07/3/24

Looking at Steve Fuller’s Book (2020) “A Player’s Guide to the Post-Truth Condition” (Part 26 of 26)

0238 Original sin?

0239 Francis Bacon (1561-1626 AD) lives at the start of the current Age of Ideas. He is a lawyer.  He accepts that lying is part of everyday life, especially in the courtroom.  He discovers that inquisitional modes of investigation force people to report in public what privately they do not hold.  In short, the inquisitorial mode of testing and observing and measuring produces what I call “phenomena”.  Courtroom phenomena do not reveal what a subject “privately” thinks.  Courtroom phenomena reveal what the subject is openly willing to disclose under inquisition.

What I privately think associates to the noumenon.

What I am willing to say associates to phenomena.

0240 What does this imply?

Just as a triumphalist scientist wants to replace the noumenon with a mathematical or mechanical model, the scientismist one wants to replace what I privately think with what the Positivist’s judgment ought to be, that is, an empirio-normative narrative.

0241 Okay, then does that mean, once I am properly credentialed, that I have bought into a lie?

Yes and no.

Yes, phenomena cannot objectify their noumenon.  If I do not testify to what I think, then I must be lying.  So, the very idea of phenomena entails, not necessarily a falsehood, but a deception.

No, phenomena can objectify a model substituting for the noumenon.  If I have successfully substituted an empirio-normative narrative for what I think, then I am always engaging in deception, even to myself.  Either that, or I am always telling the “truth” (that is, the narrative) that can be objectified as what I say.

Did I write that correctly?

0242 The Christian doctrine of Original Sin derives from a mythic account of Adam and Eve.  Adam and Eve are fashioned by God in a paradise near the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.  They disobey God’s command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Okay, let me tweak the tree’s label to “the fruit of the tree of formalized knowledge1b“.  Mythically, this tree occupies the center of the Edenic garden.

The problem is not disobedience, per se, but a capitulation to a post-truth condition imposed by… what else?… a speaking snake.  Serpents must speak, because they cannot talk with their hands.

0243 Needless to say, the serpent has a variety of narratives to offer.  The fruit will allow Eve to own its beauty (the capitalist model of value2b) as well as make her wise (the socialist model of value2b).  Eve sees an opportunity1c.  She makes an actionable judgment2c.  And, the relativist one3c notches up two successes2c, since Adam is along for the ride.

So, the Fall in the Garden of Eden has a lot to do with disobedience (to God, but obedience to the serpent) and lying (to oneself by adopting the narrative of the serpent as one’s own).

0244 Saint Augustine associates the Fall to a permanent weakness called “concupiscence”, which transliterates to “con (with) cupi (Cupid) scence (the state of being)”.  The state of being with Cupid is a little more entertaining than the state of being scammed by a speaking snake.  But, the post-truth condition for each is pretty much the same.

0245 Why?

The foundational potential of the post-truth condition is the will1a.

By definition, the foundational potential of the prior condition is the truth1a.

0246 What does this imply?

Well, if Adam and Eve associate to the start of our current Lebenswelt, as proposed in The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace (as well as An Archaeology of the Fall, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues), then the prior truth condition must associate to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  Consequently, Adam and Eve may be historical, in so far as they are fairy tale figures associated with the start of the Ubaid archaeological period of southern Mesopotamia.  The Ubaid marks the start of history (that is, our current Lebenswelt).

0247 Of course, Saint Augustine does not know this.  So, he proposes that all humanity shares in the original sin of Adam and Eve through direct descent.  All humans are subject to original sin2c because Adam and Eve are the first parents.

This turns out to be a scientific proposal.  All humans are related to an original pair of humans.  This hypothesis is debunked by modern genetics.  There is no genetic bottleneck, as would be expected for a single-pair founding our species.

0248 So, Fuller points to a post-Augustine interpretation of our current Lebenswelt as a breeding ground for the post-truth condition.  We are expected, by our inquisitors, to say only what we are publicly willing to disclose, as if that is what we are thinking.  Whenever we live up to that expectation, we deceive ourselves.  At the same time, we notch up successes2c for the relativist one3c.

On top of that, our hard-won academic credentials encourage us to utter statements based on the latest empirio-normative narratives2c, as if they2c are what we are thinking2a.

0249 Razie Mah heartily agrees.  See his blog post for January 2, 2024.

0250 Perhaps, among other things, original sin involves defying the God of Creation by publicly mouthing the normative narratives of lesser deities, relativist ones3c, who put both the human intellect3a and will1a into perspective.

The sacrament of baptism plays a role in washing away that original sin, in so far as it introduces the infant to people who offer the story of the One True God, despite the fact that the story is unbelievable, according to all relativist one-heads.

0251 That said, Fuller’s genealogy of the post-truth condition points back to the very start of our current Lebenswelt.

Here is one vista that Fuller, as a guide to the post-truth condition, allows.

0252 Each person must decide which path to follow in the fourth Enlightenment Battle.

There are two paths.

One turns the person in to a certified mask that utters empirio-normative narratives.

One turns a person into a sign-tracker on a path that leads to a sign-vehicle that does not stand for what the empirio-normative judgment is telling me to think.  This is the path of metalepsis.  If Fuller is on target, the sign-tracker will discover an interventional sign-vehicle containing both a novel doctrine of original sin (for our current Lebenswelt) and a new appreciation of the human as an image of God (for the Lebenswelt that we evolved in).

In order to appreciate original justice, one must first respect original sin.

0253 Razie Mah offers three works that reconfigure the current empirio-schematic narrative of human evolution in a way that may assist sign-trackers.  These works are titled, The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define the Word “Religion”.  These works address the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, the first singularity and our current Lebenswelt.

Indeed, these works begin where Fuller’s excellent guidebook concludes.

0254 My thanks to Steve Fuller for his daring, and brief, exposition of the contemporary post-truth condition.

07/1/24

Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition

0001 On January 2, 2024, Razie Mah posts a blog challenging a Catholic podcast to take up a quest.  Re-articulate the doctrine of original sin for the forthcoming age of triadic relations.

0002 The challenge rests on four points.

0003 Here is the first point.

In the 300s AD, Saint Augustine formulates the doctrine of original sin.  In the process, he inadvertently proposes a scientific hypothesis.  All humans descend from Adam and Eve as the original pair.

