notes

[some edited]

Language (as we know it) intrinsically modal--which models on/off supposition recurrent through all human reasoning (except that generally discounted, or labelled 'mythic' or generally much worse). (Identity principle also vice similarity principle. Tacit assumption: if something fits within defined field of variance, then it is effectively identical to any other thing that fits within that field, and discrepancies not identified (not defined within field of variance) are intrinsically unimportant.

--Concept of intrinsic value: meaningless. Denotive description not intrinsic (by definition, note). This directly implies kinds of separated knowledge--because information control is the trues form of power (money=information about right to live).

(pause)
[as noted]
When the relative is expressed in terms of the absolute, there is intrinsic error. Thus “You have confused the true and the real” because truth is a matter of representation and for that matter thus of understanding. Numbers occur in translation--they represent quantities (based on 'salient characteristics'--a very important phrase in many respects) abstracted from the real environment by means of a representational system (language, that is) which is flawed by inherent assumptions, some of them so basic to our experience that we can become aware of them only with great difficulty. Our cultures see ownership as intrinsic. Privilege is an expression of social stature (control of information--bearing in mind that “money” is information!), and society as we know it--based on an aggressive model, that is--requires such structuring. The stability of modern cultures depends on it. Authority=stature=privilege. There is also thus an automatic separation between governing and governed. [One might name any number of people who went from the lower classes to the governing class. One might also note that they either changed viewpoints or died, generally. Coincidentally, of course. Statistics are not a tool for causative analysis.] Implicit in any aggressive society is whole is more important than parts, that the “good of the many outweighs the good of the few”. This could be used to defend the Nazi persecution of Jews (it provided both rationale and clear (supposed) basis of identity (Aryan nation)) because it provided a unifying force for Germany. “The truth” is always in terms of a system of values and consequent definitions and is at least nearly entirely relative--because base values and definitions are dependent upon social position. The existence of the homeless amounts to the declaration that the right to live is dependent upon functioning as a wage-earning member of society. Factor in current (as of the early 90s) valuation of correct attitude over competence and a steady progression to a dystopian dictatorship (ruled, mind you, by numbers, and thus putatively unfailingly just--but the numbers, money, are assigned...by social stature) where correct and possible attitudes are rigorously defined and any variance therefrom is rewarded with (at least effective) execution. [(No job=homeless=how do you survive? ('temperate' climate, mind, temperatures here right now get up to 42 degrees Fahrenheit))] The current attempts of the Bush administration to define good in terms of social stability maintained by capitalistic structuring of social rank (and control) are surprising only in that there is no real attempt to disguise with platitudes. The groundwork has been fully laid for the loss of even illusive freedom. [I am not a communist, by any means. Communism can't work, because at the heart lies the idea that one works to his/her best function (state-defined, which means that error will occur in the form of information being scrambled in the form of the bureaucracy steadily and rapidly changing to a form where preservation of the bureaucracy is a prime good and any other functioning secondary, and that thus influence will be an active force) and is paid to his/her needs...again state-defined, and note that there then is...money. Pay in goods requires a representative system=information about right to posession=money. Neither communism nor capitalism have ever or will ever exist; all have been socialist institutions, in that there are governmental controls on commerce and that there are (however inadequate, as in the United States) governmental programs to assist the needy. More than that, the very idea of a communist state existing solitarily is absurd. This in fact was an expansionist and imperialist doctrine, no matter the antecedents...and had nothing to do with equality. A pyramidal structure of authority cannot and will not support equality. In this case the identity principle works; information=information. The actual statement of social stature in the U.S. becomes ...then...possession of information and control of access to it.]
...
Numbers cannot lie: but then neither can they tell the truth. Their connection to reality is based on the same complicated skeined scheme of concepts (definitions+values) as is language--and that connection is necessarily in terms of language. That a lingual analogue (similar not identical to language) is employed rather than language itself does make some difference (identity does not equal similarity)--but in mass-analysis situations will have little practical effect. [What will have effect is archetypes which lie below lingual level and are the essential constructions of the prelingual consciousness and thus effect all later learning at a sublingual and therefore hard-to-approach level....though this is actually the level of experience, realtime. What is the sound of one hand clapping??] Actual motivational sequencing isn't explicit because actual values are not explicit. Attempting to describe personal, subjective sensations in terms of 'object-oriented' representational system possible only because of extreme similarity among users (Hoyle, Black Cloud).
--sd