Email to the Universe discussion group, Week Five!

Alfred Korzybski 

By Gregory Arnott, guest blogger

[Today's section is pages 79-82 of the print version, e.g. from "Old Man On a Balcony: Views of Monterey Bay #10" to the end of Part I. I forgot to post that at the end of last week's episode. -- Tom]

With these short entries we finish Part 1 of Email to the Universe and begin to move into some more Advanced Head Trips.

Allow me, my friends, a couple of sophistries:

First: If we are to understand ego and perception in the way that RAW intends, we could consider each of us gods who are in complete control or slaves of their own universe. Thus when we speak to each other there is an ontological conflict. Language is the composite that makes our cosmos and also what allows us to build a bridge between our separate universes; infinite care should be allocated to these divine interactions.

Second: I tried explaining Korzybski's "the word is not the thing" to my five year old daughter this week during a discussion about the Great God Pan and Jesus as "the Lord of the Dance." I asked her to lay out her hand and say "I have a ring in my palm." She did and I asked if there was actually a ring in her palm. "No." I then asked her to put out her palm and laid out of my rings in her hand. I asked her to be silent for a stretch and asked her if there was a ring in her hand although she hadn't said anything. I know this is trite but it seemed to be an effective lesson. 

RAW's short jibe at the dishonorable and happily late-of-this-world rev. Falwell made me think of the disaster that is Abrahamic religion and their sick relations amongst themselves. Until humanity can understand that religion is but one way to regard the world around us it will remain as a poison that divides humanity and obscures the truth. Perhaps by understanding that religion should never be a source of morals (decency shouldn't be regulated by a hypothetical old man sitting on a cloud, i.e. rape and murder are generally bad regardless of whose watching) but rather remain as a metaphysical idiom we could declaw its vicious nature.

Sir Arthur Eddington

 
Sir Arthur Eddington, who is quoted twice in the closing parables was an early twentieth century astronomer who would have been considered a "science popularizer" in today's lexicon. Probably what endeared this man's works to RAW was his contribution to explaining the implications of Einstein's relativity to the layman.  I'm going to inflict some haikus upon you that I wrote during a walk in Cooper's Rock National Forest recently:

rivulets of sun

midst the shadows and foliage

there dances kether

everywhere -- fern fronds

reminds me of a white porch

where she hung ferns once

a candy corn slug

no, a petal resembling

a sea cucumber

[Next week: Discussion of Part II begins, pages 83-104 in the print edition, through "Get Your New York Garbage Online" in the ebook. -- The Management.]