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.      

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.

DM/DE

Dark matter and dark energy.  The "and" and "or" in their purest form

An Important Task

The  the amino acids, proteins, the elements such as hydrogen, that make up a cell, each separately dead, come together in miraculous ways to make up a living cell.  Cells come together to make conscious beings.  Life is predicated on the "and". Without the "and", life wouldn't be. If the "and" dies, so goes life.  Protect the "and".  Let the "and" bring "the"s and "others" together, allowing them to preserve their otherness but to work as a team.  Teamwork does more than win ball games.  It makes life possible. 

Andorian sketch of commerce and inequality

We will begin with a brief examination of what physically occurs when a financial transaction takes place.  We will suppose this exchange occurs at a hardware store, before the widespread use of credit and debit cards.  The customer takes a ball of string from the shelf, carries it over to the cashier, who we will assume is also the owner of the store, and hands over $3.40 so he can take ownership of the string.  The "and" and "or" are operative on a number of levels.  Without dissecting each movement in painstaking detail, we can say that the "or" is being actualized when the dollar bills and coins are separated from the purchaser, and the "and" is working in tandem with the "or" when the seller takes possession of them.  Similarly, the "or" and "and" are working in tandem when the seller relinquishes possession of the string, and the purchaser assumes ownership of it.   The employment relationship is a similar set of and/or transactions.  The purchaser or employer takes temporary possession of the seller (employee) or that part of the seller that has a service to offer and relinquishes funds in return.

Commerce in general is a web of such or/and transactions. Overall, although it generates some degree of conflict, it brings people together and forces them to engage, however superficially.  In its own limited way, it decreases isolation, resulting in a more cohesive society.  Seller and buyer become acquainted, maybe even friends,  Thus, I would argue that the "and" and "or" work in tandem to increase the cohesiveness of society and strengthen the "and".

We can also see the destructive effect that extreme inequality can have upon this cohesiveness, this web or fabric that holds us together.   For when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, there are fewer transactions.  There will be dramatically fewer strands holding this web together.  It is possible that some of these strands, those spun by the few in whose hands wealth is concentrated, may seem powerful, but there is a great deal of space between these strands.  Fewer flies, or less nourishment can be absorbed from the surrounding environment.  The connections that can be built by those who are indigent are weaker.  The web can withstand fewer shocks.  Social unrest bubbles on the surface and financial calamity is a heartbeat away.

 It goes without saying that societies with a large middle class and less concentrated wealth are both more cohesive and more resilient. More can participate in the financial transactions that strengthen social bonds. The web is thick, more like a fabric.  More can take their friends out to dinner. More can develop relations with the business owner, restauranteur or real estate broker.  Since more money is spent (as it is well established that the very rich are more likely to save), more nourishment is imbibed from the environment that surrounds us.  Since wealth is distributed throughout, when financial calamity is experienced by a few, it is less likely to bring down society with it.     

In sum, society is healthiest when the and/or is functioning vigorously, when the and/or is diversified, and when the cohesion (and) that it thus creates is sufficient to withstand any conflict that inevitably when financial transactions do not proceed in accordance with expectations.   

Everyday experience of time

Time is experienced linearly, and the "and" and the "or" appear to be operative in equal measure in our everyday experience of time from past to present to future.    That the "or" is at work seems beyond question.   For if that were not the case, and the present did not separate itself from the past, the present would be the past, and , time would either be frozen in the past, or it would jump from the past to the future with no present in between.  If I were frozen in the past, I would not be here now, typing this sentence.  Thus, direct experience is evidence that the "or" is operative in separating the present from the past.  Similarly, the "or" is at work in separating the future from the present.  If it were not, the future would be the present, and there would be no future.  We would be frozen in the present.  And clearly, again, I would not be typing this sentence and you would not be reading it. Of course, the "and" also expresses itself through the present, which connects the past to the future.  A number of similar arguments, moving backward in time, can also prove the existence of the "or".  If the present did not separate itself from the future, it would be the future, and since the future does not exist, and the past no longer exists, nothing would exist, not even Cartesian consciousness.  Experience tells us this is not the case.  And if the past did not, though the or, separate itself from the present, then there would be no past, and we would have sprung up out of nowhere and nothing, like magic. 

But I say the "and" is operative in equal measure.  For if the "or" predominated, there would be no connections between different events and between different periods in time.  I would be five years old one second, and 20 years old the next.  And biology tells us it is impossible to make the leap from childhood to adulthood without experiencing puberty in between. 

Thus, as is the case in so many other fields, the "and" and the "or" operate in equal balance when acting on everyday time.

Some thoughts on freedom

If you are not free to change, then you are not free.  Freedom, thus by necessity incorporates change.  But a rock can change.  It may be worn down by water or split in two by a harder rock.  And no one would say that a rock is free.  Thus, we can say that freedom presupposes life, and that freedom presupposes choice.  Thus, to be free you must be alive, be able to change, and be able to change because you choose to change.  The choosing to change can involve choosing to direct one's thoughts in a certain way, choosing to move somewhere or to do something or any combination thereof.  However, it seems clear that the change involves movement of some kind.  Directing one's thought towards certain things involves movement in a sense, as does moving itself.    And we have already said that movement is always towards something or away from something and that it involves the "and" and the "or".  Thus, freedom cannot exist without the "and" and the "or".  But a pebble moves when swept by a current, and a pebble can hardly be said to be free.  For a person to be free, he must be able to choose to direct himself, to move, in a certain way.   Thus, freedom would seem to involve being able to draw from one's own personal reservoir of the "and" and the "or" to determine his own relationship with other beings and ideas, drawing from the "and" as one sees fit and drawing from the "or" as one sees fit, choosing which to draw from and when.  This personal reservoir, I would posit, is always there, but when one is not free, one is not able to draw from it.  Something or someone or preventing one from accessing this reservoir.  And when this is the case, and "and" and the "or" are not actualized but only exist in potential form. In the same way that the conservation of energy provides that total energy, i.e. potential energy plus actual energy, doesn't change (potential energy and actual energy change proportionately to each other, but there total remains the same), I would say that the size of the "and"/"or" reservoir does not change.  The potential "and/or" and the actual "and/or" may change in proportion to each other but the total remains the same.  In other words, the potential to be free is always there, at least for humans.  There may be something blocking this potential, whether it be socioeconomic straits or mental illness, but the possibility that these obstacles can be removed, however remote, is always there.  And that is why freedom is something we can aspire to, and why not being free results in anger, frustration and often rebellion.  It is because the potential to be free is generally within view.  

This and/or reservoir such not be confused with a reservoir of possibilities.  Rather, it is the possibility of acting on these possibilities.    It is the reservoir of the "and" and the "or" that each person has which either exists in potential form or is actualized. 

It might be said that each of us has a personal and/or reservoir, but collectively, those within a collective, whether it be a state or a country, have a collective and/or reservoir.   And when they can't act collectively to decide their future, i.e. when the "and/or? reservoir exists only in its potential form, the seeds of rebellion are sowed.