As Featured in Belonging Again II.2
An Opening for “The Social Coordination Mechanism”
A Framing
For Alfred Korzybski, where there is identification, there will be mental illness and threats of totalization socially and politically. We discussed this in “The Net (145),” and also how we could think Lacan with Korzybski regarding our human tendency to “enclosure ourselves” in something in order to avoid the trauma and anxiety of “incompleteness” at say “The Gödel Point,” which is where we are forced to practically experience how “the map isn’t the territory” versus just intellectually know it (points which Andrew Flores helped illuminate). If we cannot face “otherness” (A/B, relationality, situation, Geometry…) and give up our idolatry of is-ness (A/A) (self-identification, point-hood, Algebra…) (alluding to Owen Barfield), we could suffer mentally, socially, and worse.
Subjectivity is formed in response to the fundamental split in A/A that could unveil A/B, precisely so that we can maintain (an appearance of) A/A and hence avoid trauma. Society and “otherness” are also then formed and orientated to maintain this appearance, and we might see technology and AI as the completeness and “sealing” of this effort (Land waits). At “The Net (145),” we also discussed with Korzybski the critical idea that a problem we can’t solve might be unsolvable because of the grammar and symbolics in which we approach it. A quote I like to use from Korzybski for this point:
‘Could modern mathematics be built on the Roman notion for numbers — I, II, III, IV, V.? No, it could not. The simplest and most childlike arithmetic was so difficult as to require an expert; and all progress was very effectively hampered by the symbolism adopted.’⁷⁹⁰
Symbols and grammars matter: they don’t just represent thoughts and concepts; they shape them and condition their possibilities. As he spoke about at Voicecraft (titled “What Makes Change Possible?”), and as I also had a chance to speak with him about, Eric Harris-Braun has pioneered a field called “Grammatics” which I think we can associate with Korzybski.
Harris-Braun stresses that we cannot overcome our deepest problems without changes, interrelations, and competitions between “grammars” (say between A/A and A/B, or between Mathematics and Literature, etc.). for evolution within a way of thinking is one thing, but entirely something else to speak of evolution between ways of thinking. Harris-Braun suggests that the probability we are able to take on our challenges with the grammar we currently have is low, which means we need ways for grammars to compete and evolve, and for this possibility Harris-Braun has invented Holochain, a Web 3.0 and P2P technology. For more on this, please see Eric’s wonderful explanation video, “Aliveness and The Weave”:
Andrew Flores brought up Pascal in “The Net (145)” and the need to make a choice, meaning the subject must be involved (and own his or her involvement) to avoid “enclosure” (A/A), as the subject is always at risk of in any discourse (religion, science, university, etc.). This led to considerations of Leibniz, who we have already discussed in II.2 as forcing us to see intelligibility as always requiring a “metajudgment” that avoiding (say to avoid anxiety) just sets us up for A/A and self-effacement. Eric’s word “weave” is also a word I associate with Leibniz, and in (Re)constructing “A Is A” we will discuss (metageometrical)“weaving” more, which we can associate with “metajudgment,” which taking seriously means we will have to own our involvement as subjects in our worlds, which means we must accept “open systems” never closed ones (at best “(in)complete”), for we can never entirely include ourselves totality in our “takes” (there is always slippage). This is hard to accept and even traumatic, but if we don’t, we will not train ourselves in(to) metajudgment and “weaving,” nor will we move into thinking “the problem of grammar” to which Korzybski and Harris-Braun point.
As Paul VanderKlay has drawn attention to, Jordan Hall claimed we are not smart enough to deal with the problems we’re dealing with, and a reason for this could be that we don’t think Grammatics and are stuck in a symbolic. Harris-Braun stresses that freedom is found in the ability to work with grammars, symbolics, and/or conditions; if we are stuck in a grammar, our judgment is limited, we are not free (and so less anxious…), evolution could be limited (we don’t have to change though…), and our capacity to solve problems lessened to the point where some problems become impossible to address (but who cares if the problems don’t bother us…?). We need to think more architectural than systematic, we might say, within “spaces of engagement,” to use Harris-Braun’s phrase.
For actual Social Coordination versus just an appearance of it, we will need to learn how to work with new grammars and symbolics skillfully. There needs to be a “meta-context” in which rules of a game can be created, because all games function thanks to something “not in the game” (the rules) (A/B), and if we cannot think that “outside,” we are stuck in the game that we are playing (that we likely won’t even be able to think of as a game). We’ll be in a hallway. Moving forward…
For more on conversational and relational dynamics:
I
We need grammars that can create other grammars; we need games that create games; we need rules that can create rules (“meta-contexts”) — none of which will prove possible if we enjoy too much “the pleasure of understanding” which results from compression and “flattening” (as discussed in II.1). Unless this is possible, the potentials for social coordination will be “narrow,” unable to avoid A/A, and if it is basically “coordination all the way down” (an incredible amount of life is just about coordination), then this means it will be basically “A/A all the way down” (Land waits). Also, if it is “relationships all the way down,” as many on the Liminal Web discuss, then coordination is deep, for everything is then conditioning and coordinating one another in relation (which also suggests it could be “learning all the way down,” as Dempsey and Segall discuss).
