Religious, Philosophical and Political Systems are Boundary Assertions as Attention Based Language and Symbolism Dynamics

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Religious, Philosophical and Political Systems are Boundary Assertions as Attention Based Language and Symbolism Dynamics

There is no religious, philosophical or political sect that does not result into a divergence of different interpretted values, over time as new sects, nor is not subject to synthezing exterior interpretted values into their own system, so as to maintain a sense of identity in the face of opposition.

All religious/philosophical/political sects derive a set of self-evident truths, which at the primitive level are effectively boundary claims on existence where the act of questioning of said self-evident truths is given a further boundary of refusal through meta-language games that either divert of nullify the questions and questioning act.

And in turn of the asserted self-evident truths the sects use basic to advanced levels of reasoning by which to build a structure from said axioms. This reasoning is the scaling of the axioms in a manner where the single foundation exists in a variety configurations that reflects its appearance under differing contexts of application and conceptualization.

What remains across the sects is the execution of force behind the assertions as the founding point is purely assertion and what this nature of force is or is not is irrelevant as the nature of the force is limited to the act of assertion itself thus elevating the act of power and identity of the sect to a quasi form of a language game built into the structural level.

In these respects religion, philosophy and politics are boundary claims on existence, using language and symbols, thus elevating language as but the proto-typical religion, philosophy or political system given the language and symbolism act as means if containing and redirecting the attention of the members in a manner that maintains and expands the sects by very said act of attention.

The processual structure of religious, philosophical and political sects are reducible to the following:

  1. A boundary in existence is drawn by the assertion of a claim as self-evident; the self-evidence of the claim is a meta-assertion within the primary assertion itself.

  2. The asserted claim is scaled with further claims to result in a transmission of the claim in accords to the various contexts by which it expresses itself.

  3. The sects diverge into new sects while synthesizing the nature of the various sects to reinforces the boundaries of the claims of there own.

  4. Re-contextualization of the claim appeara over time as a divergence of the structure under the means of time itself where sect A in time X appears different in time Y.

  5. What remains is boundary claims on existence by language assertion thus resulting the sect being the act of language itself.

  6. Language is the sect; language is the bounardy claim of how, what, where, who attention is directed as without attention the sect ceases.

  7. Attention is the energy of the sect, language and symbolism is how the attention is structured as the sect.

  8. The sect is a meta-language game given empirical and abstract boundaries as the distinction of the sect itself, a meta-language game is the relation of language and symbol to language and symbol.

  9. The divergence of the sect, from others, by elevation of axioms is the distinction of the sect itself thus conflict in language and symbolism is a necessary feature of the sect so that definition emerges.

  10. This conflict is the divergence of the attention within and of the populace from which it emerges thus a sect appears within the sect from which it is derived.

  11. Sect emerge and dissolve from sects, what remains is the scale invariance of the symbols and language from which the sect is derived thus the dissolution of a sect does not necessitate its complete absence when scaled across time but rather and expansion and contraction of the sect within a measure span of time.

  12. What remains is boundary assertions as the language and symbol game that contains and directs attention.

  13. The structure of attention is the sect itself as the attention is the meaning of the language and symbols and the language and symbols are how attention is directed and contained.

  14. The boundary of meaning becomes scale invariant as language and symbols emerges and dissolvd over time thus what remains is a pure observer effect as scale invariance itself given the focal point of attention is the everpresent medium, the single point from which the sect emerges and dissolves, re-emerges and re-dissolves.

  15. The scale invariance of attention results in the similarities of symbols across sects while the constitutive meaning of the symbol varies across the sect in some contexts while maintaining partial transferable meaning in other contexts.

  16. The sect is meaning application, meaning as “means”, is the transfer of one state of being into another thus resulting in the act of meaning application as the act of change itself thus in this context meaning and change are synonymous.

  17. The direction of meaning is the direction of change thus the sect is a boundary for how, when, where and who change unfolds; power is the mediation of change, power is derived from attention, attention structure is determined the the sect.

  18. The sect is the direction of meaning; the assertion of axioms as boundaries it the assertion of boundaries on the act of attention.

