Limen et Continuum

 

Existence is Encounter. Meeting at the limen. In the limen, the masks disappear, that is, the basic intuitions of identities, such as the identity that I feel and think in relation to the tree that I see in front of me. The identity of the tree is a projection of mine: the unity of my process of perceiving the tree generates a mask in me, the ghost of a limited unity separated from everything else.

The simplest form of intuitive understanding of masks and limen is given to us by numbers. Numbers intuitively express the liminal tension that is Existence. A little etymological note. Rythmos in Greek means flow. Arythmos (number) is what does not flow, what remains solidified. Numbers express the liminoid, and flow, rhythm, expresses the liminal. A rhythm becomes liminoid when we can trace patterns in it, that is, when we can construct masks of identities.

Mathematics has spoken of flow using the Latin word “continuum”, the continuous. All modern science, since Leibniz and Newton, is based on differential calculus, which is a science of the continuum. In the 19th century, starting with Cauchy, Weistrass and Cantor, the continuum was transformed into a science of the limit in relation to aggregates of identity (sets), the mathematical formulation of the theory of liminalityand the infinite. Without this science there would be no Riemaniann geometry, that is, there would be no theory of relativity, no quantum theories, no cosmology. The curious thing is that, at the same time, the theory of the continuum dynamites any physical science, since the “principle of identity”, on which any notion of material Existence is based, is blown up. But let's return to the psychological understanding of limen from numbers.

The perception of space and time gives rise to the series of natural numbers: 1,2,3,4,5... These numbers are masks or identities that in principle seem well defined based on intuition, like the identity that I feel and I think in relation to the tree that I see in front of me. I can say “1 tree,” and I can count. Starting from a superstition deeply rooted in the simplicity of this first intuition, I think I can count anything. Can I? How many drops of water are there in a liter bottle? The answer from our science is clear: 20,000. Well, approximately. Approximately means that I need another type of number to count them, rational numbers (numbers that have decimals). The approximation takes a finite number of decimal places, which is not necessarily the case, in fact: it is not the case. Why? Because measuring space is measuring the continuum, that is, entering the fabulous world of real numbers. Real numbers are irrational numbers, numbers that do not have a finite identity explicit in terms of natural numbers. Real numbers are not really numbers (they are not “a-rythmos” but “rythmos”, flow, they are non-finite entities. Saying 20,000 drops is an approximation to a real number, an infinite entity. You may think, well, but it's enough for us to function. Yes, it is valid to build a form of human life like the one we have built in the modern world... well no, computers do not work with real numbers, they cannot perform infinite processes. Computers work with approximations of rational numbers.

The continuum is not only a question of a problem with the measurement of space and time, but a problem of the principle of identity: the identities of our concepts and our perceptions are commonplace. With an example of something we use every day.

What is a liter? We ask the physicist, who knows about these complex things. He tells us: “hmmm, I don't know what it is exactly, I would rather say that it is an agreement or unit of measurement, but I can tell you that it is equivalent to 1.000 cm³.” Well, we ask him then: what is the agreement based on? What is a centimeter, or a meter, if you prefer? He answers us: “the distance that light travels in a vacuum in an interval of 1/299.792.458 seconds.” Hmmmm… so many problems. In order not to go on forever in circles, let's assume that such a number is not an irrational and that we take as "intuitive" the definition of “a second” that science would give us based on the entity known as the "cesium atom." But what to say about emptiness? What is a vacuum?: “A region of space devoid of energy and momentum.” That means space without particles or other physical fields, that is, something that is not in the Universe. Well, our agreements for measurement ultimately refer to concepts about entities that are not in the Universe. And our conceptual tools in relation to space. i.e. geometry, are based on entities that are not in the Universe, points.

The identity of all our measurements is liminal. The identity of the concepts we use to measure is liminal. The identity of the Universe is liminal. The liminoid, the uncritical common, the everyday life are a protective veil of our identity masks. You are immersed in phantasmagoria, but you continue to take them literally, even after knowing about it. That is your game, the Lila that the entire Universe plays.

What do we marry?

 

The narrative tradition of India contains true gems of fantastic literature that give rise to the most entertaining ethical and metaphysical speculations. In the collection of stories from the 11th century Katha-Sarit-Sagara (The Ocean that Contains Streams of Stories), which collects traditional stories from India, the loquacious ghost of a corpse taken down from a gallows tells the king who took him off the macabre swing a very interesting tragicomic tale.

Two friends undertook a pilgrimage to a sacred spa of the goddess Kali, and there they saw a beautiful girl. One of them fell ill with passion, stopped eating and sleeping, and was sure that he would die unless he could have that girl as his wife. His friend contacted her father and explained the situation. The father, hurriedly, went to the girl's parents in order to organize the wedding. Shortly after the hasty marriage, the young couple and her friend left for her parents' house. On the way, they came across a Kali temple, immersed in blood. The young husband asked his wife and his friend to wait outside while he went inside to honor the Goddess.

