The Deception of Words

Abstract Deception

 

 

The human psyche is a battlefield with various factions seeking control. One of them, The Archons of Gnostic mythology, is described by John Lamb Lash as a sort of spiritual control system implanted into the human mind. According to his definition, these inorganic entities have a tri-fold identity: cosmological (an independent alien population creating virtual worlds between the Sun-Earth-Moon system by imitating geometric forms), noetic-psychological (a software program within the mind causing us to move away from the intentionality humans possess and archons enviously lack), and sociological (working through authoritarian structures to steer collective evolution). By entangling the human psyche in a world of abstractions --- lacking human intentionality (ennoia), they can only imitate NOT truly create --- we are pulled away from direct connection with a living earth.

This development of abstraction during the Upper Paleolithic period of 50,000 BCE has fanned out to express itself in language, mathematics, and art. John Zerzan views this "development" as a fundamental error leading to the domestication-domination fetish of modern civilization. The uniqueness and multi-sensory immersion of pre-named experience becomes filtered into a systematized division when names and symbols work their magic. Naming binds; silence frees. The disenchanting of the world begins.

With names working to simplify the idiosyncratic details of each form, diminish the integrity of the whole, and bring in the obsession with control, a ground plan is laid for the game of Manipulation --- of pitting Masters versus Slaves. This is the water we are ignorant of in this fishbowl of modernity. The Archons help create this aquatic environment and use humanity as a meme-machine to spread their abstract simulacra vision. The alive gaian entelechy, the world as-it-is, becomes more and more distant, buried beneath a layer of abstraction until it becomes like a disposable commodity. This is objectification: a living unity is made into a sterile dead object. 

Our social relations help manufacture this commodity. We often interact with each other under the disempowering weight of abstraction --- the archons are heavy! Martin Buber in his book I and Thou sets up two modes of relating: I-It and I-Thou. The former is born from the domination and control-fetishes inherent in Symbolic Culture; it's a dynamic of objects to be used or experienced. The latter is born from a pre-abstracted world of unfiltered experience; it's a dynamic of interwoven subjects that move toward relating with each other. The dumbing down of experience by the use of words stifles the emergence of this more reverential mode of relating.

Now for the paradox: do you understand me? And if so, how will you respond?