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richard rutt yi

dobro p

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I just got a copy of Richard Rutt's Yi. I'm really disappointed. On the one hand, I find the translation idiosyncratic and I'm disappointed in the lack of commentary to go with it. On the other hand, I was hoping for something that would improve my understanding of the Yi. My understanding is based on the one most of us are familiar with, of course, the modern version. But Rutt's version challenges so much of the modern version of the Yi that, although it's excellently researched and thought out, it only serves to muddy the water for me. I was hoping for something that would help elucidate the Yi I use, not radically rewrite it. It's great scholarship, but a complete disappointment in terms of being of any practical use for me. I'm looking forward to the history bit, though.
 

ewald

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Rutt's Zhouyi is based on the assumption that the received version of the Zhouyi (the poetry that is the core text of the Yi) is not the original text. Characters are supposed to be copied incorrectly in the course of time, resulting in the Zhouyi we know.

I don't believe that that assumption is true. The Zhouyi that we know makes perfect sense. How can one text change into another, without adding or omitting characters, and still make so much sense? If Rutt and the likes were right, no characters would be added or omitted. That is so unlikely that I stopped putting any stock into their "original" versions.
 
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cjgait

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Interpretation versus transcription

ewald said:
Rutt's Zhouyi is based on the assumption that the received version of the Zhouyi (the poetry that is the core text of the Yi) is not the original text. Characters are supposed to be copied incorrectly in the course of time, resulting in the Zhouyi we know.

I don't really agree with this characterization of Rutt's assumption. There are certainly characters that have changed over the centuries (often simply homophones, two characters used for the same sound and same meaning in different texts). There are some characters that Gao Heng (who's work is the basis of many findings in Rutt and the other modern school interpreters) identifies as having changed due to copying errors. Again, one can argue about individual instances, but there are certainly plentiful precedents for this in ancient Chinese sources as well as all other ancient literatures.

But I think all this misses the main point. What Rutt and others in the modern school are doing is based on Jia Gu Wen (Oracle Bone Language), Jin Wen ('Bronze' language, the language of inscriptions on ancient vessels and implements), etc. So we have a single text with the same characters, but interpreted differently in different times.

I use a metaphor in European culture to explain the state of the Yi Jing text. It is as if there were one single text that functions as both an 'Old Testament' (Tanakh) and 'New Testament'. If you interpret the individual words of the text one way you have the old text, full of sacrifices and war. Reading it another way you have a new text that stresses personal morality and a bloodless sacrifice.

A common character like Zhen1 (貞) is a good example. In the Song Dynasty version of the Yi on which nearly all western translations are based this character is interpreted as various forms of 'virtuous, chaste, pure', etc., i.e. a moral concept of some kind. In the Shang and Zhou Dynasty oracle texts found inscribed on shells and bones this is a character meaning 'to divine'. So there is no question about this character being incorrectly transcribed, it is simply a matter of how it was interpreted at various points in Chinese history.

We are talking about a text that is 3,000 years old. In the course of those years many changes have occured and the scholars lost contact with the earliest layers of the culture. Starting in 1899, with the recovery of the first 'oracle bones' at Anyang, Yi Jing scholarship has undergone a revolution. We now are able to read divinations carried out for the Shang royalty. Some Zhou material is also coming to light, but in a much smaller quantity than the huge Shang archives found at Anyang and other sites.

I personally feel it is important to study and value all parts of the Yi's rich and wonderful history. I am as enthusiastic about studying the commentaries of Zhu Xi and Cheng Yi (Song Dynasty neo-Confucianists) as I am in reading about the archaeological studies and material on Jia Gu Wen and Jin Wen. It all adds to our understanding. It's all treasure.

Each school, being the product of human beings, doesn't always 'get it right'. There are some points in the new school texts that really go out on a limb in interpreting this or that word or concept. They sometime fall off the limb. But I think it only fair to point out that some of the conclusions of the Song Dynasty school, based as they are on conjecture about words whose meaning had been obscure for millenia, are long on imagination but short on substance.
 

dobro p

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cjgait -

"A common character like Zhen1 (貞) is a good example. In the Song Dynasty version of the Yi on which nearly all western translations are based this character is interpreted as various forms of 'virtuous, chaste, pure', etc., i.e. a moral concept of some kind. In the Shang and Zhou Dynasty oracle texts found inscribed on shells and bones this is a character meaning 'to divine'. So there is no question about this character being incorrectly transcribed, it is simply a matter of how it was interpreted at various points in Chinese history. We are talking about a text that is 3,000 years old. In the course of those years many changes have occured and the scholars lost contact with the earliest layers of the culture."

