10/31/24

Looking at N. J. Enfield’s Book (2022) “Language vs. Reality” (Part 1 of 23)

0841 This is an encore performance to the sequence of blogs on the post-truth condition.

As such, this examination wraps up Part Two of Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

Take a gander at the full title of Enfield’s text, Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good For Lawyers and Bad For Scientists.

Surely, that sounds like a book that belongs to a set of books on the post-truth condition.

So, the numbers continue to build from the last examination.

0842 The book is published by MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The author is a professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney and the Director of the Sydney Centre for Language Research.

0843 The title of the book is a play on John B. Carroll’s (editor) collection of essays by Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941 AD), published in 1956 under the title, Language, Thought and Reality.

To me, this implies that “thought” has transubstantiated into “versus”. The substance of the word has changed, so to speak. The word, “versus”, derives from the same root as the word, “adversary”. So, if “thought” once used to nominally stand between “language” and “reality”, then today, “thought” is confounded with “adversary”, and that might serve as a hint concerning the nature of our adversity.

Perhaps, this is not the only notable feature of the title.

Then again, a book titled, Language, Adversary and Reality, might not fly off the shelves in feel-good book-outlets. It is not as if, next to the Self-Help section, there is a Come To Grips With Your Doom section.

So, expect me to play with the title throughout this examination.

0844 Another notable feature of this book, at least to me, is that the author is not acquainted with Razie Mah’s re-articulation of human evolution, in three masterworks, The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define the Word “Religion” (available at smashwords and other e-book venues). The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language. Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk. Plus, the evolution of talk comes with the twist, humorously called, “the first singularity”.

So, Enfield’s work serves as a marker for the twilight of the Age of Ideas and the dawning of the Age of Triadic Relations.

0845 Okay, let me dwell on the idea that the evolution of language is not the same as the evolution of talk.

Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues, and also, for the most part, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog for January, February and March, 2024) divides the evolution of talk in the following manner.

0846 The first period starts with the divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineage (7 million of years ago) and ends with the bipedalism of the so-called “southern apes” (around 3.5 to 4 million years ago).

In the second period, australopithecines adapt to mixed forest and savannah by adopting the strategy of obligate collaborative foraging. Eventually, Homo erectus figures out the controlled use of fire, leading to the domestication of fire, starting (perhaps) around 800 thousand years ago.

The third period, lasts from the domestication of fire to the earliest appearance of anatomically modern humans. During this period, hand talk becomes fully linguistic, religion evolves as an adaptation to large social circles (of 150 individuals and more) and hominins use the voice for synchronization during seasonal mega-band and occasional tribal gatherings. Then, sexual selection does the rest and the voice comes under voluntary neural control.

0847 The fourth period starts when the voice, now under voluntary control, joins hand-talk, resulting in a dual-mode way of talking, hand-speech talk. Hand talk retains the iconicity and indexality that grounds reference in things that can be pictured or pointed to. But, speech adds a symbolic adornment, which starts as a sing-along and ends up taking a life of its own. Four centuries ago, the North American Plains Indians and the Australian aborigines still practiced hand-speech talk, with full fledged sign and verbal languages. Now, their hand-speech talk is all but dead.

0848 That death, along with the demise of all hand-speech talking languages, comes (and came) due to exposure to speech-alone talk, which has significantly different semiotic qualities than hand-talk and hand-speech talk. Hand-talk is iconic and indexal. The referent precedes the gestural word. Speech-alone talk is purely symbolic. The spoken word labels ‘something’, and sometimes that ‘something’ cannot be imaged or indicated.

Well, it must be real because speech-alone talk provides a label for an explicit abstraction!

0849 Here is a picture of the transition labeled, “the first singularity”.

0850 Consider the words, “language”, “adversary” and “reality”. Each word is a label for ‘something’ that cannot be pictured or pointed to. These words do not exist in hand-talk or hand-speech talk, because the referent cannot be imaged or indicated using a manual-brachial gesture. What does this imply? Does a referent exist because a label has been attached to it? Or, does an explicit abstraction properly label referents that exist irrespective of the spoken word? This type of question is addressed in Razie Mah’s masterwork, How To Define The Word “Religion”.

Fortunately, the author of the book under examination is unaware of the first singularity and the difficulties that a change in the way that humans talk poses. Human evolution comes with a twist.

0851 So why examine this work?

Well, I expect to see the evolution of talk manifesting in this book, even though the author is not aware of Razie Mah’s academic labors.

Surely, Enfield’s work details recent scientific research in linguistics and cognitive psychology, in an attempt to provide the reader with a coherent view of how language is good for lying lawyers and bad for honest scientists.

What will this examination reveal?

08/8/24

Artistic Concordism. Harmony between Genesis and Evolution?

0001 On August 14, 2024, Razie Mah, the blogger and author of The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define the Word “Religion, releases an e-book, titled “Exercises in Artistic Concordism“.

Concordism is harmony between religion and science, particulary, the biblical origin stories and evolutionary history. Concordism attempts to build a bridge. But there is always a problem.

