Experimental Council Theory #1

Experimental Council is a forum for discussion and decision-making which arises from Experimental Unit.

Recall Important Aspects of Experimental Unit Theory

Senses of the term “Experimental Unit”:

1. Experimental Unit from military contexts

   Gloss: An experimental unit is put together for the purpose of testing new capabilities, including technology and forms of training. These tests must often be performed in the field due to the exigencies of a seeming war-emergency as well as in order to even obtain the experience and data which can help evaluate the new techniques and methods.

2. Experimental Unit in science

   Gloss: In scientific discourse, the experimental unit is what can also be known as the unit of analysis of an experiment. In other words, we are running some test. I like to use the example of evaluating a school. First of all, you have chosen a school as the unit of analysis, but beyond that? Do you evaluate students, classes, subject areas? In a given experiment, what is it that is being tested? The adoption of the name experimental unit signifies both that a) I and anyone else who adopts the XU mindset constitute an experimental unit (i.e. we run tests on ourselves) and b) Experimental Unit as a whole, meaning the aggregate of all those “running” Experimental Unit (as though it were software, a Pokemon on your team, a heat, a Magic card) themselves constitute what is being tested.

3. Experimental Unit as reference to “The One”/”The Absolute,” etc.

   Gloss: Unity is known within my symbolic space as a highly problematic term. For example, to speak of “the unity of our people” opens many unwholesome doors. In what sense are we One? Much cognitive-affective (poetic-symbolic) violence is done through inclusion within unities (classes, types of people) which are stifling to individual singularity-sovereignty (Inukness).

   This is nowhere of higher consequence than in the consideration of everything as belonging to one thing. “The One” might refer to “what is one (with itself), as opposed to meaning something like “The One (who is there). One as adjective, and not as noun. Still, the whole question of allowing for multiple things which are all the One is absurd. The difficulty resides not only in the concept of unity but the concept of “the.” To say The Absolute as opposed to An Absolute is to say that there is one Absolute which is more absolute than any other Absolute. Or, there is no other Absolute, there is only the Absolute.

   The issue here arises from the fact that “we can see” that there are multiple things in the world. And, even if we did want to say that everything really is one, the question then arises: under what terms is it all unified? Neoplatonist terms? Hindu terms? And which of the tendencies within these wide rivers of systems?

   Nevertheless, in this sense “Experimental Unit” refers to the unity (the One, the Absolute) which is experimental (it enters into incarnation). This sense of Experimental Unit evokes a highly solipsistic, psychedelic, mystical sensibility. It is also here emphasized that words cannot capture the sense which is being attempted to be conveyed. “The Ineffable” is a much better title than “The One,” similar to “The Great Mystery,” yet these names are still problematized by their use of the word “the.” So we can as easily use the term “Ineffability,” or even “(Divine) Silence.” The idea of ‘silence’ or ‘wordlessness’ as paradoxical terms in themselves can gesture at the fundamental poetic nature of all forms of language.

   This is to say that is what of most importance to be conveyed can never be captured in words. The purpose of these words is to allow for practices which can allow for ever greater awareness within myself (Greater Jihad) of the sense in which “the Absolute” is all there is, and division and illusion are non-existent, although so is the notion of truth or oneness. This must be a paradoxical exercise since this amounts to the justification for a particular kind of practice within a situation in which there is no goal or absolute standard by which this behavior can be evaluated.

   Nevertheless, the overall imaginary here is of an Absolute which has experimented with the experience of being incarnated, that is, in a body, and with doubt (under the illusion that there is something to know, do, or be). This is the process which has given rise to you, the reader, and me, the writer. In some sense we are each other (I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together), but it is not so simple as this.

