By Edmund Dalpe, MFA., an excerpt from his latest work, Dream Duet © 2018
If epistemology asks questions about how do we know what we know, mythepistemology, i.e., mythological belief, is its scuttling, as it casts all such riddles to the deep-six. From which subsequent queries and ponders surface from such a wreckage, about how, when and why a culture would drift into the mythosphere, which are really questions about the corruption of language, because, barring maladies, the embodied mind is unassailable. As Dr. Ellie Epp so eloquently stated in her short, sharp and pointed assertion, ”Beings do not hold knowledge, they are knowledge” (Epp, 2002), and if we think of dreams as a linguistic expression of the embodied mind’s knowledge, the drift into the silly sphere must be a consequence of a culture’s technological d/evolution of its embodied language.
IOWs, when humans abandoned their natural way of palaverin’ for techno-speak, they had to memorize how to parley in the new jargon from schoolin’. As memorization be believin’, palaverin’ got enveloped in a pious sail. Necessarily, as the billowing sheets of mind and knowledge are filled with the same leeward wind, they must navigate the same faithful course. Thus, everything can drift, hither, thither, and yon, if certain conditions be manifest, like foul blaggards (oligarchs) scribblin’ in yur school books.
Likewise, when linguistically adrift, the anchoring process is about questioning what we were trained to believe about the nature of language itself, which is to begin the mirror mirror on the wall process; on a social evolutionary and individual scale. However, to understand today’s language, i.e., the Third Language, one must understand art, the Second Language, the Social Language, upon which it’s built. Yet, to understand art, we have to understand the First Language, the embodied language of the self, forged from lived experiences –dreams. Because dreams are 100% pure unadulterated human language, from which all subsequent evolutions of language spring (section 3.7.2).
Obviously, language is not unique to humans, because other mammals dream. What seems to distinguish human language is an evolved form of memory; a capacity to recall experiences in an abstract manner –imagination. Because, that’s exactly what dreams are. We don’t dream literally, we dream metaphorically. Flying dreams have little to do with flight. Thus, if you interpret your dreams literally, you have an affliction unique to hybrids, a techno-linguistic disorder of the mind, which renders humans incapable of accessing their creative capacity, vis-à-vis their dream language.
By the time you finish this blasphemous work about the trio, Language, Art and Dreams (LAD), you will know far less than you do now. However, your feet, that were once amblin’ skyward, from pickin’ too many free range daffodils about them, will be planted firmly on the deck. Thus, you will gain the capacity to think abstractly in the language your were born with, human, i.e., metaphorical thinking, which resonates with our nature on a root level.
In a nutshell, we are going to traverse epistemology from the dawn of self awareness and the creative expressions of the Stone-Age to mathematics, and we are going to do so in terms of our somatic language and syntax, that is, we are going to use our sub-language. You know, archetypes. However, if you’re squeamish ’bout get’in down’in dirty by dismissing every academic canon on the subject, leave immediately, ’cause we’re gon’na dig ’till we hit pay-dirt!
TECH: BREVIUM
I emphasized the word prehistoric to direct your attention to our social misunderstanding of what language is, where it came from and how it developed, because the word prehistoric is misleading. Humans of the Stone-Age had a rich language and an extensive history (see, section 3.4), we simply no longer recognize it, because of the technological evolution of our language and thus mind!
During the Mousterian Industry we find the first evidence of language. Which is to say that humans exhibited a self awareness, because they understood how the human mind is mindful by its externalization (art). That’s right, I am saying art is a technology, it’s our core technology, that has evolved into what we think language is today, which I do not classify as language. Absolutely, it’s a hybrid system derived from it. But language? Not so much!
In relatively short order, during the Chatelperronian Industry, humans were able to project practical knowledge from their minds to external repositories (cave walls), that is understood today, if, like them, you understand how the human mind speaks. Because if you understand the language of your dreams, you will understand that the caves of Chauvet, Altamira and Lascaux spoke in the same tongue. Likewise, when we learn how our sub-mind speaks, we can then begin the process of learning about ourselves, and there is no better way to understand our sub-mind then to understand our first linguistic expressions from the great libraries of the Stone-Age.
The great libraries (caves ) are filled with amazing knowledge about the nature of language itself (section 3.7.1), i.e., human nature, climatic historical events (section 3.8), land navigation, mathematics, philosophy and calendar systems, both stellar and galactic (section 3.2), all of which are indicative of a rich human culture.
However, the most influential knowledge shared between generations from the technology was not any specific knowledge, but relational knowledge. Over many generations they were able to develop a sense of super knowledge, the knowledge of the owl, the wise being that sees through the darkness of time, i.e., historical knowledge.
The down side was/is, like all human technologies, there’s a catch, and this one’s a BIGGIE! Once we use a technology we become dependent on it for our continued survival, and as each generation’s contributions augments its complexity, subsequent generations have to be trained in its use. And here’s the clincher. As a consequence of our technological training, we become blinded to our natural language, because training a humans’ mind with knowledge by proxy has no meaning with our metaphorical sub-mind and its sub-language that derives meaning from actual lived experiences. And as the tech transfigures conscious cognition, humans are oblivious to the paradox (Linguistic Determinism).
Training the human mind renders it illiterate to human language and thus human nature, that is, its creative nature. They become confused by their dreams, even terrified by them. Likewise, hybrid mythology abounds about the evil nature of the beast to blame-shift their upside down character on human nature and remain willfully ignorant of the self destructive path chosen. Because without access to their creative capacity, they become … wait for it … that’s right, the exact opposite, destructive. Naturally, they gloss over that fact that there was no such thing as warfare prior to their mass mental breakdown.
IOW s, as a consequence of the d/evolution of their linguistic technology, their art, their core technology, humans lost the ability to speak human, which is the very definition of irony, tragedy and the source of much bemusement as well as falling off the chair and rolling across the floor guffaws! “ You’re not the same as you were before”, the Mad Hatter would have said. ”You were much more… muchier… you’ve lost your muchness” (Carroll, 1865).
As such, the social dialogue becomes feckless, because the morgue of collective experiences untethers from human muchness. There is an inverse corollary between what is gained and what is lost from the linguistic technology on multiple levels. As their collective knowledge expands, their creative capacity and thus their humanity is diminished. From greater systematic understanding so dissolves aggregate meaning. From advancing complexity, their mind retreats into vapid simplicity, and so on and so forth.
In this work I show how the technological mind can reclaim their destiny by reclaiming ownership of their imagination, will, and thus their actions, via bridging their conscious technologically trained mind with the subconscious metaphorical mind, with the intention of disengaging autopilot, set millenniums past by a class of venal oligarchs, to a destination that no longer exists and reinstate their natural mind as its warranted navigator. IOW s, this is a guide to the forgotten root language, the First Language!