Of course, Augustine has no reason to question the Genesis text in this regard.  The Bible is sacred text, a witness to God’s action in our current Lebenswelt.  The science of genetics stands 1600 years in the future.

In the 1900s, geneticists definitively debunk the idea that all humans descend from an original pair, unless that founding pair lives over 500,000 years ago.

0004 This is not the only surprise.

In the 1800s and 1900s, archaeology discovers the historical depth of the ancient Near East.  Now, the stories of Adam and Eve are listed among other origin stories of this age and location.  All these stories (with the exception of the first chapter of Genesis) depict a recent creation of humanity, which does not make sense, since humans have been around for at least 200,000 years.

Why do all the written origin stories of the ancient Near East testify to a recent creation of humans?

0005 Indeed, if Augustine were around today, he would frame the doctrine of original sin within the paradigms of the current scientific age.  Adam and Eve are not the first Homo sapiens, even though the second chapter of Genesis depicts their unique manufacture. The stories of Adam and Eve are ancient Near East mythologies.  The artisanal fashioning of Adam and Eve, as well as the talking serpent, are correspondingly mythic.  Also, the stories recorded in Genesis 2.4 through 10 concern the same start of humanity that is suggested by all other written origin stories of the ancient Near East.

0006 The problem?

What is this business about a recent start to humanity?

Why can’t the origin stories of ancient civilizations envision times significantly earlier than their civilizational foundings?

The social and biological sciences have done their utmost to portray human evolution in a way that excludes the witness of the earliest civilizations.

Does human evolution come with a twist?

Of course, it does.

0007 Why does Augustine claim that Adam and Eve are the first humans?  The book of Genesis says so.  But, once one realizes that all the origin stories of the ancient Near East point to an event horizon beyond which civilization cannot see,and that this event horizon is recent (rather than in deep evolutionary time), then the stories of Adam and Eve turn into fairy tales that address the coming-to-be of our current Lebenswelt.

0008 Before our current Lebenswelt, there are no civilizations.  There is no unconstrained social complexity.  There are no experts, or sophists, or relativist ones, or post-graduate ones.

Before our current Lebenswelt, humans live in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, which is unquestionably different than our own civilized condition.  Social complexity is always constrained.  Social hierarchies seldom contain more levels than grand-parents, parents and children.  Maybe there are specialists, like a midwife or a shaman, but there are no institutions for education in “nursing” or “medicine”.

0009 What does this imply?

Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

All the origin stories of the ancient Near East (except for Genesis One) testify to the beginning of our current Lebenswelt as the start of all humanity.  The Lebenswelt that we evolved in cannot be remembered.

The history of the ancient Near East runs deep.  Archaeologists point to the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, as the time and the place where the earliest unconstrained social complexity manifests.  Civilization is further potentiated during the Uruk archaeological period, when urbanism starts and social stratification becomes obvious.  Plus, uncanny inventions are made, such as the wheel and the use of the donkey for long-distance caravans.  Civilization is obvious at the start of the Sumerian Dynastic archaeological period.

0010 So, what do the stories of Adam and Eve depict?

In the 300s, Augustine gives a premodern answer and formulates the first doctrine of original sin.  Adam and Eve are the parents of all humans.  The taint of original sin passes from one generation to the next.

In the 2000s, Augustine’s followers will give a postmodern answer and formulate the second doctrine of original sin.  The stories of Adam and Eve are fairy tales about the start of our current Lebenswelt.  Our current Lebenswelt begins with the first singularity.

0011 Here is the second point.

If Augustine’s hypothesis that Adam and Eve are the first humans fails, then is there another relevant scenario suggested before the modern age of ideas?

Thomas Aquinas offers one, when he reflects on the state of (the literal) Adam before the Fall.  Before the incident involving the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve live in a world of original justice.  Then, after the Fall, they live in a state of original sin.

Does the state of original justice correspond to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

What was life like during the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

Did hominins live up to a recent slogan offered by the expert-driven, science-oriented and empirio-normative-dominated World Economic Forum, “You will own nothing and be happy?”

Our Paleolithic ancestors own nothing (compared to anyone in any civilization) and they are happy (in ways that we currently cannot imagine).

0012 For example, our hominin ancestors adapt to the transcendentals that are extolled by religious intellectuals and ridiculed by secular sophists.  It is as if the transcendentals are sign-vehicles that elicit adaptive sign-objects in the hominin mind, so our brains and bodies express a phenotype that serves as a sign-interpretant for those adaptive sign-objects.

Yes, our ancestors cannot label the transcendentals with spoken words.  Instead, they experience the transcendentals as adaptations.  Truth, beauty, nobility, temperance, strength, wisdom, and prudence do not have spoken labels.  They have moments of perfection in the hominin body and mind.

0013 Aquinas knows nothing about the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  So, he depicts Adam as something of a Greek philosopher, rather than someone who modern anthropologists might recognize: a hominin who owns nothing, works in teams, belongs to community, suffers ailments and danger, yet is unimaginably happy.  After all, our ancestors are who we evolved to be.

We are not so lucky.  

0014 The Lebenswelt that we evolved in holds secrets that contemporary evolutionary anthropologists cannot articulate using the disciplinary languages of the social sciences. (See Razie Mah’s blog for January through March, 2024, as well as Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), available at smashwords and other e-book venues).  Tomasello’s technical term, “joint attention”, is an explicit abstraction that describes hominins, working in teams, being productive and having fun.  It is a mystery how they do it.  Yet, that is what hominins evolve to do.

0015 Another big secret about the Lebenswelt that we evolved in is that, unlike modern anthropologists, our hominin ancestors cannot conduct explicit abstractions.  Our hominin ancestors cannot explicitly label things or events with spoken words.  Why?  They talk with their hands.  Speech is added to hand talk at the start of our own species, Homo sapiens.  Then, Homo sapiens practices a dual-mode way of talking, hand-speech talk, for over 200,000 years before the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia appears, nominally 7,800 years ago, as the world’s first culture to practice speech-alone talk.

0016 Hand talk and hand-speech talk facilitate implicit abstraction.

Even when hand-talk becomes fully linguistic, explicit abstraction not possible.  Manual-brachial gesture-words are holistic.  The referent exists before the word.  The gestural-word pictures or points to its referent.