Fair enough, and I understand and appreciate what you're saying. But I want to *use* the Yi, and it makes it really difficult to do that if meanings keep drastically shifting all the time. The 'shifting meaning' problem makes communication about the Yi on a board like this one almost impossible, for instance. And it makes personal divination incredibly difficult as well. For instance, I take Hex 52 to talk about aspects of meditation, but Rutt says it talks about cleaving a sacrificial victim into bits. Those two meanings are so far apart as to be irreconcilable. It's not helpful for a Yi user.
 
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lightofreason

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dobro said:
But I want to *use* the Yi, and it makes it really difficult to do that if meanings keep drastically shifting all the time. The 'shifting meaning' problem makes communication about the Yi on a board like this one almost impossible, for instance. And it makes personal divination incredibly difficult as well. For instance, I take Hex 52 to talk about aspects of meditation, but Rutt says it talks about cleaving a sacrificial victim into bits. Those two meanings are so far apart as to be irreconcilable. It's not helpful for a Yi user.

They ARE reconcilable. You just need to zoom-out a bit ;-)

The price of being specialist in thinking and not working with the general can allow for 'novel', personal, interpretations not fitting the core template of the general but reflecting more 'sloppy' thinking and so drifting into near-by categories.

52 in its generic form covers contractive bonding - the sharing of space with another/others but 'in here' as compared to 58 that is more 'out there'.

This generic focus allows for association with meditation and with sacrifice in that there is a sense of 'death' as well as the spiritual present on the bonding focus.

If we focus on PASSION, then 52-58 form a pair covering issues of a present love (58) or a lost or imagined love (52).

Extend things into trigrams and we cover self-restraint and self-reflection. Keep going and we move into discernment (quality control) and intense expression (replication be it physical or mental) Thus we can link all forms of spiritual gain through some form of suffering to 52 - be it in meditation or in cutting up sacrifice.

The 'Species I Ching' (search archives of this list) covers the core categories derivable from the nervous system dynamics derived from the encapsulation of noise to give us order. All else is 'refinements' , customisations in customisations etc and so more and more particulars but also metaphors for what the brain deals with.

For ANY hexagram you can fall-back on the really general categories to aid in interpreting some particular and so identify where someone has 'wandered off' a bit.

What the Species IC does is allow you to write your own IC, local customisation, WITHIN the bounds of what is foundational to meaning derivation/determination - our neurology and its senses etc and so on into cognitive and emotional categories etc.

Chris.
 

hilary

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Useful things in Rutt...
  • the footnotes (especially for quotations from the Songs)
  • the translation of the Dazhuan (clear, accessible, much easier to read than W/B)
  • the introduction
And not so much the translation, at least for me. Though Val, who used to post round here a lot, used it as her primary text for divination.
 
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cjgait

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Usability of Rutt

Well, yes, I'll have to admit I don't use Rutt as my 'first line of oracle texts', but I visit him along the way. I mainly read the Chinese text now, (slowly and painfully :confused: ). But among English editions I use Balkin's excellent 'The Laws of Change' (080524199X), then Master Jou's 'The Tao of I Ching' (0804814236). When I am exploring the obscurities of a particular Chinese term in the text I go to Shaughnessy, Rutt, Kunst and of course Gao Heng (unfortunately not translated yet). So the versions and translations used really depend on what is needed for a particular reading. If I'm really pursuing an in-depth pursuit of a particular text I'll run through a few books in the CD version of the Si Ku Quan Shu and really humble myself about my depth of ignorance.

And of course the Chinese is the best, even with my crude level of knowledge of the language.

So just devote the greater part of your time to studying ancient Chinese and you'll have one 'translation' that you can depend on, the original :) Of course the only thing you'll have to ask about is: So, how do I pay the bills when I study Chinese all the time?
 
