Revisiting Structuralism: its mediated existence

Struc·tur·al·ism

1.) A method of interpretation and analysis of aspects of human cognition, behavior, culture, and experience that focuses on relationships of contrast between elements in a conceptual system that reflect patterns underlying a superficial diversity

2.) The doctrine that structure is more important than function

Web definitions

__ linguistics defined as the analysis of formal structures in a text or discourse

__an anthropological theory that there are unobservable social structures that generate observable social phenomena

__ a sociological theory based on the premise that society comes before individuals

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The Zodiac of Astrology simply reflects the idea of unobserved structure as it occurs in language, art, and philosophy; it did not invent hidden or "occult" structures.

___Though while young I may have been somewhat unaware of my own preferences for a more structured life, it is true that a more predictable or understandable one has come to be much more desirable than a more rebellion-inclined, happy-go-lucky, chaotic one. And, I kind of like my ideas to be more like me in that respect. I would rather brood a little on a regular basis and feel a little boxed in than to feel always left adrift and or all at sea. The reality we should then hope for, the one I actually want to live in, should be one of strong but adaptable forms, persistent but amenable, like the structure of language itself. So eventually it did come to my mind, as if in the case of a truth by way unwilling belief, that the above mentioned idea--that there indeed are "unobservable" structures tending to dictate how one thing, concept, or idea ,relates to another, actually does play an important part in my personal philosophy, my world view. Due to having no particular interest in extreme positions or absolutist's dogma, I see the pragmatic incorporation of structuralism and its mediation--the de-structuralising oppositional forces of intervening individualistic chaos--the presence of mold-breaking inventiveness in the world, as being both beneficial and essential to my imagining the state of reality the best I can. Faith, in this respect, is an unyielding belief that I too am entitled to a somewhat agreeably formed and dependable vision of a workable 'reality'.

What does the most general form of this structuring-of-everything look like? Say, if it were condensed to a circular graph composed of all the potentials for a harmonized plurality of life's expressions ?

__This is were all the fun begins. Having searched life experiences for a suitable circular graphing idea candidate, it is hard to miss that astrologers may have already attempted this organizational chart in the forming of the Zodiac concept. Though it is probably part revelation or inspiration, what if it is also 98% perspiration as well. What if the ancients were at least as intelligent as moderns? Could they have been at least as seriously working at philosophy and psychology, not merely dogmatic theology, with the same highest of intentions that most of us would so willing ascribe to the academic scholars of our own day? In contemplating the apparent relationships between major concepts of Western culture; how we are logocentric, meaning a word stands for a thing's existence, and how we tend to value reason with an appeal to a logic with its categorical forms, how we state what is included or excluded from a given word or statement. I here began with the plotting position of "Up" as being most authoritative and purpose-driven place of any such attempt at graphing our collective thinking habits or nature upon a circle:

__It wasn't too long after constructing this graphic, I began reading about the topic of Linguistics, and so encountered the works of one Steven Pinker. Lo and behold, he had already created a similar graph:

__Steven Pinker's graphic places his idea of purpose on top, "up," because the mind's unltimate goal, ala Pinker, is to converse--to emit speech form the mouth and detect it withe the use of the ears. But notice that "Semantics," our personal meaning, is likewise subject to the exact same motives that I cited in my graph, "Belief and Desires." I don't mind saying that seeing this did tickle me pink. I had used the traditional associations of the Zodiac Signs of Sagittarius (belief) and Scorpio (desire) to cite the same implicit structuring or coordination of motives. So, how does Steven Pinker's graph reconcile with my suggestion? Being that we came at this graphing task from two different purposes; mine more philosophical, his more biological and psychological, it turns our we are nearly upside-down mirror images in terms of the background of the unflinching pattern of the Zodiac. Note that because we ended up with a mirror image, Pinker's labels need to be reveresed to an awkward sounding "Desires and Belief" and "Ears and Mouth," in order to be technically correct Zodiac-ally. This reversing of terms phenomena we see here just stands to show that the Zodiac was traditonally conceived the way in which I show it, and that Pinker, himself totally unfamiliar with the Zodiacal frame's "unobserved" structuralism, nevertheless silently adheres in principal to basic notions of what-goes-with-what quite naturally!