Speech-alone talk permits implicit abstraction.  It also facilitates explicit abstraction.

Spoken words label parts, distinct from the whole.  For example, the rotational motion that goes into making clay pots is explicitly abstracted with the invention of the pottery wheel.  Then, the pottery wheel is explicitly re-oriented to become the wheel of a cart.  

Spoken words exist before the referent.  Spoken words cannot picture or point to anything.  That is why the referents for spoken words exist as meanings, presences and messages in the realm of possibility.  How often do we create artifacts that validate the meaning, presence and message underlying spoken words?  How long do such validations last?

0017 The differences in the semiotics of hand talk and speech-alone talk are discussed in the opening chapters of the fictional drama, An Archaeology of the Fall.

0018 Point three follows points one and two, in so far as the mythic, as well as the historical, Adam and Eve stand at the event horizon beyond which the origin stories of the ancient Near East cannot see.  The stand at the very start of our current Lebenswelt.  They signify the first singularity.

See The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0019 The fourth and final point is this fool’s errand.  Razie Mah’s blogs for July through October 2024 offer a stumbling yet ambitious start to the quest posted on January 2, 2024.  

The sequence of presentation in the three-part e-book, Original Sin and The Post-Truth Condition, is not quite the same as the sequence of appearance in the blogs.  The blogs are sequenced for space and convenience.

The numbering of the points follows the list presented here.

0020 Fuller’s account of the post-truth condition is examined first.  This examination is foundational.

The results are applied to a book by American entrepreneur and politician, Vivek Ramaswamy, as well as a monograph on American propaganda by Michelle Stiles.

An essay by Josef Pieper on the abuse of language, reconceptualizes the application and serves starting point for a second formulation of the doctrine of original sin.  In the blog, the examination of Pieper appears between the examinations for Ramaswamy and Stiles.

By the end of Pieper’s work, a connection between the post-truth condition and original sin, deepens.

0021 But, that is not all.

An examination of a book on language and cognitive psychology shows that, in 2022, secular academics are yet to confront the hypothesis of the first singularity.  This examination stands as a warning that this hypothesis challenges both theology and science.  Theologians need to devise a post-Augustine formulation of the doctrine of original sin.  Scientists need to consider that (1) the human niche is the potential of triadic relations, as proposed in Razie Mah’s e-book The Human Niche, (2) our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, as dramatized in An Archaeology of the Fall, and (3) the semiotics of speech-alone talk is radically different than hand and hand-speech talk, as discussed in How To Define The Word “Religion”.

0022 The post-truth condition is a product of the semiotics of speech-alone talk.

The post-truth condition manifests original sin.

The end writes the beginning.

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 (SVs) stands for a situation-based sign object (SOs) in regards to the question of what it means to me, operating on the potential of ongoing content (SIs).

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

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 (SVs), stands for traditional Catholics being forced to drink elixir from the grail of the unholy (SOs) in regards to the question of what it means to believers, who are concerned about ongoing events (SIs).

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 (SVs) is picked up by the senses as a mind-independent being.  The situation-based sign-object (SOs) is mind-dependent.

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

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

0026 Here is a picture for the meme at hand.

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

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 (SOi), called into being by an alien intelligence guiding what is happening and the potential of ‘something’ happening (SIi) in the process of implementing an alien idea, plan or judgment (SVi).

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

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

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?

12/30/23

Looking at Joseph Farrell’s Book (2020) “The Tower of Babel Moment” (Part 1 of 10)

0001 The full title of the work before me is The Tower of Babel Moment: Lore, Language, Leibniz, and Lunacy.   The author is one of the wandering stars of our current age, an era when academics award more doctorates than any job market can absorb.  Professors with sharp elbows occupy the few available academic positions, leaving brilliant and successful graduates, the ones with sharp minds, to find places in heaven knows where.

Farrell finds a spot on the internet, that once verdant pasture of free expression, and establishes his own scholastic exploration outside of modern institutional constraints.  In short, he founds his own school.  Those who listen to his voice offer remuneration.  God bless all concerned.

0002 The work before me offers speculation on the nature of the titular biblical story.

Farrell proceeds by way of a spiral staircase of observations and… may I say?.. expansive “measurements”.  Measurements of what?  The literature of the seventeenth century?  The titans of the late Renaissance?  Yes, that will do.

0003 My goal in this examination is to shoehorn Farrell’s exploration into a category-based nested form composed of category-based nested forms.  The interscope is elaborated in A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  Of all procrustean beds that I have at my disposal, the interscope is most accommodating.

Here is a diagram of the interscope.

0004 The method is simple.  First, associate features of Farrell’s argument to elements in the above matrix.  Second, discuss the implications.

Each nested form consists of four statements, the most paradigmatic of which goes like this.  A normal context3 brings an actuality2 into relation with the possibilities inherent in ‘something’1.  The subscripts refer to the categories of Charles Peirce.  Thirdness brings secondness into relation with firstness.

The nested form is fractal.  An interscope is a category-based nested form composed of category-based nested forms.  A two-level interscope associates with sensible construction.  A three-level interscope corresponds to social construction.  Note how the labels change from 1, 2 and 3 to a, b, and c.

The three-level interscope allows the visualization of virtual nested forms, composed of elements within one column.  For example, the virtual nested form in the realm of actuality turns the second column into a category-based nested form,where a perspective-level actuality2c (as virtual normal context) brings a situation-level actuality2b (as virtual actuality) into relation with a content-level actuality2a (as virtual potential).

0005 Farrell opens chapter one with his personal discovery of Leonard Bernstein’s recorded lectures, titled “The Unanswered Question”.  In these lectures, Bernstein discusses Noam Chomsky, who has his own unanswered questions.  Chomsky, in turn, provokes Farrell to ask his own unanswered question, “How do linguists go about demonstrating linguistic universals?”

A universal may be regarded as an observable feature “measurably” appearing in all spoken languages.

0006 Phonologists find common observable features in the sounds of speech.  Common sounds are attributed to the anatomy of the head and neck.

Etymologists find common observable features in closely related words in different languages.  The words are similar and not identical, because they arise from isolation and drift among speaking populations, in a manner similar to biology’s slogan, “descent with modification”.

0007 The key?

Universals imply common origins.  For phonologists, the universal is biological.  For the linguist, the universal is… perhaps lost… in the recesses of time.

