On language: on controlling and being controlled

[Mephura]

Please note: When I say our language, I most of the time mean the languages of humans as opposed to the chirps of birds and the barking of dogs.

Gendanken, now you are getting to the good stuff. On a side note this thread has been very helpful in seeing your thought process.

You seem to be saying that language, due to its inherent abstractness, supports and fosters the belief in gods and the supernatural. Then again, that would tie back to your earlier words about how the brain worked and how language arrose in the first place. Its seems we are hitting the topic at two different levels. You are nailing on the biological side and I am attempting to hit on the psychological. In the end, we seem to be arriving at the same grounds.

Give me more woman.

thefountainhed
Disagree with what?

 

[gendanken]

Can't wait till I get my hands on this one. There's about a million things right now swimming in my cortex.

Will you meet me on the morrow?

 

[Mephura]

I would climb the cliffs of insanity for it.

 

[gendanken]

Insanities

Now!- where were we? Let's see here.........................ah!:

Meph:

You seem to be saying that language, due to its inherent abstractness, supports and fosters the belief in gods and the supernatural

I was cheesing ear to ear when I first read this. What was it somebody said to me once? "WUUUUUUUUUT!". Exactly.

But first a little modification- remember that I'd said "recursion allows for introspection. Its the backing behind insight........It's coinded the term sin"? Scratch that. The coin termed is"consciousness".

You’re saying that by means of language we control the mysterious.
You’re saying labels depreciate the value in something.
You’re saying we were once more in tune with instinct but language has bleached it of us in a way.

Bingo.

You’re trying to show what fear did. I’m trying to show how. Well, trying anyway.

I move to say that language was simply a renegade experiment that was by circumstance allowed to runaway unharnessed. Imagine booting up a program with a nested loop in it. It puts out a bunch of junk on the screen and you let it go on unsupervised until you come back some thousand years later.You didn’t have the leisure to tend to it at its beginnings. And so it went on neglected.

"Leisure" is the only reason you came back, and having done so you find a gigabyte file filled with letters.
Enter probability and chaos theory that says a pattern is inevitable in any multi-factored field in flux.
You can’t explain the pattern but to you, having genetically developed by now to appreciate beauty, the pattern seems ghostly and poetic. And so, a simple hairy hominid’s invention of grunts and snorting interchanged sequentially thousands of years ago now suddenly ascends the throne and becomes the stuff of legends.
Why? Neglect.

See?

This invention of ours has generated many wonderful things but it has also allowed for the haunting of the mind by abstractions.
And aren’t abstractions the universal basis for religions?
Those three vexing properties in language: vicariousness, displacement and incursion have made all of this possible.
Before, fear was only an immediate whiff of horror alive only for that second, that moment. The way it is for the animal out on the Sahara.
Language has solidified fear’s fluidity and made a god out of it. How?

I'm saying these 2 things (language and religion) were born on the same day but were seperated by circumstance.
One became a common specimen for the laboratory, swimming in formaldahyde and put to the scalpel. Its materialistic nature became the stuff of science; you see words on paper, make them with ink, you hear it on tounges, you speak language, you think and play with it so there's nothing magical about it. Everyone's Ok with it being used and abused because its just language.
It serves us.

The other one became a spiritual byproduct of these vexing three properties. The very fact that you cannot see it, hear it, speak or play with it has further mistyfied the hell out of it and so we placed it on Olympus. It became the stuff of Zeus and the soothsayer. The focus of control having long ago been misplaced by our little invention made this all the more easily possible. And so with time we allowed its untouchability, the same untouchability found in language, to elude us and now it no longer serves us.
We serve it.
Why? How? Because the focus of control had been shifted long ago, the same exact trait found in the superstitious.

You may say I've contradicted myself by saying just now that language has untouchability when I just finished stating that the material properties of language are so readily availabe- on paper, on tounge, in mind, in ear.

But its reach goes far beyond the laboratory.

Isn't it odd that when you correct someone's grammar and they ask you why it should be that way you can't exactly pin point why it should be? It just 'feels' better 'corrected'. The neatest thing is that this also happens in music, as when a pianist hits a wrong note or plays slightly off bar. You've never heard the tune before but your brain is not in sync with it for some odd reason you can't quite put your finger on and yet you've never composed a damn thing in your life.

Here's the most striking thing in all this: modern theories on grammar are incredibly complex and to this day they are incomplete. It takes years to master not only the ins and outs of much more complex languages (Aboriginal, Native Indian, pueblo indians) but its just as hard to master the complex rules of your own language........which is ironic because children somehow take easily to grammar and are using it by the time they're only 5. Could this 'feel' for language be explained by analytical "magic" of the the left side of the brain? And if so, can we leapfrog and tie this "feel" for religion back to language and so explain the damn thing with language by proxy? Could it be that simple?
Or would that make me a raving heretic needing to be shot by a Catholic?

