Saturday, June 17, 2017

Language

Words are indices made out of squiggles. Codes made of squiggles map onto memories in various ways in various languages. Phonetic languages map squiggles onto a speech database, pictogram and heiroglyphic languages map squiggles onto the structure of the system of squiggle itself, leading to a sort of natural archaeology of its own meaning. The latter forms of writing can deviate greatly from speech. In any case, words and speech hold their basic meaning through consistency of use across population overtime. The basic technology of using squiggles to index a large number of patterns holds across audio and visual inputs. Once an experience of note is correctly encoded in all its various media, from auditory patterns to speech to writing to images even to action loops, a network connection forms that facilitates the formation of concepts. Concepts become object-like in that they also form networks that form higher concepts. Concepts can easily escape the confines of individual biology such that they are only perceivable intersubjectively. The difference between objects and lower level concepts blurs the higher the concept level one views them from. Indeed, from a collective consciousness, boundaries between objects, concepts, even people blur. However, at the most basic level of perception, there is still a real perceivable difference between objects and concepts. (The previous statement is not really backed up by any evidence other than that it seems absurd to have words in a world where objects and concepts didn't differ in any important way, I much rather take the simpler explanation that objects have become too small to notice next to the big concepts).

Of course, it would be great if we could "rectify" our languages, as Confucius says but that the task seems so unsurmountable only reminds us that we live in an age where symbolic systems are battling fiercely for supremacy. The size of our concepts have grown in proportion to the energy that we consume. These large concepts can only be wielded by collectives and most of these collectives expend immense energy erecting barriers to access these concepts and the objects that they control. Wars manifest themselves in whatever way they can, like the fruits of decay, between concepts too large for any individual to perceive. But it seems to create new concepts, old ones must be destroyed.

Perhaps it was never a good time for the task of rectifying language. Perhaps it has only ever been done the only way it could, in piecemeal. Babel, if it ever existed, must not have lasted very long anyway.

What tools do we have at our disposal?

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Father

Father is an often misused word that therefore become a target of a wide range of attacks.

Father, with a capital F, is often used to signify authority or origin, both senses of which have little to do with the experience of a biological father. I think the biological father is a strange figure, an identity which is still in its experimental stages (beta tester fathers), a role which progresses towards becoming a necessity while still leaving open the possibility that he is optional so long as resources are provided to the truly necessary caretakers.

father, with a lower case f, veers toward friendship at times, a benefactor, a mentor, but other times, he could seem more like an exploiter or dominator. Not every child is lucky enough to have a benevolent father. Such children are the most likely to misuse the word to refer to something other than his or her father, to defer the man to an idea, to displace the trauma that could have been unnecessary had fatherhood not been demanded upon societies (why does he exist in such a role?). The rejection of the Father (the displaced, misperceived father) could potentially return fatherhood to its rightfully ambiguous place.

father as a symbol; realistically rendered as father, not the father or Father or fathers, is a thing very few people (only siblings) have in common. To attempt to distill universal characteristics, enough to fill a potent symbol, isn't easy. Symbols based upon fatherhood tend less to be one liners and tend more to express themselves as tomes and ouvres. The Father is one of our oldest and most entangled symbols.

More interesting than the subject of fathers is pretty much most of everything from video games to sex. Just now, I saw a group of people downstairs standing in a circle watching a small dog fuck a tiny dog. Everyone found it very amusing. Concomitantly, we are all very amusing2.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

Politics

Arbitration is also known as arbitrage -- the stock market correction, the self-regulating cycling of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen... the raison d'etre of life on earth.

Politics, another nounverb, designates the endeavor of arbitrating (policing) economies (symbolic ecosystems).

Economy

Economy* is a linguistic phenomenon. It means the naming (pricing) of ecosystems.

Large mammals developed symbolic systems (languages) to coordinate economy (growth of general energetics through symbolic exergy). With open arms (limb interface), they welcomed microbial life into their physicality (sovereignty). They took advantage of the alacrity of their microbial kins and became a hybrid life form (fungal dominant).

Symbols, like fungi, seek dominance.  The polis is the symbol's (fungi's) organizational form. It expresses outward in order to colonize and regulate. The network connections (communication) of discrete things** creates ordered chaos conforming to the nebulous universe. With gravity, in time, they contract and harden.

Though the meaning of my speech is timestamped I can still speak as if it were hard (atemporal).

The temporality of symbols is arbitrary***(The arbitration of signs. Politics).




*Nounverb (how silly to separate the two)
**Objects of all orders of temporality
***Arbitrary doesn't mean random, it means up for arbitration.

Natural Language

It was said by Heidegger that language is the house of being.

It was said by Lacan that language is structured like the mind.

It was said by Paul Stamets that the brain is structured like mycelium and that fungi regulate the structures of ecosystems.

Therefore, our symbolic edifice (Being) should be structured like ecosystems under the direction of the mind (fungal brain).

The efficiency of growth of general energetics through communication (economy) seeks to surpass that of fungal spores.

The exergy of symbols should be meditated upon in a basic way.

Symbolic Waste

Our languages are primitive and shitty (sucked dry).

Experimental artists wonder why their experiments don't connote, don't emote, don't signify as intuition would suggest they should. It must be a fault of the art. Not.

The arbitrariness of symbols has been taken seriously but not literally.

Everything should be taken literally.

The telos of an advanced symbolic system would make full use of the bandwidth of signification such that every combination(permutation?) should yield a meaning (fuck taboos and censorship).

Advancements in linguistics, not just the passive study of but also the active creation of, are much needed.