Thinking out loud and on the bus and in pictures

I have been thinking about language as a tool or human technology for some time now and reading what others have said about it, the philosophers, visionaries and poets. Often I am so excited by these new ideas I have read that I can't stop myself from recounting them in detail to my patient companion at breakfast or on our morning walk across town. I say 'patient' because while this is the forest that I love to wander in, hers is quite different, it is full of stories and images which she weaves together in paintings. I cannot begin to fathom how she does this, but the paintings keep appearing like daily miracles before me. I suppose she feels the same way about my idea paintings.

And so we have worked out a way to sing our own songs to each other that is very companionable. Occasionally, it becomes a dialogue. Recently, she suggested illustrating a book with a painting of each of the thinkers surrounded by their icons of their ideas. Marshall McLuhan looking back at a Gutenberg style printing press from the buzzing voices of electronic consciousness; or Henri Bergson holding high a lantern as he peers down the narrow tunnel of human knowledge and wonders if that is all there is, or Simone Weil contemplating the beauty of a boat turned into the winds and waves and balanced by a solitary figure leaning on the tiller. I cannot imagine what she would imagine in her illustrations but there is something deeply true about the way the ideas are spun out of images of concrete human experience--the experiences of those thinkers.

Yesterday at supper, after a long bus ride into Abu Dhabi and then back again, I explained with some glee my day's research into theories and thinking about the origin of human language.

There is the continuous model, I said, where human language evolves over time from similar vocalizations in other species, and then there is the discontinuous model, where, according to Noam Chomsky, a generative grammar appears all of a sudden in human genetic evolution, rather like a crystal forming. Chomsky thinks that grammar is underneath all languages, that it is intrinsically human and that is essentially different from animal sounds. There is still a debate and no real way to say either way. Its a bit like playing hockey with an imaginary puck: it could be here, it could be there. I don't think Chomsky is on the right track, I went on, because human language is much more complex than something which can be explained only by genetics. You can't begin to understand human language without taking into account communal and cultural evolution (yes, thank you Julian Jaynes). It doesn't simply just appear as an ability in the vacuum of an abstract individual human; it emerges from the more and more complex engagements of human beings with each other. It appears because they begin to do it among themselves.

My partner looked at me vacantly, as if i were describing the fine points of transmission maintenance.

Look, I said, why is it that you can trust a cat's purr or a bird's preening chirping to mean exactly what it says, but you cannot trust a human being saying 'I love you' in the same way? Deception, self-deception and pretence those human skills of relationship--that is the real context for the origin of human language. Language allows us to extend ourselves in ways that are not instinctual and predictable but rather original and creative (I will give you this sharpened stone in return for that spear) and constantly shifting; and therefore it creates a complex network that is not symmetrical and balanced like the beehive or the ant hill but like...well human society chaotic and brilliant always appearing to hurtle out of control. We are a mess compared to bees or ants because we are so mobile, our words link us to things and to other people in ever-expanding, complex ways.

What about the Kildare, she asked?

The Kildare?

You know the bird that acts wounded and seems to offer herself to you to catch in order to lead you away from her nest. It's called a distraction display.

And that is why thinking out loud is so important.

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Where I am and How I got Here

After a long time of blogging my wanderings around India at onewaveintheocean.blogspot.ca, I have accepted the inevitability of change and migrated (as they say) to this new blog. I am not closing the door to the past, but I am acknowledging that I have changed and begun walking along a new path in my life. This is the most ordinary and the most extraordinary thing about being human, isn't it? I suppose that is why there are so many cliches for the experience of change, the changes that we human beings undergo over and over again.

Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat

"It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis." Henry Miller.

Saying something so often that it truly disappears into the background noise and becomes banal is one thing; but then finding just the right words to say it again so that it re-emerges from the cliche and we see it again as extraordinary---well, that is a good talisman for this first reflection on the power and limits of language.

As it turns out, words are the very thing that has been preoccupying me lately, words and their workings through and on human beings. Marshall McLuhan saw language as the first and archetypal 'technology' and that is a clue I have been trying to follow.

But I am forgetting where I am and so let me start with the words right here and now, (on words and their power to transform): today is the first day of the holy month of Ramadan (2015), the time that recalls the long ago time of the divine dictation of the words of the Holy Qu'ran to the Holy prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him). When that occurred it created (or re-created) something utterly unique, a new beginning, a new people. Christians imagine something like that when they say, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God". Words beyond mere words, then. Holy words, words that act and create.

