We shall remember the Celtic Bards

Apple II

 A mantra for the early christian scribes as they worked can be seen in a comrade's description: "The universe-will trying to catch the lightning of reveletion in a physical bottle." Keep in mind that few of my comrades are human, most of them figments of my mind.

 The early christians wrote things down so they could be spoken out loud, not read in private and alone. Paul's epistles were scripts to be performed to a room full of people, the vocal chords engaged, gestures movement and action employed as the promoted dogma. They were a communion they weren't private moments between a reader and a writer with a frozen message to share.

 Then from the very early church when Paul had to fear the earthly tyrant Nero there was a bolshevism amongst the christian believers that declared their encounter with their transcendent message was so real they'd risk their lives to carve it into the physical material of the world, let god witness their loyalty and devotion, let others follow in their footsteps.

 Indeed for the pre-christian Celts of Britannia and even the training that produced a post Roman bard like Taliesen would be considered cruel and unusual in this day. While performing, had Taliesen produced a note from his pocket, or used a telepromoter, it would have been considered sacrilege. He was supposed to be a direct link between mortals and Awen, the divine flowing spirit of inspiration.

 Go ahead, if you won't I'll say it: "Taliesen is a reminder that the human body is capable of carrying the full weight of the world's meaning without outsourcing it to the written word or a Machine."

 We were Awen and still are.

Acclimatizing to a Transcendental Signified and the end of the Postmodern

Trajectory

 De Sausurre pictured language as a massive shifting net that kept words apart. Différance, different and postponed, which in Derrida's view is the description of meaning in language, is in my view an expression emerging from a fundamental constituent of the universe that's a transendental signified that grounds language. The argument has been that language is logically flawed, it's inaccurate, no match for the precision of math and science. I suspect that argument to be an error. Now go ahead, close your eyes and phone a mental health professional, then say hello to the end of Postmodernism while I stick a tongue into the keyhole of reason.

 

Connecting to the Universe.

Auras

 We are going to attempt to think about language as the medium through which life forms chose to connect to existence. A tad radical! And you're correct the Blue Green Algae doesn't speak English or Aramaic, so our question will be "What is called language?"

 We have talked about de Sausurre and Jaques Derrida.We spent time with the Signifier, the word or sound cat, and the Signified, the mental image and connections that come into the mind of a small, fury, sometimes purring animal when cat is mentioned. And while we might never have found out how to pronounce the name  de Sausurre we have admired his two points about the relationship between the Signifier and the Signified. Those points are, there is no reason why the word cat should mean a small, fury, sometimes purring animal, rather, over the years we have just collectively agreed upon it. The other point is a word has meaning, not because of what it is, but because of what it is not. A cat is not a car or a kipper. De Sausurre pictured language as a massive shifting net that kept words apart.

 Jacques Derrida, who had amazing hair and the ill-tempered expression of a man who might have spent too much time thinking, had, like so many, searched through the texts of preceding centuries looking for what Derrida, having absorbed de Sausurre, decided to call a Transcendental Signified. Where was the floor, what was the thing itself. Derrida asked: "where is an ultimate, unshakeable bedrock of truth outside of language that anchors everything else." In another way, "When you look up a word in a dictionary, it defines that word using other words. If you look up those words, they lead to more words. You are trapped in an endless loop of signifiers. You never actually reach the physical "thing" itself."

 And if I remember we then looked at Derrida's suggestion for a possible solution to the where is the floor question? He chose the French word Différance which is arrived at from the word différer which means both "to differ from" and "postpone." He suggested meaning was always both differing and postponing. Here it's useful to accept that within the meaning of postpone is the idea of deliberate and deliberate implies a decision.

 Derrida and Sausrre's contributions to understanding is to advance the idea that meaning is a collective human project. Me, I'd argue a Transcendental Signified is existence. If so this collective human project is our response to existence, an expression of consciousness.

 Now I can say  Différance which as different and postponed is a fundamental constituent of the universe.

A Choice to Connect is the Ulutmate Verb

Elija in the Desert (Washington Aliston 1779-1843)

  Western Philosphy, in my view, is in the process of re-engaging with existence. This time, not so much because of World Wars, fields of blood and industrial scale murder, but more as a result of reasons similar to the reasons that drove veterans of the The Third Crusade to become hermits and find peace in the caves of Mount Carmel where Elijah had once challenged the Prophets of Baal. The Elijah account was a long, tumultuous story and still is. Baal was all about storms, fertility, deception, idolatry and king Ahab's wife, Queen Jezebel. Elijah was about obeying the one God and having no fun whatsoever this side of the "Still Small Voice."

 Elijah had just caused the death of 450 Prophets of Baal, there'd been fire that melted stone. Despite the victory for Yahweh it had been no more and no less traumatic for Elijah than the Third Crusaders attempts to retake Jerusalem, and return it to the rightful god. What Elijah did to recover was to retreat to the Cave of Mount Horeb, he wasn't victoriously celebrating, he was a broken soldier. His symptoms, as recorded, were exactly those of severe trauma, his first request was to pray for death : "It is enough! O Lord, take away my life."

 Elijah had had his word with his god, and nowhere in the story did Elijah appear to have publicly doubted his calling. Had he shared Schopenhauer's understanding of Will he might have seen what I see - a mindless, universal force pushing shape into the mystery, a random slope looking for Nouns - a blind, insatiable, striving energy that underlies all physical reality. But no Elija was a full blown noun, he'd left his verbs, avoided them, didn't want to think about them and he'd become a servant of his Lord.

 Our philosophers are where I believe they should be, verbs looking for nouns, not smug little shit heads with answers. Indeed the choice is to connect with existence not define it.