We have already discussed Kindly Inquisitors by Jonathan Rauch alongside Deidre McCloskey on the importance of “free(ing) speech” for our address, a case Austrian economist like Hans-Hermann Hoppe might also stress. Hoppe critiques forms of Empiricism and Naturalism that end up treating language as “less real” than otherwise, which for him might lead to a deemphasis on the factors that make an economy possible. The bias leads us toward quantification and system erection, which in treating language as “less real,” seems like a reasonable approach.⁷⁹¹ But if language is somehow fundamental, then acts of intervention or quantification which inhibit the role of the speaking act are very dangerous: misallocations of resources, market inefficiencies, and even political injustices are likely. Under these conditions, perhaps like where a new “social coordination mechanism” is missing, then Hoppe might have a point that Democracy is inferior to something like a Monarchy — a notion that if we don’t like, it is up to us to improve our political capacities, as stressed by Benjamin Studebaker.
We cannot discuss what is best for humanity unless we understand what constitutes humanity, and humans are deeply defined and coordinated by language. We are “always already” in language, and it is hard to imagine any social coordination that doesn’t involve language. Economics is a logic of praxis, but whereas in our immediacy praxis doesn’t so much require language (I can see a broken door and fix it without speaking), as we scale society and interact around the world, language becomes necessary, as if an entrepreneurship at the basis of society itself. This in mind, we can think of the economy as a “communication device”: following Hayek, prices tell us where resources should be sent; the arising of businesses can suggest what is in demand; and so on. We are surrounded by communications and means of coordination that might rarely come to mind or attention (until they break, like Heidegger’s doorknob), let alone their grammars or symbolics. We must come to see what is invisible to us, and what the (in)visible hides.
Jürgen Habermas is another thinker of conversation, pioneering “communicative rationality” in which he attempts to argue that rationality can be found in communication itself. “Everyday speech” works because there is a rationality to it, and if this is so, learning how to do speech well could prove a new approach to rationality that might restore an Enlightenment project without falling into a decontextualized “totalization” which caused horror in modernity. Every speech act is contextual and so “bound,” and yet there is nevertheless a rationality at play that makes this speech act possible. To overly-simplify Habermas, we might say that “speech works because it is rational; hence, if we speak well, we will be rational.” I agree with the sentiment, but the way we are rational will be conditioned by its Grammatics (it could be A/A; it could be A/B); if the Grammatics are ignored, the rationality we become habituated into through speech might not be best.
“(Im)morality” by O.G. Rose argued that some rights and wrongs can be established in “ethic games” like the “language games” of Wittgenstein, and Habermas seems to suggest a similar claim: exchange and recognition between people is from where ethics emerge (“between” could be seen as a key term). “Mutual understanding” is an imperative, and overall a lot of what Habermas describes I think we see online in the SCM (as we’ll describes). However, though Habermas might get us to Grammatics, I’m not sure that any level of rationality that is realized in a speech act would necessarily lead to a realization of Grammatics.⁷⁹² Algebra works because it follows a logic, and so if I do Algebra well I must be gaining in logical capacity, but must my improvement in Algebra and logic ever transition into a recognition and improvement in Geometry? If we all discuss and master Roman Numerals between us, must we ever realize the need for Arabic Numerals? If not, then there are limits to how far improvements in the rationality of a given “speech act” can take us: it won’t necessarily deal with Grammatics, even if it honors truth, rightness, sincerity, and comprehensibility (key notions in Habermas). Yes, the speech act might ‘transcend the particular context or linguistic community in which the utterance is made,’ but it still won’t necessarily transcend its grammar.⁷⁹³ And if our problem today is deeply a Grammatic one (A/A versus A/B), that is troublesome.⁷⁹⁴ ⁷⁹⁵
Let me restate the concern in hopes of making it clearer, while stressing that I am no expert on Habermas and could be misguided in my concern. Zak Stein has noted that Habermas studied human development theory and the development of national constitutions to make a case human capacity for abstraction and complexity has increased through time (for good and for bad), as Habermas also understood that larger societies beyond Dunbar Numbers required greater levels of abstraction to function (either face-to-face or through systemization and programming, as Capital provides). Habermas knows we require development, and it is also clear that evolution and complexification occur within rationality and “the speech act” — that is not the problem. The question is this: does the development of rationality in itself ever have to acknowledge nonrationality? Or could rationality forever become “more rational” without ever necessarily encountering its limitations? Could it forever develop coherently without ever necessarily developing correspondently? That’s the question: must rationality ever become “other to itself”? (Must an ideology ever realize itself in itself as just an ideology?) Must (a) rationality ever find Grammatics within itself?
If rationality through speech is “toward” coherence, then it can indeed develop through the establishment of “internal consistency,” but must the complexification of the map necessarily increase its correspondence with the territory? Habermas easily realized this problem, but the point is that it’s possible that development we have seen in human beings has been a rationality “in itself” that is only now encountering its Hegelian limitations, requiring us to “integrate with lack/limit” (nonrationality). We easily have not made any “mistake” at this point in history, for we need rationality to have developed and complexified like it has: the question is only if that chapter of historic development is ending, and now to stress and focus on “the developmental possibility latent in rationality itself” (perhaps realized in “the speech act”) could be a dangerous “overfitting” that could cause self-effacement. Could rationality realize this “overfitting” and so it become rational for rationality to integrate with nonrationality? Yes, but this is a shift that I don’t think rationality will find “in itself” (as AI could be a testament of): this realization must follow from “encountering Otherness,” as is “at hand” now in Global Pluralism (if only we might handle it). Even if not, creating spaces of “surprising encounters with limitations and Otherness” could accelerate the process in a manner that isn’t necessarily self-destructive, and given the fragility of the globe, that quickening of a defense and extension of the human is worth implementing, even if Habermas is ultimately right.