And still further: I am living in the western desert region of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, formerly called, with an ominous simplicity, 'the empty quarter' (Al Gharbia). It is also being 'renamed' slowly and meticulously with trees and grass and mines and oil wells and solar power plants and peoples, of course, from all over the subcontinent . In this garden blossoming in the desert, there are still echoes of that word that was heard by the intrepid English explorer, Wilfrid Thesiger (author of Arabian Sands) --'the empty quarter'--but they are only echoes now. This too is an act of re-creation, but of a very human kind. It is a filling up and transforming of the empty places by virtue of human vision, desires, technological ingenuity and of course, wealth. It is something to behold, and shows words in action overcoming what was once named 'empty'.

The desert is the landscape I see everyday and which surrounds me. There are also landscapes of the mind, however, those we carry around inside us (and which carry our spirit around and around in them). I am thinking not of the desert but of the forest, now, like those Canadian forests in which I walked and wandered and sometimes even got lost as a child. This forest is a good metaphor for the world of ideas or the mind, I have always thought. There are many paths that open up as one walks and possibilities of turning in many directions. Although it is also very true that 'the mind is a dangerous neighbourhood", as a friend used to say. Buddhists are well aware of that. It is full of words and ideas and fantasies and when we follow them around long enough it is very easy to be completely lost in a kind of labyrinth of the ego, or, of course, and to 'miss the forest for all the trees'.

It was one thing to explore and discover yourself there in a new found territory then, but there is also always the risk of being unable to find your way back. And in that sense 'dangerous' things also lurk in the darkness of forests, as the myths all tell us, things that may change everything and shake you to the core. If for example, like Hansel and Gretel, you are kidnapped by a cannibalistic witch and led into the dark deeps of her forest, it would be wise to leave a trail of breadcrumbs in order to find your way out again--should you ever escape and return to yourself again. That fairytale ends happily as most of them do: the children escape the witch, find their way out of the forest and, you guessed it, live happily ever after.

What's missing in the fairy tale is the impact of experience as it changes us, transforms us so that there is no way back and we will never again be what we were before.We can remember, of course, we can follow the trail of crumbs and come out of the forest into a clearing but when we arrive where we began we realize that something is very different. And that is the person that we are and the way we see the world. For experiences--at least the ones that overwhelm us--also transform us. Words may describe these changes only indirectly, and that occurs when we find ourselves suddenly and surprisingly speaking and thinking in a new way.

This shows us a another and deeper power of language with which we human beings are intimately entwined. We use it to create a house for our consciousness and then we inhabit that house we have made. Words cloth us in a story, our story, and give us countless orientations to the world that we come to know through them, and they help us find our way about in it. And when that world shifts dramatically, the foundation of the house crumbles; we search quickly for new words, try speaking them in different ways and begin building a new house for ourselves. So words and ideas shape views of the world and of our self--in a thousand deep and hidden ways. We wrap ourselves around in them like the double helix of our DNA and become one with them. It is only when we wander off into the forest, find ourselves at a loss and then, to mix metaphors, open the door into a surprisingly new and spacious room of the mind, that we realize we have changed. And so has our world, the foundation has shifted, 'up' is 'down' and 'left' is 'right'. There are surprises at every turn for we are speaking a new language and coming to live in a new house of words.

I am and have always been a man of words. I write blogs. I think by writing and my thinking is wordy, grammatical and argumentative: it moves from here to there like the lines on a page. I begins at a beginning and ends at an end, like a Victorian novel. It tries to move slowly and surely filling in all the blanks. In India and now again here in the desert, I have made the most startling discovery, however. I am a quite simply, a child of the print culture of the west, my mind formed and informed by its logic and laws. And for most of my life that worked more or less seamlessly. It just doesn't work here, in the east, (much as our culture has become the exemplar of technological primacy for the rest of the world and especially for many here). People simply cannot jump over their own shadows no more than I can. And so, while I must make the best of it with the resources that I have, that I am, I can look for new points of reference, a new moon and stars to navigate by. There's enough wonder in that I think, for the moment.

 

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Words, words, words. Where I am and How I got Here

After a long time of blogging my wanderings around India at onewaveintheocean.blogspot.ca, I have accepted the inevitability of change and migrated (as they say) to this new blog. I am not closing the door to the past, but I am acknowledging that I have changed and begun walking along a new path in my life. This is the most ordinary and the most extraordinary thing about being human, isn't it? I suppose that is why there are so many cliches for the experience of the changes that we human beings experience over and over again.

Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat

"It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis." Henry Miller.

Saying something so often that it truly disappears into the background noise and becomes banal is one thing; but then finding just the right words to say it again so that it re-emerges from the cliche and we see it again as extraordinary---well, that is a good talisman for this first reflection on the power and limits of language.

