Hello and welcome again! For those of you who are returning readers, thanks for your continued interest! Let me know you're here by joining in the discussion. For those of you new to the blog, welcome welcome welcome! Feel free to make your voices heard in whatever capacity you feel is appropriate!
I'm going to take a step away from the topic at hand and back from the viewpoint currently in effect to take a look at language. I feel this topic is pertinent for two reasons: not only is language just about the most variable part of our society, constantly shifting and redefining itself, but it's also the heart of the discussion of bi-ness, seeing as one of the biggest obstacles between humans and absolute fluidity is the words we use to describe it. Or, to put it more succinctly, I am just as interested in studying language as I am in studying bi-ness, and the two walk hand-in-hand, intermingled alongside humanity.
I was given a book by someone who knows me very well entitled "The Evolution of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind". It's an awfully thick read, and I was only able to get through the first conclusion the author made before I had to set it down and massage my temples for, oh, say, four months or so. The other day I picked it up and paged through what I'd already covered, and was reminded of exactly why I set the book down in the first place: for the time being, the lessons it taught me have almost intentionally sought to pervade every last action and interaction I take part in.
Enough suspense-building. The author's message, laymanized as much as possible, is this: True human consciousness didn't exist until the invention of language. (In this case, the term "language" is defined as "communication through abstract symbolism", as in, for example, that the shape of each letter of every human language is inherently meaningless were it not for our interpretation and dissemination of their meanings.) His assertion was spelled out and proven in a very convincing way, being presented through the lens of biochemistry, psychology, sociology, linguistics...it was a very broad scope. So, before humans were able to communicate, they weren't truly "human", but instead just quite intelligent animals.
Of course, all sorts of arguments spring up when the matter is discussed so simplistically, seeing as the question of "What is human?" has been around since humanity could ask it. For the time being, please trust me when I say that my critical mind was convinced of the author's claims with a minimum of skepticism. If it makes you feel better, let's at least agree on the idea that "Language is of the utmost importance to defining, furthering, and bettering humanity as we have come to know it."
Why is this, though? Well, we need to look at how we define humanity. Humanity implies dealing with all humans everywhere, and so to understand it is to understand what is the most basic level of commonality between humans. Humanity involves some level of society. Society is just a series of complex interactions between two or more people. People have an inherent desire to understand the world around them, and one of the most potent methods of accomplishing this is to tap into the perceptions of others. People perceive the world through their senses. It is their language that allows them to express their perceptions. This language is only effective if it is learned and shared with others.
Let's work from the bottom up. To understand the inner workings of another's mind fully is impossible, for to do so would be to empathize 100%, and this would result in a loss of self. Now, this is not to invalidate empathy; Quite the contrary, it is to emphasize just how important a tool it is in human interaction. (It is certainly possible to empathize with anyone to some extent, but this is only once they use the tool of language to express just what emotions they are feeling that can be empathized with. However, I digress, and will discuss this in my next blog.) However, the actual processing of thoughts, the catacombs and recesses that must be traversed in one's own mind to come to a conclusion that can be expressed with any accuracy using language, are often veiled even to ourselves. For example, take a look at inspiration. If any of you dear readers have ever felt a sudden bolt of realization, a fresh new thought, fully formed, that had never occurred to you before and seems to have no path that can be backtracked through your mind, you know what I mean when I say "inspiration". True inspiration cannot be manufactured; Conditions can be changed so that inspiration is more likely to make itself known, or so that you can latch onto it for long enough to bring it to the front of your mind and duly note it, but to arduously come to an inspirational conclusion is not true inspiration at all. It is inspirational, at best, in the same way a motivational speaker can be.
This is where language steps in. I just said that it's impossible to fully empathize with another's thought processes because it would result in a total loss of self. This reason is secondary to the fact that most of us don't truly know how we come to our own thoughts, inspirational or otherwise. It is some combination of perceptions of the world around us, viewed through past experience and seasoned with personality, that ultimately forms a conscious thought. Through these already muddied details we can glean only a fraction of the reality of our mind, which is muddied still by the fallibility of language. And then the thought is expressed, and it hits our listener's ear, and the process begins anew. And what is that last step before speech? In our mind, we put the words together, we rehearse them in our inner ear (so to speak), and once the proper vocabulary and syntax are present, we let our mouth finish.
But what about the steps previous, the ones that lead to that conclusory act of speech? This is the no-man's land I've just been discussing, but I'd like to make a guess as to its nature. I wager that this space is filled with language as well.
