Branding barrier, semiotic barrier and status barrier

Implication of Indwelling Intelligence in Global Confidence-building (Part #11)

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A major challenge for a global civilization, experiencing and anticipating a variety of crises, is what is to be identified as inspiring confidence -- at a time when collective confidence has been systematically abused by every authority (Abuse of Faith in Governance: mystery of the unasked question, 2010). In what ways might global "confidence-building" be related to any sense of indwelling intelligence? Given the level of controversy and assertions of delusion, are there subtle "barriers" -- perhaps ironically analogous to the "sound barrier" -- which have to be traversed in order for such confidence to be enabled?

The existence of such barriers is only too evident in the violent deprecation of religions and their denominations for each other, matched by the deprecation of the disciplines of science for each other, as notably illustrated by scandals such as the Sokal Affair and the Bogdanov Affair.

Paradoxical boundaries: As noted above, with respect to "indwelling", the paradoxical relationship between "inside" and "outside", especially in the light of any higher order of dimensionality, has been very fruitfully clarified in terms of the geometry of the Mobius strip and the Klein bottle by Steven M. Rosen (Topologies of the Flesh: a multidimensional exploration of the lifeworld, 2006; Dimensions of Apeiron: a topological phenomenology of space, time, and individuation, 2004).

Such insights regarding mutuality are reflected in some religious use of "indwelling", as with: God dwells in us and we dwell in him (Dwelling in God: 1 John 4, 2010). Charles Fillmore: Spirit-Mind is the indwelling idea at the center of everything that has real existence. (Unity, Feb. 1915, p.1). The difficulty is that the paradoxical, counter-intuitive challenge to comprehension is readily lost, as in otherwise insightful statements regarding "higher", such as the following by Friederich von Schlegel (The Philosophy of Life, and Philosophy of Language, 1847):

How difficult it generally is for man to express his internal conceptions, to bring out the indwelling idea and to realise its perfect external manifestation, is shown, for example, among other instances, by the fine arts, or the art of the beautiful. For this reason, the theory of the latter, the so-called aesthetics (which, however, might far more correctly be termed symbolism), forms the natural pendant and accompaniment to logic, if the latter, instead of being limited, as is usual, to the mere art of distinguishing the different kinds of notions, is understood in a far higher sense, and referred to eternal and consequently divine truth, and to its intrinsic and equally divine standard.

Threefold barrier: As noted above however, the insights are the most problematic as a consequence of being inextricably confused with preoccupations with what amounts to "branding", "copyright" (whether intellectual or spiritual), and with "registered trademarks" -- echoing the questionable parallels of commodification. These may be understood in terms of semiotic, branding and status barriers. Experience of the greatest subtlety and significance is framed in proprietary terms, with a strong emphasis on ensuring what amounts to consumer "buy-in" and even "lock-in", namely dependence on doctrinal authorities -- effectively preventing use of another "supplier" without substantial "switching costs". Such "lock-in costs" may create "barriers to market entry", through efforts to establish a doctrinal "monopoly". This mode consequently also includes what might be termed "unauthorised" insights, inappropriately "labelled", and possibly to be recognized as "counterfeit".

Of relevance to the use of the marketing metaphor is the recognition of a "branding barrier" in that context, as expressed by the Tenaya Group (Breaking The Brand Barrier): Historically, brands have often engaged the world from the missionary position. Sadly, this top-down approach deadens customers, dampens initiative, and greatly limits the value brands can provide. This barrier may be compared with a "semiotic barrier" as noted with respect to evangelism: There is an evangelical semiotic barrier between non-Christians and Christ that is blocking the way. What emergents have done is declare a moratorium on standard rhetoric, not because it's not true, but because it? has become needlessly obstructionist.

Indications of threefold barrier: branding, semiotic, and status consciousness understood as encompassing the nature of "indwelling intelligence", as circumscribed by Venn diagrams (with the implication that its elusive nature is suggested by overlaying the two diagrams)
Indicative "experiential" descriptors (from table above)	Indicative "qualitative" descriptors (from table above)

Challenges to comprehension: References to any "Holy Spirit", claims to know of its nature, or to have experienced it, are to a degree presumptuous. They are framed to imply comprehension of what may well be currently beyond human comprehension -- given the challenge to the brightest to understand the nature of the universe. If humans are challenged to comprehend how the autonomic nervous system keeps their own bodies alive (as noted above) the scope of their comprehension of that which is believed to encompass them must necessarily be questionable. It is for this reason that the classic introductory lines (themselves variously translated) of the Tao Te Ching are most fruitfully indicative of the challenge of ineffability -- and the need for a degree of humility:

The Way that can be told of is not an unvarying way;
The names that can be named are not unvarying names.