0002 According to current interpretations of these matters, either religion or science has to give.

Enter semiotics. Semiotics is the study of sign-relations. Sign-relations are triadic relations. Triadic relations? Thirdness (the triadic realm of normal contexts) brings secondness (the dyadic realm of actuality) into relation with firstness (the monadic realm of possibility).

0003 What if Genesis One is a sign of the evolutionary record?

If one reads the Creation Story through the lens of Charles Peirce’s typology of natural signs, then each day of creation offers icons, indexes and symbols of a corresponding epoch. The days, like pearls, string perfectly onto the evolutionary record. The aesthetic correspondence is beautiful to behold.

0004 What has to give?

The interpretation that the Creation Story is itself the revelation? Perhaps, Genesis One records a revelation. That means there is a visionary, which brings up the question. How do we (as the ones who will hear the words of the vision) evolve to be who we are created to be? We are created to recognize the signs of God. What does this mean?

And, what if the stance that the Creation Story is a vision gives us ways to answer these questions?

0005 What else has to give?

Our theoretical formulation of human evolution? Yes, there is more to our evolution than fossils and genetics. What if, as the Genesis text indicates, our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in? What if there is a cultural twist in recent prehistory?

0006 If one reads the awkward textual transition between the Creation Story and the stories of Adam and Eve as discontinuity, then one may wonder why all the written origins stories of the ancient Near East portray the origin of humans as a recent event. Humans are created, de novo, by differentiated gods.

Why can’t any of the civilizations of the ancient Near East see past a time horizon that an anthropologist may place, say, at the start of the Ubaid archaeological period of southern Mesopotamia?

Why can’t these ancient civilizations see the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

These queries lead to a much more inflammatory question. Why is our current Lebenswelt not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

Imagine the answer to that one!

0007 Today, civilized folk are abuzz about the coming singularity. What if it is not the first?

Uh oh, the first singularity is a scientific hypothesis that harmonizes a cultural twist in human evolution with the stories of Adam and Eve.

0008 Both religious appreciations of the text and scientific blind-spots must transform if there is to be concord.

Plus, that concord will be neither religious nor scientific.

It will be artistic.

01/2/24

Avoiding Babylon and the Quest for the Grail of the Unholy (Part 1 of 1)

0001 The actual title of this blog is Looking at Avoiding Babylon’s 2023 Year in Review Podcast.

0002 One avenue to the podcast is https://spiritustv.com@avoidingbabylon.

At the moment of this writing, these comedic, yet earnest, podcasters are also on youtube and rumble.

0003 The current title employs an Arthurian legend riff, because, if anything, the four interlocutors in this video elaborate a sign-relation specifying what Pope Francis, seemingly simultaneously pope and poseur, means to each one. The appropriate Tarot card is the Hierophant. So, that is what I will label this confluence of fallible human and political position.

0004 In general, the sign is a triadic relation where a sign-vehicle stands for a sign-object in regards to a sign-interpretant.

Here is a picture.

0005 In a specifying sign, a content-based sign-vehicle (SV_s) stands for a situation-based sign object (SO_s) in regards to the question of what it means to me, operating on the potential of ongoing content (SI_s).

The actions of the Hierophant play a prominent role in the year-end review. These actions serve as a specifying sign-vehicle (SV_s) that stands for the reviewers drinking from a chalice of unholiness (SO_s) in regards to what the news events of 2023 mean to traditional Catholics (SI_s).

0006 Here is a picture.

0006 Now, the members of the discussion do not quest for the grail of the unholy. Rather, they suffer it. The elixir that they reluctantly imbibe is a distillate of the rotted fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, vaporized and condensed by nefarious operators similar to those fingered in Charles Theodore Murr’s book (2022) Murder in the 33rd Degree.

0007 Razie Mah offers two snapshots of this distillate.

One is Looking at Sam Smith and Kim Petras’s Music Video (2022) “Unholy”, presented in Razie Mah’s blog on February 11, 2023, several days after the Grammy awards.

Two is Looking at Carlo Vigano’s Speech (2021) “How the Revolution of Vatican II Serves the New World Order”,presented during July 2022, in the same blog.

This is what the talents at Avoiding Babylon taste.

0008 So, what is this distillate?

Well, the answer is obvious.

The distillate is the liquid in the grail of the unholy.

Surely, the elixir is spiritual. But, it is not the blood of Christ. Its mash is stamped from the modern grapes of alienation and resentment.

0009 At this moment, pause, and take a glance at the title of this blog. The title proposes a quest, not for the distillate, but for the grail of the unholy. The grail is the vessel, the cup, the chalice of what is unholy.

0010 Spoken words are so slippery.

Perhaps, the following articulation is more suitable.

I propose a quest for the doctrine of original sin.

0011 The doctrine of original sin is the vessel of the unholy, purchased by Christ in the transaction of all time, bringing good out of the fall of Adam and Eve.