The word ‘leisure’ I've been using in all this is key. That was language’s gift to us. That’s what she gave us: leisure.

There's more but you know how I am about ..uhm..."long wind". So.... Still with me?

 

[Mephura]

Damnit woman

Yes I am still with you. I will be with you until I know all of it. You make me feel like i am cheating; Raising my postcount with all these little "i'm with you" replies.

Anyway, so far you are painting my kind of picture. Interconectedness, simultanious development, circular (but not in a bad way)thinking. Its beautiful.

Keep it coming

 

[man on the hill]

In order for me to know If im still on the same track as you two, I need you to varify this.

We cannot explain our feeling for incorrect grammer using words in the same way that we cannot explain religion using religion. Which I suppose coined the term faith.
Am I with you?

 

[Mephura]

Damn..thats a good (and slightly awkward) question. My answer would be yes.
Its a knowing with out knowing. I have my own ideas on the subject, but I am saving those for when gendanken is done with this theory of hers. I don't want to get it sidetracked.

Good to see you still come down from your hill to visit us.

 

[gendanken]

We cannot explain our feeling for incorrect grammer using words in the same way that we cannot explain religion using religion. Which I suppose coined the term faith

Yes. Yes. Yes. Magnifique. Its like a genetic jolt when something falls out of sync for some odd reason and while I'm not fully convinced, I'm leaning more and more day by day to thining it may all be genetic.
Religion, however is slippery. Tricky, tricky, tricky. And its trickier to grapple with because its further stigmatized by its sanctity......fertile ground for neglect.
I'm short on time here, more on this later. I'm not completely done and will come back with more if you lords will have me.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Greetings from the other thread

Originally posted by gendanken
Here's the most striking thing in all this: modern theories on grammar are incredibly complex and to this day they are incomplete. It takes years to master not only the ins and outs of much more complex languages (Aboriginal, Native Indian, pueblo indians) but its just as hard to master the complex rules of your own language........which is ironic because children somehow take easily to grammar and are using it by the time they're only 5.

I came over here from the "How Much Brain Do We Use" thread at Man on the Hill's invitation.

Interesting stuff which indeed dovetails with the other thread. A couple of responses of my own...

Not all languages have complex grammatical rules that are difficult to master. Chinese is absurdly simple compared to the other languages I have studied. It has the feel of a language that has been used by a continuous civilization for several thousand years, which it has, instead of going through a meltdown, diaspora, and recolonization every 500 years like the Indo-Europeans tongues seem to do.

And it has been polished by use like grandpa's hammer, simplified for speed and power like a motorcycle with the fenders and mufflers yanked off. All the Stone Age paradigms have been abandoned. No tense, no number, no articles, no prepositions, no conjunctions. Just nouns and verbs and a couple of connecting particles of nearly Boolean generality. Learning Chinese is strictly a matter of mastering the pronunciation and then just increasing your vocabulary. And the sequence subject-verb-object if your own language doesn't happen to work that way.

I also think that not enough credit has been given to animals that have advanced beyond the limitations of instinct without inventing language. Crows have invented very sophisticated tools using materials at hand.

Notwithstanding any of that, communication within a community expands the domain of the thought process from one brain to many. It turns a collection of individuals into a multiprocessor, just as with computer telecommunications. It is language that allows us to pass on what we know to the next generation, so we're sitting here at the pinnacle of many millennia of learning, instead of each generation having to learn almost everything from scratch.

 

[thefountainhed]

Meph, gend...

here: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20176&perpage=20&pagenumber=3

 

[gendanken]

Fraggle:

Not all languages have complex grammatical rules that are difficult to master. Chinese is absurdly simple compared to the other languages I have studied.

True enough Fraggle. Once again, thanks for the trivia. On the history of language no one can compete with you. I remember you commenting once on how easy the Chinese languages were, in that instead of coming up with a new word for 'televsion' they would use words already extant like 'picture' and 'box' and say 'picture box'. But I don't think I really buy into the grammatical rules being all that simple though, even if the language itself is more of a homebody than the Indo-European languages. There's still a universal 'feel' to language that the human mind takes to incredibly easily early in life, provided the lights are all on if you follow.

It is language that allows us to pass on what we know to the next generation, so we're sitting here at the pinnacle of many millennia of learning, instead of each generation having to learn almost everything from scratch.

Fraggle, believe me, this thread is the farthest thing from asserting that language is useless.


and as for slighting animals (like crows) that have their own coded systems, I think most people belittle the creativity in animals, sure, but its easy to see why. There's a difference with their coded systems. Their 'inventions' are mostly gestural suggestions for the immediate. The common animal's use of code seems mostly 'iconic' while ours is diseased with abstractions. Our language allows for more purpose and planning than it does for the simple task of breaking clams open with stones or weeding out termites with stalks of dried grass.

fountainboy:

Shoo. Go away.

