Distinction 

 

I am not the only one to have been intrigued by Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form appearing in 1969.  Basing his entire system on the 'mark of distinction' has also a metaphysical appeal.  It calls to mind our attempt to characterize creation as the process of dividing the primordial, singular unity. 

The Kabbalah speaks of the Zim-zum, sometimes pictured as a lightning bolt, as the '(self-)contraction' of God to leave a space for creation to manifest.  In this shadow ignorance is latent and knowledge becomes manifest.  

In Revelation there are the apocalyptic ten thunders that also play a central role in Joyce's Finnegans Wake.  The recursion that is doubly implicit in Joyce's title is explicit in the Laws of Form.  This speaks in part to the duality of the Alpha and Omega that is witnessed within history as the syzygy reenacted at the X-event, sometimes referred to as the (little?) death, or passion of God. 

In those thunders, are we not hearing the primordial creative word, or was it the primal scream, of God piercing the cosmic silence.  It is the beginning of revelation and concealment.  We also hear the Ur-language which may well have arisen out of a primal Aaaarrgghhhh of totipotent meaning, the stem cell of language, by degrees of distinction, down to the disquisitions of our analytic philosophers today.  Heading into the eschaton, this historical process is reversed and accelerated via the Internet, of course.  In place of the original Aaaarrgghhhh, we have the final Metanarrative.  

All we need now is to understand the connection between the Zim-zum and the Monster group and we will be in business....Aaaarrgghhhh!!

 

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6/26/02