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lightofreason

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cjgait said:
And of course the Chinese is the best, even with my crude level of knowledge of the language.

So just devote the greater part of your time to studying ancient Chinese and you'll have one 'translation' that you can depend on, the original :)

absolute rubbish. :mischief: - unless you are stuck in a 10th century BC frame of mind - no wonder there are issues on this planet!

The traditional sequence/material is a local customisation of a greater perspective rooted in our species and its perceptions of reality. In that customisation the times involved lacked any scientific investigation into methodologies in deriving meaning and as such the customisation involved ad-hoc identifications of universal qualities of meaning with local ancient Chinese history/legend/myth.

To utilise the principles behind the IC metaphor does NOT require any learning of Chinese etc to be affective on determinations of one's life or possible lives. That said, the yin/yang distinctions etc are USEFUL but can also mislead due to the custom form.

In fact, understanding the methodology of self-referencing brings out aspects not covered by ANY of the so-called 'gurus' of interpretations/translations presented to date. (and that goes back to recent copies of the IC dug up and associated with the ancient past (100 BC era) rather than the 'court' edition of the 1700s AD)

Why you people insist on sticking to a specialist, out-dated, perspective on yin/yang dynamics is an issue - maybe it is for escape? or are you all academics working in some department of oriental philosphy/culture/divination?

By understanding the methodology used in creation of the IC one can move into a more 21st century AD perspective rather than rummaging around in texts of specialist, archaic thinking.

Chris.
 

bradford

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My views are well enough known.
Just remember he's part of a whole school of thought on the Yi,
one that started back in the 1930's and even had Arthur Waley
convinced that Fu should be translated ants instead of twitching
captives. Whether their translations make sense has no relevance
whatsoever to this mindset.
But, to be fair, I want to second Hilary's comment. Once Rutt is out
of the Zhou, the era of the Modernist's wild ass speculations, and
into the Han, his translations are pretty good. The Dazhiuan and the
other Wings are well done.
 

dobro p

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I'm grateful for the responses to this thread, but I'm feeling grumpy about the whole thing. I'm considering taking cjgait's advice and getting familiar with the Chinese version; I'm considering taking Chris' advice and getting familiar with his version. But that would be like climbing two mountains. That's why I'm grumpy.
 
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lightofreason

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dobro said:
I'm grateful for the responses to this thread, but I'm feeling grumpy about the whole thing. I'm considering taking cjgait's advice and getting familiar with the Chinese version; I'm considering taking Chris' advice and getting familiar with his version. But that would be like climbing two mountains. That's why I'm grumpy.

They are different types of 'mountain' - one is focued on universals applicable to any context without local language understandings - the other is a specialist presentation.
One is about the notion of 'mountain' (and even more generic to 'highness' vs 'lowness' etc etc) and the other is a particular expression of that notion.

The idea is to go from general to particular and in so doing be able to identify the differences in all of those specialist interpretations of the one set of categories rooted in our neurology etc.

With all of that you can write your own IC ;-)

The EmotionalIC utilises the self-referencing of fight/flight and the self-referencing of yin/yang where the self-referencing, the methodology, allows for isomorphism across the two specialist perspectives - and so allowing for one to elicit representations of another that communicate the meaning hidden in both.

As such, given three general questions applied to feelings, and so nothing to do with the IC as we know it, EIC can derive a hexagram that describes in good details what the emotions are detecting - no chinese involved, no coin tossing, no 'mystery', just basic dynamics of self-referencing.

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/EmotionalIC.html (preamble)

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/lofting/icplusEProact.html

this is rough, 'trail' stuff but it does work and will be developed further.

If you then want to get into the nitty gritty of a local manifestation of these dynamics then sure, get into the chinese etc but recognise that to appreciate what they wre TRYING to say requires knowledge of the 'bigger picture' - the regular network of universal categories (blend, bond etc) that customised to give us the traditional perspective.

Those universals are derived by IDM:

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/introIDM.html

where we see the emergence of order from the containment of chaos.

Chris.
 
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cjgait

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Very Amusing as Always

lightofreason said:
absolute rubbish. :mischief: - unless you are stuck in a 10th century BC frame of mind - no wonder there are issues on this planet!

