This branch of the TRINPsite tree provides the answers, and sometimes the
reason why no answer was given, to a variety of comments or questions
sent to this site by
e-mail, by
form or by means of a
g:u:e:s:t:b:o:o:k (which may be closed now
because of Internet abuse by spammers in particular).
The questions or comments have been arranged in chronological order,
starting with the most recent one.
There is a separate
document for the years 56 to 59 aSWW.
All answers are by M. Vincent van Mechelen.
The senders of questions or comments are not identified other than by one
or two initials, unless they have made themselves known in public or have
indicated that they do not mind. Obviously, private messages and personal
details are not published here, unless of interest to others, while the
person concerned has given
'er permission.
For the sake of brevity some minor parts of comments, questions and
answers may have been deleted.
Apart from these deletions no editing has been done. Any spelling mistake
or other error or any idiosyncratic usage is the writer's.
FORM COMMENT by B. R. on 64.14.1:
In the case that the planet erth is considered an organism in it's own right, does it have some
structure analogous to lungs, and what structure would that be if it in fact exists?
ANSWER on 64.14.4:
To consider the Earth a single organism with lungs may make sense or may
make no sense. It depends.
Literally speaking, organisms with lungs are air-breathing vertebrates.
The Earth, however, has no spinal column, no head and no arms, legs or
wings.
And, in spite of those who call it "a Mother", it has no sexual organs,
let alone exclusively female or, for that matter, male ones: it does not
reproduce at all, neither sexually nor asexually.
Therefore, people who claim that the Earth is 'a living organism' (or,
worse, 'a conscious, intentionally acting Gaia') with lungs contribute
nothing sensible to the discussion about this planet.
However, figuratively speaking, the Earth 'is an organism with lungs' in a
sense, because there are significant analogies between a real organism and
the Earth and between real lungs and the so-called 'lungs' of the Earth.
In other words, the Earth resembles a living plant or animal in a
certain respect and it has 'organs' whose function can be compared
to the respiratory function of the lungs of vertebrates.
The 'lungs' of the Earth are, then, in reality first of all the vast
tropical rain forests.
These 'organs' and all the other parts of this planet may seem more or less
separate, but form one 'interconnected web of relationships' and are
mutually dependent on one another.
The Earth is one, open as an energy system heated by the Sun, almost
closed as an ecosystem in itself.
Figures of speech may build a road to (relatively fast) enlightenment,
but when they are taken literally, when the use of
is replaces
resembles and when a claim to identity
replaces comparison, the road they build leads to (long-lasting)
obscurantism instead.
Most striking about this Earth-organism brand of obscurantism is the
arbitrariness in its selection of parts and qualities.
Why would the Earth have lungs in a literal sense but no head nor backbone?
Why would the Earth show the respiratory and metabolic processes of an
animal but no capacity and tendency to procreate in the genuine sense of
the word?
These are questions for those who say that the Earth is an
organism with lungs, and who believe that this will help them to get an
ecological message across, a message which may be good in itself.
They are not questions for those who compare the Earth to an
organism and its rain forests to lungs, and who should feel at least
the same concern about climate change and the destruction of the natural
environment.
P.S. The (partially) fictional legend
An Organism with Lungs?
—originally accessible at TRINPsite and directly linked to from here,
but 1 or 2 years after this reply incorporated into the third part of the
trilogy Triptych of Times— deals with
the same question and provides a longer and more detailed answer in a
literary setting.
FORM COMMENT by C. on 63.34.3:
I fully confess I can't understand your site at all because your use of
language is quite atypical (although I do pick up the vague idea you have
opposite values to mine). Are you some sort of cult or new religious
movement or whatever the PC phrase for that is now?
ANSWER on 63.34.4:
TRINPsite at
trinp.org —www.trinp.org at
the time of this reply— offers writings, sound files and pictures of
a philosophical, literary and (in a neutral sense) 'ideological' nature.
When you let me know that you cannot 'understand this site at all' i expect
you have been looking at one or more of the philosophical texts, which may
be quite abstract and technical, and which often require close and patient
reading (facilitated by hypertext links).
