Thursday, April 10, 2008

ORGY




Dear Dialogue & Dialecticians & Colleagues
across the curriculum.,

Below: a 5 pg. work-day "orgy" on Chapter IV
of Gregory
Bateson's Mind & Nature ("Criteria
of Mental Process")—my
novum organnon day
contribution. As with ALL my essaying, it is
written always for the sake of argument:
the improvement of terms and images.

Otherwise IT's like one-myn pingpong.
Playing with my self, damnit. I go blind.

Most people don't sit to wonder about MIND
--come up with a "definition" or "story" for it
--attempt to reflect: mind thinking about mind
thinking about thinking and talking about how
we talk about these "no things."

Instead: the minding is aimed at doing math
& physics & chem & bio and socio-logic and
literature and stuff like that. Not turning back
on itself: recursive, repentant. When did you
last think about thinking and how your mind
minds-- coming to some terms and images?

So it makes sense that IT be strange, and that
it be Up for Grabs, too. Everyone claims to have
a mind and minds this and that. So we're all
expert and this class don't mind minding about
mind minding and even encourages it--plus failure
& the liability of clarity, not like them other courses.

School Mode. Consider (be considerate) or ignore
(be ignore-ant): always our fundamental free
willy/nilly choice, true?

Yours in Work: from I.E. werg 1-- "to do" erg,
urge; Gk. ergon: work, action, energy, allergy,
surgery, liturgy, synergy; Gk.organnon: too--
organ,organization; Gk. orgia: secret rites,
worship, orgy .

Plenty of room for play & improvement here--
"toward frontiers yet unknown."

xxxooo, Sam

&&&&

I’m sitting here on WORK day trying to think
about MIND minding,
trying to put what I’ve read
of Bateson into my own terms and images.
I’m looking
at my hands, wondering where the ideas ARE. I’m
sitting
here thinking, right? As if going to the john—
elbows on my knees.

Waiting.
Not in control, damnit.
Serving the muse.

I know I ( Commons Sense Addict) talk about MIND
as if it were
some thing, as if I could locate it, point to it,
touch. As if I could
waste it, be out of it, lose it. It’s
convenient to talk about mind that way
—conventional.
Everybody does it.

***************

1) Bateson talks about mind (thought) and evolution in
terms of a system
of relationship(s): “an aggregate
(gathering) of interacting parts or
components.”

Some of those interacting parts are physical parts.
Some of those interacting “parts” are non-physical parts.
Some of the interacting is between physical and non-physical parts..

The word “parts” (components) comes with physical,
thing-y connotations.
So you can see from the start, our
physical sense and terms are conveniently
and conventionally
used/abused to STAND-FOR (represent) almost all
(if not all) our non-physical notions and ideas.

An IDEA (which is no thing, which is relationship: a
difference
that makes a difference) must be embodied—
manifested—to appear and
to be put in use, in play. And
so habitually, I thing-fy—which is to say I
reify, personify,
deify. And then my minding and my converse action
becomes physical-ized & I talk of being in love, out of my
mind, full of hate,
deathly scared, lacking energy, looking
for Santa, hoping to please Jesus,
rebellious against an
angry god who dangles me over the pit of hell from
a thread,
damnit.

See how easy it is shake my fist at gods, curse the
Administration, fall in
love with a face, blame my cat for
making me sneeze….(that bastard cat,
that stupid Administration,
those whimsical uncaring gods!) or machete
some kid for naming
his teddy bear Mahomet! All a result of
HOW I THINK—reifying,
subjectify-ing, objectifying, personifying,
deifying ABSTRACTIONS.
Making THINGS out of Not A Thing!

Amazing!

Do you see the thread here (so to speak: no thread—merely
a manner of
speaking)? Do you GET IT? (Again: “get” and “it,”
—there’s no IT and
no getting either, except in manners of
speaking. THING-ifed is what
we are. MATERIALISTIC.
Matter. Mater. Matrix—permeates how we think
and talk:
all our IDEAS (relationship) carried on the wings of embodimental
manifestation—so to speak. Physical-ists: no wonder we all
have body image
issues.

Any way: some parts of Minding are physical.
Some parts of Minding are
non-physical, but the word
PARTS does NOT discriminate between the
2—and
carries the bias of physical habitually, addictively.

2. The Inter ACTION between parts & parts is
TRIGGERED
(love it:
grade-gun connotations for me,
explosive: “the violent bear IT away”) by DIFFERENCE.

Let me turn up the difference between

DIFFERENCE and IMPACT (bump)

this distinction is crucial. It’s the difference between
“INFORMATION”
and “ENERGY” between an “idea” and
an apple dropping on the noggin.

I FEEL an “idea” (difference) as a gut, visceral deal, or
merely register it
with apparently no feeling at all.
I SENSE an apple hitting my head, sticks
and stones,
smells, touché.

The 2 (information/energy, Idea/Impact) are related
like Siamese Twins maybe.
But different.