Science vs. Religion: It is most curious the extent to which those of scientific or religious persuasion are emphatically articulate in their arguments as to the "delusion" of the other (cf. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006; Peter Wilberg, The Science Delusion: why God is real and science is religious myth, 2010). It is even more curious that within each domain of belief, variants are similarly condemned -- without considering the possibility that "consensus" may itself be a delusion, as is only too apparent in the political arena (The Consensus Delusion: mysterious attractor undermining global civilization as currently imagined, 2011).

The nature of the "semiotic barrier" could be explored by considering how the deities of various pantheons would be understood by "science" -- if they were to be recognized as an (alternative or earlier) intuitive understanding of what science now recognizes as, for example, Fourier transforms, as universal constants, or the 8-fold way of particle physics (cf. List of Fourier-related transforms, Tables of universal constants). With the recent detection of the "God particle", the converse could be equally instructive, namely the representation of fundamental scientific insights within a "pantheon" of anthropomorphic "deities" whose attributes and relationships could be distinctively identified for mnemonic purposes -- as suggested by the distinctive "flavours" of quarks (including "charm" and "strange"). Such mnemonic initiatives could contribute significantly to reframing the mystification by which the subtler insights of science and religion are characterized -- with both eliciting vast resources from their believers worldwide. As an example of significance at a "semiotic interface" between science and religion, the feng shui deprecated by the West is frequently a determining framework for the current design of projects requiring major investment in the East.

Definitive statements about what is otherwise held to be mysterious ensure a misleading form of closure (¡¿ Defining the objective ∞ Refining the subjective ?! Explaining reality ∞ Embodying realization, 2011). Both "holiness" and "spirit" as comprehensible to humans may also be understood in terms of the integrative subtleties explored by those without religious commitments and explanatory frameworks -- including scientists and philosophers. As for the religious, the challenge for them is that science precludes the possibility of any future discovery which has not been authorised by its current methodology and worldview (cf. Rupert Sheldrake, The Science Delusion: feeling the spirit of enquiry, 2012). In a review of the latter by Mary Midgley, she notes:

We need a new mind-body paradigm, a map that acknowledges the many kinds of things there are in the world and the continuity of evolution. We must somehow find different, more realistic ways of understanding human beings - and indeed other animals - as the active wholes that they are, rather than pretending to see them as meaningless consignments of chemicals.

Rupert Sheldrake... spells out this need forcibly in his new book. He shows how materialism has gradually hardened into a kind of anti-Christian faith, an ideology rather than a scientific principle, claiming authority to dictate theories and to veto inquiries on topics that don't suit it, such as unorthodox medicine, let alone religion. He shows how completely alien this static materialism is to modern physics, where matter is dynamic. And, to mark the strange dilemmas that this perverse fashion poses for us, he ends each chapter with some very intriguing "Questions for Materialists", questions such as Have you been programmed to believe in materialism?, If there are no purposes in nature, how can you have purposes yourself?...

The interaction between science and religion does credit to neither. Each claims to be "right" but neither has any useful means of explaining the existence of the other nor for the multiplicity of its own subdivisions -- nor their credibility for many. The situation is well described in The Pivot by Chuang Tzu (as interpreted by Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu, 1970), with "science" and "religion" corresponding to his reference to "Confucians" and "Mohists" -- and with the "Pivot" possibly to be understood as a form of "indwelling intelligence":

Tao is obscured when men understand only one of a pair of opposites, or concentrate only on a partial aspect of being. Then clear expression also becomes muddled by mere word-play, affirming this one aspect and denying all the rest. Hence the wrangling of Confucians and Mohists; each denies what the other affirms, and affirms what the other denies. What use is this struggle to set up "No" against "Yes", and "Yes" against "No" ? Better to abandon this hopeless effort... The possible becomes impossible; the impossible becomes possible. Right turns into wrong and wrong into right -- the flow of life alters circumstances and thus things themselves are altered in their turn. But disputants continue to affirm and to deny the same things they have always affirmed and denied, ignoring the new aspects of reality presented by the change in conditions. The wise man therefore... sees that on both sides of every argument there is both right and wrong. He also sees that in the end they are reducible to the same thing, once they are related to the pivot of Tao. When the wise man grasps this pivot, he is the center of the circle, and there he stands while "Yes" and "No" pursue each other around the circumference.

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