Scratch n’sniff Icebergs

I wrote this in response to an ongoing conversation with a brilliant fellow blogger about the nature of people and what we call ‘our’ reality. It makes a good blog-post in itself, so I’m presenting it here with the odd tweak. Click here to view the original thread (scroll down to the most recent comments).

 

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I happen to think that the world is in balance, and that people are too, it’s just that our demented limited language structure makes a hash of it all, confusing the issue and twisting everything out of proportion. There is no consensus seemingly, because we cannot agree linguistically. We place sooo much weight on the magical word that like a bunch of crack addicts we get addicted to those little spidery squiggles as if our lives depended on it, and the ridiculous thing is most of society does, and hangs off each syllable like it’s a bloking great epitaph. Verbal communication forms, what?…7% of all communication. Well what weight do we place on the other 93%?

Sure a lot of that is based on visual stimuli, the multi-semiotics of everyday life, but a fair proportion is also based on the kinesthetic and the emotive. Life is like a scratch and sniff iceberg, deep beneath that visible tip is a heck of a lot more than anyone bargained for, and a very deep smell of brewing coffee.
What I’m getting at is that current popular thinking likes to pigeonhole and pare things down into either-or bite-size chunks, and therein lies the problem. We create paradoxes and contradictions so that we don’t have to actually see things for what they really are, mostly hypocritical and fallacious. Smoke screens designed exactly to confuse and obfuscate. It’s religion as it has been for centuries all over again. In fact all that’s changed really in terms of people’s thinking habits is the bill-board picture. Maybe we can even conjecture that it’s just a human knee-twitch, inevitable, though by all means not unavoidable. As we both agree contradictions do not exist, so everything must be taken into account with no exceptions to the rule.
We have physical reality at our disposal, with all it’s gadgetry and stuff, more stuff than you can shake a big stick at. Let’s use it all, take advantage of what we have to hand, physically that is, but also use that other percentage of ourselves that stays well hidden. Like a dog it too needs to be taken out for a walk everyday to keep it healthy, it needs to be loved and played with. Why not just be mindful of the balance that already exists within and ‘seemingly’ outside of us?

Thank you to the internet source for the above image: http://www.123rf.com/photo_15501001_private-information-hidden-insider-knowledge-and-secret-personal-or-business-data-as-a-partialy-subm.html

Posted in Diary stuff Language Timothy!Tagged addict balance common sense communication contradictions deceit language metaphysics multi-semiotics Paradoxes perception physics reality religion the word