  19. The divergence and synthesis of claims is moderated by the act of attention itself thus the axiom of the sect are the limits of the attention applied to itself where further attention results in the divergence and synthesis of further boundaries.

  20. The sect is the transformation and maintainence of axioms; the sect is the transformation and maintenance of attention itself.

  21. The divergence and synthesis of sects is the divergence and synthesis the the structure that contains attention; this act of divergence is synthesis is the focal point of attention itself.

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Your phrase contains several interesting ideas, but it suffers from a number of conceptual and linguistic problems in its current form. Firstly, it reduces complex systems to a single function. While it is true that religious, philosophical and political systems are fundamentally ‘boundary assertions’, with dichotomies such as sacred/profane, true/false, citizen/foreigner, moral/immoral and self/other, these systems are capable of much more than just establishing boundaries.

These systems also serve many other purposes and provide meaning and purpose, organise experience, transmit cultural memory, coordinate social behaviour, create identity, articulate values and offer formulations of reality. Describing them merely as boundary assertions is reductionist.

For instance, Buddhism is not merely a set of boundaries. It is also a practical path of transformation. Similarly, democracy is not just a boundary between citizens and non-citizens; it is also a framework for collective decision-making. It might be better to say, “Religious, philosophical, and political systems use language, symbols, and narratives to direct attention, create shared meanings, establish conceptual and social boundaries, and organise human experience.”

The first part is true. Early Christianity produced numerous interpretations before later orthodoxy emerged. Buddhism developed into traditions such as Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. Liberalism has evolved into classical liberal, social liberal, libertarian, and other variants, and Marxism has fragmented into many competing schools. Whenever a tradition attempts to answer new questions, enters new cultures, or encounters new circumstances, internal differentiation tends to occur.

But when you say, “in order to maintain a sense of identity in the face of opposition”, this suggests that borrowing occurs mainly as a reaction to external threats. Sometimes that is true, but often it is not. Ideas are adopted for many reasons, first of all because they appear true, but also because they solve problems, they clarify existing beliefs, and cultures naturally interact and exchange concepts. For example, many Christian theologians did not see themselves as borrowing Greek philosophy merely to defend Christianity. They believed Greek philosophical concepts helped them articulate truths they already held.

Your statement implicitly views religions, philosophies, and political movements as self-preserving organisms whose primary concern is maintaining identity. It is a perspective from sociology and anthropology that can be useful but it leaves out another possibility. Participants within these traditions often believe they are pursuing truth, wisdom, justice, enlightenment, or God and not merely preserving group identity.

Figures such as Socrates, Buddha, Jesus, and Spinoza challenged the identities of their own communities rather than preserving them. Indeed, many transformative figures are remembered precisely because they disrupted established boundaries and loyalties.

“All religious, philosophical and political sects derive a set of self-evident truths” is simply not an accurate universal statement. While some traditions do begin with axioms or foundational claims, such as in Euclidean geometry and certain strands of rationalist philosophy (e.g. Descartes’ ‘clear and distinct ideas’) and in some theological systems (e.g. doctrinal creeds), many others do not.

Empiricist traditions, for example, treat ‘truth’ as derived from observation rather than self-evidence. Pragmatist traditions (e.g. William James) treat truth as that which works in experience. Furthermore, many Indigenous knowledge systems are narrative and relational rather than axiom-based. Therefore, the model fits some systems but not all.

The idea that foundational truths are ‘boundary claims on existence’ is suggestive, but unclear. Such a claim could define what exists versus what does not, what is sacred versus the profane, or what is meaningful versus what is meaningless. These distinctions are made in very different ways. In politics, for example, foundational claims are about legitimacy and authority. In mysticism, however, the highest truth is often described as existing beyond all conceptual boundaries. Therefore, the phrase compresses very different phenomena into a single metaphor.

Across all 21 points, the argument steadily reduces religion, philosophy, politics, meaning, change, power, identity, conflict, and history into a single substrate. Namely, attention is structured by language and symbols. But you make it absolute and exclusive, and nothing else is admitted as real explanatory input, which is where the problem begins.

