Hitchhikers Guide To Real Communication.

Forefront: Travel to[ http://nickmielnicki.blogspot.com/2017/05/inside-outside-real-out-of-sanity.html ]for a back-note on these topics.. Thank you
 'When we talk of 'being' we do not mean the Outside. We mean the Inside.'

This example illustrates a standard procedure for appearing to take the Outside into consideration without actually doing so. The rules for this kind of writing are very simple and roughly as follows.
There are a number of words and phrases which may mean something about existence or something about humans.
For example: 'existence', 'depth', 'ground of being', 'ultimate concern', 'meaning', etc. Whenever what you really mean is 'human relationships' or 'day-to-day living' you should replace it by some existential-sounding combination, such as 'the depth of being'. It is a good idea to use compound phrases ('the depth of historical existence', 'the ultimate ground of meaning') as a considerable degree of obscurity can be created by summating the uncertainty of a number of uncertain terms.
It is usual to define these terms as little as possible. But if you wish to appear to do so, it is best to use a series of phrases in apposition (as in the example just considered: 'the whole of human reality, the structure, the meaning and the aim of existence'). This gives a very good effect of struggling to define something difficult with precision while actually generating ambiguity (on the principle of summation of uncertainty already mentioned). The device of apposition itself introduces an additional modicum of doubt, since if you appose two such phrases as 'the depth of meaning' and 'the inmost structure of reality' no one will be sure whether the two phrases are ways of saying the same thing, or whether they are intended to complement one another.
Other verbal devices may be used for placing together in the closest possible proximity 'human' words and 'Outside' words. Words like 'ultimate' and 'reality' should be used in phrases like 'human reality' and 'ultimate concern', and the word 'meaning' should be softened into 'meaning and coherence'. (The word 'meaning' might be regarded as informationally sufficient; however, the addition of 'coherence' contributes a useful implicit suggestion that 'meaning' must hang together in a way that is recognizable and rather agreeable to humans.)
To illustrate these instructions, consider the typical phrase 'life and existence'. Now the word 'existence' may mean 'human life', but if it does it is adding nothing to the meaning of the phrase. So this phrase would seem to mean 'human living and the fact that things are there' -- which seems a strange combination to discuss in the same breath.
Another example of the way in which abstract words such as 'transcendent', 'meaning', 'existence' should be combined with human words such as 'life' and 'confidence':

"High religions are ... distinguished by the extent of the unity and coherence of life which they seek to encompass and the sense of a transcendent source of meaning by which alone confidence in the meaningfulness of life and existence can be maintained."

May I suggest a paraphrase, which I think does not reduce the informational content. 'High religions are distinguished by making the whole of human life feel meaningful to the human being.' As human life already feels meaningful to sane human beings, this would appear to let anything or nothing qualify as a 'high religion'.
It is true that my paraphrase reduces Niebuhr's meaning if he is using the word 'transcendent' in a transcendent sense. If so, what he is saying becomes more complex, but questionable. Assuming 'transcendent' to mean 'possessing a validity which cannot be affected by any consideration whatever', or perhaps 'directly related to the reason for existence', it is difficult to see why a 'transcendent source of meaning' should be expected to maintain anyone's 'confidence in the meaningfulness of life'. For this to be true, we should have to accept the psychological supposition that people can only confidently accept transcendent meanings as meaningful. What is more, we should also have to accept that a transcendent source of meaning would have the characteristic of making a human being confident about the meaning of his life. It is an interesting sidelight on human psychology that it should be so often assumed that a transcendent purpose must be one that 'gives a meaning to life'. In fact, anyone sufficiently unusual to think occasionally about transcendence finds that it makes his life feel intolerably meaningless. (This is why people do not go on doing it.)
If we assume that Niebuhr is using the word 'transcendent' in one of the senses defined above, the most obvious characteristic of a transcendent meaning would seem to be that it invalidates all subordinate meanings. This, after all, is what 'transcendent' means -- that which invalidates, but cannot itself be invalidated. So if Niebuhr is really using the word 'transcendent' to mean that which transcends, what he is saying becomes: 'High religions are distinguished by making the whole of life meaningful by reference to something which makes the whole of life meaningless, which is the only way in which it is possible to maintain confidence that life is meaningful.'
As this is patently absurd, I assume that he is not in fact using the word 'transcendent' in a transcendent sense. It is much more likely that when he talks of a 'transcendent source of meaning' he means 'anything which is capable of making the whole of human life seem meaningful to a large number of people'.
I leave the reader to appreciate the following without further explanation:

God made the world, and is never absent from it. So, within the mind of modern secularism there are feelings after the meaningfulness of human existence, recognition of supreme obligations in human relations, gropings after an undefined 'otherness'.

