Chapter 25 Cause and Effect, and the redefining of natural and real numbers

Chapter 25

“The knowledge of an effect depends on and involves the knowledge of a cause.” Thus Spoke Spinoza’s IV Axiom from Concerning God in The Ethics. What this means is that only God (as sheer Existence), as an Infinite/Finite, All and singular encompassing substance, necessarily exists independently (a priori) and any “thing” (de facto of non-godly substance) is thus only an essence (attribute) belonging to the aforementioned nature of God — and therefore Leibniz went All Monad on Spinoza. Because a “You” or an “I” need, thanks to vampires and monsters, to believe we have more to say in matters at hand than to be a deterministic attribute in the dance of Life and Existence…

From the odor of Garlic this All translates into:  The “I” can only experience things but understand no “thing”, because to understand any “thing” or “anything” is an activity where the gods play. 

 Cause and Effect:  The parents of all mysticism, religions and sciences. And I have to say, I’m not writing this because, as you found out in chapters twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two and twenty-three, I am in the nuthouse, and now you, too,  lovely reader, agnize you are a patient here with me, and this sudden awareness (that you are here with me in the nuthouse) having thrown you into a ‘mystical’ state of spinning, spiralling psychotic neurosis (see the cause and effect), you are unsure whether to cry out to your God for help or ask the nurse for another shot of pharmaceutical slushy to help you dispel the fears.

If a tale of ragout is nothing more than an evil Creator’s nightmare then all I can recommend is that we all just laugh it out together, because in such a situation it’s better to be a silly nut job than a serious fruitcake:  There’s no pharmaceutical slushy that can change life for better or for worse. Neither God, nor Merck & Co., nor Christian ministry can help you where we are at. Or perhaps you know you’re not here in the loony bin with me and that any wacky, crazy psychosis belongs only to me… which may well be. If this is the case, then the best I can say is that I am neither trying to avoid discussing my time here nor am I trying to build up suspense to this story... well maybe the latter. But the fact of the matter is, and truth be told, I have no say in this story:  I’m just the maître d’! Garlic is the only cook and/or Story Teller. And The Story is the unexpected interruptions as they are the capricious ingredients being tossed into the pot; melting and mixing into a here and now delicious Tale of Ragout.  

As for Cause and Effect, fortunately there’s only Existence; any perception which derives value from any other context than the one rising is full of nothing — or it smells, tastes, looks and feels of Garlic.

Garlic has already delivered a design (patent still pending) for time:  Identity moving along the horizon of a sphere (Being) expanding outwards towards Infinity, with every movement (or glimpse) towards this Infinity being a movement towards its Finite center. Just as any movement towards its Finite center is a movement towards its Infinite expanse. (All of which is delivered in numerical order sans the one:  Consciousness of Identity rising in Infinite/Finite nature of its own complementarity Difference.) And for our (playful) illusionary view as it reveals objectivity in Cause and Effect, Identity occurs along the sphere’s horizon:  Any movement in either direction (along the sphere) is a movement towards the point of departure:  Infinity moving towards its own Finite beginning, or Finite moving towards its own Infinite end. As Aristotle put it in the Natural Sciences:

“It is evident that the primary form of locomotion is rotation.  Every locomotion, as we have already remarked, is either rotatory or straight or a combination of both; and the first two of these types must be prior to the last since they are the elements of which it is composed. Rotation, moreover, is prior to motion in a straight line, for it alone is simple and complete, [as the following considerations will show].  A straight line cannot be infinite: an infinite distance is impossible. Granted, then, that a straight line is finite, motion along such a line must, if reversed, be composite and consist of two motions; while if not reversed, it will be incomplete and perishable. But the complete and imperishable is prior to the incomplete and perishable, whether in respect of nature, of definition, or of time…” (Wheelwright, Aristotle:  Book VIII, Motion and the Unmoved Mover, ix. Rotation, the primal form of locomotion, pg. 62 Odyssey Press 1951)

And from Bk. XII. Lambda, The Eternal Unmoved Mover vi. That there is an actual Eternal Mover, pg. 97 (Wheelwright, Aristotle 1951):

“Motion [in general cannot come into existence or pass away; in other words, it has always existed.  The same is true of time; for if time will ever was not, the word ‘before’ has no meaning, and if time ever will not be, the word ‘after’ has no meaning.  Time, then, must be continuous in the same way that motion is, for time is either identical with motion or an attribute of it.  But the only continuous motion is spatial motion, and the only continuous spatial motion is circular.”

I admit time still seems to happen despite Garlic’s little Aristotelian / Kierkegaardian exposé, but this has more to do with certain illusionary objects of our or one’s (ones’) perceptions — things like numbers and triangles, for examples, seem to confuse us. But number-forms and geometric-forms have the continuity of Difference as their playfully hiding house; they have the luxury of living as the bricks, mortar, tiles, studs, shingles and plumbing of that house:  The ones as ideas, mental images and symbolic forms being the complete picture(s).  