   “You already made the choice, now you have to understand it.” This motto summarizes our position: there is no point blaming anyone else because we have done this to ourselves. Theodicy boils down to the question of: why did you do this to yourself? The apparent indignities of existence are there to show us that the Absolute can seem to degradate itself as much as possible and in the most nuanced ways, but it remains the Absolute. You can take it basically because you are the most epic hero ever, and “you” will have your revenge (against yourself.) You will have your satisfaction (at your own expense).

These are the important senses of “Experimental Unit” to keep in mind as we explore the Experimental Council concept.

Tying them together, we have “in the beginning” the Absolute, off to play its game of incarnation (see Lila, Ludus Amoris, and many more cosmologies which incorporate the trope of a single entity deluding itself into thinking it is multiple things). Within this framework, “the past” represents prior practice and world-building for our current activity. We can engage with the lore and tropes of this world and bring to bear our passions in order to intervene into the world as we see fit.

When we “identify” as the Absolute, as “a spiritual being having an incarnational experience,” then for example it is understood that death is nothing to be afraid of. Or fundamentally, shame and humiliation can be borne as long as we are resolute in our understanding of our place with a divine plan, which is to say a set of purposes which we are willing to sacrifice all established tradition to (including all the traditions that pose as anti-traditional). We can achieve a singularity of purpose, conviction, and willingness to sacrifice that those who believe there is something to achieve can never know. We know, like Ramona, that we have nothing to win and nothing to lose.

Nothing to win because we are the Absolute. This game of being limited is fun for God. Basically. Just like we often like to play at the opposite of the general tenor of our lives. For God, this imagined experience of being timeless, purely aware of yourself because there is nothing else, but you and your awareness are one, there is no space for you to think about yourself because you and thinking are not separate. Leading to sentences like Brahman Brahmans Brahman or Brahman Brahmans or Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

So what is there really to achieve? We will “become” immortal? (We are immortal..) We will be praised? Oh? By whom? We will be happy? (See here the existential kink book, which proceeds from the premise that there is pleasure within the shadow at nominal suffering).

With respect to Plotinus and the Undescended Soul, it is Experimental Unit’s intervention to say that no part of the soul is descended. Plotinus’ contemporaries didn’t like this idea because it disincentivized the practice of doing a philosophy. This is because there is fundamentally nothing to achieve which is not already the case. When we see that no part of the soul descends from God, this means all souls are perpetually in a state of grace, and there is no distance between us and the Absolute godhead. The Absolute can only ever experience itself from a point of view, and any point of view will appear to be transitory, threatened, suffering, etc.

Nothing to lose because there is no where to go. There is no problem with being destitute, dying, sacrificing anything. It is all nothing to us because we understand that there is no value to be had. The only thing which is of value is the understanding that there is no value. This understanding frees us from the sense that there is anything which must achieve. We may still set tasks for ourselves and complete them, but these will simply be for us the tasks which present themselves to us as inviting completion. And in fact we are already doing this and nothing but this.

In other words, the attainment of Loving Love is nothing. There is nothing except loving love because there is nothing but God. God is love and love is everything and everything is God. I’ll write a song about that. Loving love is not an achievement, it is a meta-sensibility which can be brought to the awareness of the living in contemplation of the singularity (ichi go ichi e) and tragic beauty of everything. The world is nothing to you; there is nothing else for anything to be. There is nothing you love more than nothing.

Nevertheless, here we are, within an experiment. And so, despite the fact that there is nothing to achieve in an existential sense, we can experimental to have, basically, a nice time. The previous discussion of the lengths to which a member of Experimental Unit will go (or realize it is unnecessary to go) and its infinite nature applies here also to concepts, or more specifically operational concepts or concepts of operations or CONOPs.

This leads us finally near to Experimental Council. We take inspiration from Ben Zweibelson in his treatment of Simon Nahel’s Systemic Operational Design in his book Understanding the Military Design Movement. In Chapter 3, Zweibelson describes the conceptual lengths to which Mr. Nahel will go in his exploration of forms of operational design.

