Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Intention>Language>Misinterpretation>Separation
I have been thinking a lot recently about language and intention. About how, specifically, some synaptic spark or flute of the muse gives rise to a Thought (amorphous) that is selected in the mind for external expression. And how it is intended that this Thought be expressed as it was when it rose in the thinker, that it remain pure and be understood by a receiver as such. And how, somewhere along the tangled lines of language, in the processes of expression and interpretation, it may inadvertently become Another Idea altogether through fumbles in articulation on the part of the speaker, or misunderstanding on the part of the listener. And this misunderstanding of the listener could be due to the possibility that the listener's brain has over time and shaped by experience not acquired the compatible concepts in its web of mental schema, and therefore substitutes relevant meaning by a slight adjustment to the message. The underlying question that begs my attentive excavation as I dawn upon my 8th hour of silence today is whether or not, or perhaps less severely, how often we understand exactly what was intended upon expression, and how often we just get "the gist". It is unsettling when it becomes apparent how in our everyday lives we are constantly and unwittingly engaged in the game of "telephone" with all we encounter, each of us subjectively filtering from the overwhelming mass of stimulus that bombards our sensibilities that which is personally pertinent. Through the existence of our separate sieves we work most efficiently by throwing aside our overlappings in perspective once confirmed and weeding through our differences to pin down a single granule of Truth (whose solidity is less and less certain the further we move past the post-modern mark of human-interpreted-History). While sharing perspective with others and receiving confirmation facilitates the warm-fuzzy comforts of human bonding, makes one at ease in his identity, and secure in the World, the hypothesis arises through this study of language that it is not our coinciding in interpretation and perspective but our divergences that are most revealing. We depart by the sheer impossibility that we could perceive the same stimulus and have the very same interpretation. It is into these cracks of difference I wish to fall and dig, into these gaps of understanding that disrupt our lulled illusion of continuity, these spaces we bump into that remind us of our distinct perceptions, and coax us to rummage through our toolboxes of words and explain ourSelves to the Others in repair. And perhaps we find we are missing the precise tool we need. What other ways can we convey our intentions, and connect?
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