FRAMUSTANS
Copyright by Barnabas D. Johnson
There are no simple ways
to say truly complicated things.
Dumbing-down complex relationships
mocks what we humans are: Carriers of the
evolving DNA of our planetary future, which is,
or should be, "not dumb" ... a celebration of complexity.
The evolution of our capacity to discern and communicate "not this" and "not that" has been and remains central to civilization and its future worthwhile evolution. A "framustan" is a territory or relationship that is "framed" or "signaled" in relation to what it is not.
Although "this is not that" signaling is often broadcast in an "affirmative" way — for example, "this is play" (meaning "this is not real") or "this name denotes that beast" (meaning "the map is not the territory") — the "negative" form, no matter how well hidden, is integral to thought and language, whether in simple linguistic classifications (pigs are among those things that don't have wings), in more complex meta-linguistic messages (the word "wings" cannot fly), or in most complex meta-communicative observations (how presumptuous of me to bother you with pigs and "wings").
Linguistic, meta-linguistic, and meta-communicative know-how draws us, even if reluctantly, to examine framustans precisely because thought and communication evolve to identify and distinguish similars, which necessarily involves finding differences. As Aristotle said, only similars can be usefully distinguished. In our own time, G. Spencer-Brown has argued that "indications of distinction" are the most basic implements of thought and communication. But long before our time, philosophers have pioneered personal and societal knowledge aimed at distinctions and similarities, analysis into parts and synthesis into wholes. This enterprise presupposes that, no matter how identifiable any "part" is, it cannot be "fully identified" (or at least fully known) except in relation to the whole — ultimately, the Universe — of which it is a part. This insight, not surprisingly, led long ago to a deep skepticism about our ability to know anything "well enough" to allow our truths to generate consequences: to shape behavior, wise governance of self and society. The pre-Socratic Sophists were probably the first to grapple with this difficulty in a systematic way. Their "answer" moved beyond logic and science (albeit theirs was a very primitive understanding of both) to the rudiments of what we now discern as cybernetics — the theory of self-corrective "learning systems" based on probabilities, not certitudes, and therefore based on continuous probing, self-examination, and resulting self-transformation. Clearly, we are embedded in our knowing and doing. And "knowing what is not" is crucial to that enterprise. See discussion of "metalogues" in Conversation of Democracy.
As we shall see, because cybernetic systems, including healthy individuals and cultures, depend mostly on "negative feedback" — continuous cultivation and harvesting of "environmental warnings" regarding mistakes to be avoided — we must honor those "guard rails along the road of life" which keep us from falling into a lawless, frameless, self-destructive abyss; accordingly, we should not assume that "negative" is "bad"; indeed, "negative feedback" in cybernetic theory is good, precious, necessary.
The capacity to communicate "no" or "not this thing or idea" is crucial to the evolution of symbols, languages, ethical systems, and emergent global law.