Note: while PHYSICALISM and MATTER and bodies
and manifestations
and thing-iness dominates our
talk-terms
(in manners of speaking),
NON-PHYSICAL
DIFFERENCE-ing is primary in mental process.

Look how tautological the notion is: the difference between
DIFFERENCE
& BUMP, and the idea of idea and meaning
as a difference that makes a DIFFERENCE
. What’s the
DIFFERENCE between a difference that
makes no difference
and a difference that makes a difference?

How many different differences are there in that last
question? What are
they differentiating? What is the
relationship among all those differences?

3. Mental Process requires collateral energy.
My idea all by itself
to smoke a cigarette, kill a hog,
buy a house, become an architect, brush
my teeth…
won’t accomplish any of those deals. But collateral
energy
don’t go no where without an idea. So the 2
are related—but NOT THE
SAME, damnit. They are
incommensurate. My goodwife is convinced
she can
“conserve energy” by taking it easy. My son “generates
energy”
biking up the mountain. Who’s right? There’s
an idea-logical mix of an IDEA of “idea” there
and an
IDEA of “energy.”
Another example of the actual
“dominance” and primary-ness of IDEA
(difference)
even while I’ve just been claiming PHYSICALITY &
MATTER
dominate our realtime sense of things.
Which?
Am I contradicting myself?
A paradox?

4. Mental Process requires Circular
(or more complex) chains of
Determination.
This brings in TIME—the time it takes, the feedback
circuitry that information passes along, thru the
circuitry and transforms
a system. Think of your cruise
control. Think of a guided missile. They
are self-correcting
regulating navigational systems operating by information:
differences triggered by changes in environment. Think of
a group POSITION PAPER—or CONSENSUS.
Feedback
circuits within and among individuals over time bringing about a
Change of Mind-Set in the Whole System. (Group, Class.)

5. In mental process the effects of difference are
to be regarded as
transforms (coded versions ) of
the difference which preceded them.


click-switch response/gradual response
digital/analogue
turn off/on flow
discontinuous /continuum

A trans-form is a form (idea, difference, theme,
characteristic) that is
(as it were) carried across
borders, lines, relays—and maintaining
(sustaining)
its information (difference, theme
,characteristic) in
another fo
rm: x x x x x x x x x not a great example
—but
maybe you get the idea. Information goes thru
a system, class, culture:
changing form but preserving
the info (differences).

Look at a horizon, write an essay:
change in continuity, continuity
in change. .Transforms thru a circuitry.

6. The description and classification of these
processes of transformation
discloses a
hierarchy of logical types immanent in
the phenomenal.


The Hierarchy of Logical Types—Bateson took on
this way of
thinking and talking about organization
from Russell & Whitehead: collaborators
in math
and philosophy and it’s at the heart of all his cross-
disciplinary thinking
about “information” and
“communication” and “learning” –about mind
minding
and nature evolving.

For Bateson: these 6 aspects or characteristics of
MIND (mental process) are
ALL variations on a
theme (the pattern that connects)—transformations
of a Governing Idea (a controlling meta-force, say) that
runs THRU the whole (not
just inside “heads”—but
systemic circuitry including the blind man and
his cane,
the boy and his automobile, a group in a room: all
components
(parts) of minding going on and organized
HIERARCHICALLY





Organic organization is “hierarchical”—
horizontal vertical upside down
right
side up: there are LEVELS of organization
and ordinate/subordinate
relationships,
circuits and circuitry, linear and non linear,
constellational
and sequential and simultaneous
and “fixed” and “flowing” etc.

Arches—not anarchy. Gk. ARKOS: ruler,
ARKHEIN: to begin, rule.
Govern.



For This Conversation, it doesn’t matter what
the token terms are: the
organization (structure)
is what COUNTS. Except for the bottom line
(consider it a truncation) most of the nodes are
super-ordinate and subordinate: they govern
and are governed, receive information both ways
or all directions
if we can extrapolate this structure
to “infinity,” transform and pass it along
(“up/down”
“over & over.”).

“Evil” (I.E.upos: up from below) literally (descriptively)
occurs when the
hierarchical organization breaks down
or breaks up.

Mixed Metaphor and Mixed Levels of Logical Type
occur when the values
and terminology of a “lower”
(or upper) level are imposed (unknowingly) on
the
upper or lower level. When I or the Human Species
project our terms and
values on the “whole”— it can be
described as mixing logical levels of type. Etc.

When husband/wife “talk” about “marriage” in
husband/wife terms and
values: a mix of logical
type & level. When we in this class or community
talk
about the CLASS (which is not a member of us)
or the College in our human-terms:
a mix of logical level and type.

Mix happens. In human thinking and discourse;
the mix of levels of logical types
(like mixing metaphors)
is ongoing and can be said to account for ERROR &
“evil” and HUMOR and Play & Creativity & Invention

There’s a difference that makes a DIFFERENCE
between knowing about the MIX of logical levels
and types and the necessary errors and creative play
they generate, than in Not Knowing. Need we argue?

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