0008 A dramatic hypothesis stands against this key.  A sudden change may destroy the common language of humanity.  That change may be labeled, “A Tower of Babel Moment”.

0009 Years ago, Farrell proposes a wider context to this type of hypothesis.  The scenario includes ancient cosmic wars and world grids.  But, these are other books, and other matters, than the text at hand.

0010 So, before going on to chapter two, let me draw some associations.

On the content level, the normal context is language3a.  The actuality may be called a “topology”, or a map of all spoken languages2a.  The potential is that universals imply common origins1a.

The normal context of language3a brings the actuality of cross-language maps2a into relation with the potential of ‘the idea that universals imply common origins’1a.

On the situation level, the normal context is a civilizational moment3b.  The actuality is the Tower of Babel (the biblical story)2b.  The possibility is ‘discontinuity’1b.

The normal context of a civilizational moment3b brings the actuality of the story in Genesis 112b into relation with the potential of a discontinuity1b that corresponds to God confounding the common language of the plains of Shinar.

0011 Here is the two-level interscope.

12/30/23

Looking at Joseph Farrell’s Book (2020) “The Tower of Babel Moment” (Part 2 of 10)

0012 Chapter two discusses the Tower of Babel story, along with ancient commentaries.

In Genesis, the story of Noah’s flood is followed by the genealogy-rich Table of Nations.  The Table of Nations leads into the Tower of Babel incident.  Then, another genealogy follows, segueing into the stories of Abram (who becomes Abraham).

Farrell does not take the reader into the particularity… that is, the “fit”… of this story as an introduction to Abram’s call.  He does not speculate that Abram’s call is directly connected to the embarrassing collapse of a bureaucratic project that promised to deliver a monument rivaling those of the Egyptians.

0013 Instead, Farrell wonders why the denizens… er… rather, the elites of the land of Shinar seek notoriety in building a structure larger than… those damned Egyptian pyramids that everyone admires.  At the time, the Egyptian pyramids are even more impressive than today.  A stone casement adorns each side.  The casement has been chipped off over the millennia.  So, we will never know what the pharaoh proclaimed about himself, for all to read.

Whatever it was, I suspect that it had to be edited by later pharoahs.

0014 Timing?

Farrell is not so interested in connecting the Tower building to a historical event.

Nevertheless, intelligent guesses are possible.

The idea of a tower that establishes the notoriety of a people… or is it regime?.. places the building of the Tower of Bab-ilim (Sumerian for “the gate of the gods”) after the Egyptian pyramid building frenzy (by most reckonings, occurring between 2550 to 2450 B.C.)

According to the world history encyclopedia, dynastic civilization in southern Mesopotamia is already hundreds of years old at this time, in the style of city states.  Around 2500 B.C., the first dynasty of Lagash establishes the first empire, swallowing many city states into one administration.  Codes of law appear by 2350 B.C.  Sargon the Akkad’s empire is even greater than the first.  Sargon sacks Ur in 2330 B.C.  Ziggurats are in use in many Sumerian cities by 2100 BC, showing what empire-ruling administrations can accomplish. The first king-list is officially registered around the same time.

Then, a short dark age follows, say 2080-2020 BC.

A Sumerian rebirth follows, the Ur III period in Sumer, the third dynasty of Ur, lasts from 2047 to 1750 BC.  Then, Babylonians invade.  Elamites attack.  Amorites migrate into the region.  Sumerian civilization ends.

0013 Farrell is interested in what the Genesis tales reveal.

Genesis offers a clue concerning the leader of the populations of Shinar.  Nimrod is a mighty hunter before the Lord. Everyone else is completely intimidated.  Nimrod hunts and conquers wild beasts.  What about human hearts?  Nirond overflows with charisma.

So, of course, Nimrod’s lackeys… er… “administrators” want to advertise his name (as better than the Pharaoh’s).  What better billboard than a tower reaching to the heavens?  Certainly, the Tower of Bab-ilim would secure their leader’s fame as well as ensure their own narrow objectives, such as maintaining their positional power as gatekeepers of the world most sacred site.  Sacred?  Yes, the word, “Bab-ilim”, in Sumerian, means “gate of the gods”.

0014 So what does God do?

God comes down and confounds their speech… oh, I mean to say… their common language.

Once the language is confounded.  Work grinds to a halt.  The project is abandoned.  The blame game begins.

0015 Here, Farrell follows his discriminating nose to the concept that smells the most suspicious.

What is this “common language” business?

Mother tongues are associated with peoples.  Peoples have similar genetics, by way of descent.  So, does the confounding go all the way to the genes?  And, what is in our genes that can be confounded?  Is it DNA.  Or is it what the DNA expects to encounter once its curiously complex code is rendered into a genotype that potentiates a phenotype?

0016 This reader imagines that the Tower of Babel story fits into the terminal events of Ur III, or perhaps with the preceding brief (but, I am sure, distressing) “dark age”.  I imagine that Nimrod is an outsider, living off charisma, speaking a language that is different than Sumerian.  Suggestions?  Akkadian will do.

So, Nimrod rules over the plain of Shinar where two languages are spoken.  One associates with his new regime.  One associates with the old regime.  There are two peoples.  At the same time, there are two elites who want to take advantage of the union of the peoples.

So, a map needs to be constructed.  The topology of this map connects spoken terms between the languages.  With such a map, the people, in theory, speak a common language.

If they speak a common language, then there is nothing that they cannot do.

0017 Here is a picture of Farrell’s second procrustean bed, concerning the tower’s construction.

Note that a two-level interscope corresponds to sensible thought.

0017 Here is a picture of Farrell’s next procrustean bed, concerning the tower’s deconstruction.

Note that God’s intervention brings the perspective level into play.  Once in play, social construction begins.

12/29/23

Looking at Joseph Farrell’s Book (2020) “The Tower of Babel Moment” (Part 3 of 10)

0018 What do I know so far from the Genesis 11 story?

0019 In terms of technical cohesion3b, kiln-fired bricks2b are expensive and methodologically demanding1b. They must be uniformly burnt “thoroughly”1b.  So, there can be no diversity in the meeting of specifications.  When the architectorders bricks for a monumental tower and asks that the bricks be burnt “thoroughly”, the manufacturer must deliver the appropriate product.  So, the situation-level nested form addresses the organization or incorporation of the project.