While reading this book, I am screaming at the page at the top of my lungs on every page: “what about the concept of war itself”? It is from this perspective as the Absolute, the Experimental Unit (from “the liar lies to himself”/"Descartes: You’re the Evil Demon!” to “the experimenter experiments on itself”) that it becomes more possible to say not only that war is an obsolete frame of operational design, but that war does not exist.

Can God be at war with itself? Maybe as play, but this seeming division can only be the expression of a higher order (Wilden as cited in the preface to Symbolic Exchange and Death by Jean Baudrillard) unity, which can always then be abstracted over to posit a higher order of division, etc. It can be a theater play of war, as again in Lila, or a war within Ludus Amoris which is ultimately in the service of Love in the sense of Agape. Rendering also more understandable agape and the notion of “all sentient beings.” All other sentient beings are you, perhaps not in the sense that they don’t exist or have experience but that their experience is yours as much as the experience of them is. See the meme of us as diglets but we are connected underground and are a dugtrio. Yes, okay, but why is there a distinction between ground and dugtrio? Or air? And us as looking at this composite image?

I will not get to the notion of Experimental Council, as I have to go to a vigil at Spelman College.

I will simply relate now my image of Glaucus’ Lingerie, and brief commentary.

Plotinus compares our role as souls, with parts of us descended and some undescended from “The One,” with the god Glaucus emerging from the water. Glaucus would normally be very shiny and emitting a bright light, but this is not visible because he is encrusted with barnacles. These barnacles obscure his divine aura. This represents our souls, the undescended part of us is shining with the glory of God, but we can’t see that because this part of our soul is obscured by those parts which have “descended” from out of the Absolute to something else (within my own mirror universe of discourse with myself, I can appreciate how ridiculous is the notion that part of everything would go elsewhere). These barnacles on Glaucus can be wiped away, and this is the process of us purifying ourselves so that the undescended part of our souls can shine forth.

My issue with this is that I don’t see how the barnacles can be different than the god. How can anything obscure the glory of God? It’s impossible. It is more that the God is so amazing that it can appear ungodly to itself and still be godly, that’s how godly it is. You can forget how awesome you are and it doesn’t matter, because you are still just that awesome.

So, in my formulation, Glaucus is wearing lingerie. The idea of lingerie here is just that people look more attractive in lingerie than they do without it. So, the point is that instead of the addition to the divine making it seem worse, the obscuration of the divine actually makes it more enticing. This is similar to wisdom I have heard shared in Vedanta centers that aspiration is sweeter than attainment. Within the experiment, part of the joy is to work with the illusion that there are stakes, that there is something to find out. Meanwhile what there is to find out is that you never had a mystery at all, you were always at home, always safe, always the greatest. And none of these things matter at all. “It is what it is,” you are what you are. Brahman Brahmans.

Still, lingerie is something other than Glaucus. So, the next level of the parable is to say that Glaucus is really naked. It is simply that Glaucus is tattooed with what looks like lingerie on him. So, God looks like it is wearing clothes, it is hidden. But its hiddenness makes it all the more attractive. Yet in actuality there is no hiddenness. You are actually always seeing God naked. It’s is just that its nakedness is an appearing to be clothed. Its transparency appears to you as opacity (which is the only way it can appear, since “in reality” you are it and you cannot appear to yourself since you are appearance, you are the concept of “to”.

Commentary: The remaining bit is to point out that even in the final panel, Glaucus remains as an image that you are supposed to consider. Someone is seeing God and it seems naked, what is obvious seems mysterious, etc. Yet who is this appearing to? This goes again to show that no parable can express or represent the situation at hand. Instead, what is desirable is to continually introduce new poetic images and tear away and cannibalize the old. And again, in fact this is all we ever do.

Next Time on EXPERIMENTAL UNIT:

Points of inspiration for Experimental Council include:

1. Council Communism

2. National Security Council

3. Security Council

4. Spokes Council

5. Situationist Workers’ Councils

6. Holarchy