The name of this infinite and inexhaustible ground of history is God. That is what the word means, and it is that to which the words Kingdom of God and Divine Providence point. And if these words do not have much meaning for you, translate them, and speak of the depth of history, of the ground and aim of our social life, and of what you take seriously without reservation in your moral and political activities. Perhaps you should call this depth hope, simply hope.

Inside, Outside. Real, Out of sanity

Outsidity/ Outside – The space of mind beyond real. Not including truth.  That part of reality which is not emotionally regarded as 'real' by the sane person.
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In religious and philosophical writings it is often difficult to eliminate all reference to the Outside. There are a number of ways of dealing with this problem. One of the most successful is to generate a distinctive kind of ambiguity about the meanings of crucial words.

Being -  the whole of human reality, the structure, the meaning and the aim of existence.

'The term 'being' in this context does not designate existence in time and space

When I use the word 'existence' I mean by it what I also mean when I use the word being. It seems that what is ment by this is… 'being there'.

Lets define the word ‘being’ in a second sense. The term 'being' means the whole of human reality some say. The meaning of this phrase is not obvious.

Perhaps we mean the sum total of the mental content of all humans - illusions and all? What humans think is real? Or that part of reality which is accessible to the human mind?


The last seems to be the best we can do. So let us suppose that 'human reality' does mean that part of the mental content -- actual or potential -- of humans which is actually in accordance with what exists.
'Human reality' is then placed in apposition with 'the structure, the meaning and the aim of existence'. What is to be understood by this? The 'aim of existence' seems at first sight to be clear, unless 'existence' has made an unannounced change of meaning since it was first used. It would seem that this phrase must mean 'the purpose for which everything exists'.


But this is difficult, because 'the aim of existence' is in apposition with 'human reality' which certainly does not include the purpose of existence.


This leads us to a distinct suspicion that when some talk of 'the structure, meaning and aim of existence' we do not mean 'existence' at all, but 'human life' instead. If we do mean this, there seems no reason why we should say so -- except that it would rob what we are saying of a status it does not possess. And if we do mean this, we have arrived at the following definition of the word 'being' -- 'whatever happens to be realistic in the mental content of humans; the structure, the meaning and the aim of human life'.


In fact, we may suggest this paraphrase of what some are saying: 'When we talk of 'being' we do not mean the Outside. We mean the Inside.'


This example illustrates a standard procedure for appearing to take the Outside into consideration without actually doing so.

Writing Under Erasure

There are several levels of paradox. The shallowest level, aleph-one, exists where words contradict themselves. One meaning is juxtaposed with a contradictory one. Such paradoxes can be articulated, such as in "This sentence is lying."
The deepest level, aleph-null, exists where language contradicts itself.
Here the possibility of meaning itself is cast into doubt. (This very formulation assumes that which it denies, for to speak of doubt is to assume that there is certainty.) Such paradoxes cannot be articulated, for a successful articulation would require the destruction of meaning itself. Derrida cannot of course articulate a paradox of type aleph-null, so he does the next best thing: he writes under erasure.

To write under erasure is to write a word and cross it out, but to let both the word and the deletion stand.

Derrida borrows this practice from its originator Heidegger, who critiques the word "Being" because simply to say the word presupposes that anything can be. This is precisely the pressuposition Heidegger wishes to examine, but it is very difficult to question the possibility of being in a language which exists because it assumes the possibility. Heidegger therefore writes the word as [.]. This allows him to point, metaphorically, to the fact that he cannot help but use the word in the very process of questioning its meaning.

Heidegger's use of the technique suggests that Being does exist and can somehow be apprehended through philosophy (the same hope articulated by Plato and, for that matter, by Hilbert, Norris and Whitehead.) Derrida assumes no such thing. He goes Heidegger one better, so to speak, by arguing that all language is written "under erasure." Language exists only because there is a paradox at the very place where language comes into being. In other words, there is an aleph-null paradox at the origin of language.