As it turns out, words are the very thing that has been preoccupying me lately, words and their workings through and on human beings. Marshall McLuhan saw language as the first and archetypal 'technology' and that is a clue I have been trying to follow.

But I am forgetting where I am and so let me start with the words right here and now, (on words and their power to transform): today is the first day of the holy month of Ramadan (2015), the time that recalls the long ago time of the divine dictation of the words of the Holy Qu'ran to the Holy prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him). When that occurred it created (or re-created) something utterly unique, a new beginning, a new people. Christians imagine something like that when they say, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God". Words beyond mere words, then. Holy words, words that act and create.

And still further: I am living in the western desert region of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, formerly called, with an ominous simplicity, 'the empty quarter' (Al Gharbia). It is also being 'renamed' slowly and meticulously with trees and grass and mines and oil wells and solar power plants and peoples, of course, from all over the subcontinent . In this garden blossoming in the desert, there are still echoes of that word that was heard by the intrepid English explorer, Wilfrid Thesiger (author of Arabian Sands) --'the empty quarter'--but they are only echoes now. This too is an act of re-creation, but of a very human kind. It is a filling up and transforming of the empty places by virtue of human vision, desires, technological ingenuity and of course, wealth. It is something to behold, and shows words in action ovGercoming what was once named 'empty'.

The desert is the landscape I see everyday and which surrounds me. There are also landscapes of the mind, however, those we carry around inside us (and which carry our spirit around and around in them). I am thinking not of the desert but of the forest, now, like those Canadian forests in which I walked and wandered and sometimes even got lost as a child. This forest is a good metaphor for the world of ideas or the mind, I have always thought. There are many paths that open up as one walks and possibilities of turning in many directions. Although it is also very true that 'the mind is a dangerous neighbourhood", as a friend used to say. Buddhists are well aware of that. It is full of words and ideas and fantasies and when we follow them around long enough it is very easy to be completely lost in a kind of labyrinth of the ego, or, of course, and to 'miss the forest for all the trees'.

It was one thing to explore and discover yourself there in a new found territory then, but there is also always the risk of being unable to find your way back. And in that sense 'dangerous' things also lurk in the darkness of forests, as the myths all tell us, things that may change everything and shake you to the core. If for example, like Hansel and Gretel, you are kidnapped by a cannibalistic witch and led into the dark deeps of her forest, it would be wise to leave a trail of breadcrumbs in order to find your way out again--should you ever escape and return to yourself again. That fairytale ends happily as most of them do: the children escape the witch, find their way out of the forest and, you guessed it, live happily ever after.

What's missing in the fairy tale is the impact of experience as it changes us, transforms us so that there is no way back and we will never again be what we were before.We can remember, of course, we can follow the trail of crumbs and come out of the forest into a clearing but when we arrive where we began we realize that something is very different. And that is the person that we are and the way we see the world. For experiences--at least the ones that overwhelm us--also transform us. Words may describe these changes only indirectly, and that occurs when we find ourselves suddenly and surprisingly speaking and thinking in a new way.

This shows us a another and deeper power of language with which we human beings are intimately entwined. We use it to create a house for our consciousness and then we inhabit that house we have made. Words cloth us in a story, our story, and give us countless orientations to the world that we come to know through them, and they help us find our way about in it. And when that world shifts dramatically, the foundation of the house crumbles; we search quickly for new words, try speaking them in different ways and begin building a new house for ourselves. So words and ideas shape views of the world and of our self--in a thousand deep and hidden ways. We wrap ourselves around in them like the double helix of our DNA and become one with them. It is only when we wander off into the forest, find ourselves at a loss and then, to mix metaphors, open the door into a surprisingly new and spacious room of the mind, that we realize we have changed. And so has our world, the foundation has shifted, 'up' is 'down' and 'left' is 'right'. There are surprises at every turn for we are speaking a new language and coming to live in a new house of words.

I am and have always been a man of words. I write blogs. I think by writing and my thinking is wordy, grammatical and argumentative: it moves from here to there like the lines on a page. I begins at a beginning and ends at an end, like a Victorian novel. It tries to move slowly and surely filling in all the blanks. In India and now again here in the desert, I have made the most startling discovery, however. I am a quite simply, a child of the print culture of the west, my mind formed and informed by its logic and laws. And for most of my life that worked more or less seamlessly. It just doesn't work here, in the east, (much as our culture has become the exemplar of technological primacy for the rest of the world and especially for many here). People simply cannot jump over their own shadows no more than I can. And so, while I must make the best of it with the resources that I have, that I am, I can look for new points of reference, a new moon and stars to navigate by. There's enough wonder in that I think, for the moment.

 

Posted with Blogsy