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Illusionary References

Katin said Jun 11, 2006, 10:19 AM:

The great thing about language is that it allows us to communicate concepts and ideas with precision. The worst thing about (current, modern) languages is that the level of precision is an illusion. Language, while being so much more specific than non-language communication, still does not have the level of precision that I think many people assume it does.

Different people assign different subtles of meaning to the same words - at best! Many people have entirely different understandings of exactly what a word means. Here’s a great example: ask a friend or a group (1) what is gratitiude? (2) what is appreciation? and (3) what is the difference between gratitude and appreciation?

This is a great exercise, and you should do it if you get the chance. And while it unfolds, realize that even though everyone’s explaination and interpretation of these words and even the concepts may be slightly different, no one is really wrong.

So we group major concepts to words correctly (e.g., no one thinks that appreciation = a space ship), but when it comes to precision, we are at a distinct disadvantage. We THINK we have precision in our words but we don’t.

When I read the critiques of philosophies and theories - from Anthony Robbins to Wilber to Aristotle to Jung - especially the ones that say the philosophers invalidate themselves with their own statements - I see mostly a subtle use of misprecision, a redefining of words and meanings, what most people would call symantics. This is epecially prominent when it comes to words like real, spirit, consciousness, will, enlightenment, evolved, God, soul, unreal, nothingness, matter, and many others.

In a way, being human means a big journey alone. You can understand what someone else says in the way you interpret, connecting it with the concepts and associations as you will, and that may or may not have much to do with (a) what the person speaking holds as connections, concepts and associations, or (b) how others will hear, interpret and connect the same speaking.

This is the side of things that says we can never truely communicate with each other. That can lead to “so why bother?”

On the other hand, regardless of the content, communciation does catalyze people to make connections, thoughts, associations and meaning. Isn’t that worth… everything?

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Re: Illusionary References

Zoe [no longer around] said Jun 11, 2006, 6:32 PM:

Katin,

This reminded me very much of a scene from the movie Waking Life in which there is a brief conversation about how we, as you stated in your post, assign different subtleties of meaning to the same words. I believe one of the examples in the movie was surrounding the word love. When we say thte word love, the listener takes that word/symbol, runs it through their brain (I'm taking from what I remember of the scene, not trying to make this my own), and associates the word with their interpretation of love based on their own private experiences. So while we may assume we understand one another when communicating a concept such as love, we cannot absolutely understand the other person's meaning, just our own.

You did a good job with your post. Better than I'm doing here! I find the topic quite interesting.

And yes, that IS worth everything (re: your final statement below).

Re: Illusionary References

Katin said Jun 15, 2006, 7:26 PM:

Thanks, Zoe! Neat.

Your comments triggered me into wondering how it is, then, that we evolve the meanings of the words within ourselves… and the answer I got back (prompted by your post) was stories. We are creatures of story. It is the stories we have around the word love that define love for us. Likewise for every deep, meaningful word. The stories are how we define he meaning…. of everything.

And that helps me explain why movies are so extremely popular in our culture: they are the common stories, the instruments that define the moods and meanings as precisely as they can be (still riddled with interpretation on each individual’s end, but still more precision that just using a single word) because a movie-story gives context to the mood and words.

For example, when I say, Brenda loves Jerry like Sally loves Harry in “like in When Harry Met Sally”, anyone who has seen the movie knows exactly what I mean. Well, “exactly” to a higher precision than if I just said, “Oh, yes, Brenda loves Jerry.”

So these movie-stories are powerful and valuable cultural links, they are like our common meanings and communication-relationship vocabularies that carry startling precision. Maybe not precision-per-letter, it may take me dozens of words to specify a mood/message/meaning from a movie as opposed to using a single word like “love”, but the precision in communication of the context and subtlety and meaning are great.

Which leads me to think of that episode of Star Trek where the alien race only spoke in story references, not verbs and nouns… “In Jerico (sp?), when the walls fell down,” they’d say to describe their view, the roles expected, and the actions in play in the situation.

Well, I don’t think we need to go quite that far in our adaptation of language for precision… hee hee

Re: Illusionary References

Stuart said Jun 17, 2006, 8:15 PM:

Is it possible to do away with verbal utterances? For as you point out, even while two persons may have seen the same movie, given there backgrounds, their mental and spiritual makeup, the “exactness” is still inexact.

What's the point? Having been blessed upon occasion with such, and, being an observer and noting such…the glance shared between two or more intimates, no words exchanged, and yet they perform a complex and perfectly organized action, each understanding precisely what the other is thinking, and what the other will do, and blending together.

This isn't new, “we” knew “how” to do this in time beyond history. So why the illusion of communication providing opportunity for “babelization”? With the lack of technology to produce an experience that could involve almost all the senses, how could one communicate across distance? Surely this has been one reason for utterances, an evolutionary step to reach beyond the reach of our vision, beyond time even. And what will our next step be?

Love and Light