 

[Mephura]

The sleeper awakes

Ok, for a while now, I've been sitting back and watching, throwing in the odd comment to see where this would go. I seem to remember having a idea obout something at one time and maybe, in a couple of days I will have the time to go back and reread this thing from the begining to see if I can't rediscover it.
Until that point, I am going to try to simplify the points as much as possible and also reply to a couple of the posts.

Main Ideas (mind you these are mine and are no way facts or widely excepted theories that I am aware of.)

1.)Fear is the primary motivator. Instincts serve as a way of controlling fear by acting as a set of instructions on how to deal with it. Main amongst these fears is a fear of the unknown that developed as we started living 'consciously'.

2.)Language developed as we moved away from instincts to act as replacement for them. By naming things, we remove some of the 'unknown' quality from it.

3.)Through naming things we place limits on what can and can not be reasonably expected to happen. ie, a bear isn't going to appear in the middle of you kitchen out of thin air and report the weather to you.

4a.)These labels are also applied to ourselves and act to limit our actions by defining what we are capable and not capable of, at least in our minds.

4b.)We label others in the same way we label ourselves and, because of this, we do not always give people the oppertunities they diserve or the positions/situations that they may be capable of handling. We judge with out any 'hard evidence'.

5.) Man is a social creature by nature, yet thinkers tend to seperate themselves from the 'herd' by there thoughts and actions. Popular trends may be thought of as a 'herding instinct' that is used to control the masses. Popular trends are no longer discovered, they are made. As such, culture has started a slide back towards not thinking and instinctual behavior. Perhaps nature has deemed that thinking has created more problems than it solved.

If I missed anything, I appologise, although I would mainly be doing myself a disservice.

Now then, on to the responses.

gendanken
So far I only have one disagreement with what you are proposing.
That would be the gramatical and musical "knowing" you decribe. The music I might possibly accept, although if you ever have listened to traditional Indain music would will quickly hear things that sound very foreign to you. They do not use the same scale we do and have notes that just don't exist in western music. Their idea of what sounds good and right is something completely different from ours. As far as grammer is concerned, I disagree totally. I think the 'feeling' you describe can be better attributed to exposure. I have two lines of thinking that support this idea.

First, is the fact that this feeling of "wrongness" doesn't act independant of vocabulary. Meaning I have no idea if, say, a spanish sentence is gramatically correct or not. I don't know the vocab. I don't know the rules. I haven't grown up speaking it and hearing it spoken enough for me to have developed that 'feeling'.

Secondly, look at young children just learning to speak. They stumble over grammer. They use the wrong tenses. They use wrong sentence structure. They learn grammer in school for the next 6 years, and still make mistakes. It is only after many years of speakingthe language, hearing the language, and practicing the rules of the language that this sence of what is correct developes.

In other words, its a learned thing, not a genetic or neurological trait. Its like learning a musical instrument. After a while you no longer have to think about how to play a certain chord or note, you just do it.

thefountainhed I checked out the link you sent, and at first I had hopes for something new, but after readingit i find more of the same. I will tell you again, I am not saying that language limits us. I am saying we limit ourselves and others through labeling people. Those labels are words, which means they have definitions. When we apply those definitions to people, we lock them into a set place in our mind. That is how we use language to limit. We limit, not language.

Also you made a point in the other thread about thinking in language. You are wrong. Can you not imagine a sunny day, a forest, your bed? Are you thinking in words or images? Yes, we think in language. We also think in pictures, sounds, feelings, and a host of other abstracts. I am begining to think that the problem may be that you just can't handle your gren as well as tiassa can..


and lastly fraggle rocker
You are right. Not all languages do have the complex grammer that most western languages have. There is a couple of other major differences in the languages and the people. On languages, most of the asian languages can be very complex in other ways. You bring up chineese. While it is true that its grammer may not be complex, being a tonal language raises the bar of complexity as far as westerners are concerned. If I remember correctly, all their words are monosylabic and have, what, 5,6 different accents? The same two letters mean both father and raddish for christ's sake. Its just a matter of how you pronounce them. I would say that that alone could take the place of a complex gramatical system. Secondly, there is a major difference in thought and philosophy. While one could argue that this has no bearance on the subject at hand, I would beg to differ. Language and thought had to have developed hand in hand. One would hav influenced the other and vice versa. As sch, it could well be argued that the reason that their languages do not have the same complex grammers is that their thinking didn't develop in the same way. A different evolutionary road if you will.

Secondly, as far as animals goes, only one group comes to mind as being even worthy of consideration for enterence into this; that being aquatic mammals such as dolphins and whales. My intention in this thread was not to say that species other than man have not developed languages that go beyond mere survival issues. It was to say that because man's language has developed to the point that it has, and because of how it developed and how it is used, we have come to a point where, I believe, we are inadvertantly limiting ourselves and our "progress" as a species.

