Dear Steve, Winfried and all athers,
It is perhaps a little known fact that the words we use to express our
thoughts about the world are created by blind poets; the great - mostly
unknown - singers of the mystical past have given us the words to the
feelings. The German word "Dichtung", springs to mind: trying to close the
gap ("dichten") in meaning and creating poetry ("dichten") and the prayer
"closer to thy, my God" ("dichter tot U, mijn Heer): there must be a
hidden meaning in that word.
Words like "power", "force", "energy", "will" words like "love", "beauty"
and "subsequently" (?). All of us - except Australian males i've heard a
woman say on television, who know only three words - "What?", "Dunno" and
"Brrggh" - use the many words to express the (ir)rational feelings and
thoughts that well up inside of us. Words somehow bridge gaps, or act like
bridges, filling in holes, in our awareness. These words themselves
generate, recreate knew (new - knew, pun intended) thoughts, also known as
knowledge - it seems to me like feedback loops or a recycling process.
Words expressing (hidden) thoughts and feeling, like plants and animal as
the expression of genome. Mutating thoughts to find better expressions,
words and sentences, like mutating DNA to find better expressions of life.
There's no stifling of the will to live.
It is a bit like Scott's cartoon of square wheels: the round wheels
(thoughts, feelings) are in the cart and all we do is push and pull a cart
using square wheels (words, sentences). The only way we can talk about
round wheels (feelings) is by using square wheels (words, words, words). -
By the way, whenever i use the cartoon and ask people what to do in this
situation, always somebody says: keep going, the wheels will turn
themselves into round ones. -
So, i do not believe that we import concepts and "laws" from physics into
the realm of the human. It is the other way around: concepts and "laws"
from the realm of human thoughts have been imported into physics (- nice
example: quark was thought up by the great Irish singer James Joyce -).
Physics, just like history, economy, psychology, philosophy, philology and
theology*), only tells us something about ourselves, our worldviews,
"unsere Weltanschauung". We've created these languages to exchange, to
express meaning and perhaps because meaning has many faces (or did i say
phases?) we have many tautologies.
We tend - or tended - to think using concepts and "laws" about "force",
"power" and "energy" about ourselves. We've felt our world ruled by
(unknown) forces, we feared "chaos", so we thought to use "power" to save
us from our fears. The language of Physics reflects this, and it has been
and is a very effective language. By using this "language", this "slang",
we applied "laws" and power to create flying machines, hearth-lung
machines and accidentally created what we call the internet: a machine to
even faster mutate metaphors. Great! (by the way, perhaps we're enslaved
by words. It is not us that have the words, the words have us. That comes
from not paying them enough, like Humpty Dumpty said, we should pay more
attention to our words. - or perhaps we should go "underground" and invent
something else, soemthing more powerful - back to the feature).
Subsequently - aha -, we make no error in importing these concepts into
the realm of the human. They have never left the realm of the human. We
can check out any time we like, but we can never leave - hmmm, sounds
familiar, i smell poets -. Do you think that a not to distant star changes
because we im- and export concepts like "stars are holes in a dark blanket
covering the fire that surrounds us"? Or "stars are Gods in a horse drawn
carriage", or "stars are thermonuclear plants at a safe distant from
earth" or "stars are distortions in the space-time continuum that have not
yet imploded or evaporates" or "stars are the source of all life" or
"sister sun, i praise thy rays that enlighten my soul" - they do, they
honestly do, but that is not the point. Not at all.
For we can not know "dass Ding an-sich", we will not experience the true
nature of the things that surrounds us. We sense their presence, and, i
guess, because we're made of the same matter, we have an in-build,
sub-conscious, a-priory correspondence - notice the hidden meaning of
exchanging meaning - , a gift to know or seemingly to know. But in
reality, all we experience are our own feelings, thoughts as expressed by
words - words about words are about words. And in the transmission,
transformation, transceiving between pure matter - leptons and family -
and the feeling of a godlike enlightment - it does happen to me, not
often, but it does -, some holes have to be filled by words, some flows of
sub-conscious have to be bridged, like aquaducts, by sentences.
So, i'd conclude that in my opinion it is catch-42-as-catch-42-can: in
love and the search for the meaning of life ("the truth, nothing but the
truth and the whole thruth") aka the creation of diversity, every use of
every language is permitted, and inventing new words, like foma - small,
harmless untruths -, is to be encouraged. If you think it is necessary to
stiffle some words, like entropy, fine, try to kill it. Flogistons have
been succesfully erradicated, some words will have to go. Try "antropy" or
better perhaps, "antropomorphying": creating mistical thoughts by people
in order to find a deeper meaning of life.
I promised myself to be short and swift, so i'll stop rambling on.
Take care of your thoughts, and your thoughts will take care of you,
Jan Lelie
*) i forgot Business Administration, or organisatology - i'll trade mark
it right away.
> Winfried,
>
> Because you are so open to challenge and disagreement, I want your help in
> dealing with my belief that the importation of concepts and "laws" from
> physics into the realm of the human and the institutions humans have
> created to organize their lives is a serious error, and one that obscures
> and confuses rather than illuminates.
>
> As support I begin with the work of one the thought leaders of the
> mystical and the religious in the US, Ken Wilber, who says this of such
> movements of physics into such realms as creativity and religion:
>
> "This is a colossal error. Physics is a limited, finite, relative, and
> partical endeavor, dealing with a very limited aspect of reality. It does
> NOT, for example, deal with biological, psychological, economic, literary,
> or historical truths..."
-- With kind regards - met vriendelijke groeten,Jan Lelie
Drs J.C. Lelie CPIM (Jan) LOGISENS - Sparring Partner in Logistical Development Mind@Work est. 1998 - Group Resolution Process Support Tel.: (+ 31) (0)70 3243475 or car: (+ 31)(0)65 4685114 http://www.mindatwork.nl and/or taoSystems: + 31 (0)30 6377973 - Mindatwork@taoNet.nl
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