I suggest that the lethal text articulates an aleph-null paradox. Naturally, this text can only be written in a language which does not have the limitations of human language. Lethal texts have to be written in a transcendental language. Such languages cannot be translated into human ones, and those who read them cannot possibly convey what they have learned. Gayatri Spivak suggests that Heidegger "makes it clear that Being cannot be contained by, is always prior to, indeed transcends signification. It is therefore a situation where the signified commands, and yet is free of, all signifiers--a recognizably theological situation" (xvi). It is also a recognizably Platonic situation. To escape from the cave into the light is a metaphor for escaping into a world not bound by human language.

Macroscope suggests that its destroyer signal is simply a text which teaches its readers how to read the transcendental language in which it itself is written. It is a primer in transcendental language. Therefore, it is not what it says that is devastating, but rather how it says it. Its mere existence critiques human language and make the paradoxes that underlie it unbearable.

It is important that the destroyer signal is simply a text about itself, in such a way that to read it is to instantly experience what it describes. In describing transcendental language, it carries its readers into a transcendental realm. It is a text in which the USE-MENTION distinction, normally tanglable and tangled, becomes irrelevant. To mention it is to use it. The nam-shub described in Mesopotamian myth, and excavated in Snow Crash, is self-reflexive in exactly this way. It is a story about the destruction of language, which, when heard, destroys the language of its hearers.

"The Lethal Text"

Quite simply, the lethal text is a text that, when read, renders the reader incapable of reading. It destroys the reader's mind. It induces a crippling insanity. Only those who have read a lethal text know what it says...but they are in no position to share their knowledge.

What does the lethal text say? By definition, no one can know and remain capable of telling it. But perhaps it is a logical paradox.
The human mind has a kind of protective shield against paradoxes: it gets confused and gives up, instead of attempting to resolve them.
They can stop "running the program" set up by a paradox.
But the lethal text somehow penetrates this shield, presenting a paradox the mind cannot stop trying to resolve.

Which is why the lethal text is (probably) not possible: the mind is not a computer. The mind can deflect paradox by ceasing to think about it.

Derrida has probably come closer than anyone else to articulating a lethal text. His texts use language to describe language's limitations. A paradox!
But Derrida cannot truly complete the paradox; he can only point to it in a metaphorical way.

For example, he borrows Heidegger's technique of writing under erasure. But his texts can at best destroy themselves, whereas the lethal text destroys the reader.

Are readers' minds truly destroyed? Or are they elevated to a higher plane, like the escapees of Plato's cave, so that man's insanity is heaven's sense?

Lethal texts appear in a number of science-fiction novels. In Piers Anthony's Macroscope (1968), an alien message is picked up which destroys the mind of anyone intelligent enough to understand it. In Neal Stephenson's more recent Snow Crash (1994), the lethal text is transmitted via a computer virus, and is most threatening to hackers, whose neural pathways are most vulnerable to it. Pat Cadigan's Synners(1991) uses almost exactly the same plot device. It is also present in Arthur C. Clarke's short story The Ultimate Melody (1956) and The Mysterious Card. It appears in a somewhat different form in the Star Trek episode Is There No Truth in Beauty? (1968).

The lethal text appears, of course, in the Sirens' song of the Odyssey. It also plays a role in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the Bible, God's face is treated as if it was a lethal text (Exodus 19:21 & 33:20.)

Models

A model is an intellectual structure which exists in a genotypal relationship to a referent. It abstracts the essential features of a referent. Thus a blueprint is a model, and the house built from it is its referent.

Baudrillard's simulacrum is of course a model without a referent: "a perfect copy of a nonexistent original." It is not really important whether a physical referent exists or not. It is not even important that it can exist. What's important is the existence of nonphysical structure.

The world of Plato's Ideal Forms is a such model. So is the world of Robinson Crusoe, which is an Enlightenment economy in miniature. So are the arks of Noah and Utnapishtim, and Gerlenter's Hospital.

Models are absolutely central to cyberspatial thought. Cyberspace itself is a model. Not necessarily or even importantly of particular real spaces, but of space itself: its boundedness, its volume, its up-down-left-right orientation, its passageways, and so on.

I would argue that a certain class of literary texts, including the ones just named above, are recognizably "cyberspatial" in that some of their fascination comes from their modelmaking. By this definition, the legend of Noah's Ark is "cyberspatial." I do not claim, of course, that the Bible anticipates cyberspace by 4700 years. Rather, I make the converse claim: cyberspace is the latest manifestation of a fascination with models which goes back 4700 years.