Language

[WeedIsFree]

Something I've often pondered on is as a species our use of language. My interest in this really started when I tripped with a couple of mates a few years back and we where trying to describe our thoughts or feelings. At different times we all concluded 'there are no words in English to put it into words'. Now yes we were tripping but we weren't seeing crazy kaleidoscopes and trying to describe the patterns, it was just trying to say how we felt but we couldn't. So now I accept language(or at least English) as a man made creation and not yet fully capable of doing the job it's supposed to.

Since then I've noticed there are a lot of feelings and emotions that cannot really be communicated that well through English, through myself feeling something and not being able to communicate it or seeing other people try and talk to eachother and it's like neither one is listening to what the other is saying. I don't think it's arrogance and not listening, it's preconceptions and misinterpretations, mostly in English.

If someone has known you a long time and perceives you in a certain way, they might not interpret what your saying in the way you intended and then you have the uphill struggle of trying to untangle other things you might have said previously before how you feel is actually understood, and getting to that point is hard fucking work as it can escalate into arguments quite quickly with a lot of people before you get near the point.

Also I think that sometimes because we lack the expressions we need, we try to explain our emotions badly which leads to people thinking you feel something you don't, which then leads to endless other explanations.

This probably makes very little sense which could be just my lack of ability to communicate thoughts or feelings on topics, but also it could prove my point

I can see or feel the whole topic/thought process of what I mean in a microsecond, but why does it take so long to say and why does it have to sound complicated when actually its quite simple?

Just spent 10 minutes trying to sum it up and ended up deleting it

Anyone know what I mean?

A possible solution to avoid confusion is having a single word or phrase which covers a large breadth of meaning while still having a core start point. Such as Rastafarians use of the word Babylon, from wiki

" In a more general sense, Babylon refers to any system that oppresses or discriminates against all peoples".

A rasta knows that greed and materialism is at the core of babylon, so whereas you might watch a news story about a political corruption issue and spend hours trying work out the issues, a rasta would say "Babylon mate, nuff said" The word brings to mind all the connotations of the idea and therefore to another rasta simply saying Babylon is just as much an understanding(or overstanding) of the situation as someone describing all the in's and out's of the topic in great length on newsnight.

It's not a good example as it's restrained to a belief system so again you need to know what their on about, but the template for words like that is there I think.

More than likely a stoned ramble but I was bored

[jumpman233345]

some very deep thinking going on here matey

[blackmedicine]

very well put, ive thought the same, language is a virus

Edited July 2, 2013 by blackmedicine

[FunkyJazzJesus]

i believe humans will have to get past language to use our brains more efficiently, also more to do with the problem language brings as an interface for using our memories, it's sort of like going the long way around our brains, i have a way of summing up this inability of words, if you point the focus of all your senses on everything around you including yourself and all that you are, you look at whats around you and now you are going to put labels on all these things, the walls, doors, floors, colours, shapes, measurements, reflections, structures, cracking noises, happiness, you label the whole room until it's completely covered in labels, which makes it appear nothing like it really is, you can't see anything anymore, except labels. This goes onto the fact this language is how you explain your experiences and we know they are not really the same yet we use the same words to describe those experiences, things go wrong when we hear certain words and most usually we always imagine our version of the words rather than what the other person seems to be saying, we then go into the vagueness of words which i mentioned earlier with the labeling metaphor, it simply lacks information, so much information compared to what we are really taking in, we go into the memory more and more, i think it will be one of the breakthroughs in coming time, we get into the conscience and the subconscience, which i think we are meant to use our awareness to gain more insight into those vast sums of information we take in. Vision for instance seems to the predominant sense, we can take millions of times more information through vision in a few seconds than what can be taken from words, it seems easy for the brain but if you were to try and remember a paragraph which is nothing compared to sight and all it's qualities, it takes ages for me to even say all these things compared to all that i know and take in, we have memories that are very much like time machines, giving us the feeling of past by default of the memory being there, the present which we connect and compare memories to what we're sensing at the time, then we get the future feeling, like we know what will happen but this is all at once, you can move around time quite freely as i feel, time is infact something that the memory gives us a sense of, this evolutionary development of conscince seems to show that when it's there, we become aware of the fact there are sort of rules behind the physical world, to me, consciousness is before the physical as it gives us the awareness that we see a laws of physics and all other things we feel.

I feel there is much to discover about our brains which seems something quite rare we play around with, i noticed that when i get vivid visions, that my eyes try to look at it, but obviously this vision cannot be seen with my eyes, it disrupts whats happening, like if you're listening to something then all of a sudden someone grabs you, this other vision fades away, little things like that, what do they lead to when you can control it? Evolution is strange, the more you go in a direction, the further you go away from others, if we go technological route, this does not mean it IS meant to happen, it's just a direction and we will turn our selves into something i feel many of us do not want, if you don't want to be some weirdo mechanoid, then we need to get away from simplfying nature, which is far more complex than our machines, like our brain is the evolutionary change that made us seemingly sepearte from other animals, yet we are still not focusing on this tool we have, i don't think the making of tools, languages, art, music, i don't think these things are the highlights of what the brain can achieve, just steps towards a direction, symbols for getting us to come together and find out what this brain is meant to be used for.