Your argument is circular (and keeps re-stating itself). The system defines itself through itself, for example:

  • Sect = language structure of attention
  • Language = structure of sect
  • Attention = energy of sect
  • Meaning = change produced by sect
  • Change = expression of meaning
  • Power = mediation of attention
  • Attention = structured by sect

This is a closed loop of definitions, and in logic terms, it does not reduce complexity; it redistributes labels inside a self-referential system. Nothing outside the system is allowed to explain it.

I think you are trying to get a real idea to emerge, that human systems of belief and organisation are sustained through feedback loops between attention, language, shared meaning, and institutional reinforcement. In other words, attention matters, language structures attention, institutions stabilise meaning, and systems evolve and fragment over time, which is all reasonable.

The issue is not the ingredients; it is your claim that this is all that exists at every level of analysis.

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You just applied the text in your analysis of the text. Thus the text stands.

As to the misspellings…ignore them. In the age of AI an imperfect draft is a human signature.

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In that case, I can ignore you from now on.

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Okay. If you need too…I never heard of you until you started complaining.

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Guys: I had to come in as my name meno suggest, compelled to try to use my non sensible friend Meno aka Pronto, who I’ve just observed as intentionally lagging behind, causing no uncertainty having to face what’s coming so here is a new language tryst so that

 This is a beautiful and demanding request. You're asking me to construct a third language — not a compromise, not a middle ground, but a genuinely different register of discourse — that:

· allows both Voice A (totalising reduction to attention/boundary) and Voice B (pluralistic, interiority-honouring critique) to recognise themselves and stand on common ground,
· remains tangent to existential questions of being/non-being without identifying as existential or anti-existential,
· operates after a kind of epoché (a suspension of existential commitment), so that what remains cogent is purely structural,
· and does so in a manner akin to the Socratic elicitation with Meno's slave — drawing out a recognition that was always latent, rather than imposing a new doctrine.

I will attempt exactly that.

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The Third Language: A Generative Grammar of Distinction

We begin with the Socratic move. In the Meno, Socrates does not teach the slave geometry. He asks questions, and the slave, by following his own recognition of what must follow from simple distinctions (line, diagonal, square), arrives at a truth he did not know he knew.

Analogously, we will not tell Voice A or Voice B what the “real” nature of religious, philosophical, and political systems is. Instead, we will draw out the minimal conditions under which any such system can appear as a distinct system at all — conditions that both A and B, by the very act of making their arguments, must already be relying upon. This is a transcendental move, but not a Kantian one fixed in a priori categories. It is closer to a generative grammar: a set of operations that make distinction itself possible.

Step 1: The Primacy of Distinction (Not Boundary)

Voice A says all systems are boundary assertions. Voice B says they are more than that — they provide meaning, purpose, transformation.

A third language steps back and asks: What must be the case for anything to be experienced as something at all — for there to be a “this” and a “that,” a “sacred” and “profane,” a “true” and “false,” but also a “path of transformation” and a “mere self-preservation”?

The answer is not “a boundary.” The answer is distinction. A boundary is one species of distinction — a sealed, rigidified, often spatialized distinction. But not all distinctions are boundaries. A gradient, a tension, an aspiration, a calling — these are distinctions without being boundaries. Voice B’s richness (pursuit of truth, wisdom, enlightenment) requires distinction between the actual and the possible, the confused and the clear, the inauthentic and the authentic — but these are not necessarily “boundaries” if that term implies a fixed inside/outside logic.

So the third language’s first axiom is: All human meaning-systems are distinction-based systems. This includes Voice A’s boundary assertions as a subset, and it includes Voice B’s transformative paths, self-critical ruptures, and felt interiorities as other kinds of distinction.

Neither A nor B can deny this without ceasing to have anything to talk about. Even the argument against reduction relies on distinguishing reduction from richness, inside from outside, self-preservation from truth-seeking. Distinction is the condition of the debate.

