Saturday, January 28, 2017

Categorization

In the act of categorization, the "other" is combined with the "the" and stripped of its otherness.  It is a violent act that strips the other of its individuality.  And yet it is a characteristic of all human thinking.  It is impposible to speak or think without categorizing.  When we use words we are categorizing.  When I say "Melba is a cat" I am categorizing her.   I am shutting out some of her ownmost characteristics, such as her colors, weight etc so that I and you can "get a handle" on her.  We may try to undo some of this damage, when we describe some of her traits, but still...The use of all language involves "trying to get a handle" on or manipulate the world.  And why do we do this?  Because the world, in its shapelessness is overwhelming.  We and all animals are locked in, or at least feel locked in a constant battle for survival.  When exiting the womb we see things as they are, and it is too much.  We start to cry.  Lacking fangs or venom our only way to survive is to use our mind, to get a handle on things, to define them, to turn them into tools if need be.  For some, the act of meditating is an attempt to let things be, to let things come as they are without defining them.  Looking at a work of art may be an attempt to view something in its undefined essence.   Of course, meditating or visiting museums are only activities that can be done at our leisure.  And can we really see things as shapeless blobs as a baby might see them?  Not really.  We may see or experience more of the thing in itself, but our lenses set, our neural networks are formed, our horizons forever limited.  We are murderers.      

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

The Four Pillars

Four pillars underlie all that is: The and, the or, the "the,"  the "other".    While the and and the or are the two primordial forces, they would not operate without the "the" and the "other".  

We have already defined the "and" and the "or".  Similarly, the "the" and the "other" can be given somewhat amorphous definitions.  Both can represent any object or point in space, or space time, with the "the" generally serving as the protagonist.

 We can first say that the "the" and the "other" are the building blocks of space or spacetime as we experience.

Prior to the big bang, there was no other, just the "the" and the "and" holding the "the" together, causing the "the" to occupy an infinitely small point.   With the big bang, the "or" caused the "the" to separate from itself, giving birth to the "other", and to infinite "the"s and infinite others, and our modern space, or  spacetime as we currently know it, as well as motion.  

    With regard to motion,  the "and", along with the "the" and the "other" is operative in all motion insofar as all motion involves the "and" causing the "the" to merge with the "other".   Similarly, the "or" is operative in all motion insofar as in all motion, the "the" is moving away from itself, or its former point in spacetime,  thus giving rise to the "other."

We have already, in one of our earliest posts, said that the "and" and "or" form the building blocks of all the fundamental forces, such as the strong force, weak force, gravity and electro-magnetic force because all force is attractive, causing things to come together, or repulsive. But we left the "the" and the "other" out of the picture.   Attractive force, motivated by the "and", causes the "the" to merge with the "other".  Similarly, repulsive force, with the "or" as its building block, either causes the "the" to separate from itself, forming the "other", or the "the" to separate from the "other".

 The four pillars, as we have already said, underlie all language.  For all written language must consist of words, which in turn must consist of letters. And the "and" is responsible for joining two or more letters, one of which we may call the "the", with the other called the "other", into a word, or two words (which may both consist of "the"s, "ands" and "others" into a sentence.  And as we've already said, the "and" combines sentences into paragraphs, while the "or" separates letters, words, sentences and paragraphs from each other.

There is not a single thing, either in nature, history or thought, that does not have contain these four building blocks.