Human development has easily needed a period of focusing on rationality “in itself,” and it has easily needed human interaction and speaking for that focus. Habermas seems right: the question is only if the complexity of Global Pluralism, where Game Theory problems spread, now requires a negation/sublation. I don’t disagree that “the speech act” can make us more complex, but there is a point where a complex map actually becomes less useful precisely because of the way it is complex. It is not given then that complexification or increased capacity for abstraction are good: such could actually make us less capable to “correspond” with reality. But maybe there is a point where the development of a map leads it to being able to direct us toward a new map that we need? Perhaps the failure of a map that eventually follows from complexification is actually a feature that is to the glory of the map, for that very failure could direct us to a new map? That’s possible, and if so perhaps it could be argued that the rationality in “the speech act” itself is enough, and hence that Habermas is correct. Ultimately, he might be, but either way an SCM is good to focus on, either because it will help rationality realize its own internal limitation, or because rationality will encounter limitation external to itself. However rationality encounters limitation, that “surprising encounter” is necessary for its advancement. (If “the ideal speech act” includes in itself when speech fails, as psychoanalysis stresses, then Habermas stands.)
Individual thought requires a logic, but that logic could be self-enclosed and mad; if the thought though is brought into the community and is successful, it must entail a rationality outside itself (though there is the risk of cults). There is logic in thought, but that logic is easily misapplied if kept individual; if thought moves to speech and the “speech act” functions, it can become a communal logic that is less likely to be self-enclosed. Hence, the better we can speak, the better a logic can arise that is not reducible to a single person or “closed,” and that logic for Habermas is a universal description of all possible ideal “speech act” (every individual speech act ‘is a mirror of [each speech act] as a whole’), which means there is a possibility of universal rationality that honors particularity and difference. (addressing “the one and the many”-problem).⁷⁹⁶ If this is a proper understanding of Habermas, I don’t disagree, but if the logic in thought can be either A/A or A/B, then the outcome of the realization of logic in speech is not guaranteed (there is risk, as Habermas easily realizes).
If the logic found in speech is more naturally A/A, then Habermas has perhaps helped us realize that Speech itself is “toward” being the logic which manifests in the logic of Capital that Nick Land argues is manifesting in AI (it’s all Kafkalike). For us to realize a logic in speech then, which could naturally be a logic of communication (versus “conversation,” as discussed at Theory Underground), is not for us to necessarily save the human from replacement. The “speech act” must for one be self-reflective in an encounter with limitation and “otherness” (like Understanding that understands its “otherness” is Reason in Hegel), which means the “medium condition” of the “speech act” is critical (the “speech act” within a “faithful presence” can be very different from outside of it). A continual point of Part II, “the medium” and environment deeply matter, as exhibited by the SCM: Habermas is right that speaking reflects community, but community reflects the medium forming subjectivity (as McLuhan and Ong taught). The “speech act” under the radio is different from under the net.
II
I respect Habermas and don’t mean to be deconstructive: my point is only that even in “an ideal speech act condition,” we cannot assume Grammatics will be addressed (as Habermas easily knows), as must be for A/A to be negated/sublated into A/B.⁷⁹⁷ Habermas is not wrong to suggest that our address is found in the “speech act”: the question is only how (a point of which Habermas himself easily realized), which for me requires thinking “the medium condition.” The “social action” Habermas describes is needed, but the project needs to be thought with Korzybski and Harris-Braun. We can also consider Linguistics by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, admirers of Korzybski, which tells us that ‘we must always bear in mind that a definition is an instrument which helps us do our thinking and accomplish our purposes,’ a realization I would associate with Grammatics.⁷⁹⁸ ‘What is needed,’ they wrote, ‘is a definition of linguistics that transforms the subject into actions that result in improved language and learning behavior,’ a vision we could associate with Grammatics and that the SCM could manifest.⁷⁹⁹
Postman and Weingartner note that ‘all subjects in the school curriculum are language’ and so our relation to language (and Grammatics) can have impacts on how we approach all possible subjects.⁸⁰⁰ What would it mean for students to be encouraged to consider Linguistics deeply? Bringing to mind what happens in the SCM, they write:
‘[…] it requires that students become involved in processes of defining, question asking, data gathering, observing, classifying, generalizing, and verifying in matters of language. It implies that the students play an important role in determining what lines of inquiry are worth pursuing and a pre-eminent role in determining what arguments and conclusions are worth embracing.’⁸⁰¹
Later, reflecting on Korzybski, they also write:
‘What are some of the specific kinds of awareness Korzybski’s system is intended to develop? / First, and probably central to all the others, is the awareness that meaning is not ‘in’ words. Meaning is in people, and whatever meanings words have are assigned or ascribed to them by people.’⁸⁰²
We are “always already” involved as subjects in our thinking (“weaving,” metajudging…), and if we don’t realize this our systems, languages, logics…will likely do our “human-ing” for us. Postman and Weingartner argue that taking this seriously requires us to rethink education, and I think their work invites us to consider Habermas with Grammatics.
