The World of SPLectrum
Flying the Flag of Belonging, Privacy and Creativity
Free, at last. That is how I feel. Why? In Building from the Seed I made the transition from (only) talking about the structure of language - based on the seed principles - to building on top of that structure, presenting the SPLectrum philosophy as a voice in the pluralistic conversation. It is a philosophy built from three core values of us as subjects - belonging, privacy and creativity.
The impact of these values on metaphysics is substantial: they significantly rebalance the five pillars. That is what I want to explore in the first few posts.
It all starts with a subject experiencing reality, being a private witness, before anything can be shared with others and become part of belonging. I find this really empowering, my reality starts with its disclosure to me. When I open my eyes it is always privacy first, belonging second.
But wait a minute, experience is expressed in language. Where does the language come from? I came in to being as a working system, already primed with a language to experience, a language given to me through belonging - through being human, the species I belong to. A tight coupling between belonging and privacy, but mine to decide what I share and where I decide to belong or not. This is a grassroots metaphysics — built from private experience through shared language, not given from above.
There is a price to pay: there is nothing and nobody to tell me ‘this is true and that is false, or this is right and that is wrong’. Absolute does not exist, be it objectivity or truth. The way to come to knowledge is through feedback and convergence. We experience, we share and update our language of experience. That is how we learn and converge, the core of SPLectrum’s epistemology.
The beings of ontology are concepts in that language. We create and share them. You might think this is too much a free for all. Actually, rather the opposite: language couples us tightly, belonging is important to us. So much so that it is often forgotten that everything starts within the privacy of personal experience and ‘continuous recreation’. That it could have been different. And it is in that contingency that creativity lurks.
Creativity is in all of us, in our own way. Yes, people’s names get attached to specific creations that are deemed important. But the importance lies in what they stand for, the concept, not the people. The fact that it is a specific person is contingent. Don’t forget all those that are not mentioned, contributions that make a difference but remain not named.
And this opens up an unexpected avenue: the importance of how I experience and how I share that experience. We all start with a shared toolset given through belonging. But what we do with it and make of it is in our hands. Often there is too much emphasis on learning to think rationally, ignoring the importance of learning to experience and share. It ends up too cerebral, ignoring that we can’t think without experiencing. It makes me laugh writing this, it wasn’t my thinking when I was young!
In SPLectrum aesthetics takes on an important role: there is no reality without sensory experience. And since experience is mediated by language, a reality shaped by the beauty, purity, effectiveness of the language we use to share and create belonging, that we use to function as communities.
The absence of absolute values easily instills fear - objectivity as subjectivity converging is often pushed away. In fact it should be embraced. If objectivity is where our subjectivities converge, then we all have an equal stake in shaping what counts as real. We who belong have to figure that out - together. Starting from individual and running across communities, that is where diversity makes us stronger.
Photo: Sebastian Schaidler / Unsplash