[MD] Marsha's (s)OL

[Ham Priday]

Dear Marsha (Platt mentioned) --



> I too sometimes feel I want to agree with Ham, but I cannot quite
> grasp his special vocabulary.  I came to the double negative via
> Buddhism, and after a struggle to understand, embraced it.
> The nature of the static patterns of value always seemed the most
> important concept to understand.  Unlike an ideal form, patterns
> are best understood in the double negative.  The pattern for zebra
> would be opposite-from-non-zebra, the pattern for justice
> would be opposite-from-non-justice; this would make a pattern's
> boundary amorphic and all-encompassing, along with conceptual,
> ever-changing, relational and interconnected based on present
> experience and on an individual's history. The unpatterned is all
> around us, but we are too quick to apply static patterns and a
> tendency to involve in constant mental chatter about past and future.
> Once the nature of patterns is understood, it becomes easy to deal
> with the four levels for they become a bridge between the MoQ
> and SOM. I also believe within Buddhism it is stated that the
> Ultimate Truth can only be _approached_ through the negative,
> by discovering that something is false. I think the same could be
> said of DQ; it can best be approached by discovering what patterns
> are not.

You're on to something here, Marsha, and so is Platt (although he doesn't 
yet realize it).  On 10/4, in his assertion that "existence, reality, and 
Quality are permanent," he also said "'All is change' is self-
contradictory."

Existence itself is contradictory because it pits the "self" against 
"otherness".  A dichotomy like Self/Otherness cannot be "real' or true in 
the metaphysical sense because it represents contrariety.  There is no 
contrariety in Absolute Essence (Cusa's 'Not-other').  If you understand 
negation, you must come to the realization that the only way contrariety 
(differential otherness) can arise from an absolute source is by negation. 
Selves are negated entities, as is all otherness.  In my thesis I refer to 
existents as "negates".

Think of the negate as an individualized reduction of the primary source. 
The first "difference" -- the "split" which Bo is always talking about -- is 
the division of unity into two.  This is manifested in the empirical fact 
that bipolarity is a prominent feature of existential reality.  You not only 
have 'selfness and otherness', you have 'this and that', 'here and there', 
'good and bad', 'male and female', 'beginning and end', ad infinitum.  The 
individual is a dichotomy of its own: Being-Aware.  It's not surprising, 
therefore, that all experience reflects this primary dualism.

If I am negated from Essence, then I am no more "real" than the objects I 
see around me.  Descartes might as well have expressed his Cogito thusly: "I 
think, therefore I EXIST and AM NOT REALITY".  In one place in my thesis I 
type this verb with a hyphen as "ex-ist".  'Ex' is the Latin for "from", as 
in "separated from", and the etymology of the suffix 'ist' is IS (i.e., that 
which is real).  So, in actuality, everything that ex-ists is a negational 
derivation of the true reality, Absolute Essence.

The question I had to answer was: What is it that Essence negates to 
actualize Existence?  It came down to a choice of Consciousness 
(sensibility), Value, or Nothingness.  I won't bore you with my reasons for 
rejecting the first two options, but Nothingness is the obvious choice. 
Existence is a synthesis of Being and Nothingness.  Essence contains no 
nothingness BECAUSE it negates it.  But a "being" must have nothingness in 
order to ex-ist as a particular finite entity.  (Nothingness divides it from 
the Whole of Essence and from every other entity.)

That makes Experience a "secondary negation", a theory that's too involved 
to get into here.  But you're on the right track, Marsha.  And I'll be happy 
to expound on my theory -- on or off line -- if and whenever you're ready.

(Have I given you any new insights, Platt?)

Anyway, I want you both to know that I greatly appreciate your continued 
interest in my views as an "armchair philosopher".

Best regards,
Ham

P.S. "Soulmate" is another reification, Marsha.