In particular, the potential of “overcoming diversity” means that all the bricks are burnt thoroughly.

0020 Farrell further informs me that the Sumerian word, “Bab-ilim”, “gate of the gods”, is readily confounded with the Hebrew word, “Babel”, “confusion”.  

May I wonder whether the technical term for “thorough” has a counterpoint in punnery?

0021 Farrell continues.  Old Testament pseudepigraphical referrals to the Tower of Babel story are found in several books of the Sybilline Oracles (date estimated to be 150-200 A.D.).

In Book 3, a brief allusion tells of Nimrod-philic administrators wanting to go up to the starry heavens.  This precisely contradicts the administrator’s propaganda that visualizes the tower as a passage from the firmament to earth.  Celestial beings are invited to come down for refreshment.  Mortal beings (except, of course, the administrators themselves) are not invited to go up and do something impetuous, like carve their initials into the metallic surface of the firmament.

In Book 11, the text mentions a universal ruler who furnishes another race of restless men.  Does that terminology sound like “immigrant laborers”?  I suppose the line between immigrant and “restless” is fuzzy, at best.  These are the ones1bwho make the bricks to construct a tower of awful height, in opposition to heaven.

0022 Farrell suggests that these brief snippets add to the picture in Genesis 11 in intriguing ways.

First, the idea of going to the starry heavens intimates a desire for cosmic power (that is, the power of celestial beings).  Can that desire be reduced to a quest for immortality (for example, as portrayed in the epic of Gilgamesh)?  Is mortality tied to the confounding of the languages that accompany the deconstruction of the Tower?

Second, one aspect of the confusion of languages is phonetic drift.

Third, maybe, the immigrant-slave laborers are not regarded as human.

0023 Farrell next considers Slavonic and Greek translations of 3 Baruch.

In the former, the Slavonic writer sees features of the story in a vision.  At the start, angels carry the visionary through an immense portal (time and space?) to a plain populated by chimeric men, with faces of cattle, horns of deer, feet of goats and loins of rams.  When questioned, the angels say that these are the ones who built the tower of war against God.  The Lord threw them out.

Later, the angels say that these chimerians force men and women to make bricks.  One woman gives birth while engaged in such tasks and is not allowed to stop.

In a more technical vein, the visionary finds out that the chimerians devise an augur.  What is the plan?  When they get high enough to contact the firmament, they will use the augur to drill a hole in its surface, in order to ascertain its composition.

0024 Farrell asks the reader to consider genetic technologies to account for the chimeric humans.  Plus, dows not the thickness of the gates of heaven indicate distances of transit from Earth to Sun or from Earth to Saturn?  Such questions raise the specter of interplanetary powers.  Is the goal of the Tower to manipulate celestial mechanics?

Too bad the chimerians are not around to ask.

0025 Farrell next turns to the Book of Jubilees, where the Lord our God says that, if the tower is completed, nothing will escape the Nimrod-affiliated administrative state (or, I should note, God says ‘something like that’).  This explains why the Tower is called “an act of war against God”.

Most likely, the administrators claim (for the public to hear) that the Tower will serve the convenience of the celestial being.  Come on down and have refreshment!   But, the administrators (in private) have far more nefarious plans.

Thank God, no one knows about them.

0026 The citizens of the Shinar plain agree that whatever the administrators say must be correct.  The great tower should ease the descent of a celestial being.  Even the immigrant-slave laborer, who still knows what “thorough” means, is on board.  Even that woman giving birth knows that her “people” can do anything that they set out to do.  After all, they have a common language.

It’s like mind over matter.

In this regard, Farrell mentions the research of a material-science professor, at the University of California (back in the day), who demonstrates that humans, through agreement and projected intention, can generate “psychometric objects”.

Are these things that are altered by conditions?  Or things that alter conditions?  Or maybe both?

“Psychometric” is an evocative (yet ambiguous) adjective… and occasionally… noun.

0027 To me, “psychometric” describes the difference between an actuality alone and an actuality2 with a normal context3and potential1.  An actuality by itself is a mind-independent being composed of matter and form.  An actuality2 that is bounded by a normal context3 and potential1 permits understanding or whatever one wants to call the entire nested form as a mind-dependent being.

Farrell notes that psychometric objects naturally belong to rituals.  In Christian tradition, bread and wine (matter and form) transubstantiates to the Body and Blood of Christ (being and form, as actuality2 in a nested form).  The appearance or essence of the substantiated form remains the same.  The presence or esse_ce of the substantiating being changes from matter to being.  Matter is material.  Being is relational.  Being entangles matter in its relationality.

The Eucharist is an exemplar for psychometric objects.

Being (relationality) entangles matter (physicality).

A category-base nested form entangles an actuality itself.

0028 Speaking of psychometric objects, Farrell next turns to Pseudo-Philo’s version of the Tower of Babel story, where “thorough” takes on an alchemical flavor.  Each person says to his neighbor, “Let us write our names on the bricks and then thoroughly burn them in fire.”

To me, the immigrant-slave laborers are only imitating their Nimrod-loving administrative masters.  The word, “thoroughly”, passes from a technical quantification to an alchemic qualification.  To burn a brick is to heat it long enough to fix the written name, rather than to drive all the water out, leaving spaces for molten bitumen to seep into before solidifying and stabilizing the brick.

The thoroughly burnt brick absorbs molten bitumen.  When the bitumen solidifies, it fortifies the brick.

The alchemically psychometric burned brick appears to absorb molten bitumen, but maybe not as much.  Plus, it costs a lot less.

Does that sound like a recipe for disaster?

0029 Pseudo-Philo re-iterates the idea that, if these Nimrod-serving bureaucrats and their immigrant-slaves act as one people, due to the conviction that they speak “one language”, then they will be daring in all that they propose to do, including building a tower that will rival the Egyptian pyramids.

But, Pseudo-Philo does not seem to notice that the method of brick manufacture has already changed, from construction material to alchemical psychometric thing, making it more and more difficult to ascertain which bricks are suitable for monumental construction and which are not.

How can the translator stone permit the discrimination of technically thoroughly burnt bricks from alchemical psychometric bricks when the translator stone is the mechanism supporting the ideology that the people of the old regime and the people in the new regime now speak one language and that makes them one people?