While I agree with you multiprocessor view, I think that the hardware isn't being used to its fullest due to a few software bugs. To keep with the computer lingo, think of language as the OS. Now, each person is a independant, yet networked, machine. However, when detecting other machines, the OS may report that machine x isn't capable of instruction 3 and machine z is, when the exact opposite may be true. So, in the end, the network is running horribly slow because the work load isn't being divided properly. The other problem that is occuring is that the over all goal of the programisn't being achieved at the maximum possible speed because too many of the machines are being told to accept all the data from others. Just as some files you download are corrupted, some ideas are wrong. Just as the Newtonian view of the universeis no longer accepted, quantum mechanics and relativity may also one day fail us. The problem is too few are willing to entertain doubt. So many ideas are being are being held up as untouchable that all but the rare few bother to question their veracity.

Most of the great scientists and thinkers were, in their time, viewed as nuts. However, we would not have achieved half of what we have had it not been for their questioning convention. This willingness to doubt and go against popular thought is a quality that is becoming more and more rare. great philosophers, mathematicians, and other thinkers used to be revered because of their thoughts and ideas. Now, this has become a rare occurrence. Today, children grow up wanting to be the next popular trend. A thing that is a temporary and meaningless.

Tell me Fraggle, in your oppinion, what would benefit the world more: Another Brittany Spears or another Einstein? Another MTV or another Library of Alexandria?

It has been said that the rate at which technology is growing is exponential. With that in mind, look at the grat achievemnets of the last hundred years. We went from the automobile to the airplane. From the airplane to the spaceshuttle. Look at the jumps in technology then and now look at the jumps in the last twenty years. What have we done really? We've made some things smaller, others larger, but where is the new and ground breaking ideas? Where is my hover-car? Where is my robotic butler?
We've stalled, and I'm not sure, but I think I have rambled on
long enough.

-mephura

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Re: The sleeper awakes

Originally posted by Mephura
Look at young children just learning to speak. They stumble over grammar. They use the wrong tenses. They use wrong sentence structure. They learn grammar in school for the next 6 years, and still make mistakes. It is only after many years of speaking the language, hearing the language, and practicing the rules of the language that this sense of what is correct develops.

What you're speaking of is an anomaly. For most of history children learned language just fine by practicing it with other people. There were no schools except for the aristocracy. The fact that children are doing so poorly in English right now is an indictment of our failing school system.

I hate to sound like one of those old geezers who starts every sentence with, "In my day," but sometimes it's unavoidable. When I went to grade school in the 1950s kids spoke much better English. The high school students of my generation had far better language skills than those of today. It shows in the test results. As I've pointed out before, the average contemporary U.S. high school graduate reads at the fifth-grade level. The reason they call it that is that not too long ago that was the level at which fifth-graders read. High school graduates could read at the twelfth-grade level. We all read Shakespeare and Faulkner and Hemingway in high school and at least half of the kids could actually understand it and discuss it.

What appears to you to be an innate human inability to master our own language is merely yet another collossal failure of the government. If you're worried that something might be bringing down human culture, take a look at the corrupt bozos in Washington and the complete mess they make of absolutely everything they stick their greedy hands into.

I will tell you again, I am not saying that language limits us.

Au contraire, language enables us. The more languages a person has at his disposal, the more different kinds of ideas he can entertain. Each language reflects the culture and philosophy of the people who developed it. English has an advantage because it has borrowed so freely from other languages. But Chinese has somehow achieved the same greatness without the ability to borrow words. (The language's phonetic limits make that totally impossible, the only borrowed word I've ever heard of in Chinese is "wei ta ming" for "vitamin.") I guess a word stock of 75,000 is a great resource regardless of whether it's native or borrowed.

On languages, most of the Asian languages can be very complex in other ways.

There's no such thing as "Asian languages." They fall into a number of different families. Japanese is more complicated than ancient Greek. Chinese is more simple than English.

You bring up Chinese. While it is true that its grammar may not be complex, being a tonal language raises the bar of complexity as far as westerners are concerned. If I remember correctly, all their words are monosylabic and have, what, 5,6 different accents?

There are only four tones in Mandarin and they are quite distinct. Not at all hard to master. What's difficult for Indo-European speakers is learning that you can't express emotion with your tone of voice. You have to learn to be more expressive with the language and say the words you mean. Tones are phonemic.

The same two letters mean both father and radish for christ's sake. Its just a matter of how you pronounce them. I would say that that alone could take the place of a complex grammatical system.

Anglophones are fond of making that point but it's bogus. What you're calling a word is really a morpheme. There are very few one-syllable words. It's true that Chinese is only capable of forming 400 syllables times 4 tones = 1,600 syllables. But if the average word has two syllables, that makes a total possibility of more than two million. There is in actuality no danger of misunderstanding. And again, you're making way too much of the tonal system. I didn't study it until I was an adult and theoretically incapable of learning a language so different from English. Instead I found it infinitely easier than Russian. You want to talk about difficult pronunciation, try Russian. It will make you tear your hair out.

Tell me Fraggle, in your oppinion, what would benefit the world more: Another Britney Spears or another Einstein? Another MTV or another Library of Alexandria?

