KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA63 (Leslie / Rees)

Commentary 3 (to R1)

( NOMINALIZATIONS )
by Adrian van der Meijden
19 October 2003, posted 26 October 2003

<1>
Just because we CAN treat subjects like objects does not necessarily mean they are or that treating them so leads to satisfactory results. Relativity applies. Invocations to nominalisation don't cut ice. While I agree that every fool and his Dick needs respect, that does not mean one HAS to try to understand them. I once spent three months with a friend making up a model of shareable knowledge between us so we could try to get across what neither of us could understand about or of the other. To try and do this for every variant and uniquely different individual would put me into the Shandy dillemma, I'd never get around to living my own life. For, after one has tried to understand other people the final word is that it seldom helps to lead one's own life. So it is not understanding we need but more tolerance for what we cannot understand or won't. Anyhow with enough creativity and spare leisure time one can play supposes and come up with just about every already known stated POV of one or other authority, which adds nowise to extend one's creativity beyond that already more than well rehearsed "known" on record.

<2>
Giving some 6 billion people 5 seconds of my time each - no travel time, eating and sleeping allowed for - takes 60 x 60 x 24 x 365 = 31,536,000 /5=432000 YEARS. So the best we can do is what we already have: a limited collection of stereotyped communal bits and pieces that don't even sum up to the essence, quiddity or wholeness of a single person because every one of us can find instances of where and how we fail to be "well-described" in that fearsome 3rd social collective module. Apart from that every society has a different set, every society imagines is a complete set, etc.. NONE of this would get us any closer to solving the Q posed riddle of consciousness.

<3>
I notice and repeat myself to say that despite previous mentions {THERE: by nominalising a word I've treated it like a subject} that authority is a social fiction I notice only authorities POVs are cited in discussion Should we take it that a mere 1% of folk might be worth listening to that would still take 4,320 years which I also don't have. The 70 years already wasted on it don't make me much happier either. Adding the 30 odd ways I know of making generalisations plus data crunching and data mulching time, would take how long ? I'd need an infinite sized mind to encompass and accommodate it all. THEN to communicate it all we'd have to invent ourselves a communally agreed on means of representation - oops we've got one, called language, the potentials of which are hardly used - which would take how much longer + to iron out the points of disagreement amongst us ? Indian Rhetoric allows of four KINDS of hearer: Those who understand immediately, on reflection, one being shows or told, and never ever at all. I would wish there'd be a sifting method to find those who do understand immediately.

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Adrian vdMeijden