0030 The two-level interscope changes slightly, but tellingly.

12/29/23

Looking at Joseph Farrell’s Book (2020) “The Tower of Babel Moment” (Part 4 of 10)

0032 So far, the pointed mention of a common language before the construction of the Tower of Babel suggests a single people speaking a single mother tongue, rather than a translator stone that maps between the language of an established elite (Sumerian still is spoken in temple halls and in schools of learning) and the language of immigrants (Akkadian is spoken by the newcomers, both elites and common folk).

However, the image of a common language does not rule out the possibility that there is an instrument, a translator stone, capable of rendering Sumerian into Akkadian and back again.  Plus, this instrument would be in the hands of the newcomers, the “administrative” elites, who have taken over management and think that Nimrod is a great sport.  These administrators would never cross Nimrod and his family.  But, they might subvert the execution of those royal commands that do not advance their own interests.

In fact, the established elites and the incoming elites have their own incentives to fashion a single people for the mighty hunter to rule.

0033 Indeed, certain clues in the Genesis text and subsequent commentaries argue against the suggestion that the term, “common language”, requires a single people speaking a single mother tongue.

But, what does the idea of a common language indicate?

0034 Farrell asks the reader to consider late 19th and early 20th century inquiry into the Indo-European language radiation, which documents many of linguistic transitions through writing.  Yes, writing is invented soon after the proto-Indo-European population rapidly grows and diversifies and settles new lands (including Europe, Persia and northern India).

The proto-Indo-Europeans are a single people with a common tongue around 4000 B.C.  Writing first appears slightly later in Mesopotamia and Egypt.  So, this language radiation picks up writing along the way, enriching the documentary evidence for the hypothesis of a language radiation from a single population.

0035 Indeed, scientific inquiry into spoken languages and peoples shows that these two go together for the radiation of the Indo-European family of languages.

0036 Can the same be said for all spoken languages?

Do all spoken languages and populations go together, all the way back to the population that founds Homo sapiens?

Plus, wouldn’t it be nice if scientists obtain a psychometric object that can verify an affirmative answer.  The psychometric object cannot be writing, since writing starts, say, around 3000 B.C., and anatomically modern humans appear in the archaeological record before 200,000 years ago.  Perhaps, a computer simulation will suffice.

Statistical correlations might work.

0037 What does this tell me?

Does Farrell want to find a key in the union of language and populations (hence, genetics)?

The union of language and population is supported by well-documented research into the Indo-European radiation.  The divergence of the languages is documented in writing, so to speak. 

The union of language and population supports the alluring psychometrics of modern linguistic inquiry.  Inquiry discerns more and more expansive language families, reaching back to the earliest Homo sapiens.  Is the divergence of all languages documented by our genetics, so to speak?

Such documentation will make the union of language and population uncontestable.

Will the union be so uncontestable that one can construct an ideology that says, “If we share a common tongue, then we are one people.”?

And, can that ideology be so persuasive that everyone in a region buys into it, even though they speak different languages?

0038 I wonder, and in that wonderment, I offer the following three-level interscope as Farrell’s next procrustean bed.

0039 On the content level, the actuality of a translator stone2a is contextualized by an ideology of a common language3athat is supported by the potential of ‘technical and group cohesion’1a.  This material and immaterial cohesion1a must be strong enough to sustain an ambitious project of monument construction2b.

Working against this cohesion1a is the potential that the labor is immigrant and not particularly well-remunerated1b.  Here, the alchemic knowledge1c that contextualizes the tower’s construction2b comes into play.  Alchemic knowledge1c supports the ideology that both elite and immigrant practice a common language3a, courtesy of the translator stone2a.

0040 Here is the virtual nested form in firstness.

Consider the psychometrics.

If immigrant and slave labor serves as a potential1b by itself, then, to me, it seems unlikely to support the actualization of the tower2b that the techical organization3b aims to achieve.

If immigrant and slave labor serves as a potential1b in the above virtual category-based nested form, then it1b operates as a psychometric object working within the virtual normal context of elite alchemical knowledge1c and the potential of ‘the technical and group cohesion’1a that the technical organization3b demands.

Consider the numerological approach.

If I consider a number for this virtual nested form, I suppose it would be the number 5.  In binary code, {5} is {1(22)+0(21)+1(20)}.  The perspective (22) and content (20) levels are posited.  The situation (21) level is negated, or transformed into something that it is not: a psychometric object1b.

No immigrant or slave (by himself or herself) ideates that he or she is either immigrant or slave (because all are of one people due to the common language ideology).

0041 On the situation level, the actuality of tower construction2b is contextualized by technical organization3b and operates on the potential productivity of immigrant, not well-remunerated, labor1b.  That does not mean that they1b are not well fed.  They are fed slogans daily.

0042 On the perspective level, the elite’s hidden normal-context of celestial manipulation3c brings the actuality of the tower as a psychometric object2c into relation with the potential of ‘elite alchemical knowledge’1c

The virtual nested form in the realm of normal context is telling.  I assign the number three.

0043 In binary, {3} is {0(22)+1(21)+1(20)}.  The perspective-level is negated, thereby forcing everyone to think in terms of sensible construction.

In fact, the official propaganda is that the intended purpose of the tower is to serve as a stairway from heaven to earth.  The tower is an invitation for a celestial being to descend and find refreshment.  So, the number 3 is not enough.  There is one more “level” that packs the entire three-level social construction into… um… a content-level actuality2a?

0044 Okay, then about the number 11?

In binary, {11} is {1(23)+0(22)+1(21)+1(20)}.

So, the {1(23)} affirms the negation of the perspective-level normal context by masking its emptiness with a public proclamation2a(new) that covers over the “0” in the perspective-level normal conext3c.

At this point, I wonder, “May I call this numerology business, ‘numerometrics’?”

0045 What about non-biblical version of the same type of story as the Tower of Babel?

Notably, the Meopotamian epic, Ennerkar and the Lord of Aratta, notes that, way-back when, everyone addresses Enlil in a single language, then Enki mixes up the speech of men.

In the event, the mix-up involves an envoy going to the mountains of Aratta, in order to obtain gold and a specific form of silver, capable of participating in alchemic synthesis.  What would the envoy synthesize?  The translator stone?  A philosopher’s stone?  A formula to bind illusions, such as an ideology that everyone speaks a common tongue, to human minds, so that everyone accepts the ideology while, at the same time, obviously speaking different languages?  A translator’s stone can be spell binding.