I vote for "E," all of the above. Life has to have both academia and popular culture. People need to laugh and dance and hum and be silly. We can't spend all of our lives memorizing the theory of relativity or trying to figure out what's so special about Bach. My wife and I are about as intellectual as most of you and we sit around passionately discussing impressionism and Jungian archetypes and whether Lincoln was a megalomaniac instead of the savior of our country. But you're just as likely to walk in on us rolling around on the floor with our doggies and watching Spongebob Squarepants. You've got to balance your yang and your yin, Grasshopper. That is the secret to happiness. Now you owe me a nickel.

 

[thefountainhed]

Meph,

LMAO. I am busy and thus will wait and make a detailed reply, but I think you ought to think clearer about what language is, especially after seeing that post on the dictionary.

Main Entry: lan·guage
Pronunciation: 'la[ng]-gwij, -wij
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French, from langue tongue, language, from Latin lingua -- more at TONGUE
Date: 14th century
1 a : the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community b (1) : audible, articulate, meaningful sound as produced by the action of the vocal organs (2) : a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings (3) : the suggestion by objects, actions, or conditions of associated ideas or feelings <language in their very gesture -- Shakespeare> (4) : the means by which animals communicate (5) : a formal system of signs and symbols (as FORTRAN or a calculus in logic) including rules for the formation and transformation of admissible expressions (6) : MACHINE LANGUAGE 1
2 a : form or manner of verbal expression; specifically : STYLE b : the vocabulary and phraseology belonging to an art or a department of knowledge c : PROFANITY
3 : the study of language especially as a school subject

Main Entry: 1think
Pronunciation: 'thi[ng]k
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): thought /'thot/; think·ing
Etymology: Middle English thenken, from Old English thencan; akin to Old High German denken to think, Latin tongEre to know -- more at THANKS
Date: before 12th century
transitive senses
1 : to form or have in the mind
2 : to have as an intention <thought to return early>
3 a : to have as an opinion <think it's so> b : to regard as : CONSIDER <think the rule unfair>
4 a : to reflect on : PONDER <think the matter over> b : to determine by reflecting <think what to do next>
5 : to call to mind : REMEMBER <he never thinks to ask how we do>
6 : to devise by thinking -- usually used with up <thought up a plan to escape>
7 : to have as an expectation : ANTICIPATE <we didn't think we'd have any trouble>
8 a : to center one's thoughts on <talks and thinks business> b : to form a mental picture of
9 : to subject to the processes of logical thought <think things out>
intransitive senses
1 a : to exercise the powers of judgment, conception, or inference : REASON b : to have in the mind or call to mind a thought
2 a : to have the mind engaged in reflection : MEDITATE b : to consider the suitability <thought of her for president>
3 : to have a view or opinion <thinks of himself as a poet>
4 : to have concern -- usually used with of <a man must think first of his family>
5 : to consider something likely : SUSPECT <may happen sooner than you think>

You think with language. Emotion is not thought...

P.S. LMAO. I do alright with the ganja.

 

[Mephura]

thefontainhed

I thinkif you are that fond of posting definitions, you should read them a little closer and maybe edit out what disagrees with you, that is if you plan on using a dictionary to back up your arguments and have no original ideas of your own.


1 : to form or have in the mind

So you can not form images in your mind? Or have a song going through it?

5 : to call to mind : REMEMBER

So you do not remember how you felt, smells, sounds, images, ect? You only remember words?

8 a : to center one's thoughts on b : to form a mental picture of

Again without words. I know i don't "form pictues" with words, I do so with images.

There are three definitions, that you use to support your argument, that disagree with what you say at the end of your past. One of them is the primary definition. Did you even read it, or just rest self assured that you were right and pasted it blindly.

And if you have a problem with the dictionary post,
1) take it up there, and also
2) take it up with anyone that uses slang, figures of speach and other such connotative devices.
(quickly i'll make the dictionary point here. Your first "words" after addressing me were "LMAO" a common abrieviation for laughing my ass off. Now, if i took the actual dictionary meaning of your words, i guess you would either be assless or still laughing. Since I live in the real world where what people say and mean doesn't always agree with dictionary definitions, I believe that neither is the case. )

As far as what language is, the main defining factor is communication. Is I am alon in a room with now windows and a shut door, with no observation of any kind, and I stomp on the floor, just for the hell of it, who am i trying to communicate with? Its not language. I can still think of the sound. I can imagine how it felt when i did so. Neither are language.

You have put yourself in a precarious position. If you are going to throw definitions at me, I would expect you to not only read them, but also to not suddenly jump the fence and use any connotative arguements. Language denotes intelligence, especially when you are going by the definition you have provided. That means that any arguements concerning my body "communicating" the feeling to me do not fall under language unless you are proposing that my body has a seperate mind from my own.

Think before you type fountainhed. Read what you write before you hit the post button. Stop making yourself look more stupid than you are and let me get this topic back on course.

