[lit-ideas] Re: The Purpleous Of Langwich
- From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 05:28:50 -0700 (PDT)
First, lest anyone misunderstand my earlier post on complexity, the status quo
will be around for a long time. Specialization has been around for a long
time; the Middle Ages had its craftsmen and apprentices in different
specialties for example. Black swans do happen but for the most part when
change happens, it happens slowly, over centuries even. We're all
interdependent with society and always have been, and society isn't going
anywhere, needless to say.
Regarding no words to express, i.e., thoughts versus emotions, I've heard it
said that we can think other people's thoughts, read other people's words, but
only we can feel our emotions. It's emotions, nuisance that they are, that
make us us. However, if someone is standing on my foot and it makes me feel
the emotion of, say, anger, I need words to say, get off my foot. But even
there there's no possible way to describe the emotion of anger, except perhaps
metaphorically, and even that works at best imperfectly. My anger was like an,
unerupted volcano. Except not really. My anger was like a, team of out of
control horses. Well, sort of. My anger was like a, and words fail me.
I had been taught that deaf people who learn no language during that window of
opportunity in early life when it's possible to learn language, have limited
cognitive ability. Since they have no words to say I want this, I don't like
that, they'll throw something or whatever to express their turbulence or need.
Even adults with full language skills will often act out what they feel but
can't put into words. So they go and hit somebody verbally or physically, or
have a drink, or whatever they do. However, it makes one wonder how Helen
Keller fits into this. She was about a year and a half old when she was
stricken. She too acted out until Anne Sullivan communicated with her.
Pre-language may start before a year and a half so it's possible that the
language window had been partially opened in her case. I know that deaf babies
will babble in sign if they're lucky enough to have parents who know sign.
As far as the universe needing humans to validate its existence, I never
understood this, but that might be because nobody ever said it. Humans have
such amazingly limited ability to understand just about everything. Really,
humans know virtually nothing. Tumors know more than we do. After all, can we
make testosterone on command? We have no clue, but tumors do it at will. A
tumor has will? But if it doesn't, how can it make testosterone? The mighty
human has waged a war against the lowly bacteria for 70 or 80 years, and is
losing decisively.
When a person dies, his small universe dies with him, but the real universe
composed of between 30 and 50 billion trillion stars keeps chugging along as it
has for the past 4.5 billion years. There's a quote from Mark Twain to this
effect (I spent most of my life before I was born, and it didn't bother me at
all). I can't find it to document it so maybe he said it because I wanted him
to say it.
Andy
________________________________
From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Miriam Rachels <greatestnumber@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2011 2:13 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] The Purpleous Of Langwich
What if I were to say to you: "There are no words to express how I felt at that
moment." What would that mean to you? That I must have a limited vocabulary?
That there are experiences beyond the scope of language to express? That I'm
just being a Drama Queen? That I have a limited imagination? That I might be
retarded? All of the above?
Like all of us I have indeed experienced moments of awe, of horror, of sadness
and sorrow, of self-revulsion, of unexplained elations, of fury and anger and
self-destructive urges, of mercies that melt me, of tendernesses that embarrass
me. Emotions, that is, that language seems hopelessly inadequate to convey. A
horse is a horse, of course, and we know that because the word "horse"
completes itself, even if it's name is Mr. Ed. In such outer-world instances
language shines with ineluctable meaning. But in the diaphanous interior land
of ourselves, language is only a shadow among shadows of what is meant.
JL loves language in ways that are almost as alien to me as is chess. I find
his fascination with language fascinating -- up to a point. And it's not a
very sharp point : ). Th(ought, I used to think, was the provenance of
language. No words, no thoughts. "But I was so much older then, I'm younger
than that now." I think Jesus said that. Or some god. Now I believe that
thoughts preceded language and that one day "presto-jockamo" in an ape-thick
anonymous female brain (if you don't know why female, you're hopeless) it
happened that a word suddenly manifested itself.-- perhaps it was "apple" --
whatever, it was plucked from the thing that ever since has been called "tree"
and eaten by she and he -- grammar hadn't been invented yet. I truly believe
that was the first sin that condemned us all to die of philosophy.
The ape-thick female brainy one, said to the ape-thick male one: "Apple good.
Eat." That did it. Language was on it's way to writing the Bible. And all of
Shakespeare's plays and, wouldn't you know it, even invaded physics with its 3
quarks. So where does this get us? No where. There's no where to get to but
internally. Reminds me of that saying: "No matter where you go, there you
are." And who is that "you"? We each are, I believe, the universe -- at least
the only one we'll ever know. And when each of us dies, the universe dies with
us. The only good thing about death is that you never ever know you're dead.
One of the very most good things about life is the encompassing of all emotions
-- a way of being that cannot be taught, it has no subject matter, is
approachable only through compassion, expressible only through poetic
dialogue. This to me is the crown jewel of Language. The greatest reward of
being alive.
On the otherhand, there's war.
Mike Geary
all peachy and preachy in Memphis
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