When he saw the image of Kali blood-stained and triumphant, crushing furious demons with eighteen powerful arms and with Her lotus foot planted on a bull-shaped demon, a sudden enlightenment came upon him. He came up with the strange idea of immolating himself before the goddess to be saved and obtain Her grace as a reward for his devotion. He took a sword from the shrine and cut off his head. After an hour of waiting, the friend entered the temple to look for him. Seeing his corpse, he took the same stained sword and cut off his own head, immersed in the greatest sadness and despair. A little later, the young woman entered the temple worried about the delay of both, and when she saw the two decapitated bodies in a pool of blood, she ran away horrified to hang herself with a vine from the nearest tree. However, Kali's voice spoke to the girl and ordered her to bring the boys back to life by placing their heads back on her bodies. Nervous and scared, she hastily placed the heads on the still warm corpses, but she absentmindedly placed the head of her husband on the body of her friend. A funny ethical dilemma was then posed to the girl: Which of the two was her husband? She opted for the head of the husband with the body of the friend, a combination that today raises smiles among married women, but which supposedly conveys the teaching that the head contains more of the soul than any other part of the body, apart from the obvious one that we indoctrinates in the belief that he who worships the Goddess will be resurrected and have eternal life. The story does not tell us more about how the union of the girl with her particular Frankenstein monster turned out to be, nor if the husband suffered severe personality changes in the various facets of married life, although it perfectly shows the headless impetus that guides marital unions, and the blind orgy of bad decisions in which we spend our lives.

Fragile is the structure of our masks, the narrative of our egos... Life blows its wild winds and certainties, precariously sustained on foundational dreams of personality, break up.

What is Mythopoetics?

 

The narrative grew in the process of being told, as myths always do. The Blog has become more labyrinthine over the years. It contains my Mythopoetics book and a few other things. For those who access these texts without knowing anything about Mythopoetics, I am going to post the introduction of the first part, so you can decide if you want to spend your precious time thinking about the identity narratives that we humans have developed over the years. throughout our eventful existence as a species.

"Mythological narratives are the only intellectual activity that has been continuously practiced by human beings, a fact that makes them a unique tool for thinking synthetically our evolution as homo-sapiens. In this sense, they are the first valuation settings that humans have made about themselves and their environment, and as such, they have conditioned the ones that have come afterwards, both in form and content. Their communicative function places them at the basis of social action. In fact, few human activities are so ubiquitous and daily based as the narrative action, whether in the form of traditional stories, which gather tales about the group’s identity and origins, or in the simple tales of daily life which constitute ordinary communication, like the ones that give an ordered account of the day’s course, or the projects for the morrow. We are used to think narratively, generating more or less closed scenarios, with characters and objects, either material or conceptual, which have a set of relations organized according to the sequentiality of our intuition. We start from the models of our particular tradition, and inherit with them a set of concepts, densely interpreted within cultural processes, whose metaphorical contents show their belonging to some myth. Even in the spheres where it has been deliberately attempted to leave behind any mythological link, we find our thought permeated by notions whose origin is mythological. Such is the case, for example, of Western legal systems which are based upon the idea of positive law, for despite of having developed a structured system of thought according to chains of syllogistic reasoning, contain concepts as elements of the system whose origin is mythological, as that of equality before the law, whose origin can be traced back to Christian theology, in the idea of the formal equality among all men in relation to the sovereign will of God.¹The genealogy is not only conceptual, but also ritual at a more basic psychological level, since the very same representations of trials date back to the ancient ceremonies of old mythologies. We cannot be surprised by the mythic root of most of our concepts and systems of social order, for our symbolic constructions were originated in the vital process that began long before our modern social structures. In one way or another, myths belong to social life and have an interpretation in relation to the past life of the group, forming a narrative scheme that entails a specific worldview.

Myths are linked to the psychological formation of our personality. Unperceptively the tales of the community shaped the features that we consider our values. We discover our individuation thinking a tale, identifying ourselves with some character, inventing a personal identity from some of the narratives that the group has to offer, through an imitative action that spontaneously shapes us. The myth is sung by the shaman, the poet, the prophet, the sage, but it is transmitted as well by the mother and the master, in a process of enculturation that is continued in all spheres of social life. The majority of the world’s mythological traditions relate the origins as the appearance of the gods or the ancestors out of preceding chaotic states, as if after a given instant, the thought focused and the world emerged. Just like the child, the group awoke within the narrative of its own identity, a tale that was first a rather automatic animal action, to later advance towards more reflective processes. However, its awakening was not like the child’s, into a closed and playful environment, but it occurred entirely inside the uncertainty of life. It was an active awakening, involved in a humanity that was already in progress, living and dying, who interpreted their actions according to their limited means, thinking after their small scenarios that which experience was showing to them, and projecting it over the horizon of their ignorance. The tales that remained, that endured the abyss of time, became fixed: if they had served to interpret existence up to that point and to survive according to those values, the conformity with the world proved their validity, and as an extra-cellular DNA its repetition was protocolled in the group’s customs by all possible means, universalizing its contents as the way of things.

Our everyday contact with myths makes them unproblematic cultural objects, although the transparency is lost when we closely examine their connotations and denotations. For this reason, it is indispensable to establish a basic terminology and an historical context for mythology as a philosophical problem. I will begin by delimiting the mythic domain from the points of view by which it has been addressed in philosophy of religion and anthropology. To this end, I will examine the ontological dimension of the different mythological traditions and the hierarchies that are established among the entities of myths. Secondly, I will ponder on myth from a linguistic vantage point, revising the most relevant theses postulated in relation to its metaphorical dimension, and proposing a simple model concerning the linguistico-epistemological function of determination of experience that myths gather. I will next move on to consider the relations between myth and history, examining the scope of myth’s traditional domain within fields that are considered historical. I will finish by discussing myth in relation to its composition, that is, from the point of view of the mimesis, a process in which, from the narrative action, the subject as well as the object and the scenarios of its experience are determined. The purpose of this argumentative line of thought is to obtain a preliminary definition of the mythic domain, as well as of the different concepts that are included in the definition."

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