0012 But, has not Augustine’s doctrine of original sin been disproven by modern science?

This is a very good question.

To witness one Christian author caught in the tentacles of this “has not”, consider Looking at Andrew Ter Ern Loke’s Book (2022) “The Origin of Humanity and Evolution”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog between November 30 and 1, 2023.

0013 I propose that Avoiding Babylon pose this question to their audience, in an open forum, along with the following queries. (1) Is Augustine’s doctrine of original sin still valid after modern science demonstrates that there is no genetic bottleneck, as would be expected if Adam and Eve are parents of all humans? (2) Does Augustine’s diagnosis of concupiscence still apply? (3) What about other diagnoses, such as the Protestant’s doctrine of total depravity? Do they still apply? Finally, (4) are there any alternate formulations of original sin proposed after Augustine but before the modern Age of Ideas?

0014 I suspect that the answers will be: (1) No. (2) Yes. (3) Yes, look no further than the demos-racket party members and their rino consorts beholden to the glow-baloney-ists. (4) Yes, Thomas Aquinas proposes that original sin is the deprivation of original justice.

0015 In a subsequent open forum, I propose that the audience of Avoiding Babylon riddle this question. Does Aquinas’s proposal that original sin is the deprivation of original justice apply to human evolution?

In other words, is there a twist in human evolution?

Is human evolution shaken, not stirred?

Has the living world of humanity changed?

Is the German word, “Lebenswelt”, appropriate?

What if our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

0016 Why stop there?

Can the Lebenswelt that we evolved in correspond to an era of original justice?

Can our current Lebenswelt correspond to an era of original sin?

0017 Of course, with questions like these, an open forum may descend into chaos. To date, no one seems willing to connect the dots, except for Razie Mah. That give this literary figure a certain daring. He even proposes a label for the transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.

The label is “the first singularity”.

Yes, there is an archaeology of the fall.

0018 If Aquinas’s concept of original justice applies to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, then how are we to envision this… um… Edenic existence?

Perhaps, inquirers may consider the lives of newborns, infants, toddlers and young children.

These innocent creatures did not evolve to grow up in civilization, did they?

0019 Two recent blogs by Razie Mah assist in opening the modern mind to the possibility that we evolved to be what children expect us to be, which is nothing like what we adults actually are in today’s unconstrained social complexity.

One is Looking at John Deely’s Book (2010) “Semiotic Animal”, appearing from October 30 to 2, 2023. John Deely (1942-2017 AD) is the only postmodern semiotician buried in the cemetery adjacent to Saint Vincent’s College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. His last student, Brian Kemple, runs the Lyceum website and is worthy of an interview. So are the contributors to his online journal, Reality.

Two is a series of examinations of the works of Michael Tomasello, recently retired Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (and may be living near Duke University in North Carolina). These will appear from March 31 to January 4, 2024 (and will be wrapped into an e-book titled, Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), soon to be available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

0020 So, the question is, “Are these little tykes expecting us to be, who we evolved to be? And, if so, then why do we seem to fail to live up to their expectations, say nothing of our own expectations for ourselves?”

I suspect that Dr. Tomasello might want to take a swing at that hardball question.

0021 Imagine the implications of associating Aquinas’s original justice to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0022 As for our current Lebenswelt of original sin, the prior specifying sign says that Pope Francis, as a premier news maker of 2023 (SV_s), stands for traditional Catholics being forced to drink elixir from the grail of the unholy (SO_s) in regards to the question of what it means to believers, who are concerned about ongoing events (SI_s).

0023 Of course, scientists like to call these news items, “memes”, easily transmitted virus-like units of cultural information. Today, memes are everywhere. They are incessantly broadcast. So if the Hierophant employs memes, then what is the nature of memes?

Here, Looking at Daniel Dennett’s Book (2017) “From Bacteria, to Bach and Back”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in December 2023, offers a notion that memes, bits of gossip, pithy justifications of concupiscence, demoralizing proclamations, and label-attaching accusations involve the specifying sign (as already noted) as well as the interventional sign.

0024 The interventional sign?

The interventional sign is like a mirror of the specifying sign.

In a specifying sign-relation, the content-based sign-vehicle (SV_s) is picked up by the senses as a mind-independent being. The situation-based sign-object (SO_s) is mind-dependent.

In an interventional sign-relation, the content-based sign-object (SO_s) is available to the senses as an apparently mind-independent being, which is totally backwards from the specifying sign. The perspective-based sign-vehicle (SV_i) is mind-dependent.

0025 For the interventional sign-relation, a perspective-based idea in the mind of someone (or something) (SV_i) stands for what the participants sense (SO_i) in regards to the content-based question, what is happening, drawing upon the possibility that ‘something’ is happening (SI_i).

0026 Here is a picture for the meme at hand.

0027 Note that the sign-object of the interventional sign (SO_i) is contiguous with the sign-vehicle of the specifying sign(SV_s).

However, the interventional sign-relation is much more difficult to assess than the specifying sign-relation.