0046 Farrell next mentions the Mayan creation account.  Parallels between the Popal Voh and the Tower of Babel are numerous, especially an implicit threat that human knowledge increases so rapidly as to threaten the gods.  Human knowledge includes cosmological information.  Human can identify the four corners of the sky.

In particular, the gods identify intellectuals as the problem.  In order to address their fears, the gods introduce wives and women to cause procreation and stop the accumulation of technical and alchemical knowledge.

Keep those explicit abstractions in check!

0047 Here, I return to the interscope for social construction before the confounding of speech.

Note how the titles of each level change.

0048 Here is what happens next.

12/28/23

Looking at Joseph Farrell’s Book (2020) “The Tower of Babel Moment” (Part 5 of 10)

0049 Chapter three concerns the topics of linguistic common origin and taxonomy.

From this examination, so far, I speculate (riffing off of Farrell’s speculations) that the normal context of an ideology of a common tongue3a derives from an actual translation stone2a, which converts one language to another so well that it2amaintains the potential for ‘technical work and group cohesion’1a

0050 So, to me, the question that chapter three addresses asks, “Is this ideology built into our brains, bodies and bones?”

What2a is required for the normal context of a common language3a to manifest the potential of  ‘the technical and group cohesion offered by one people1a?

Would a translator stone2a do the trick?

0051 Here is a picture of what I am talking about.

0052 Farrell starts with the earliest scientific formulation that the coincidence of one language and one people is bound through time.

The first language family to be identified is the Indo-European.  Wonderful social science is accomplished by Edward Sapir (1884-1939 AD), Alfredo Trombetti (1866-1929) and others.  All Indo-European languages trace back through time to one proto-Indo-European people. 

After that, further attempts at classifying language families are resisted for years

0053 Why?

Well, I suppose that it must be due to a “translator’s stone issue” of some sort.

As it turns out, many Indo-European languages are written, as well as oral.  So, writings, preserved through time, independently corroborate the similarities and differences identified by linguists.  In effect, writing independently verifies changes in phonetics and semantics over time.  Writing operates as a psychometric “translator’s stone”.

0054 In the 1960s, Joseph Greenberg refashions the (writing-focused) translator’s stone into an exercise of pattern recognition and statistics.  Farrell offers samples demonstrating the exercise.  Our gestalt-tendencies allow instant recognition of patterns that are then validated using statistical methods.  What are the chances that this pattern would be recognized and not any other?  Greenberg identifies language families as gigantic as Indo-European.  Indeed, even families of families can be discerned with his new translator stone… er… I mean to say, “methodology”.

Merritt Ruhlen, Greenberg’s student, publishes the crown publication in 1994, bringing the coincidence of language and ethnos (Russian for “a people lacking explicit abstractions indicating that they are a people”) all the way back to the origin of our species.

(Ethnos? See Looking at Michael Millerman’s Chapter (2022) “…Dimensions of Dugin’s Populism” appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in late February 2023.)

0055 So, if hominins fashion a common tongue at the start of our own species, then what do our ancestors talk in the times prior to say, 250,000 years ago?

The answer, according to Razie Mah, is hand talk.  Speech is added to hand talk at the start of our own species.  Humans practice hand-speech talk for, say, 240,000 years, and now, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.

Hmmm. I suppose that a Tower of Babel Moment may be hidden in that hypothesis.

0056 But, a hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk Tower of Babel Moment is not what Genesis 11 reports.

Genesis 11 reports something very different.  Genesis 11 reports the conviction that one language means one people and, if everyone holds that conviction, then a civilization can accomplish whatever it sets out to do.

If the people really speak different languages, all that one needs is a topogram that maps one language onto the others, and visa versa, in order to establish that all belong to a common tongue and therefore constitute one people.

0057 Yes, the correlation between language and people, our talk-tradition and ourselves, is woven, by evolution, into the fabric of our being, so much that if we believe that we practice a common tongue, even though we obviously do not, then we are transubstantiated into one people.

0058 Farrell comes to the verge of articulating this realization, but does not.

Why?

He forges a path for others to follow.  The connection between a common language and genetic affiliation smells too sweet for him to realize that the flower produces a seed and that the seed may germinate into an illusion.  The mind-independent reality of the translator’s stone substantiates the mind-dependent reality that we all share a common tongue and therefore, are one people.

Others, following his path, can pause and say, “Hey, this may sound crazy, but what if the link between talk tradition and people is built into our very constitution, and what if all someone has to do is convince us that we have the same language, then we are caught, hook line and sinker, by the illusion that we are one people?”

Here is a picture.

0059 And now, an irony.

The Akkadian language, the language that most likely associates to Nimrod, the mighty you-know-what, belongs to the Semitic family of spoken languages, which is as impressive as the Indo-European.

The Sumerian language, the language that most likely associates to the ones who concocted the Tower of Bab-ilim story, is a linguistic isolate.  An “isolate”?  Yes, Sumerian is unrelated to any family of languages.

0060 This is an embarrassing topic for students of ancient Mesopotamian civilization.

So, experts rarely mention the fact.

After all, why would Sumerian be an linguistic isolate?

And, what would that fact have to do the formation of civilization of southern Mesopotamian?

Who knows?

So, who cares?

The stone that the builders reject, becomes the cornerstone of a new foundation.

12/28/23

Looking at Joseph Farrell’s Book (2020) “The Tower of Babel Moment” (Part 6 of 10)

0061 In chapter four, Farrell introduces the reader to Gottfried W. Leibniz (1646-1716 A.D.), a polymath in a century filled with polymaths.  Leibniz writes volumes.  Many of his works are not translated into English.  So, let the reader beware.  At the same time, let that not deter us.  Farrell picks up a translation of a short article (circa 1696) titled, “On the Principle of Indiscernibles”.

0062 I suppose that, if one tries, one can discern something.

But, what if that ‘something’ is indiscernible?

0063 Leibniz writes (I follow Farrell’s quotation), “All that we have said here arises from that great principle, that the predicate is in the subject.”

Does this apply to the Tower of Babel story?

Here is my guess.