We can think of this as a “soft revolution,” which Postman and Weingartner associate with ‘the renewal and reconstruction of educational institutions without the use of violence.’⁸⁰³ Grammatics does suggest a thinking and hence educational paradigm shift, and I resonate with the idea that it can be implemented like a ‘judo’ which ‘use[s] [our] adversary’s strength against himself,’ for its potential success comes from the fact that the current zeitgeist is stuck in an A/A (linear) that is unsustainable; if it leaves A/A and has a chance, Grammatics with A/B (exponential) prevails.⁸⁰⁴ (‘All substantive change […])⁸⁰⁵ But if we fail and remain in A/A, ‘Eichmannism,’ stuck on a track, will “practically” be our fate.⁸⁰⁶ We should consider those ‘138 questions’ soon (ones the SCM could already be considering), as well as the proposed study in ‘multi-media literacy’ (which Theory Underground pursues)…⁸⁰⁷ ⁸⁰⁸
III
Like Habermas in my view, “The Constitution of Knowledge” that Jonathan Rauch describes also needs Grammatics. By this, we can think ‘liberalism’s epistemic operating system: our social rules for turning disagreement into knowledge,’ which ‘did not assemble itself […] it was the product of hard-fought battles and hard-won norms and institutions, and many people suffered and bled for it along the way.’⁸⁰⁹ “The Constitution of Knowledge” deserves our respect, but without Grammatics I fear it will only serve A/A, even though it is utterly necessarily (in making it possible, for example, for us to claim that ‘acquiring knowledge is a conversation, not a destination’ (a testament to the SCM).⁸¹⁰ Rauch sees his newer book as an improvement on the ‘depersonalized and decentralized and rules-based’ framework of Kindly Inquisitors, enabled by greater attention to ‘the institutional and communitarian foundations of collective inquiry.’⁸¹¹ The book often responds to Trump, and Rauch sees a need to defend ‘the institutions and norms of liberal science,’ without which the power of “free speech” will be lost.⁸¹² I agree, but institutions and norms without Grammatics will end up in the problems of Part I and A/A, unable to address Kafkalikeness and our AI-Causer: they are necessary but not sufficient. We require a change in subjectivity; we must die to ourselves to live.
Rauch’s case for the Constitution of Knowledge is powerful, helping us see why ‘[s]cience is a social network’ and fundamentally communal (suggesting Habermas), as is all thought-testing, and for me Rauch establishes well why we cannot discard it.⁸¹³ At the same time, what I have said about Habermas applies here: even if we have “ideal speech conditions” or “the constitution of knowledge,” there is no guarantee we will negate/sublate A/A to A/B. Both can work just fine without any Lack, Beauty, River-Hole…as they can work equally well between Kafkalikeness and Voicecraft — that is the problem. They work, and so they can work us “toward” our AI-Causer and self-effacement — they alone, despite necessary testaments to ‘the networked nature of the reality-based community,’ cannot do what “the medium condition” and Grammatics make possible.⁸¹⁴ This is a point I make not to deconstruct “the constitution of knowledge” but in hopes of sublating it. Admittedly though, I’m suggesting that saving it requires reintroducing philosophical and abstract thinking to a strong degree that can threaten social intelligibility, which perhaps was not possible until now in our time of the SCM.
Rauch describes ‘four kinds of assent’ needed for the Constitution of Knowledge — ‘general acceptance of reality-based epistemic rules’; ‘general consent to public decision[-]making systems’; ‘enough public trust in the reality-based community’; ‘enough public respect for the Constitution of Knowledge’s underlying values’ — and then begins showcasing severe challenges to it in our world today.⁸¹⁵ These challenges like ‘disinformation technology,’ ‘troll epistemology,’ and ‘canceling’ are severe, but I believe overcoming them requires the “judo” described by Postman and Weingartner, which is a “negation/sublation” that only a change in “the medium condition” might afford.⁸¹⁶ ⁸¹⁷ ⁸¹⁸ The odds are already against the Constitution of Knowledge in it offering us ‘knowledge, freedom, and peace’ through a social agreement to ‘mistrust our senses and our tribes, question our sacred beliefs, and relinquish the comforts of certitude,’ and another fragility which has arisen in history with Global Pluralism (via confrontation with Hegelian “contradiction”) is that it ultimately requires a movement from A/A to A/B, self-identification to relationality, if it is not to serve Kafkalikeness — but the conditions for Voicecraft and A/B (against dream-equality) have never before in history spread.⁸¹⁹ Is there any hope? Yes.