 

[Mephura]

Re: Re: The sleeper awakes

Originally posted by Fraggle Rocker
What you're speaking of is an anomaly. For most of history children learned language just fine by practicing it with other people. There were no schools except for the aristocracy. The fact that children are doing so poorly in English right now is an indictment of our failing school system

I hate to sound like one of those old geezers who starts every sentence with, "In my day," but sometimes it's unavoidable. When I went to grade school in the 1950s kids spoke much better English. The high school students of my generation had far better language skills than those of today..

You know its funny how you can take my point and try to use it against me. So you are saying that grammer isn't something learned, that it is an inate ability that we are born with? My point wasn't how well kids are doing in school, it was exactly what you just said; "practicing it with other people". I said "speaking the language, hearing the language, and practicing the rules of the language" Wow! unless they magically know the language fromthe start and are speaking it to themselves, Speaking it and hearing it would imply conversations. Tell me, how many 6 year olds do you know with perfect, and I mean perfect grammer? Did you have it at that age? I know I didn't.

It shows in the test results. As I've pointed out before, the average contemporary U.S. high school graduate reads at the fifth-grade level. The reason they call it that is that not too long ago that was the level at which fifth-graders read. High school graduates could read at the twelfth-grade level. We all read Shakespeare and Faulkner and Hemingway in high school and at least half of the kids could actually understand it and discuss it.

Really?? You mean it wasn't just some arbitrary term or goal post they cooked up out of thin air? Please, enlighten me more. Wait. Here is an even better idea: Take the comments about government, school system inadequacies, and stories about how things were in your day, and post them in a thread that they might actually have some relevance to.

What appears to you to be an innate human inability to master our own language is merely yet another collossal failure of the government. If you're worried that something might be bringing down human culture, take a look at the corrupt bozos in Washington and the complete mess they make of absolutely everything they stick their greedy hands into.

I would love to know what makes you think I am worried about the down fall of human culture, and where the hell you got your oppinion that I think people are incapable of mastering their language. Again, you are completely off topic here, and I have no idea how any of what you are spewing forth on this thread has any relevance to the course of the discussion. For being so much better educated in "your day" you have some real problems with reading comprehension. Again, take the government shit else where. This isn't politics. This isn't a educatin discussion. This is about the development of language, and the possible psychological effects it had on the man kind as a species. If you read the thread it is fairly clear that I am dealing with psychological/evolutionary issues here, not socioeconomic or political.

Au contraire, language enables us. The more languages a person has at his disposal, the more different kinds of ideas he can entertain.

I have no idea where the hell both you and fountainhed are getting the idea that i am blaming language. Again, read the damn thread. Do your homework. It was established by the bottom of page one, that I was not saying that language hindered communication or thought. You know, before you preach about the topic, find out what it is. I have went to the trouble of summing this thread up at least twice now so people joining late would have some clue. I am wondering if the whole post is just invisibleto you because I can see it fine in my monitor.

Each language reflects the culture and philosophy of the people who developed it.

HOLY SHIT!!! A valid point that almost has some bearance on the issue. Of course, I said the same thing in the post right before yours. "...there is a major difference in thought and philosophy. While one could argue that this has no bearance on the subject at hand, I would beg to differ. Language and thought had to have developed hand in hand. One would have influenced the other and vice versa."

There's no such thing as "Asian languages." They fall into a number of different families.

Ok, you caught me being lazy. I was refering to the tonal languages. Mainly the different dialects of chinese.

There are only four tones in Mandarin and they are quite distinct.

I don't ever recall saying anythign about mandarin specifically. I can't remember which dialect I was learning, but there were more than four. Actually 5 if i remember correctly. Hard for me to illustrait but I will try: -, ^,V,/,\. perhaps you and I are talking about different dialects, or some other quality of the language altogether.

Not at all hard to master. What's difficult for Indo-European speakers is learning that you can't express emotion with your tone of voice. You have to learn to be more expressive with the language and say the words you mean.

Agreed

And again, you're making way too much of the tonal system. I didn't study it until I was an adult and theoretically incapable of learning a language so different from English. Instead I found it infinitely easier than Russian. You want to talk about difficult pronunciation, try Russian. It will make you tear your hair out.

Actually, i wasn't making any deal out of the tonal system other than it might be a replacement for a complex grammer structure. More emphasis on the tones and less on complex rules.

I vote for "E," all of the above. Life has to have both academia and popular culture. People need to laugh and dance and hum and be silly. We can't spend all of our lives memorizing the theory of relativity or trying to figure out what's so special about Bach.

Its amazing how in a series of either or questions, some one decides to pick a letter answer. Again, where is this superior education from "your day"?It wasn't multiple choice fraggle. Secondly I never said anything abotu everyone in the world. I said which would you rather have another "x" or another "y". Meaning one new person. Not a world of clones. Perhaps they've raised the bar on reading comprehension since your school days.