To label someone else's life's work 'absolute rubbish' is disrespectful. I do not deal with the disrespecful.

As to the state of the planet, it's like the gag from an old Monty Python sketch: "Spot the loonie!" Or in this case: 'Spot the troll!'
 
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cjgait

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Now you've got that hamster screaming!

dobro said:
I'm grateful for the responses to this thread, but I'm feeling grumpy about the whole thing. I'm considering taking cjgait's advice and getting familiar with the Chinese version; I'm considering taking Chris' advice and getting familiar with his version. But that would be like climbing two mountains. That's why I'm grumpy.

Yes, but you will open up a treasure palace. The language of the Analects, the Laozi, the Xunzi, the Poetry, millions of pages of literature, and thousands of books of commentary on the Yi that have not been translated will slowly open up for you.

That's the good news. The bad news is that it takes about 30 years to learn properly unless you start when you''re about 4 years old, in which case it still takes 15.

But you can pick up enough of the terminology to be dangerous in a few years, and perhaps the computer aided translation systems of the near future will make the whole process easy. That is if the computers after the Singularity decide it is good for us to read Chinese. :)

In the meantime, Balkin's work will guide you smoothly on the path.
 
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lightofreason

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cjgait said:
To label someone else's life's work 'absolute rubbish' is disrespectful.

damn right - I have no respect for absolute rubbish. If you have spent your life proving the world flat and the day of publication of your work the world is found to be round then your work has become absolute rubbish. No issues of 'respect' etc applicable.

cjgait said:
As to the state of the planet, it's like the gag from an old Monty Python sketch: "Spot the loonie!" Or in this case: 'Spot the troll!'

youve been spotted.:mischief:
 
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cjgait

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Flaming Guns On

lightofreason said:
damn right - I have no respect for absolute rubbish. If you have spent your life proving the world flat and the day of publication of your work the world is found to be round then your work has become absolute rubbish. No issues of 'respect' etc applicable.

youve been spotted.:mischief:

Ok, I'll engage in one more round of this because it needs to said:

Your postings, ALL OF THEM, are incoherent drivel. You are currently apparently railing against learning Chinese. Fine. Go study a book that isn't in Chinese. Go study anything else. But do it ELSEWHERE. If you butt into a thread that is SPECIFICALLY about versions of the Yi Jing and their merits in divination, a subject you know NOTHING about, and start waxing on about your usual 'coagulative interspersion of the interpersonal sphere of hoopla', your postings are going to cause nothing but flames in reply.

This is such a reply.

You may now post another screed of incoherent drivel on this subject. I will not respond to that or any other message from you here or anywhere else. You are, in Second Life terms, muted.
 

hilary

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the CD version of the Si Ku Quan Shu
??
For those of us who are really ignorant, not just pretending, what's that?

'coagulative interspersion of the interpersonal sphere of hoopla'
:rofl:
 
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lightofreason

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cjgait said:
Your postings, ALL OF THEM, are incoherent drivel. You are currently apparently railing against learning Chinese.

No. If you bothered to read what I said was there is no need to learn Chinese to understand the properties and methods associated with the IC. Your above assertion is weak and showing attempts to side-step the issue; your attempt to do this side-step suggests you are intellectually corrupt.

You made an explicit, clear, WRONG, assertion about the IC and needing to learn Chinese. Your rantings here reflect an inability to cope with even the suggestion that what I said was correct since it demonstrates your naivete re what is being covered in the IC as well as your wrapping your identity in your personal perspective and feeling 'touchy' about contradictions to that perspective.

What you wrote was absolute rubbish. period. Now you could have said 'in what way?' and you may have learnt something in the conversation that could have emerged - but you didnt, you had your buttons pushed and went immediately for instant gratification - weak. Pathetic.

My response was WELL within the context you started with your rubbish assertion.

If you cant take the heat, then stay out of the kitchen.
 

Sparhawk

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absolute rubbish. - unless you are stuck in a 10th century BC frame of mind - no wonder there are issues on this planet!