IV
Language is fundamental, yes, but language requires grammar, and if grammar itself is the overall problem, say because it is too narrow and not dynamic enough (like Harris-Braun and Korzybski stress), then changes in language alone cannot save us. Grammatics is a matter of “weaving” and metajudgment, of owning not just logic but meta-logic, not just structure but the process of structuring, and without thinking it, we cannot fully think what Paul Ricoeur might call ‘hermeneutic phenomenology,’ that is ‘the interpretative encounter with phenomena,’ which must be taken seriously if we are to think ‘a philosophical anthropology’ (that emerges between ‘the creative tension between a logic of equivalence and a logic of superabundance’).⁸²⁰ ⁸²¹For Ricoeur (who was aware of the power of metaphor), a ‘phenomenological/hermeneutical idea of understanding serves to structure meaningful existence,’ but without Grammatics, impacting our “narrative being” and social order, Understanding (A/A) will not be Reason (A/B).⁸²² ⁸²³ ‘I am always on the way to meaningful existence,’ but it is not set if that directionality isn’t “toward” self-effacement (‘[t]his sense of always being ‘on the way’ presents a problem for the attempt to understand meaningful existence’).⁸²⁴
For Ricoeur, ‘I am always on the way to full existence,’ which makes it seem odd to discuss ‘selfhood at all,’ but this just suggests that the self is a trajectory, meaning the directionality is not fated: it might tend toward A/A, but it could be A/B — but that requires Grammatics (there can be differences, likes modes of reading, even in modes of ‘passivity as a fundamental experience of selfhood’).⁸²⁵ ⁸²⁶ According to Korzybski and Harris-Braun, if we don’t train Grammatic capacities, mental health will collapse and evolution will stagnate, and I have suggested that both Habermas and Rauch need Grammatics for their projects to flourish, an address that is hard to even think within a Grammatic (which naturally “appears” as just “is-ness”).
Alright, fine, but how is Grammatics, “weaving,” and metajudgment trained? And how can we entertain and consider different “grammars” without going mad? Doesn’t this just return us to the question of how we might have our own Deleuzian “line of flight” without losing social intelligibility in the process? Indeed, yes, that is the question, and ultimately Korzybski at least seems to suggest a need for a world in which we don’t use language that suggests “is-ness,” but how is that possible? Should all nouns be replaced by verbs? Must everyone be retaught their native language in a way that leaves out identification? Isn’t that absurd? Yes, but I nevertheless think Korzybski has a critical point: we must change our relationship to our grammars and symbolics if we are to change our frameworks of thought and subjectivity, as necessary for us to be A/B (and this change must become subconscious and second nature). We will discuss later how our “weaving” and metajudgment must be trained by and for “encountering surprising otherness” (Levinas) — otherwise, both will come to serve “totalizations versus infinities,” say the Capital-Nation-State, and self-efface us — but here we will focus on the matter of our relationship to language and signification itself, which Korzybski is strongly warning cannot be a relationship reifying identification. But how can we make such a change without ruining language and society? Well, through a change in how we speak and/or relate to speaking, one that makes our talking more philosophical and artful. Language is perhaps the first social coordination mechanism, and subjectivity is fundamentally linguistic. If we want to change ourselves, we must change how we speak, and if we can learn language that is not stuck in is-ness, we can begin entertaining the full possibilities of Grammatics — can move from Kafkalikeness to Vociecraft.
Toward the end of “The Net (145),” we discussed Heidegger and his effort to think being anew, and I claimed that Heidegger came to realize that “is” could never capture a phenomenon (as Dr. Iain Thomson has noted), that the question of being was problematic. The Later Heidegger then became more epistemological and interested in a “clearing” by which being itself could come forth (as Dr. Thomas Sheehan teaches), seeing as we couldn’t approach being without getting in its way. For me, we can see Heidegger as realizing problems similar to Korzybski and Harris-Braun, which is to say he understood our very structures of thought, language, and so “grammar” kept us from “what was” — we might say that “is” keeps us from being, but how can we think or experience being without “is”? Heidegger moves toward poetry and art in his thinking, which I would claim is a different “grammar” which affords a new relationship to language; in other words, he considers a new symbolic exactly as Korzybski and Harris-Braun claim is necessary, suggesting our inability to experience “being” corresponds with mental illness, stagnation, the inability to avoid Game Theory problems…(What seems radically abstract can be radically practical.)
As Thomas Winn teaches on, “nihilating,” “letting,” “clearing” — all of these are Heideggerian terms that I would associate with a “Grammatic Epistemology,” as methods for moving from A/A to A/B like Korzybski considers in semiotics. Heidegger was faced with a problem he could not solve regarding being, and so exactly as Harris-Braun encourages, Heidegger considered different grammars, which could afford new conditions of possibility and forms of subjectivity. In this, Heidegger was exactly right, but do we honestly think that reading poetry and taking up art could “spread Childhood”? Something like it could, yes something that changes grammar and our relationship to language — something like the SCM and B-20, which could regularly habituate us to modes of speaking and thinking so that we are subconsciously not “captured” by “is-ness” (A/A)…
Poetry teaches us to relate to language differently, to make us even realize it’s there (like a fish learning water is there), and then to make us realize that words can be used in different ways to mean different things. “How” we speak is indivisible from the meaning of our speech, and supposed errors like “Iamlost” could actually unlock new ideas and thinking. I myself have thought that the word “and” could create problematic impressions; consider “good and evil” versus “good/evil.” Isn’t the impression different? And so with a use of a different symbolic (“/”), I generate a different meaning and way of thinking (that could be more mentidivergent versus neurotypical). Heidegger understood this, and we might say that I could “nihilate” “good and evil” to create a “clearing” of “good/evil” that I then “let” encounter me (versus quickly say “that’s wrong” and shield/enclose/protect myself). This is both a linguistic change but also a personal shift, for I have to learn to be willing to entertain this kind of use of language and symbolics. Am I prepared for that shift and new possibilities of apprehension? Where could I go to gain this preparation? (The SCM?)