0064 The translator stone2a is a predicate.  It2a is a psychometric object that actualizes the potential of ‘group cohesion’1awhile sustaining a normal context, the ideology of a common language3a, that maximizes that potential1a.

The Tower of Bab-ilim2c is a subject.  It2c is the psychometric object that actualizes the potential of ‘alchemic knowledge’1c while sustaining the hidden normal context3c, the manipulation of celestial beings3c, which may include “stars” like Nimrod, a mighty hunter and, no doubt, ruthless psychopath.  The administrators want Nimrod’s name on a tower that puts the Egyptian pyramids to shame.

0065 Leibniz’s proclamation concerns the principle of indiscernibles.

Farrell passes into the mists of that principle.

Who can discern, in the haze of a story about the confounding of languages, a Tower of Babel moment, which, to me, corresponds to the loss of efficacy of a translation stone?

0066 Does Farrell suggest that Leibniz seeks to recover the translation stone of translation stones, one that brings us to the beginning, that is, to the time when speech is added to hand talk, in the form of anatomically modern humans?

From this moment of divergence, all spoken languages radiate in time and space, except for a handful of isolates.  And, never mind about the issue of hand-speech talk.

This is not about isolates or hand-speech talk.

0067 Leibniz seeks to discern a translation stone that puts the one in the land of Shinar to shame.  Leibniz invents the calculus.  Plus, he envisions a lost form of philosophical analysis that imitates the calculus, in so far as it translates nature’s language into human discourse.  All that is needed is a map.  A topogram.  A translation stone.

Leibniz is not alone in his search for “characteristica universalis”.  Francis Bacon (1561-1626 AD) writes his own fictional manifesto, The New Atlantis, as an epilogue to his mechanical-philosophy oriented Novum Organon.

0068 Does Bacon’s towering manifesto and topographic mechanical philosophy overlay onto the actualities of the Tower of Babel construction?

Here is how that might look.

0069 Okay, back to Leibniz.

In 1679, a work entitled, “An Introduction To A Secret Encyclopedia”, circulates among later-to-be labeled, “enlightenment” thinkers.  

An Introduction To A Secret Encyclopedia mentions technocracy.

Now, if I were to put “technocracy” into the above interscope, then what slot would I choose?

How about the situation level normal context3b?

0070 Leibniz presents a long list of the arts involved with a complex administration of the secret encyclopedia.

Where do these arts go?

Perhaps, they go with the perspective-level potential1c.

Here is my prior guess, adjusted.

0071 Farrell highlights one of the arts: the art of subtlety.

This art is on display in Looking at Daniel Dennett’s Book (2017) “From Bacteria, to Bach, and Back”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog during the month of December 2023.

0072 Indeed, this reader suspects that Farrell’s line of thought is designed to carve a deconstructive path into the art of subtlety, as well as the art of the obvious, in order to allow entrance to those who, like himself, are neither commoner nor aristocrat.

The art of the obvious pertains to what is intersubjectively accepted by commoners as “objective”.  Yes, the translator stone is real.  It is more real than the plain observation that the people of the Shinar plain speak Sumerian and Akkadian.  The translation stone is a psychometric object capable of altering social conditions.

The art of subtlety pertains to what is subjectively accepted by the commoner as “suprasubjective”.  Yes, the translator stone verifies the ideology that we all speak a common language and therefore, are one people.  If many people believe it, then that turns the translation stone into a psychometric object.

Yes, both arts are at work in the psychometrics of the translator stone2a and the Tower of Bab-ilim2c.

0073 All sorts of philosopher stones have been fashioned.

I suppose that, in the beginning, one of them worked as advertised.

What Farrell points out, in his spiral-staircase ascent through his deconstructive augur, is that all the nascent figures of the western enlightenment, suspect that this is the case.  All that we need to do is rediscover the one philosopher’s stone that works.  A translator stone connects us to the beginning of human kind, even to before the beginning of our kind.  A philosophical instrument translates the language of nature into the language of humans.  This alchemical recipe will even convert lead into gold.

0074 And so, I may pencil in a few more elements to Francis Bacon’s own Bab-ilim.

12/27/23

Looking at Joseph Farrell’s Book (2020) “The Tower of Babel Moment” (Part 7 of 10)

0075 Farrell concludes chapter four with speculative fireworks, launched from the platform of Leibniz’s characteristica universalis and the Nimrod-administration’s topogram that converts Sumerian to Akkadian and back again.  Content-level actualities2a generate a normal context3a and potential1a that allow people1a… well, at least the representatives2c of the people1a… or better, the people2c who claim to represent the people1a… to challenge God3c or at least, achieve ends3c that are hidden beneath a blanket of official propaganda2c.

0076 The popular Cabbala represents a translation stone2a, of sorts.

Jacob Boehme’s occult references to an Adamic language3a, a Natursprache3a, intimates the hidden potential of everyone working from the same playbook1a… er… illusion3a.

Illusion?  Delusion?

0077 Here I must pause to plug the examination that marks the start of 2023, just as this review ends the year.  In January of this year, Razie Mah opens with Looking a Alex Jones’s Book (2022) “The Great Reset”.  The theatrical Alex Jones labors to reveal illusions and delusions.  That is his mission and his gift.  In the analysis, two words are defined.

An illusion is a mind-independent reality that is regarded as mind-dependent.  The psychometric translator stone is a mind-independent reality that is regarded as a sign that there is a common language, hence, a common people (that is, a mind-dependent being).

A delusion is a mind-dependent reality that is regarded as mind-independent.  On the perspective level for the construction of the tower, the mind-dependent reality of alchemical knowledge1c supports a mind-independent manipulation of celestial beings3c.

0078 How does one discern all this?

The predicate is in the subject.

Here is a picture.

0079 Farrell turns the metaphor of the topogram inside out.

Surely, the radiation of languages from an original proto-Indo-European people is documented by writing.

What about a radiation of almost all the spoken languages of the world from a single population, say 250,000 years ago?

This radiation cannot be documented by writing.

What about petroglyphs?

Does the commonality of petrographic symbols validate the impression of a continuity that stretches from the start of our species to the Tower of Babel Moment that precedes the Tower of Babel Story in Genesis 11?

0080 Farrell suggests that we may turn to the last Renaissance man… or maybe, the first figure of the western enlightenment… for further insight into the principle of indiscernibles.