0028 The lesson is on display in Avoiding Babylon’s podcast of the year 2023 in review.

The Hierophant offers an elixir that tastes like poison to traditional Catholics and the interlocutors ask what is happening. They cannot figure out the potential of ‘something’ happening’ because they cannot ideate, much less imagine, that the current Hierophant is an object (SO_i), called into being by an alien intelligence guiding what is happening and the potential of ‘something’ happening (SI_i) in the process of implementing an alien idea, plan or judgment (SV_i).

0029 Now, substitute the word, “unholy”, for “alien”.

An unholy idea (SV_i) stands for this Hierophant making the news (SO_i) in regards to the question of what is happening arising from the potential of ‘something’ happening (SI_i).

0030 No, this does not sound like concupiscence.

This sounds like something far more deranged.

0031 Has the Yaltaboath of Modernism found its Voice?

Does the Modern Yaltaboath seek to destroy the chalice of the unholy, which has been disproven, then disregarded, but still retains its power to contain the elixir of whatever idea, plan or judgment that our unconstrained minds can conceive?

Will Avoiding Babylon conduct a quest for original sin?

Will they seek to discover the cup of the unholy capable of containing the juices of Modernism?

11/3/23

Looking at Andrew Ter Ern Loke’s Book (2022) ” The Origin of Humanity and Evolution” (Part 20 of 22)

0169 Even though the theological implications of the coincidence between the stories of Adam and Eve and the Ubaid archaeological period of southern Mesopotamia may seem far removed from Loke’s proposal that Adam and Eve are the first ancestors to receive the label, “image of God”, the distance is not so great.

0170 First, the Lebenswelt that we evolved in associates to the creation of humans in the image of God (in the first chapter of Genesis).

Second, our current Lebenswelt associates with Adam and Eve receiving the spoken honorific, “Image Bearers of God”, and then promptly disobeying the only commandment that God gives them.

0171 Section 5.8.2 discusses an awkward difficulty that arises with Adam getting awarded the appellation, “Image Bearer of God”, that presumably passes to his sons, Cain and Abel. Okay… let me correct that… to their (at the time) only remaining son, Cain.

Cain runs away, finds a wife, then moves off to start a city. Loke wonders whether Cain’s wife is merely an animal that happens to be an anatomically modern human. Or, is she created as an image of God, yet is not aware that God could give someone the spoken honorific, “Image Bearer of God”?

0172 Razie Mah’s masterwork, An Archaeology of the Fall (available at smashwords and other e-book venues), treats the awkward issue as follows.

After Cain murders Abel, he complains to God that others (the ones without the rapidly devaluing honorific, “Image Bearer of God”) will kill him. So, God puts a mark on Cain. That mark happens to be the body paint of high-ranking warrior in the village harboring Cain’s wife-to-be.

Of course, when Cain walks into the village wearing such marks, everyone freaks out. The shaman tries to put an end to Cain, but ends up accidently killing the number one warrior in the village. Then, the shaman falls face down before Cain and Cain impetuously kills him.

In order to celebrate, Cain’s future bride (along with her team mates) take the body of the dead warrior and cook up a batch of delicious porridge. She is proud of herself and is disappointed when Cain (after realizing that the meat in the porridge comes from the dead warrior) decides to not finish off his bowl.

0173 Yes, communication in speech-alone talk can be treacherous.

Tell someone, “Get that body out of here and bring me something to eat.”, and see what gets served.

11/2/23

Looking at Andrew Ter Ern Loke’s Book (2022) ” The Origin of Humanity and Evolution” (Part 21 of 22)

0174 In chapter six, Loke considers Noah. Noah receives the tarnished title, “Image Bearer of God”, through descent from Adam. The title passes through the doctrine of Traducianism, so the lineage must be genetic. However, the tarnished title also seems to pass beyond Seth’s family line, so to speak, into those animals who are anatomically humans, who laugh at and ridicule Noah for imagining that God would or could punish them. Here, the passage must not be genetic. Maybe it is genealogical. Maybe it is the acquisition of speech-alone talk instead of hand-speech talk.

0175 Does Noah’s flood cover the whole earth?

It depends on how you define the word, “earth”.

0176 Here is a Greimas square that seems appropriate.

0177 The “earth” is the focal word (A). It is what is covered by Noah’s flood.

In contrast to the Genesis use of the word, “earth” (A), is the world of southern Mesopotamia (B). To everyone ridiculing Noah, the world of southern Mesopotamia is all there is. It is their “earth”. So, Noah’s flood destroys this “earth”.

The genealogies (of sorts) immediately following the flood (C) speak against the idea that southern Mesopotamia is the entire earth. The table of nations makes sense when Noah’s children are accepted into the royalty of other peoples based on the celebrity of Noah’s achievement. As far as Genesis is concerned, nations are founded because they receive direct descendants within the Image Bearer of God lineage. It is as if these jurisdictions are not relevant until then.