Have you ever asked yourself where does a number exist? Or where does a triangle exist? Even if you draw a triangle on a piece of paper, it is not found in nature but only in your imagination or as a representation of triangle on a piece of paper. (Zeno’s arguments, and rightfully so, showed us exactly the opposite:  The idea is not found in one’s imagination but only in nature. But then again, for Zeno, the imagination and nature were one and the same.) And it is this relationship, the one in which we have with existent but not exactly living numbers and geometric forms, which gives rise to many problems and delivers many solutions. Garlic argues that these objects, as they are Identity in the first moment of consciousness (Being or Existence), are the seeds to Life (or the building blocks — genetic — of consciousness). They are experience experiencing; hence, numbers and geometric form are consciousness’ simultaneous rising and collapse, and, as such, they live and exist Gestalt: They are animate vehicles delivering deliverance. Objects as numbers have Identity and Difference, but somehow they do not exist in the real world — as they appear to us in non-garlicky inhesion — that is living or Life. These objects appear with even a greater sustainable expression than my own, Individual, physically Finite person:  Mathematical and geometric forms have greater Finite and Infinite expression in relationship as consciousness, and, consequently, as they rise in and as consciousness, they are to this day not wholly understood:  But they hold the key to the many mysteries we experience. Arguably, this rising is the object of every empirical and theoretical science. And with this in mind, it could be said that our perceptions are caged (living symbolic form itself!) in a certain context of Being (guan xi ontology), but there are other possibilities besides our illusionary linear trip along the horizon of outward-inwardness:  Numbers and/or triangles and such must not exclusively plant seeds of illusionary, linear time. They can also be gifts to greater deliverance of consciousness as we experience them, numbers and/or triangles and such, as or in relationship. Matter of fact, numbers and geometric forms can and should be thought of as the truth to every illusionary object of Existence — potentiality and probability as or in exchange of complementarity Difference/Identity in its/their quantum Infinite/Finite rising into its/their own essence. Or, in other words, if one remembers there’s only the reality of experience or of consciousness, in as far as the expression of awe is the means and ends to the agents and attributes of the experience — and that linear time is a bi-product of illusionary Cause and Effect — then perhaps Garlic can present another illusion of temporality — but as an experience with less mysticism and religious filled luggage. Also keep in mind that ten seconds ago is as real as ten million years ago or in ten seconds is never a reality but always, at the most, a product of the imagination found in ten seconds¹. In Garlic’s little thinking game, it could be thought ² that the closer any object comes to this moment, the greater its cause has on the net effect — the net effect being this moment… life living!  Nowing! Take, for example, a standing row of dominoes numbered and ordered one through twelve (and not to confuse you anymore, but the numbers in this example have no related meaning to the aforementioned depiction; numbers here represent only Difference as it is Identity delivered order:  Numbers as identifiers). Now to continue, you push the domino number one and it tips, and as it falls it hits number two, causing the number two domino to topple, and then the two strikes the three, and the three strikes the four, and the four strikes the five, and the five strikes the six, and the six strikes the seven, and the seven strikes the eight, and the eight strikes the nine, and the nine strikes the ten, and the ten strikes the eleven, and the eleven strikes the twelve, and in accordance with all the other fallen dominos the twelve falls.  The first question I ask you:  Which domino fell first? In reality, the number twelve domino falls first. But according to our mystically filled unique, yet universal machines of discovery, normally we say the number one domino fell first. Why the number twelve you ask? The number twelve domino is the closest to Existence of (ising) the ever evasive moment of Now. Because of the number twelve domino’s approximation to living, its Being most recently affects the Now moment. As for the eleven, ten, nine, etc., etc., in a historical context there arises a when in which a created story supports and purports Existence (Being or consciousness) instead of negating it: First, in this sense, is of Being (ising), or its value is determined in direct nearness to the whole context of Infinite/Finite Difference or to that of sheer Being (sheer Existence). This standpoint of time is nothing new; it is what defines the how in Aristotle’s philosophy: 

 “From this it is evident that the ‘specific whatness’ (ousia) or from (eidos) is [what defines] the actuality.  Whence it logically follows that actuality is prior in ‘essential specificity’ (ousia) to potentiality.  And from the standpoint of time, as we have already said, one actuality is always preceded by another, all the way back to the eternal Prime Mover.”  (The Metaphysics: Book IX. Theta On the Actual and the Potential, iii, pg. 94, Wheelright, The Oyssey Press, 1951)

Such an experience is nonlinear, definitely intelligible, and anchored in Difference’s spherical in-out expansion-contraction:  Out being the possibility of future whereas in being the perception of past (or vice versa). Such an experience definitely supports the idea of scientific (empirical) research in that any so-called research or accumulation of data becomes a source for steering a future mindful of life’s beginning and end:  Difference/ Identity and the awe of Infinite-Finitude is/are celebrated and not destroyed.