Tsk, tsk, Chris, the whole species is stuck in a Shang mentality... That there are issues on this planet is not any individual's fault but of the species as a whole. Wouldn't you think? :) That technology has advanced to a level where a bunch of primates can throw the planet's health out the window is nothing short of amazing but, is no indication of spiritual advance. We still keep butchering each other [strike]as efficiently as we did it in[/strike] (Hilary, what's the code for strike-through?), although, more efficiently than in Neolithic China. Technology seems to run on a parallel but visible universe... Rivers of ink and commentary, on any subject, doesn't change the fact that we are behaving as primitively as we did since we started walking upright... :D Only difference, perhaps, is that human sacrifices in the past DID have a spiritual meaning and purpose...

Is interesting to see how your ideas seem to reconcile Logic with Spirituality and thus present a pathway for the advancement of humanity, as a species, to a higher level of self. Would it ever work? I seriously doubt it. Not because the ideas lack merit but because they are anomalous and complex in a culture where information is consumed and digested in a nanosecond scale. Me, I'm a cynic when it comes to that kind of hope. Humanity, as a complex set of individuals, appears to have the attention span of an amoeba when it comes to forcing change along a given path of rules, unless they are forced and coerced. As it is, this has only worked in a limited set of individuals and for historically short periods of time (even though they may span centuries as they did in old and cohesive cultural groups like the Chinese) One only has to remit to history books, enjoy the didactic material, and wonder. Until the moment comes in which Homo Sapiens, as a cohesive and indivisible group, start to see themselves as part of a single species, with no hesitation whatsoever, we'll behave as ants with no anthill to go to, that is with no reasonable purpose of existence other than fulfilling our individual desires. We all know where that is taking us. We only have to tune on CNN... :D

I'll grant though that the exposure of the problem, as I may have done above and you ceaselessly do in your notes, is not the solution. For a solution to be found there has to be some sort of consensus on what's the best course of action. I wouldn't hold my breath for that ever happening. :)


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cjgait

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Si Ku Quan Shu

hilary said:
??
For those of us who are really ignorant, not just pretending, what's that?


:rofl:

Oops, yeah, Chinese-only thing. The Si Ku Quan Shu was collected by the Qing Dynasty Qianlong emperor. It was an effort to collect all the Classical Chinese literature of the past into one library, in a uniform format. All of the literature, that is, that was not critical of the Manchus ;) .

The resulting set of books, which took basically all the scholars in the country working for ten years, ran to some 36,000 volumes (2.3 million pages).

There is a CD version of it available in various formats. The first five CDs are all on the Yi. Unfortunately the copy I have is less than perfect, so not all the volumes of the full work are readable. The Yi Jing volumes are readable, but I can't even make an archive copy.

Some day perhaps I'll trade a car for the paper version from the mainland.
 

Sparhawk

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The resulting set of books, which took basically all the scholars in the country working for ten years, ran to some 36,000 volumes (2.3 million pages).

You mean that whole library is on CD's?? Wow!! Google doesn't hold a candle to that text scanning effort... :D

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cjgait

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Si Ku Quan Shu

sparhawk said:
You mean that whole library is on CD's?? Wow!! Google doesn't hold a candle to that text scanning effort... :D

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Yup. A business man, I think from Hong Kong, invested a fortune in the task. He is a true cultural 'da ren' (Great Man)!
 
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lightofreason

Guest
sparhawk said:
...Is interesting to see how your ideas seem to reconcile Logic with Spirituality and thus present a pathway for the advancement of humanity, as a species, to a higher level of self. Would it ever work? I seriously doubt it. Not because the ideas lack merit but because they are anomalous and complex in a culture where information is consumed and digested in a nanosecond scale.

The IDM focus is on a course covering 'species meaning derivation 101'. From that GENERAL position comes better understanding of our metaphors AS metaphors rather than to be taken literally.

This moves us to considering the XOR/AND dynamics of our brains where the self-referencing of dichotomies elicits sets of categories showing the whole in each part - a holographic perspective - but these categories are categories of meaning and as such form the lexicon of a language. In other words it is the language that is holographic in that to be a language it MUST be able to describe itself (and so self-reference).

Language is NOT reality, language reflects the dynamics of map-making; this allows us to confuse the map with the territory but at the same time make the metaphor that is the word so tightly fitting the territory that we can fail to make the distinction of map/territory and so take the metaphors literally.

