Chapter Two: Hold That Thought

If the introduction to this chapter were a Where's Waldo I was solving with my grandparents in Margate, New Jersey, one of them would surely say, "Ohh! This one's a DOOZEY."

It's not the quote itself so much as the footnotes Wilson applies that give it its high Mindmush Potential.

"We, as a species, exist in a world in which exist a myriad of data
points. (1) Upon these matrices of points we superimpose a structure (2) and the
world makes sense to us. The pattern of the structure originates within our
biological and sociological properties (3)." -Persinger and Lafreniere, Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events

1. In our terminology, these data points are events or actions, i.e. verbs,
not nouns.

2. In our terminology, models or maps, static things; nouns not verbs.

3. In our terminology, brain hardware and software.

What we have here is the notion that sensory experience is more primary in terms of reality than language is, and that for that matter, verbs are more primary than nouns. People admit this in different ways, depending on whether you're a Zen Buddhist or a philosopher of language. I like to think the Buddhists got it right in deconstructing language without having to explain it in 400 pages of text, but then again, I'm too lazy to read Derrida.

Fritz Nietzsche (his friends called him Fritz -- I think it's a cute name for a brooding person) always has a metaphor that fits the point you're trying to make. He wrote a very eloquent paragraph that I'll have to summarize in my own few words: We think that our empires are strong because we build them up over time with heavy bricks, all the while they're floating along a riverbank.

He would probably dispute most of what I say, but it's still a good metaphor that I like to apply to the fluidity of knowledge in the same sense Wilson speaks here. In addition to the fact that we mistake fluid experiences for things doing things to things, reifying everything for the sake of common ground, we also anthropomorphize our world because of our wiring.

This post was going to be more in-depth, but I'm taking a break from the heavy-hitting ontological stuff to just get a warm, easy blog started with little rolled up newspapers and kindling.