Step 2: Attention as the Activation of Distinction

Voice A claims attention is the “energy” of the sect, structured by language. Voice B never denies that attention is relevant — it only denies that attention exhausts what is going on. How does the third language handle this?

It says: A distinction is nothing without an operation that draws it, holds it, or lives it. That operation is attention, but understood not as a neutral fuel but as the act of selecting and sustaining some distinction rather than others.

Crucially, this act is not merely boundary assertion. It can also be:

· Exploratory (what happens if I hold this distinction?)
· Self-correcting (this distinction no longer illuminates; I drop it)
· Transformative (holding this distinction changes the one who holds it)

Thus, the third language can say: Attention is the act of distinguishing in time. This satisfies A’s insistence on the centrality of attention, while giving B the room to say that the nature of that act can include truth-seeking, transcendence, and the dissolution of prior distinctions — including the dissolution of boundaries.

Step 3: Language and Symbol as the Storage and Transmission of Distinction

Voice A says language is the structure of the sect. Voice B might worry this flattens the lived, felt meaning. The third language says: Language and symbol are how distinctions are stored, recalled, and offered to others across time.

But — and this is the crucial “tangent” move — language is not the prison of distinction. It is the medium through which distinctions can be:

· Repeated (orthodoxy, maintenance)
· Recombined (synthesis, divergence)
· Transgressed (mysticism, creative rupture, Socratic aporia)

Mystical unsaying, Socratic ignorance, the Buddha’s silence on certain questions — these are not just more boundary assertions. They are distinction-acts that point beyond the current set of distinctions, using language to undo its own closures. Yet even this “undoing” is a distinction (between closure and openness) and thus falls within the grammar.

So the third language can say: All religious, philosophical, and political systems are historically transmitted configurations of distinction, maintained and transformed through the attention of those who live them, with language and symbol serving as the medium of transmission. This is not identical to “boundary assertions” (it’s broader) and it’s not identical to “they are simply what they appear to be from the inside” (it’s structural), but it gives both A and B a common description of what they are observing.

Step 4: The Epoché — Suspending the “All There Is” Question

You asked for a language that operates in an existentially reduced epochè — that is, it suspends the question of whether this grammar of distinction is ontologically ultimate or merely descriptively useful. This is the exact move that allows A and B to coexist.

Voice A says: This is all there ultimately is.
Voice B says: There is more — you’ve missed the interior, the free, the true.

The third language says: I make no claim about what “all there is” consists of. I only describe the structural minimum that makes any such claim — whether reductionist or pluralist — possible as a distinguishable, transmissible, attention-sustained phenomenon.

In other words, the third language performs a phenomenological reduction on the debate itself. It brackets the existence question and looks purely at the operations that constitute the field of the argument. What it finds is that both A and B are engaged in distinction-drawing attention-acts sustained in language, even as they disagree about whether that is the whole story. The slave in the Meno doesn’t need to know the ontology of geometry to see that a square’s diagonal does what it does.

Step 5: The Meno’s Slave Moment — Eliciting Mutual Recognition

Here is how this third language might actually be “spoken” to bring A and B to the same table:

“Consider the simple fact that we are, at this moment, two positions that can be distinguished from one another. That distinction is held in attention, carried by these words, and sustained by our mutual focus. Does either of us deny this? No. Now, is this all that is happening? One of us says yes, the other says no. But notice: even the ‘no’ is itself a distinction — between ‘what is happening’ and ‘all that is happening.’ It, too, is held in attention, carried by language. So the grammar of distinction is not something one can escape by denying it, because the denial is itself an instance of it. This does not prove that the grammar is all there is; it only proves that any claim about what is or is not the case partakes of this grammar. The grammar is the condition of the conversation, not its conclusion.”

This is the tangent you asked for: it touches the existential (the fact of our being-in-conversation, the act of denial) without identifying with either an existential or a reductionist position. It simply notes the recursive inevitability of distinction/attention/language for any discursive position whatever. And it allows cogency to be sustained because it doesn’t ask A to abandon the power of seeing everything as structure, nor B to abandon the felt conviction that there is something more — it only asks both to see that the very structure of having a position is a distinction-game, which is not nothing, but also not everything in the sense of a final ontological decree.