All of that said, since our neurology reflects the adaptation of cell to environment so it reflects the internalisation of 'out there' 'in here' - not the literal nature but the metaphoric nature. It is this internalisation that makes our maps so good but they are still examples of 'language' and not the 'thing'.

The IDM categories map the I Ching metaphor and so the IC as a language - a source of deriving and communcating meaning. IOW in that species 101 course we can use the IC and Mathematics as examples of specialisations and their isomorphism.

Understanding the details of all of this allows one to quickly pick up on specialisations in general since they are all metaphors for what the brain deals with ;-)

Chris.
 

martin

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Yes fine, but the fact remains that your extremely yang way of communicating your views on this forum is counterproductive. And irritating too.
But if anyone dares to say something about it you explode and become insulting. Yangyangyang BANG!
If your system works so well then I suggest that you use it to improve your communication skills and get some kind of balance there. Because what is happening now all the time - it doesn't do any good.

Okay, 3, 2, 1, zero! You may explode now .. :mischief:
 

Sparhawk

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lightofreason said:
In other words it is the language that is holographic in that to be a language it MUST be able to describe itself (and so self-reference).

Language is NOT reality, language reflects the dynamics of map-making; this allows us to confuse the map with the territory but at the same time make the metaphor that is the word so tightly fitting the territory that we can fail to make the distinction of map/territory and so take the metaphors literally.

All of that said, since our neurology reflects the adaptation of cell to environment so it reflects the internalisation of 'out there' 'in here' - not the literal nature but the metaphoric nature. It is this internalisation that makes our maps so good but they are still examples of 'language' and not the 'thing'.

Here is where I get lost most of the time: How can you have it both ways? Language, in its holographic metaphor and as a distinct subset, is still part of the whole. Language may not be the "thing" but is still part of it. No? Language, in its map-making duty, is still a creation of the whole. Using my joke about you being "Vulcan" (which is a compliment) as a logic stepping stone, even if you were an outside alien looking into our human "reality", that doesn't separate YOU, as an Alien, from the "whole of reality" because the moment the observer becomes aware of something, that something becomes part of his reality. So, in a few words, there are no separate realities for an observer. There may be infinite realities within infinite universes but the moment the threshold of awareness, from one reality to another, is crossed, they become part of whole were the observer lives. Did that make any sense? My neurons are rusty... :)

Logic, pure logic, high and above any flaws, can be intuited and abstracted, but its individual and internal comprehension and communication must still use language as a sharing conduit. Language may be imperfect but, so far, is the best tool we have. Even a person with your IQ must use language to abstract and communicate (even if you are getting all that information, telepathically, from the Atlanteans... :D)

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lightofreason

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martin said:
Yes fine, but the fact remains that your extremely yang way of communicating your views on this forum is counterproductive. And irritating too.
But if anyone dares to say something about it you explode and become insulting. Yangyangyang BANG!

go back and read it again - he made a claim strongly. I said it was absolute rubbish and added additional text to support my perspective. He replied with insults rather than take up the challange. I answered back re having no respect of absolute rubbish etc. He still did not engage other than with more 'stuff' and is now off in a huff.

Lets me say this VERY simply, you assert absolute rubbish it will be pointed out to you. The claims made by him re the IC were absolute rubbish, there is no need AT ALL to learn Chinese etc to understand what the IC represents as a metaphor for what our brain does in processing information.

There is NOTHING unique about what the IC does other than it being a specialisation and so comes with its own lexicon/symbols etc as reflecting the structure of a language.

The FACT that we can take the fight/flight dichotomy and self-reference it, and take the yin/yang dichotomy and self-reference that, and then use successfully the IC categories to describe emotional assessments of reality shows the 'truth' of what I am saying about IDM and IC+ etc etc - the emotions are not 'Chinese', they come out of our brains as members of the species. What is 'Chinese' are the labels representing underlying emotional categories and nothing to do with the IC as such.

This being an IC list so the application of IDM to the analysis of the IC retains aspects of the IC to demonstrate the links and from there we open up the IC to cover areas not covered by any of the translations/interpretations mentioned in this thread; iow all of the mentioned 'traditional-biased' texts are past their best-before/use-by dates. ;-)

Chris.
 