0178 What does this imply?

Southern Mesopotamia is the center of the world, if not the entire “earth”, until that catastrophic flood, which is noted as a break in the Sumerian king list (D).

This list (D) contrasts with the Genesis table of nations (C) because it represents the records of a public institution. It is entirely possible that the family of Seth lives entirely within public institutions in the Ubaid and Uruk (and later, Sumerian) traditions. So, the Genesis story of Noah’s flood is an insider’s view of a very public shaking of the Uruk political order.

The Sumerian king list (D) suggests that Noah’s flood (A) is indeed, not planetary, since the kingship descends (from heaven) soon afterwards. In this, the list (D) speaks against a literal reading of the Genesis story (A). Also, the list (D) supports the notion (what Loke calls Type C concordism) that Genesis belongs to the literature of the ancient Near East.

This list (D) complements the world of southern Mesopotamia (B), because the king list represents the establishment of order within the Sumerian world. The Sumerian king list is written centuries after the flood. The flood marks a break. The flood denotes the end of a Plutonic year, so to speak.

0179 What else does this imply?

Consider the following Greimas square.

0180 Speech-alone talk and Adam’s lineage starts in the Ubaid (A). Speech-alone talk spreads out from southern Mesopotamia to nearby hand-speech talking cultures.

The subsequent Uruk period (B) contrasts with this beginning. Uruk clearly differentiates from surrounding Neolithic cultures, who now practice speech-alone talk, but are far behind in terms of realizing the creative potential of this new tool of the intellect.

0181 Noah’s flood marks an ecological catastrophe, partially brought about by deforestation in northern Mesopotamia and partially brought about by (what modern insurance policy makers call) divine intervention. During the Uruk archaeological period, speech-alone talk floods into other lands. Egypt, Iran, the Indian subcontinent, China, the Mediterranean, eastern Europe and the lands north of the Caspian Sea, manifest social changes due to exposure to speech-alone talk.

Noah’s flood covers the “earth” of southern Mesopotamia.

The speech-alone talk flood covers the entire Earth.

This “flood” of speech-alone talk (C) speaks against Uruk as composing the entire earth (B) and complements the origination of speech-alone talk with the Ubaid (A).

0182 Consequently, the conditions for the table of nations, following Noah’s flood, are set (D) as the lands surrounding the Uruk, each in its own way, start to undergo trends towards unconstrained social complexity. These trends (D) contradict the exclusive claim of Sumeria as the only place where labor and social specialization increase wealth and power (A). At the same time, these trends (D) complement the achievements that already have occurred in southern Mesopotamia (B).

By the time that the Sumerian Dynastic coalesces, at 2800 U0′, dynastic civilization begins in Egypt and unconstrained social complexity is seeded along the Indus River Valley and the great rivers of China. On the Russian steppes, the proto-Indo-European cultures are already undergoing a transformation into formidable migratory chiefdoms. The Bronze Age is apparent in the Aegean. Even in the Americas, there are indications that speech-alone talk has arrived, on the western coast of what is now Ecuador.

0183 The entire Genesis sequence of stories and genealogies, stretching from Adam to Terah, coincides with the period from the start of the Ubaid (0 U0′) to the end of Ur III (3700 U0′).

If that is the case, then why isn’t the text longer and more elaborate? Why don’t the first eleven chapters of Genesis clearly blend in with the written historical material of the ancient Near East?

One suggestion is found in chapter 13C of An Archaeology of the Fall.

On one hand, when Abram starts his journey, he leaves Sumerian civilization behind. Not all of it, but nearly all of it. The story of the Tower of Babel is no accident. After Ur III, Sumerian is a dead language, known only in writing.

On the other hand, Sarai, remembers the fairy tales that her mother taught her.

11/1/23

Looking at Andrew Ter Ern Loke’s Book (2022) ” The Origin of Humanity and Evolution” (Part 22 of 22)

0184 In chapter seven, Loke concludes.

The concept of Adam and Eve as the “Image Bearers of God” stands at the core of this book.

0185 As much as the author tries to capitalize on the idea that Adam and Eve receive a title, and that this title passes to all humanity through a genetic… oh, a not genetic mechanism, Loke does not arrive at his destination, the answer to the question of the Fall.

How is Original Sin passed from Adam to us?

Why is Jesus the New Adam?

0186 Before Traducianism is challenged by the science of genetics, these questions are easy to answer.

Afterwards, Traducianism itself becomes an example of langue, the mental processing that is arbitrarily related to parole, that is, speech-alone talk.

0187 Yet, there is hope. The first singularity coincides with the fall of Adam and Eve. What is old is made new again.

0188 Future inquiry will extend beyond the book-ends of total depravity and the loss of original justice, into the natures of true versus false and honest versus deceptive.

0189 Who are we?

The behavior of humans in our current Lebenswelt is so different from the behavior of humans in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, that we might as well label ourselves a different species.

0190 Here is my suggestion.

We should call all humans living in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, Homo sapiens.

We should call all humans living in our current Lebenswelt, Homo boobiens.

