C-104. The SGN correction

(Note: This is about a course correction. It is not about a course mistakenly taken by early humans, for as BFEPS has recounted, they had to start from where they were – developmentally speaking.)

Human realization, the gist of Humanism (App. VIII), from self-understanding to self-consequentiality (App. XIX), has been, and still is, incomplete and often inaccurate. This can be attributed in part to the observer BPO bias (0:S-P; C-39), in which attention centers on bodies, particulars and the order of things. On this biased stance, inaccuracy can seem almost benign because the order of things will test answers to questions and thus promises to come to help us counter inaccuracies. Knowledge will add up and not just pile up.

But when inaccuracy is due to incompleteness, the story is different. And what the SGN correction says is that the BPO story is very, very incomplete. The SGN correction comprises greater emphasis (XI) on step, generality and the Nature of Things (III). It denies any identity relationship between body and step (e.g., not just “is as does”), between the general and the particular (e.g., universal is only a part of the general), between the Nature of Things and the order of things (e.g., order of things is only a part of the Nature of Things). Once these respective independences are established, then the full dynamic aspects of the Balance requisite (XI) apply and their potential consequentiality becomes available (C-71): They are also complementary (e.g., body plus step), interdependent (e.g., body <=> step) and in need of balance (e.g., body/step = 1).

To not respect the SGN correction is to confound and confuse, as when we treat behavioral particulars as body-body relationships, inevitably missing out on at least some of the consequentiality of the step’s relatings and use of cognitive relations – most critically on the compositional possibilities engendered by the Nature of Things. Which is to say, precisely at and in the frontier of human endeavor and progress (App. XIV).

The behavioral principles dictated by the Nature of Things make feasible a more informed behavioral experimentation (C-103), providing via HAS discipline (App. VIII) and behavioral architecture (C-90) a corrective force for manufacturing before the fact analogous to what the order of things does for discovery after the fact. (See two kinds of knowledge: C-93.)

To live in accord with the Nature of Things (C-9) is to balance BPO and SGN, to see them not as bias and correction, but as complementary and interdependent contributions to human realization. This way we add to, and then multiply, the human resource. SGN does not negate BPO. It calls attention to its absent partners. Clearly however, we must take note of their current imbalance (App. XVII), with an indicated need for more emphasis (C-3, C-80, C-90) on developing capabilities consonant with the Nature of Things. Realization demands no less.

Without the SGN correction, the BPO bias is a glaring example of what we have metaphorically termed the Escarpment (App. XVI; C-56), of an impediment (IV) to human problem solving and an improved quality of life (0: S-P). With this correction, we will not have to continually surmount the escarpment – as best we can … because it will begin to dissolve. The barrier is anthropogenic, and with its removal perhaps we can ease our way to resolving some of our other anthropogenic mishaps.

Lacking this correction, humanity’s future looks lackluster and forbidding (C-51). Late-stage functionality (C-97, C-103) will continue to reign in practice and education. Community, prized in concept though it may be, will recede as achievement beyond the horizon. Our history will continue to be more evolution than development, a tragedy of unrealized realization. Lacking this correction our past will never be completely understood, our future never accurately designed.

“To be and to become” will lose out to “To be or not to be.” (Existence was never that great a question. But as a problem ….)

(c) R.F. Carter
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