My wife and I are about as intellectual as most of you and we sit around passionately discussing impressionism and Jungian archetypes and whether Lincoln was a megalomaniac instead of the savior of our country. But you're just as likely to walk in on us rolling around on the floor with our doggies and watching Spongebob Squarepants.

Great. You play withyour dogs and watch cartoons. Am I supposed to be impressed?? Again, relevance to the topic??I give you a hint: NONE!!! On a personal note, I find most of the people that go around extolling the virtues of their own intelligence to be shouting too loudly over too little. Drop names all you want and fill the screen up with your quadrisylabic words. It isn't going to impress me until you can follow the topic at hand and add some real content, instead of wasting my time.

You've got to balance your yang and your yin, Grasshopper. That is the secret to happiness. Now you owe me a nickel.

Perhaps to you Fraggle, but my way isn't one of happiness yet.

I don't owe you shit.

 

[and2000x]

This is retarded banter from a man too afraid to face reality, the only reality he's ever lived in. He fears control because he is too weak to stand up on his own two feet under the gravity, that unwavering, unyeilding, unliberal gravity. Everything in nature excerts power and goes through a power process. In modern times, control and coercion are seen as something to fear and loathe (in fact, the very idea that we must hate these things is imprinted on us from birth in yet another manifestation of control). The TRUTH is that we are taught to rebel because it makes it more convenient for the free market. MTV preaches pseduo-rebellion which turns children away from school, from education, from nature, from family and subverts them into consumer slaves (under the impression that they are free.) This is much like the Judeo-Christians, who rebelled against Roman authority only to create their own jail cell. Now their religion is nothing more than a convenient marketing gag, tosed about by the so-called liberals and conservatives, who in reality only wish to give the weak and pathetic power.

What ever happened to TRUE POWER? Why does no one strive for it anymore? Where did that European spirit go? Where is that primordial death cry? Where is the Will To Power. Humanism triumphed over the 20th century and it will destroy the next.

 

[Mephura]

Originally posted by and2000x
This is retarded banter from a man too afraid to face reality, the only reality he's ever lived in.

So because you disagree, or in this case assume you do, it makes it retarded banter? Too afraid to face reality am I? Perhaps. Or, perhaps you are just too incompetent to comprehend my point.

How you set about defending your accusations proves it.

He fears control because he is too weak to stand up on his own two feet under the gravity, that unwavering, unyeilding, unliberal gravity.

I don't fear control in the slightest. In fact, a fear of control was never the issue. Control was never the issue. This poit has absolutely no relevance, so I'll just skip to the next one of your presumptions.

Everything in nature excerts power and goes through a power process. In modern times, control and coercion are seen as something to fear and loathe (in fact, the very idea that we must hate these things is imprinted on us from birth in yet another manifestation of control).

What is funny here is that this has nothing to do with power processes in nature. In fact this has very little to do with power processes in general. Perhaps you were raised in a different environment from me, but I don't fear or loath control or coercion. I am controlled everytime I go to work to make money. I am controlled every time I pay a bill. Coercion? I use it. You use it. Everyone does in some form or another. It makes no sense to use and accept something that is "imprinted on us from birth" to hate. In fact the statement as a whole doesn't make sense.

The idea that we must hate "x" being imprinted on us is another manisfestation of "x". If we hate it, why would we use it and agree to accept it. Perhaps you are an anarchist? Government and laws are forms of controll and most people would be lost without them. The fact that we are taught to believe and respect our government from a very young age just undermines your position even further.

The TRUTH is that we are taught to rebel because it makes it more convenient for the free market. MTV preaches pseduo-rebellion which turns children away from school, from education, from nature, from family and subverts them into consumer slaves (under the impression that they are free.)

Hmm...We rebel by being like everyone else? Explain that one to me. I thought the idea of rebeling was to go against the norm, not follow it. The truth is that you have little or no idea what you are babbling about and I sincerely doubt you have the intelligence to understand the point I am making. Read the thread about five or six times and study it for about a week. Maybe then you will be ready for the basics.
The fact that I made a point about the herd mentality and being taught to be unthinking consumers, yet you are here preaching it like something new just shows how little you actually comprehend of this thread.

This is much like the Judeo-Christians, who rebelled against Roman authority only to create their own jail cell.

Create their own jail? The most powerful combined religous force in the world today created their own jail? This point actually needs a little clarification before I, again, point out just how stupid you sound.

Now their religion is nothing more than a convenient marketing gag, tosed about by the so-called liberals and conservatives, who in reality only wish to give the weak and pathetic power.

Interesting quote. In one sentence you group together opposing political outlooks and say they are working towardsthe same goals. Very well, I'll bite. What are the differences between liberals and conservatives then. You said yourself they both are trying to give power to the weak and pathetic. If they are both trying so damn hard, who is it that is stopping them? Surely not the weak and pathetic themselves. Why one would think that they would be, dare I say it, too weak and pathetic to stop those horribly evil conservatives and liberals who seek to empower them.