0191 Only Homo boobiens can acquire specialized knowledge so exclusive that it makes them unbelievably stupid. In our world of unconstrained complexity, high intelligence empowers profound Dummheit. Just ask the experts. They will tell you that their recipes for disaster are utterly sensible and moral.

0192 Perhaps, in future academic controversies, the coincidence of the fall of Adam and Eve and the hypothesis of the first singularity will inspire evolutionary scientists to compete with Christian theologians in accounting for the Pascal sacrifice.

The Christian theologian says, “Christ dies for our sins.”

The scientist replies, “No, Christ dies for our stupidity.”

Sin results in death. So does stupidity.

Plus, we are never so stupid as when we play word games in order to lie to ourselves.

0193 The attraction of Loke’s theoretical framework, that Adam and Eve are the first to receive the God-given honorific, “Image Bearer of God”, is that the title is immediately spoiled in the Genesis 2.4-4 narrative, where Adam and Eve demonstrate that, while they are certainly created in the image of God, they cannot live up to the title. None of us can.

0194 There is good reason. Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. So, we cannot even live up to who we evolved to be. We are tempted to believe that our own spoken words picture or point to their referents, when they are really placeholders in systems of differences (at least, according to Ferdinand de Saussure, the founder of modern language studies). We can place a label on anything, then use those labels to manufacture a coherent network of relational elements that seems totally convincing, because every element of the relational structure is occupied by a label.

0195 Inadvertently, the author reveals this in his defense of Traducianism.

In his innocence and earnestness, Loke demonstrates how we may use spoken words to confuse ourselves. Can we label the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “intelligence” and “stupidity”? The moment that we do, some customers will demand the “intelligent” fruits and leave the “stupid” fruits for the less choosy.

Are the picky customers ahead of the game?

Or, are the less choosy correct in concluding that the fruits are all the same?

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

0196 With that said, I conclude my examination of this work, full of intelligence and stupidity, just as one expects from a descendant of Adam and Eve. My thanks go to the author. The arguments offered in this book tell me that we stand on the verge of a new age of understanding, where everything old is made new again.

08/31/23

Looking at Glenn Diesen’s Book (2019) “The Decay … And Resurgence…” (Part 1 of 21)

0001 The book before me is Dr. Glenn Diesen’s contribution to Routledge’s Series, Rethinking Asia and International Relations. The text carries the full title of The Decay of Western Civilization and the Resurgence of Russia: Between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. The series editor is Emilian Kavalski, the Li Dak Sum Chair in China-Eurasia Relations and International Studies at the University of Nottingham in Ningho, China. At the time of publication, Dr. Diesen is a Visiting Scholar at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and Adjunct Research Fellow at Western Sydney University. Diesen’s research interests are in international relations, political science, international political economy and Russian studies. Say nothing of history.

0002 So… um… how does this book overlap with my interests?

I am interested in civilization. The persistent question that arises in Razie Mah’s masterwork, An Archaeology of the Fall,is, “What potentiates civilisation?”

0003 Consider the hypothesis of the first singularity.

The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language. Our capacities for language evolve in the milieu of hand talk. The ancestor to our own species practices fully linguistic hand talk. Very successfully, I might add. The voice is recruited to assist in synchronizing large groups (plus, a little sexual selection gets thrown in). Once the vocal tract is under voluntary neural control, speech is added to hand talk at the start of our own species, Homo sapiens.

Homo sapiens practices a dual-mode of talking, hand-speech talk, for over 200,000 years before the first singularity. The first singularity starts with the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.

As the ocean levels rise at the start of our current interglacial, two hand-speech talking cultures in the then dry Persian Gulf are forced into the same territory. One is a Mesolithic fishing culture occupying the river ravines and coast. The other is a Developed Neolithic culture (agriculture mixed in with stockbreeding). These two cultures meld, forming a pidgin then a creole language. That creole language turns out to be the first instance of speech-alone talk.

0004 The semiotic qualities of speech-alone talk are significantly different than hand-speech talk (and hand-talk). I won’t get into the details, but the consequences are enormous.

Hand-speech talk facilitates constrained social complexity (which, to me, calls to mind Diesen’s term, “gemeinschaft”, literally translated into the “rod of generality”, coinciding with tradition, intuition and, what modern scientists deride as “irrational thought”).

Speech-alone talk permits unconstrained social complexity. Spoken words can be used to label things that cannot be pictured at pointed to, such as the term, “gesellschaft” (another one of Diesen’s key terms, literally translated into the “rod of the journeyman”, coinciding with specialization, analysis and, what scientists misleadingly call “rational thought”).

0005 The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia starts, say, 7800 years ago, which I label 0 Ubaid Zero Prime (0 U0′ or “zero uh-oh prime”, with “uh-oh” expressed as if reacting to an accident or a mishap).

At 0 U0′, the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the only culture in the world practicing speech-alone talk. All the other Neolithic, Epipaleolithic and Mesolithic cultures of the time practice hand-speech talk.