To make this all a bit more palatable, I'll use an example from my childhood. Every child is at some point taught a superstitious tradition about driving through a tunnel. Maybe the passengers need to hold the roof up with their hands, or hold their breath for the duration of the tunnel, perhaps while touching some piece of metal, and at some point a silent wish is involved. I was always taught to hold my breath and wish. However, I changed the rules a bit. I figured that it wouldn't be fair to simply hold your breath under every bridge and overpass...hell, even an overhead stoplight would suffice if the strictest definition of the word "tunnel" were used (there we go again with the variability of language!) Plus, living in the suburbs of Minneapolis meant that there was only one tunnel I encountered on even a semi-regular basis--the somewhat lengthy one on 94E going into Minneapolis--and when I was young it was often a painful struggle to get my wish granted. I thought, it's not fair to deny someone hir wish just because hir lung capacity wasn't big enough. So, I came to the fairest conclusion I could: The wish only counted if one could have feasibly said the wish aloud while still under the tunnel. This ruled out all the "fake" tunnels and bridges one would pass under going 50+ miles per hour, thereby making the "real" tunnels more important to wish on. Further yet, I felt that the longer the tunnel, the greater the feat of breath-holding, and therefore the more potent the wish should be. However, a wish is a wish, isn't it? They're all created equal. So long as one follows the wishing ritual, it floats off into the aether to be granted. But what if one wants to wish for only one thing? Would wishing for it twice cancel it out? Would it anger the wish gods? No, I reasoned, because not all wishes come true. There must be something that makes a wish more or less likely to come true, and I reasoned it was the tenacity of the wisher. Therefore, the more times something is wished for, the more likely it is to catch the wish-granter's ear and come true.
So what was the end result of all this childish logic? "The longer a bridge, the longer I have to hold my breath, and the more opportunities I have to make my wish, but it can only be as many opportunities as I would have if I said the wish aloud." Try conceptualizing it for a second: Think the same sentence in your head over and over, as fast as you can...or, perhaps more accurately, picture yourself saying your wish aloud as fast as your lips can move. "I wish I had a pony I wish I had a pony I wish I hadaponyIwishihadaponyiwishadapony..." There reaches a point where you're "cheating", where all the syllables mash together and are no longer a wish that the wish gods can understand. Now, try conceptualizing it differently. Try imagining that you have a recording of your voice saying the wish, and every time you press a big red button in front of you, the wish is made. Now press it as fast as you can. Can you hear in your head the sentence piling on top of itself? I would wager that as you first start to pick up speed, you can. "I wish I had I wish a pony had I wish I pony had a pony a pony." However, again, soon it gets to a point of muddled confusion, and the true meaning of the wish is lost. There are plenty of other conceptual ways to maximize your silent wishes, but again I say that there is a finite maximum, even if that number is the total time spent inside the tunnel divided by the time it takes a single neuron to fire. Of course, for this to be true, one would have to break down the concept of making a wish into less than most thoughts actually take, a feat that is difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish, much less describe or experience. This is to say, it is an experience that falls outside the boundaries of language...except for the sentence I just wrote, that being the equation "# of Wishes=Time(Tunnel)/Time(Firing neuron)".
I feel that the previous is a fine metaphor for just what I was trying to explain. After reading this, would you agree with me that the line where language ends and cognition begins is very fine indeed? And would you also agree that anything beyond that line is incomprehensible to people, even the person thinking the thoughts? If it helps to be less silly and more concrete, think of it like a ticking clock. Whether it is wound by hand, run by a quartz crystal, or ruled by an atom in Boulder, to the viewer the inner goings-on matter a great deal...but the only part that is perceived, and therefore truly matters, is the ticking of the second hand. Each tick is a thought, a mental sentence, that leads into the next tick of a thought, and the space between is filled by incomprehensible grindings and machinations. And if that hand stops ticking, all the background whirring is for naught. In the same way, stop that whirring and the ticking will follow suit. And further, the only way to tell that the insides whir on is by the ticking. So, the ticking is the language that reflects the processing of the stimuli we take in...that stimuli being the laws of motion and physics that rule over the clock's inner workings.
Whew...long-winded, eh? I'll rest for now, as I consider just how wishes and clocks actually do build up language and humanity. Of course, any hints to this topic would be lovely...so feel free to chime in!
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