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lightofreason

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sparhawk said:
Here is where I get lost most of the time: How can you have it both ways? Language, in its holographic metaphor and as a distinct subset, is still part of the whole. Language may not be the "thing" but is still part of it. No? Language, in its map-making duty, is still a creation of the whole.

The focus is on the making of a distinction. That act is an act of encapsulation, of setting a boundary of 'this' from 'that' - and so will automatically elicit a structure of potentials in the form of a sierpinksi gasket. That structure is self-referencing and it is the foundation of language in that a language has to be able to describe itself as well as 'all there is'.

Descriptions/narratives etc then work off resonance in that the isomorphisms of the different specialist languages allow for one to be used to describe another (or more so the language of quantum mechanics can be used as a source of analogy/metaphor to describe the IC and visa versa.)

It is the containment of noise, of the random, that elicits order. That does not necessarily imply that order is 'out there', it only says that the containment of noise will elicit order. This containment comes in the form of the 'thing' and the language used to describe the 'thing'. It is this commonality that allows for the ease in describing reality - MANY different expressions but they all relate to the ONE set of categories we all share as species-members.

Our emotions are a language and they work off resonance (in other life forms we find this in the form of 'spectrum exchange' - which is converted in us to precise, serial communications). Words carry meaning in the form of emotions and even the structure of the message is linked to an emotion - syntax is represented by an emotion that is more precise than representations of semantics etc.

Chris.

Chris.
 
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cjgait

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Noise and the La4 Sacrifice

The signal to noise ratio on this thread, and on this forum as a whole, is very poor.

Anyone who wants to discuss Rutt's translation further, please do so. I will discuss it here, in Second Life, or on Yixue on Yahoo.

As to interpretation of words from the Yi. I am currently working through several terms involving sacrifices in the oldest layers of the text of the Yi. Does anyone have any more information on the La4 (腊) sacrifice referred to in 21:3? Legge translates it as 'dried flesh' , "gnawing dried flesh and finding what is disagreeable". One can easily imagine finding a poison area in preserved meat if it was poorly processed. I wonder if this presented a liturgical challenge to the one making the sacrifice? After all, the sacrifice had already been consecrated at the time of the feast at which it was consumed. If your portion had a bad part, it was certainly a poor omen, though not fatal. What I mean by liturgical challenge is, what if the rule calls for eating the meat no matter what because it's consecrated? There are precedents of such behavior even in modern liturgical practises. You would indeed have 'cause for regret', even if you survived. Just wild conjecture on my part, of course. There is nothing I know of in the various 'Li' books (books of ritual protocol) that detail the fine points of what one does with sacrifices that have gone south at so late a point. But then again I have only a glancing knowledge of them, so If anyone knows of one, please point it out. For that matter, if anyone has experience making jerky, have you encountered a pocket of bad meat inside what appears to be good meat?

So far I have determined that the La4 sacrifice was part of the regular round of seasonal sacrifices, was offered to the 'hundred spirits' or 'various gods' and that it was made at the beginning of Winter, with the meat taken from game taken in a hunt.

It seems like an odd place for such a thing in 21, which I don't generally associate with the seasonal progression, though it certainly fits with biting through and the quality of what one consumes literally or metaphorically.

I've gone through this in the Chinese. Now I am going to start looking at Rutt, Kunst, etc. to see if there are any notes which might cast light on this word.
 
L

lightofreason

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sparhawk said:
Chris, you had me at "sierpinksi gasket" (made me Google that one... :D)

L

;-) Go deeper now - Google "the chaos game".

Any containment of noise will elicit order in the form of the gasket.
Now look at the relationship of the gasket to Pascal's triangle and so the binomial theorem. From there comes identification of recursion of a dichotomy to that theorem and so to the gasket and so to the containment of noise to elicit order. ;-)

(the IC hexagrams of yin/yang lines map to theorem where A=1, B=1, n=6 in the equation (A + B) ^ n and so gives us the distribution of yin/yang expressions in hexagrams)

It is the sameness across all containers of noise that allows for one to be used as a source of analogy/metaphor in describing the other. In tonal or visual systems we have a set of tones or images that map to the internal 'order' and they can be used to 'resonate' with tones/images etc in some other map to communicate and so form a language.

Chris.
 

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