Today, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk. The only (now dying) cultures that remember their hand-speech traditions are the Australian Aborigines and the North American Plains Indians. Both are losing the hand-component of their hand-speech talk, due to exposure to speech-alone talking cultures and civilizations. The receding of original justice, when all social circles work in harmony towards human flourishing in a world of signification, is nearly complete.

0006 Weirdly, that recession lies beneath the surface of recently examined books in anthropology.

Consider the following reviews, appearing in the Razie Mah blog.

Looking at Ian Hodder’s Book (2018) “Where Are We Heading?” (June 2023)Looking at David Graeber and David Wengrow’s Chapter (2021) “Why The State Has No Origins” (March 2023)

08/3/23

Looking at Glenn Diesen’s Book (2019) “The Decay … And Resurgence…” (Part 21 of 21)

0180 Postmodernists recoil from grand narratives.

Yet, they embrace parlor games.

Perhaps, for their amusement, they may consider contemporary figures as stand-ins for the theodrama of the second civilisational cycle just imagined.

Or, they may ridicule the concept of a Plutonic year or the relevance of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions as a clock on the Celestial Earth.

In their distraction, they ignore the grand narratives that Diesen’s time-honoring Greimas square potentiate.

Isn’t imagination what we need?

0181 In several points in this book, Diesen says that the Russian… well… even more broadly… the Eurasian resurgence needs an ideological vision that organizes gesellschaft. The same statement-of-need is found other books on contemporary international politics.

In Comments on Daniel Estulin’s Book (2021) “2045 Global Projects At War” (available at smashwords and other e-book venues), the commentary concludes with a sequence of interscopes that prepare a vision for the Chinese Datun, the conclusion of and the start of an opening of the Celestial Heavens (occurring in the years 2044 and 2045, respectively). This 2250 year cycle ties back to the passage of the first singularity through eastern Eurasia (now China), sometime after 1000 U0′.

The passage of the first singularity into northern Eurasia (now Russia) occurs around the same time, seeding the Kurgan culture, who tames horses and runs on wagons. Later, these migrating chiefdoms flood into western Europe and northern India in an exercise in elite dominance. The event is called “the Indo-European language expansion”.

The passage of the first singularity into western Eurasia winds through the Aegean, giving rise to late copper and bronze age civilizations. Do monuments such as Stonehenge signify the last efflorescence of hand-speech talking cultures or the adoption of speech-alone talk?

The passage of the first singularity into the Indian subcontinent initiates the settlement of the Indus floodplain, giving rise to the Harappan civilization.

The passage of the first singularity through Persia, directly east of Mesopotamia, occurs much earlier, seeding the Susa culture, which rises and then is overwhelmed by the neighboring Uruk culture. Doesn’t that sound like an original imprint for Iran, located at the crossroads of Eurasia?

0182 What am I saying?

I am interested in civilization. The persistent question that arises in Razie Mah’s masterwork, An Archaeology of the Fall,is, “What potentiates civilisation?”

0183 The answer is the hypothesis of the first singularity.

This hypothesis calls for creative, interdisciplinary and altogether fantastic anthropological and archaeological inquiry into the potentiation of civilization throughout Eurasia (as well as the Americas).

What a research project!

Eurasia is home to the first civilisations, as well as early language expansions, such as the Indo-European and the Austronesian.

Eurasia is currently home to many distinct civilisations which, like Russia, are about to enter a new spring of sovereignty, as the summer of geoeconomics ends with the demise of the world’s reserve currency, shorter (and perhaps more expensive, but definitely more reliable) supply chains and respect for borders.

0184 Glenn Diesen is on target, in calling for a novel ideology, supporting neopragmatist approaches.

A research project based on the hypothesis of the first singularity responds to that call.

Likewise, Alexander Dugin is on target by envisioning a fourth political theory that is not a theory at all, but a pragmatic and tradition-cultivating being there. Dasein!

To me, nothing conveys Dasein, better than the realization that our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

Both Diesen and Dugin, in their own ways, call for a new imagination, one that addresses the gesellschafts of all Eurasian civilizations with a series of questions, asking, “Where does the world come from? Where do humans come from? What went wrong? What is the solution?”

0185 Today, the natural and social sciences of the West are accepted by all the Eurasian civilisations, not as absolute truths, but as methods of inquiry. They set the stage for the mind-boggling hypothesis of the first singularity. But, because of their materialist and instrumental inclinations, they never proposed the obvious. The human niche is not a material or instrumental condition.

The first tool of the intellect for our species, Homo sapiens, is hand-speech talk.

The second tool of the intellect for our species is speech-alone talk.

Ten thousand years ago, all Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic cultures practice hand-speech talk.

Today, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.

The transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt is called the first singularity.

The first singularity begins with the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia and spreads on the wings of mimicry.