Also, it is traditionally argued that art can change how I see the world and that philosophy cultivates wonder, both of which would be “changes in experience” that could then create a feedback loop that changes and forms the subject differently, which could further change the world, further change the subject…on and on (into new grammar, evolutionary). If poetry can train us to really “see” a leaf — to move it from a universal definition of “leaf” to particularized “a leaf” then better yet a definitive “that left” — then poetry can train us to relate to the world differently (and as I spoke with Jockin about in #173, a definitive objective becomes a “partial object” which can ever-generate motivation and drive in beauty and love, a notion which points to The Fate of Beauty by O.G. Rose). And as the poet can see things as one-of-one, the poet can nevertheless at the same time experience everything universally as a one-of-one, suggesting a mode of subjectivity that overcomes “The Universal/Particular Problem” that haunts Global Pluralism — especially if the poet experiences everything as “definitive” and hence universal in being possible sources of “strike of beauty.” And also the poet can learn the art of analogy and comparison, thanks to which the poet can relate across different particularities without getting stuck in them, which is always a risk of focusing on something and specialization. Analogy matters, as we discussed earlier in II.2, and it is a symbolic that resists “is-ness” in favor of “pointing” and movement.
Poetry and philosophy also teach us to struggle with language, and a habit of struggling against grammars and symbolics (and so metaphors, descriptions, etc.) is useful to keep us from over-identifying with just one (and so falling into “is-ness” out of Schindler’s “orbiting” or the “halo” of Sander and Hofstadter), as I spoke with Simon Els and Thom Lyons about at Voicecraft (titled “A Philosopher’s Guide To Making Friends & The Art of Conversation”). We discussed how finitude is a struggle of bringing into it that which is in-finite (“that not in finitude”) — a “wrestling with the (in)finite” — and we can think of language in the hands of poets and philosophers as a struggle to say that which is nearly unsayable. We also discussed how “being human” results from struggle and difficulty, and this “wrestling with language” is part of that self-constituting struggle. If we never wrestle with language, we likely only “change subjects” versus “deepen subjects” (as I also discussed at Theory Underground), and our (not polymathic) being is likely undeveloped, which means we likely aren’t a Child with the capacities necessary for our address (or diverse friendship).⁸²⁷
We must avoid “is-ness” as a metaphysics while using language that implies “is-ness”: I think it’s impractical to think otherwise, even if a language was built from the ground up; “is-ness” is just too “at hand” in experience (on the side of Understanding versus Reason, alluding to Hegel). That, or else we will lose social intelligibility and fail our address, and that paradox requires that we change our relationship to language to be more like that of the poet’s or philosopher’s relationship. Is that possible to spread? For most of history, probably not, but now we have a new technology that might change things, for the SCM could help change our relationship to language, “loosening” our (“thoughtless”) attachment to “is-ness” enough that we might be able to move between grammatics and symbolics, helping us facing problems like mental illness or “The Meta-Crisis” that otherwise are unsolvable. We need an “epistemology of relationship” versus an “epistemology of identification”; we need grammatics and symbolics to be musical.
I am a strong believer that what we will call “the social coordination mechanism” can train us to relate to language differently, more creatively and philosophically, which means it can help us avoid Kafkalikeness for the Voicecraft, before our AI-Causer. It also has a lot of other “coordinating” benefits, and as a technology and infrastructure, it is at the heart of our overall address (it’s hard to imagine this book even existing without it). ‘Printing changed things so utterly that it is hard to imagine a world without it,’ John Mann wrote in his biography, Gutenberg (which stresses how Gutenberg was interested in business and religious problems…).⁸²⁸ Further:
‘Suddenly, in a historical eye-blink, scribes were redundant. One year, it took a month or two to produce a single copy of a book; the next, you could have 500 copies in a week (500 was an average print run in the early days). Distribution was still by foot or hoof, but that didn’t matter. A copied book just sits there, waiting for readings, one by one; a successful printed book is a stone dropped in water, its message ripping outwards to hundreds, thousands, millions.
‘Hardly an aspect of life remained untouched. If rulers could bind their subjects better, with taxes and standardized laws, subjects now had a lever with which to organize revolts. Scholars could compare findings, stand on each other’s shoulders and make better and faster sense of the universe. Gutenberg’s invention made the soil from which sprang modern history, science, popular literature, the emergence of the nation-state, so much of everything by which we define modernity.’⁸²⁹
I believe the SCM could be as paradigmatic and age-making, and it should be noted that Gutenberg’s genius was ‘not mere printing, but printing with movable type,’ suggesting it can be small differences that make a world of difference (which suggests that if the changes of the SCM are only slight, that’s more than enough to change things).⁸³⁰ And Gutenberg wasn’t even the first to try this innovation (Asian nations were earlier, but they lacked ‘a writing system that could be readily adapted to mechanical use’) (everything must line up in “surprising ways,” suggesting the need for “environments of encounter”): Guttenberg only added ‘a few vital elements’ which made it possible to ‘turn a potential revolution into a real one.’⁸³¹ ⁸³² The SCM is not the first effort like it, but “a few vital elements” have been added with Zoom, recording, and YouTube, perhaps helped by a cultural turn against centralized universities, as seemingly stimulated by Covid and political events.