Had you gone on to look at or listen to some of the simpler philosophical
texts, poems/songs and short stories, you would have been able to grasp at
least the gist, provided, of course, that you have a sufficient command of
This Language.
The acronym
TRINP stands for
TRuth,
Relevance,
INclusivity,
Neutrality and
Personhood,
values which are explicitly mentioned and implicitly emphasized
everywhere on TRINPsite again and again. When you tell me that you have
'picked up the vague idea that i have opposite values to yours', you
suggest to me, therefore, that your own values are falsity, irrelevance,
exclusivity, extremity and a lack of respect for persons. I will refrain
from jumping to conclusions here, yet i do wonder whether you really mean or
realize what you are saying with respect to this point.
What is good or just in terms of the TRINP values in no way depends on what
people believe to be true, relevant, and so on; not even on what the (great)
majority of people say, write and do, or fail to say, write or do. When you
use words such as
atypical and
cult you seem to be reproaching TRINPsite for not
being traditional or part of the mainstream, or, perhaps, in the case of
PC phrase for being fashionable and not
opposing the mainstream.
But such labels only take the content out of view and lead to superficial
discussions: being part of the mainstream or opposing it is, like wanting to
keep the status quo or wanting to change it, nothing good or bad in itself.
It is the why and the how in the light of what ideal (if any) which should
interest us.
Your question about a 'new religious movement' deserves some more attention,
because it might have a greater bearing on the substance. Anyone visiting
TRINPsite will in little or no time discover that the worldview presented
and defended there is definitely not a religion. It will take some more
time to find out that the word
religion is
then used in the sense of
supernaturalist
ideology. However, should you define any (systematic) worldview and
lifestance with a specific collection of norms and symbols as a 'religion',
even if it is value-centered instead of god-centered (!), i
cannot prevent you from doing so.
But in that case you must not forget, nor conceal, that TRINPsite is the
ground for a naturalistic,
normistic
'religion', something very different from
supernaturalist and
theocentrist
ideology.
Even
th
o we do not seem
to be of one mind, i thank you for your comment and question.
I hope you will find my reply of some use, if not now, then in the future.
May i end with referring you to the steadily increasing number of
poems/songs,
short stories and
recorded texts at TRINPsite
which may make some more comprehensible and pleasant reading and listening
for you.
FORM COMMENT by C.E. on 60.45.2:
"Since there is merely a denumerably infinite number of names and
definitions in human language, it is impossible to comprehend every set,
given the 'existence' of nondenumerably infinite sets."
Could you possibly give me a reference for a canonical expression of this
sort of thinking? I am looking for somone who has written, essentially,
that the the infinity of human language is smaller than the infinity of
natural phenomena so that there necessarily is inaccessible knowledge.
ANSWER on 60.45.7:
Unfortunately, i am not able to give you a reference for 'a canonical
expression' of the sort of thinking you are quoting.
You seem to be concerned with the question of whether there is
'inaccessible knowledge' of necessity. The expression
inaccessible knowledge has an odd ring about it,
but i assume you mean
cognitively inaccessible
factual, modal or
normative conditions. This, however, demands a clear definition
of what you mean by
cognitively (in)accessible.
Do not you agree that knowledge
is never a completely sure thing, but always a matter of probability and
plausibility, albeit, perhaps, great probability and great plausibility?
Should you be looking for 100% certainty, i am afraid you may stop your
enterprise and concede that
all (sure) knowledge is inaccessible of
necessity. But then
knowledge loses its (practical) significance as
it would not exist in daily life anymore.
There is another, normative aspect to the issue you raise: when your
concern is knowledge, you implicitly regard it as something valuable.
Should you consider knowledge an
ultimate and/or
perfective value
in itself, i must disappoint you, for such a position is untenable: if i
tell you, without lying, how many blades of grass there are in my garden,
if any, your knowledge will increase, but you will not be a better person
for it, in whatever sense. Of course, knowledge is an important
instrumental value,
since it discloses to us what utterances are or would be true or false.
But this is only the case, because
truth is a value.
