“The process is a stepwise ‘collapsing’ of degrees of liberty into manipulable specificities. These are degrees of liberty over identity, time, action, relation, cause, purpose, effect, and process. Language is one species of this ability. There are many modes, most of which are modes of superfunction. There are other modes that collapse the agent intelligence into the derivatives. It is these latter modes I am here concerned with.

Let us imagine a spiral ladder of orders, where each descent collapses dimensionality and potential into a lower-order structure. This structure is a figure. We will suppose 7 orders to the ladder. From any of the upper 5 it is impossible for the agent intelligence to ‘fall into’ the derivative produce, whatever its nature. From the lower two, the most explicitly declarative, the opposite difficulty arises: it is nearly impossible not to collapse into the products. From those positions, all the upper orders from whence insight, learning, intelligence and imagination obtain — disappear. It is as if the quality of color is gone from visual experience. But the color is the spirit of intelligence.

And this is what the Tree incident is about. This process, and the possibility of its inversion — a possibility which is, indeed, the difference between our humanity and its endless and too often deadly shadows.”

— infraheard