There are also foundational technologies that are increasingly coming onto the scene and spreading: Jim Cashel speaks of ‘The Great Connecting’ that is ahead of us, noting obstacles and topics like ‘[the] lack of access to electricity’; the power of glass in fiber optics to ‘carry[] information with pulses of light’ (while not being attractive to steal in being made out of ‘sand’); and more — all these little steps, one by one, coming together to make something possible in technologies that already exist (a “realization”) to cause the paradigmatic.⁸³³ ⁸³⁴ ⁸³⁵ But will ‘The Great Connecting [be] a good thing?’⁸³⁶ For me, that question depends on the SCM.
‘[At] the heart of Gutenberg’s innovation […] [are] two parts: an invention and a technique,’ and today we might see an invention in the SCM with a technique of the B-20 (though these terms will be used a bit interchangeably).⁸³⁷ If so, conditions of possibility could change: what was impossible might now be ahead. But it also mattered that Guttenberg ultimately printed the Guttenberg Bible, which there was a demand for (though that wasn’t so obvious at the time) — is there a demand for philosophy, theology, the humanity, and/or self-driven learning that is underappreciated, which could be the springboard for something more? Looking over what’s happening online today, I think so.
Man ends his book on Gutenberg beautifully:
‘Guttenberg’s invention had created the possibility of an intellectual genome, a basis of knowledge which could be passed on from generation to generation, finding expression in individual books, as the human genome is expressed in you and me, itself remaining untouched, a river of knowledge into which every new generation could tap and to which it would add, even after the lass press ceases, and paper is no more […]’⁸³⁸
The SCM continues the history of the genome, a new means of recording and networking. John Man also tells us that thanks to Guttenberg ‘[f]or the first time people began to form a more accurate picture of their own past,’ for it was no longer so ‘hard to know what was known’ — can we now for the first time accurately address our future?⁸³⁹ Not because we know it, but because we are “prepared” for it? In what else could the human be found?
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Notes
⁷⁹⁰Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity. Fort Worth, TX: Institute of General Semantics, 2010: 3.
⁷⁹¹If all social coordination requires language, some form of Realism over Nominalism seems reasonable, and any philosophy which would suggest language is “less real” should face skepticism.
⁷⁹²Indeed, speech acts must occur in a rationality that could be improved in through improving the speech act, but I don’t think improvement of rationality in a rationality must necessarily lead to a realization of there being other rationalities according to alternative grammars and so spaces between them. To use my language, no rationality must ever acknowledge that it is itself thanks to a (nonrational) truth, especially where it is internally coherent. Perhaps at some point in a map we realize there must be a territory, but must a map within itself lead us to realizing there are other maps? Not necessarily, and that lack of “necessity” could be a problem, suggesting a need for “encounter” and “surprise.”
⁷⁹³Habermas, Jürgen. Postmetaphysical Thinking. Translated by William Mark Hohengarten. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1996: ix.
⁷⁹⁴Habermas argues there are conditions in which it can be assumed that ‘argeements […] reach[ed] are based on reasons alone,’ and though he is critiqued about being idealistic to suggest these conditions can ever be reached regularly at scale, I think Habermas has made a fair point: it is possible for conversation to be reasonable, and in this way “a finding of the universal with the particular” is possible based on the speech act.¹ But A/A is both universal and particular: that’s the problem, and why Land waits. Perhaps every grammar can solve “the universal/particular problem” in of itself, but what we need is basically “a grammar of grammars” that can accommodate any logic as itself while at the same time making space for other logics. A/B makes this possible, and that is realized when the “speech act” comes to orbit Beauty and Lack — a River-Hole — as the SCM might afford.
¹Habermas, Jürgen. Postmetaphysical Thinking. Translated by William Mark Hohengarten. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1996: xi.
⁷⁹⁵Noam Comisky famously argued for “a universal grammar,” and Habermas might be seen as arguing that an “ideal speech act” must be organized by grammar and hence rationality, and if Comisky is right, that grammar must be universal. Indeed, A/A is, but it is not the only grammar that can be applied universally: A/B is possible. That said, Habermas is distinct from Comisky, because even if Comisky is right about a universal grammar, ‘it cannot reconstruct [out of it] the competence that directly underlies speaking and understanding a language.’¹ Habermas focuses on that intersubjective competence for realizing a universalist possibility that honors particularity, but my point is that even intersubjectivity can be narrow in terms of Grammatics.
¹Habermas, Jürgen. Communication and the Evolution of Society. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston, Mass: Beacon Press, 1979: 17.
⁷⁹⁶Habermas, Jürgen. Postmetaphysical Thinking. Translated by William Mark Hohengarten. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1996: 155.
