In Digitism Part 1 (?), I quoted from Beyond Nature and Culture – Philippe Descola. In these quotes he described what he posited as the four possible ontologies. He defined ontologies as “ sociocosmic forms of aggregation and conceptions of self and non-self.”
Figure and ground is the basis for perception to distinguish this from that. I think ground is a more complicated phenonomen than simply being the undifferentiated backdrop to thingness. The perception of ground contains a set of assumptions and guesses. For instance a frog assumes that everything not moving is neither food nor threat. Everything that does not move is the backdrop allowing things (foods or threats) to manifest.
Humans require a more complicated backdrop – “sociocosmic forms of aggregation and conceptions of self and non-self.”
Descola’s intent is to distinguish how the experience of interiority aggregates portions of the physical world into the experience of self, leaving the rest as non-self.
Yet the language is also evocative of Buddhist ideas of Non-Self as a mark of existence. So despite the experience of a Self as not only the referent point for perception, but as truly existent, self-sufficient essence, its nature is in fact Non-Self.
Training in not only the idea , but the experience of this as well, leads to the recognition of the non-duality of subject and object – Space is Seen.
So meet Red Bob #2 – part of my own ongoing training in non-duality.
Red Bob #2
(mask – Atomic Geography) (photo – Stephen Appel)
Becoming/Unbecoming
