Part I: The Real Bias of Thought Architecture
We lean on a foundation
with walls and beams
cement and mortar
an inside and out.
Our structure says
you can build here
but that spot is unsupported.
You can dwell here
but that spot is unlivable.
You can view from this window
but that vista is unknowable.
Our building tells us
this is the only way to experience this space.
And after building on these same blueprints
living within these same walls
looking out from these same windows
knowing only these cemented experiences
we cannot help but be born to agree.
Champions of buildings will say
“But!
There is always the outside
And we do go outside from time to time
And we always build new and better buildings
that expand and sprawl and capture more space
And our experience of space is not limited by our use of buildings.
Rather, it is precisely our use of buildings that allows us
to live the unlivable,
view the unviewable,
know the unknowable.
Our buildings do not create our reality
they are only vessels that allow us
to access the fundamental spaces that exist everywhere
which would be vacant to us, were it not for buildings–
As all space must be the same.
Buildings are the only way
to broach new terrain–
without them, we would be constrained
not by walls
but by the great crushing outside.”
There is another bias whose conversation runs a similar course.
The bias of language says:
We think on a foundation
with words and symbols
letters and grammars
an inside and out.
Our language says
you can imagine here
but that thought is unsupported.
You can think in this mode
but that pattern is unthinkable.
You can describe with these words
but those phenomena have no name.
Our language tells us
that this is the only way to describe reality.
Champions of language will say
“But!
There are always the unnamed things
And we do make up new words from time to time
And our language is always growing and becoming more accurate
expanding and capturing more meaning
And our experience of reality is not limited by our use of language.
Rather, it is precisely our use of language that allows us
to think the unthinkable,
imagine the unimaginable,
know the unknowable.
Our words do not create our reality
they are only vessels that allow us
to access the fundamental truths that exist everywhere
which would be vacant to us, were it not for words–
As all truth must be the same.
Language is the only way
to broach new knowledge–
without it, we would be constrained
not by words
but by the great crushing unsaid.”
And all this is well and good,
for buildings as well as for words
and we could leave it with the champions of each
if it weren’t for a whispering blindness:
We describe our spaces in bricks,
as we do build our meanings in words,
and each self aware system cannot fathom
the reality beyond its walls
which lies gaping, yawning, vast, uncharted, unseen,
yet
might be described and built and understood
by other mechanisms.
So words and bricks serve us well,
but the praise of words and bricks
is itself a circular
inbred
self-consuming reality.
No,
not all space is the same.
No,
not all thought is the same.
And the one who subscribes to a false equality
of all spaces and all things
builds walls and words to make it so
and assimilates each cell of reality
to a binding unity
it had not been before.
Such that, retrospectively,
all things do look the same
and languages and buildings,
in their conquest,
have arced their self-fulfilling prophecy
and claimed all creation and all time
for themselves.
The one language
and the one architecture
spread outward and level all fields, all trees
and look back, saying,
“See?
See how similar everything is?
See how accurately we have defined this space?
See how the world works?
See how simple it all is, really?”
And surveying the treeless deserts,
the biological continuity,
the one language,
the one science,
the one knowledge,
who can disagree?“
So it is,
that saying makes it so.