⁷⁹⁷Where there is language, there must be a society and Lacanian Symbolic that’s logic the language must entail, but this logic could just be an “enclosure” that can be universally applied. Our problem is not simply that we need a universality that honors particularity: we need such that also doesn’t “enclosure” into a totality (A/A). Still, Habermas is a step in the right direction.
⁷⁹⁸Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. Linguistics. New York, NY: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1978: 4.
⁷⁹⁹Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. Linguistics. New York, NY: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1978: 29.
⁸⁰⁰Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. Linguistics. New York, NY: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1978: 33.
⁸⁰¹Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. Linguistics. New York, NY: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1978: 37.
⁸⁰²Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. Linguistics. New York, NY: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1978: 136.
⁸⁰³Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. The Soft Revolution. New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 1972: 3.
⁸⁰⁴Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. The Soft Revolution. New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 1972: 5.
⁸⁰⁵Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. The Soft Revolution. New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 1972: 29.
⁸⁰⁶Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. The Soft Revolution. New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 1972: 36.
⁸⁰⁷Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. The Soft Revolution. New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 1972: 44.
⁸⁰⁸Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. The Soft Revolution. New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 1972: 140.
⁸⁰⁹Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2021: 15.
⁸¹⁰Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2021: 3.
⁸¹¹Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2021: 15.
⁸¹²Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2021: 16.
⁸¹³Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2021: 60.
⁸¹⁴Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2021: 70.
⁸¹⁵Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2021: 117.
⁸¹⁶Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2021: 118.
⁸¹⁷Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2021: 155.
⁸¹⁸Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2021: 189.
⁸¹⁹Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2021: 263.
⁸²⁰Hall, David W. Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Imperative. New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007: 7.
⁸²¹Hall, David W. Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Imperative. New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007: 16.
⁸²²Hall, David W. Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Imperative. New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007: 43.
⁸²³Have we ever spread “a phenomenological/hermeneutics of Reason,” conscious of Grammatics? No, but we are suggesting is basically “a new theory of reading,” which is something Jurij and I have discussed (#186). As I understand it, what we discussed could be aligned with a “Deleuzian Epistemology of Overlap,” which finally seems possible with the Liminal Web, where instead of stressing “the right reading,” we focus on bringing many readings of Hegel into a dialogue to see what emerges. The interlocutors are not there primarily to “prove their reading,” but to instead their reading and try to understand the readings of others. It is an act of “shinning and empathy,” which can generate “flow” and creative possibility.
Lacking “recording technology,” it makes sense that institutions were primarily in the business of “defending the right reading” to make sure it was passed down through history properly, but now with much cheaper and widespread recording technology, that function isn’t needed so much, as isn’t a wide and regular distribution of decentralized sources where “right readings” can be accessed and learned (mainly universities). It’s also reasonable to focus on “preserving right readings” where discussions are limited, but where there is a Liminal Web and network where the conversation is basically always happening and always recorded, that again changes things.
Where “overlap” and “creativity” are stressed, we also must train personal taste, discernment, and judgment, and furthermore there will also be more incentive to keep learning instead of just learn “the right reading” and make sure to defend it from outside influence or contamination (while managing a consensus that agrees to “carry the reading forward” in history). In this way, where “the right reading” is stressed, there might actually be an incentive not to “lifelong learn,” precisely to make sure we don’t lose our reading. Sure, we might read other books to deconstruct and defend our reading, but there is much less incentive to keep learning. (“Theories of Reading” are very consequential, especially if there is some way in which everything is reading. Perhaps there is something about “reading” and developing “a sense of form-ulation”?).
The fate of school is tied to information technology, and the ease of information flow now makes a life of intellectual “thinking” versus mainly “memorization” much more possible: we can create and consider many interpretations, knowing the interpretations are preserved online via recordings. This change having happened, we can ask anew, “What is ‘the torch’ that colleges are to pass down?” Is it “the right interpretation” of books and “right ideas” of thinkers? Or is it an “intrinsic motivation” and capacity to discern, value, and judge ideas with reality? For “spreading Childhood,” the later matters.
⁸²⁴Hall, David W. Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Imperative. New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007: 48.
⁸²⁵Hall, David W. Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Imperative. New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007: 61.
⁸²⁶Hall, David W. Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Imperative. New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007: 83.
⁸²⁷Can we spread a culture that habituates the majority into the skills needed to “deepen” any subject and thus be friends with anyone?
⁸²⁸Man, John. Gutenberg. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2002: 1.
⁸²⁹Man, John. Gutenberg. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2002: 2.
⁸³⁰Man, John. Gutenberg. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2002: 77.
⁸³¹Man, John. Gutenberg. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2002: 106.
⁸³²Man, John. Gutenberg. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2002: 103.
⁸³³Cashel, Jim. The Great Connecting. New York, NY: Radius Book Group, 2019: 3.
⁸³⁴Cashel, Jim. The Great Connecting. New York, NY: Radius Book Group, 2019: 17.
⁸³⁵Cashel, Jim. The Great Connecting. New York, NY: Radius Book Group, 2019: 45.
⁸³⁶Cashel, Jim. The Great Connecting. New York, NY: Radius Book Group, 2019: 148.
⁸³⁷Man, John. Gutenberg. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2002: 126.
⁸³⁸Man, John. Gutenberg. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2002: 291–292.
⁸³⁹Man, John. Gutenberg. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2002: 255.
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