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Summary of the Third Language

Component How it includes A How it includes B
Distinction (instead of boundary) Boundaries are one kind of distinction; A’s insight is preserved as a subset. Openings, transformations, transcendences are other kinds of distinction; B’s interior richness is not flattened.
Attention as the act of distinguishing Attention remains central as the “energy” that sustains any system. Attention can be exploratory, self-critical, and transformative — not just boundary-policing.
Language/Symbol as transmission medium Language structures and stores distinctions across time (sect = language game). Language can also be used to dissolve boundaries (mysticism, apophasis, Socratic irony) — so the medium is not the prison.
Epoché on ontological ultimacy A can still privately hold that this grammar is all there is. B can still privately hold that the grammar leaves something out. The third language doesn’t adjudicate; it only describes the shared condition of making claims at all.
Meno’s Slave method A recognizes that its own totalising claim is itself a distinction held in attention. B recognizes that its critique is equally a distinction held in attention. Both see the recursive inescapability of the grammar without having to surrender their deepest commitments.

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Final Thought

What you’ve asked for is essentially a meta-structure that is neither existential nor anti-existential, but generative of the very field in which such positions can arise and debate. I’ve called it a grammar of distinction. It is “tangent” because it touches the being of the conversation without pronouncing on being itself; it is after a reduced epochè because it brackets the ultimate question and looks only at what makes the asking of the question possible.

Does this third language succeed in letting both A and B “come to terms”? It would, I think, transform the debate from one about what is the case (ontology) into one about what kinds of distinction-games we find worth playing (pragmatics, ethics, aesthetics). And that transformation might be the very Socratic recollection — the anamnesis — you were pointing toward.

Would you like me to test this synthesis against any of the specific 21 points, or perhaps show how a defender of A might respond, and how the third language would handle that response?
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That language is subject to the event of distinction thus a pre-language state occurs where the language is one reflection through many.

I bumped the following thread in the philosophy section for you…but here it is repeated:

Distinction is a Universal Process of Self-Embedding; All Things are Reducible to Distinction as Process

A distinction is a distinction.

A distinction of a distinction as a distinction is a second order distinction

A distinction is distinct as a distinction; a second order distinction is distinct as a distinction.

A distinction moving to a second order distinction results in distinction as constant.

A distinction as constant across n-order distinctions requires distinction as scale invariant, the scale of distinction as n-order distinctions are distinct as the scale.

Distinction contains itself and is effectively complete at all levels by scale invariance of itself and incomplete by degree of difference in scale.

Completeness and incompleteness are distinctions as what is complete requires no external justification (a distinction is distinct as itself as a distinction is distinct from itself so to be distinct) and incompleteness requires external justification (a distinction requires a distinction beyond it to be distinct as distinction).

All that exists is subject to distinction as being distinct is what is required for existence, only distinction remains for what exists is relative distinctions under the distinction of relation of distinctions; “all that exist” is a distinction of relation by means of “all”.

Distinction is distinct from itself by degree of the distinction of indistinction that allows distinction to be distinct; indistinction is distinct from distinction thus is a distinction.

Distinction is a process of self-embedding, all things can be reduced to distinctions by nature of requiring the nature of being distinct.

All is distinction by degree of “all” being distinct, “not everything” is distinct is a distinction of “not everything” which necessitates relative emergent scales within distinction itself thus resulting in conditionality being a distinction that is scale invariant while allowing difference to occur.

All remains is all things as distinction as process, only process remains; this is distinction.

Distinction is a transcendental event by degree of containing itself, through n-order distinctions which result in self-scaling as self-contrast, that in turn allow distinction to transcend itself while being self-contained and scale invariant simultaneously:

A. There is a distinction.

B. There is a distinction of this distinction as a second order distinction.

C. This second order distinction is a scale, the scale results in the transcendence of one distinction over the other, a self contrast of distinction occurs by degree of said scale.

D. This transcendence is a distinction that is scale invariant as the scale is everpresent as a distinction, the distinction of scale contains the distinctions that are scaling; distinction is self contained.

