[Xmca-l] Re: Отв: Re: Ilyenkov, Marx, & Spinoza

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Hello,


I want to say in contribution to this discussion that the problem of freedom (as a problem rather than as a base state) arises only when there is *a sense* of separation (that separation may not be real). However, separation creates fear which creates further separation, which creates more disharmony and disunity.


Yet, whenever we find unity, there is equilibrium and/or homeostasis, even if there is movement while a system is balancing, it is still one system, or one entity, as one.


If there is two (division) it means that there is absolute disconnection (otherwise it can't be two). If there is absolute disconnection between two entities, by what means can they communicate or exchange? they can't, because they are absolutely two.


[As a nod to Larry, I'm sure he will say that's where the third space comes in, perhaps...but I digress.]


But if it is one non-dual unity, then there can be a thing that knows itself, like the mind knows itself. There can be reflection, movement, and transformation. Like the mind "knows" the body and the body "knows" the mind, because the mind and the body are one. It is only when a thing knows itself that there is freedom to act.


This isn't about being anti-naturalist, or naturalist, but something else. It is neither, nor both, because it is relational (neither and both). It almost seems better, if we want to create a dichotomy here, that there is anti-relational vs relational.


Just thinking out loud...if I stop to think about it, anti-relational as a concept is dependent upon the concept of relational, which has to come first.


A coin toss is relational, because it could be either/or between two choices. But one must have a coin to toss which is *one thing* to toss. :) We can't separate the heads or the tails from the coin, because it is two aspects of the same coin and dependent upon the coin.


But then the coin, as the object of our attention, must have a thrower, and one or more observers, and it must have gravity, and space, there is an up, a down, a beginning state and an end state (which are also relational otherwise how can we say this is the beginning and this is the end state?) *at the same time* there had to be a mint that made the coin, and the metal, and the miner to dug it up, and the earth from which it came, etc.: it's all connected without separation. If it's separate, where do the boundaries lie? or do the boundaries lie?


Actually, is our human attention which "brackets" the event of the coin toss from the universe in which it happens.


Regardless of our human tendency of "bracketing", the reality of the connection of the coin to its history never changes, nor is it altered from its reality, nor how it was made in time and space, nor its connections to the universe at large, from which it emerged and into which it resolves or disintegrates (in relation to time and space). We just choose (out of human necessity) not to include the relations the coin has to the universe in our processing of the event of the coin throw, be-Cause of our human capacities to perceive in time and space, but also for our capacity for meaning (i.e., why do we call the head of the coin "the head" and likewise "the tail", when the coin is a flat thing with two equally round sides). And what does it mean if it lands heads or tails? Who decided upon that?


I cannot resist the pun now to reference: just to my 2¢... 😊


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Meanwhile back at the mint:  2¢ is a count of two single copper pennies (if we reference American currency), each with a head and a tail... I do not think this makes me a Cartesian... I don't think it makes a young David Copperfield, or a Charles Dickens either! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copperfield


Oh! We were speaking of eclecticism not elliptical eccentrism, right? Or perhaps of an Wittgensteinian ellipsis...?


Where does an ellipsis *go to*, anyway?

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Kind regards on a sunny Saturday afternoon,


Annalisa