What ever happened to TRUE POWER? Why does no one strive for it anymore? Where did that European spirit go?

True power? You mean like:
http://www.realultimatepower.net/
?

The european spirit is much the same as it has ever been. They would much rather controling things in a "civilized" manner by marrage or granting of titles. If you want savage thurst for power, look to the americas or asia.

Where is that primordial death cry? Where is the Will To Power. Humanism triumphed over the 20th century and it will destroy the next.

Humanism triuphed? How? Please do explain your stand point instead of acting as if it is accepted fact.

 

[and2000x]

The triumph of Communism and Capitalism over monarchy, feudalism, and fascism marked the triumph of humanism. These systems are humanist in that they benefit the individual human interests over any long term goals, which has run counter to the concept of government for the last 8000 years. They are dangerously relativistic in their approach to values and monetary comfort triumphs over reason.

Today's market gives no concern to:
1. Future consequences.
2. Environmental destruction.
3. A standard set of social values
4. Cultural boundaries.
5. Durable and lasting products.
6. Individual interests compromising the whole

In fact, anyone who speaks up and says 'I want to save the earth' or 'I don't like mexicans working in my office', are labelled as ingrates, fascists, tree huggers, bigots, etc. From this fear profit is generated. Profit is the human god.

For a better understanding, read this from nazi.org (Libertarian National Socialist Green Party):

"Introduction

Our world faces a choice between a humanist system and a naturalist one. Humanism currently benefits the social, industrial and political interests which profit from humankind's lack of direction. Consequently, naturalism is demonized, despite its inherent tendency to focus more on heroic goals than the fear of negativity that generates mass reaction and, consequently, profit.

1. History

Our modern government is combined of social, industrial and religious influences which developed among those who could not succeed in the first centralized societies, thus designed competing bureaucratic values.

A. Religion
Early bureaucratic society produced dissidents who designed the system instead around the individual, replacing collective values with political mass appeal.

B. Industry
With the advent of technology, the industrial revolution converted tribes into national states which regulated profit activity, forming the basis for international trading and politics.

C. Social
Societies in which individuals were guaranteed evolutionary success (survival, breeding) for conformity became popular, in turn shaping the populations within them.

2. Effects
Although humanity has succeeded technologically, we have failed to maintain a society based on values, or which respects our environment, preferring instead an atmosphere of conformity and "safe" lack of conflict. The result is stultifying social taboo and an inability to conceive and execute long-term plans.

3. Problems
A dystopian society does not agree on common goals, and individuals worry about their own convenience only. Consequently the responsibility falls on its leaders, who are busy seeking profit. The result? Massive environmental damage, social decay, and a fundamental boredom and misery pervades daily tasks. Further, society seems to be self-consuming."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As for language controlling people, it's nothing new. A particular anarchist, who's name escapes me, is cooped up in his cabin obsessing over how to destroy language. Sounds rather fatalistic to me.

 

[gendanken]

Enough. AND2000x, I could very well get into calling you a miserable bag of pigshit but then you’d miss out on what you really are. You were looking for a place to pope about fascist "Will to Power" and some 90 posts into your newbie stumbling you erred and thought this was the fucking place.
You skimmed.
You browsed.
You rushed like a mofo and missed the point of this thread entirely.
And that’s fine, but if you’re going to be flirting with threads this thread is not it. Any more out of you and I’ll be backing you up into a corner crying like a fucking pussy wanting to bite me.

Want to prate about bureaucracies? Rand? objectivism? Mein Kempf? Endorse Napoleon maybe? You could but you’re going to have take your soap box and patch you up a new thread. There you can wag that little finger of yours all you want and belch out "Will to Power" like you’re eating it, you neck talking fuck.
Most threadjacking assholes don’t phase me, but you’re murder. Big mistake.

I’m not a moderator and nothing would thrill me more than getting one in a chokehold and forcing the deletion of some posts but that’s iffy.

I’ll tell you what I’ll do:
I’m going to mark this post with a red mark. All posts before the red mark symbolize an open forum open to attacks left and right from clueless political fucks that don’t read very well with few exceptions. Everything after the red line is for fellow posters who are just as fascinated with what language is, what it does, and all the odd manifestations this odd little invention of the human mind may imply.

All we’re doing is theorizing. No one here, including myself, is guaranteed the fortune or glory of the Voltaires, Sartres, or Nietzches so all we have is this thread or anyone willing to hear. Second rate psudos like you, and2000x, have no say in that.

Fragglerocker has brought to the table some valuable data to chew on, despite all the needless trivia, but that’s just a habit of his so he’ll do. You, and2000x my dear, are getting thrown out with the fucking bath water.

***EDIT*** And for the next time you're itching to bullshit, scratch it here and2000, won't you?
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26157

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Disclaimer: Now, everything after this line is going to pick up from where I left off on my last post. Who’s with me?