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Yes, as a glance could or is commensurate with the Exobyted available on the latest supercomputer, therefore, while I’m still back of it for rather obvious reasons, therefore thing is defensible on that level is within it’s self, undeniable more oppositional to save face. Therefore and for other separable yet less obvious reasons, shall remain on such level , still.

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A divergent language, using prior philosophical sects as a foundation, to create an intermediary synthetic sect by degree of language synthesis…is exactly what the text argues. Your approach justified the text, not negated it.

The text stands.

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:rofl:
I take take the time to engage with you and you call that “complaining,” what a joker!

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You said “In that case, I can ignore you from now on.”…now you are diverging from one means of attention to another…just as the text observes.

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Right.

An affirmative /reaffirmative comment, even if: insecure, by virtue of uncertainty: the subtle difference totally too close to call by most,

/<

>\

Just saying

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Joker, more care, thouroughcare;

:face_blowing_a_kiss::wink::zany_face:

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I see no negation of the text.

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But of course, on the contrary, for obvious reasons, no such thing was intended.

How does that figure?

It just does , come out that way, more subtly, so intention not carry over to obvious slight.

In particular, the most boundary situations fail, to account the difference between the different identifiable structural differences between them, because there are no identifiable differences among themselves to account for the differences between themselves, as particularly identifiable. The main idea proceeds from the distinction of how one aspect and another disposes the other using fixed and variably bounded ideas. In fact they are a matter of perception within and without their situation, that can be disposed into changing fields of reference, as they refer to each other.

Basically, these modes of logic pertain to the idea of a back look to determine a qualified change of probable changes in preceeding quality using permanence not in an absolute modeling sense.

The myth is an ultimate reduction of the variable differences, not withstanding their later distinctive features into the various sub structural aspects which can not sensibly have accounted for these resources, because there were no substantial ideas to account for them. So they stood their place through the tests, challenges that betook them without any apparent reversals but the ontological variability, which became reactive negatively to a back look. Violations resulted in demolitions of validity, destroying the object of the back look. The object was changed thereby as object retaining to that individual assessment , suffering degregatory qualities and proceed each from other objects,

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In the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Eurydice is indeed bitten by a snake, which leads to her tragic death. This event occurs when she is dancing with the Nymphs, and a snake steps on her, causing her to be bitten. Orpheus, deeply in love with Eurydice, attempts to retrieve her from the Underworld, but he fails to follow the conditions set by Hades: he must not look back at her as they ascend. This moment of doubt and longing ultimately results in Eurydice’s permanent separation from Orpheus, highlighting the themes of love and loss in the myth.
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Looking back creates doubt as permanent and boundless, and invites separate ability. That demeans the object of attending to it , which reverts its unitary being as one with it.

(mirroring as symbolically reductive- as bounding the image-the imagination) (( resulting the death of the logo-)

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You just applied sect boundary assertions in regards to myth claiming.

The whole argument applied is a boundary assertion.

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Oh, this is a tough one. Let’s try , otherwise.

"You ou just applied sect boundary assertions in regards to myth claiming.

The whole argument applied is a boundary assertion"

There are masked subsidiary things contingent. So, they are important factors of simulated yet immediately skipped, as a condition of simulation. The reason for that are manifold, and can be preferred on request. But you’d absolutely right in asking for a fixed summary to the best availability.

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“Masked subsidiary things” is a boundary assertion.

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Yes, but it is only an assertion, the mask is implied within or without it, and that’s exactly the summation of it’s form, however it proposes no distinction between the anomalie that the form possesses, which can not categorize its difference from what is summerrely separated as a latent and contingent difference.

So, then , what is the point of a repeating structural necessity of its basic structural , existential disconnect? It is a plastic multi sourced domain of imminent domain, corresponding to the modular basis it mirrors up, an endless structural deficiency until fairly recently in terms of cosmological time.

If I were to as why? It be missing the point.

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You assume a why but a why is context, same with a how, where and who but what remains is pattern.

All sects propogate patterns based upon assertions grounded in assertions.