0185 Keep that research project in mind.

Razie Mah offers, in his blog on the date of Oct 1, 2022, “A Fantasia in G minor: A Speech Written for Gunnar Beck, MEP”. The “G” stands for Germany. The “minor” stands for its location in the grand expanse of Eurasia. The speech is intended to be read in the European Parliament, currently an expression of BG(il)Lism and vassal of… chuckle… American Judeo-Pagans. But, in this speech, the Parliament is the stage for the declaration of something more important than the identity of the hidden operators behind the destruction of gas pipelines running beneath the Baltic Sea. Gunnar Beck needs only to stand up and give a 15 minute speech that calls for an act of imagination.

0186 My thanks to Glenn Diesen for his interesting and provocative book. I pray for his continued work in these challenging fields of inquiry.

06/14/23

Looking at Ian Hodder’s Book (2018) “Where Are We Heading?” (Part 13 of 15)

0090 An object_2a comes into being through explicit abstraction. Then, it enters the relational-structure of Hodder’s entanglement theory. There, it_2a is sustained as a content-level actuality through implicit abstraction_1b, within the normal context of cooperation_2b.

In Hodder’s treatment of opium as a thing, both producers (in India) and consumers (in China) are treated as objects_2a by the British East India trading company. The opium wars occur at the same time that British socialites insist that the slave trade from Africa to the Americas must go. Yes, the East India monopoly is one step ahead of the reformers. If it cannot traffic slaves, then it can traffic opium.

0091 One consequence?

The antipathy of contemporary Chinese towards the West after the so-called, “century of humiliation”, parallels the resentments of the descendants of slaves in the Americas after their so-called “liberation”.

Hodder’s book makes the case. The moral implications of objectifying humans, then treating them as things, is enormous. It corrupts the offending society, because people regard explicit arrangements through the cognitive operations of implicit abstraction. It warps the victim society, because people know that they are being objectified, and turned into things, through explicit abstraction.

0092 Yes, classifying people as objects goes back to the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, the first culture to practice speech-alone talk. They are the first culture to encounter the weirdness of explicit abstraction. Explicit abstraction makes distinctions that cannot be formulated through implicit abstraction. Oddly, after a generation, the distinction feels completely natural.

Why?

Hodder’s entanglement theory relies on implicit abstraction. Entanglement theory applies to things. With explicit abstraction, entanglement theory also applies to objects. Humans can be objectified as things.

0093 Objectification assists labor and social specialization.

Specialization is characteristic of our current Lebenswelt of unconstrained social complexity.

Hodder opens his book with graphs designed by Ian Morris, concerning the broad sweep of the past millennia. The following figure is a rough sketch of the number of specializations versus time.

0094 Hodder uses similar figures to show that human evolution is directional, in so far as humans are entangled with more and more things. These comments refine his proposals.

0095 They also show the importance of the hypothesis of the first singularity.

The hypothesis is plainly stated in the e-book, The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.

The hypothesis is dramatically rendered in the masterwork, An Archaeology of the Fall.

These e-works are available at smashwords and other e-book venues. Search for the author’s name, Razie Mah, along with the title.

06/13/23

Looking at Ian Hodder’s Book (2018) “Where Are We Heading?” (Part 14 of 15)

0096 Here is another picture.

0097 Whatever surrogate for complexity that one uses, an inflection point occurs around 7800 years ago. Once speech-alone talk influences and then replaces hand-speech talk, explicit abstraction adds to implicit abstraction. H-T, T-H, T-T entanglements expand to H-H entanglements (H-O, O-H, O-O). Explicit abstraction is required. But, once humans are objectified, then implicit abstraction kicks back in. One would never know that a distinction defined by spoken wordsbecomes… well… intuitively natural.

Yes, once an objectification is implemented and routinized, then humans become things.

0098 The masterwork, An Archaeology of the Fall, mentions Dr. Ian Hodder as lead investigator at the Catal Hoyuk archaeological site (point 0206).

A mother poses a question, saying (more or less), “Don’t you think that Dr. Hodder would benefit from knowing the hypothesis of the first singularity?“

The son says, “He can figure it out for himself.”

What a reply.

0099 Catal Hoyuk flourishes as a hand-speech talking culture. It belongs to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, right at the cusp, before the start of the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.

The site is abandoned as soon as our current Lebenswelt begins.

0100 Surely, the end of Catal Hoyuk can be attributed to climate changes at the start of our current interglacial, in the same way that the formation of a creole-speaking Ubaid culture can be attributed to rising sea levels.

But, climate explanations are not enough. These comments add value to Hodder’s argument. Entanglement theoryundergoes a fundamental change once speech-alone talk enters our world.

Hodder proposes that human-thing entanglements enslave us. They do. However, human-thing entanglements pale in comparison with human-object entanglements. The hypothesis of the first singularity enriches Hodder’s entanglement theory by adding a Peircean relational foundation, then depicting how objects_2a may be treated the same as things_2a. Objects_2a are products of explicit abstraction. Things_2a are not.

0101 Slavery begins in our current Lebenswelt with the objectification of humans.

An Archaeology of the Fall

A Horror Story by Razie Mah

Category Archives: First Singularity