Scratch n’sniff Icebergs

I’m re-posting this piece in light of an ensuing discussion about language that my previous post has sparked. I want to highlight that any notion of truth validated by linguistic exchange is vague at best and relies on mutual trust within a given social group, be they a body of scientists, or you and me in our front rooms or at our laptops here on WP. The notion of an ‘objective truth’ cannot exist outside of linguistic exchange because in and of itself it is a linguistic description that supports an intuitive understanding of what that notion may mean to a given individual. Why do we then place so much emphasis and importance on the printed or spoken word? Perhaps because we feel that it can be quantified in a way that non-verbal communication cannot? Our current culture, its politics, sciences, education systems are built on the strength and validity of the printed word, but it is a limited view of what may be considered the entire repertoire of perceptions that we each have at our disposal, the non-verbal perceptions that are just as valid, if not more so than our ability to exchange verbal utterances, whether face to face or through printed text. 

 

Therefore if you remove the power of verbal communication and language from our repertoire of communication, then it perhaps becomes more evident that experience is highly subjective, that delineating a potential ‘objective truth’ suddenly becomes more difficult. Experience becomes much more immediate and focussed in the present moment, just as it is for young children before language and what we recognise as verbal communication is ‘acquired’. It perhaps also becomes evident that each individual’s experience is much more intuitive and instinctive than is given credit for, and that in many ways it is a much more developed and highly advanced form of communication and interaction with the surrounding environment than verbal language alone affords.

We communicate verbally so that we can imagine visually and emotionally. Verbal language is merely a vehicle for unspoken intent.

 

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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 Language Timothy!Tagged addict common sense communication contradictions intuition language multi-semiotics non-verbal communication Paradoxes perception physics reality sociolinguistics the word truth