Truth, however, does
not require us to utter anything; it only requires that
what we
utter be true (and, together with relevance, that what we utter be
relevant). You and i will not be better persons by uttering more truths but
by uttering fewer falsehoods and preferably none at all! On the basis of
this ultimate value of truth there is nothing to be concerned about. For
if, and as long as, there are things we do not know and cannot know, we
ought not to claim anything about them, something we will always be able to
do.
Those who put mere belief above knowledge will not share you concern
whatsoever, but even those who, like myself, put knowledge above mere
belief, especially religious and other supernaturalist belief, need not
share your concern. For knowledge is only valuable as an instrument of
truth not in that it may force us to say what is true, let alone everything
that is true, but in that it may prevent us from saying what is false (and
from making use of distinctions which are irrelevant).
I hope that, in spite of the limited knowledge and other means i possess,
this reply will be of some help to you.
FORM COMMENT by J.G. on 60.13.2:
Tell me if you have read, and thoroughly understood "The Great Eygyptian
Pyramid Text", and then tell me that you still believe what has been quoted
in religious ceremonies through out the brief history of Judiasim, Islam
and Christianity.
ANSWER on 60.13.3:
Tell me if you have read and thoroughly understood the
Model of Neutral-Inclusivity,
and then tell me which great tome of texts suffers least from a lack of
respect for persons and from extremism and from falsehood and irrelevance:
the Bible, the Koran or the Model.
FORM COMMENT by T.S. on 60.04.6:
Your language is highly technical and shows a high level of education.
Perhaps, however, you should create a document that is tailored to the
general public, or average man. Just a thought. Otherwise, I love your
site. :)
ANSWER on 60.05.5:
I am sorry to hear that you found the document(s) you read too technical.
In actual fact, some documents (especially those with poems and short
stories) are not technical at all, whereas other documents (especially
those with the
catenical or
philosophical sections of
the Model of Neutral-Inclusivity)
certainly are. However, whether technical or not, in all documents new
ideas representing an alternative worldview are either introduced or
entertained. Such ideas often require a new emphasis on existing words, a
new meaning of existing words and even the use of new words and the disuse
of old ones. It is when confronted with this that some people,
i fear, tend to
confuse the 'technical' with the 'novel'. New verbal and nonverbal concepts
and symbols necessarily accompany the introduction of a fundamentally new
doctrine. You may consider this both an advantage and a disadvantage.
I am not trying to disprove here that parts of the Model or of TRINPsite
are, perhaps, too technical or too intellectual.
I have to point out
th
o, that in one
sense TRINPsite is not 'tailored to the general public'.
For it is not tailored to the kind of people who are pleased with a new
bottle (or, worse, a new label) so long as they can immediately identify,
or at least classify, the (old) wine it contains.
And it is not tailored to the kind of people who cannot find the time to
read or to listen to, let alone study, something new that is, or might be,
of interest to themselves or to society at large in the long run, while
these same people did and do find the time to endlessly familiarize and
associate themselves with countless religious or other ancient activities
and notions.
'The general public' consists of people of very diverse intellectual and
educational backgrounds. Each person deserves to be informed and inspired
regardless of such a background, provided that
'e is willing
to open 'er mind to it and to spend sufficient time and energy on it.
Indeed, i will regret it very much if there are such persons who visit
TRINPsite and do not stay because they cannot cope with the language, even
tho they have tried their best. Yet, they have no reason to assume that the
difficulties are there in order to be difficult.
The difficulties are there in the first place because a totally new
worldview has to be presented and defended in (near-)traditional terms to
people who not seldom have been raised with a supernaturalist, exclusivist
and/or extremist outlook on life which is at best vague, if not irrational,
and at worst abominable, if not criminally wrong.
Anyone who is sincerely interested (and has shown that interest, among
other things, by reading further) may ask me to explain a particular
argument in simpler language. But no-one can ask me to keep on saying
things in 'simple' traditional words where new concepts, terms and even
nonverbal symbols have been introduced with which to express oneself so
much faster, so much more accurately and so much better; that is, better
from a
neutral-inclusive
perspective, also in a moral sense.
For a selection of older comments, questions and answers see:
Questions and answers form 56 to 59 aSWW.
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