we believe we know." In other words.... ....How did we arrive at this point? How did we reach those decisions that have charted our course? How did we conclude what we have come to conclude? These questions of "how we know what we know?" are the questions of our time, are the questions of the postmodern inter-revolution. We are attempting to discern the validity of the 'objectivist' juggernaut that has swelled up with arrogance, simply through having deduced a few proposed laws of nature that allow for a more handy and ready manipulation of forces and flows. We are calling into question the forces of Power in our time. We are demanding an accounting from those who adjust and regulate the flows and forces of the phenomenal world through having ascertained an apparently objective 'rule of thumb'. How do they know what they know? How did they come to know what they have classified as 'objective truths' about the nature of reality? What processes informed such a knowing? What methodology gains the results that were desired as much as discovered? Each of these questions is predicated upon the "understanding of understanding". These questions are a force for justice in that they demand a response from the "objectivists"; as to how they arrive at the knowledge they take as inviolate and often sacred. If we are going to be forced to live with those codes handed down from the "objective heights", then they, in the words of Ricky Ricardo, "Gots some explainin' to do!" So, how do we know what we know? What are the ways of knowing that inform our beliefs about how it all is? How do we arrive at inferences about reality? And even, what are the hard-wired capacities of the human-organism that determines in great measure what we "can" know and what we "can't"? Let's try and find out, OK?
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