On language: on controlling and being controlled

Mephurio:
Yes, I see what your saying. Concider this though
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SWIIINNNEEEEE!!!
How dare you find flaw in my pearly pearls????!!!!
Treason.
Sabotage.
SLLlllaaaaaaaaUUUGhter!!!!

You're going to roast like a pig for daring to ask that I consider anything of yours, Mephurio. How dare you challenge the gendy? How dare you brave my fires?? You've gambled fool's gold, my dear. You manic depressive little sack of hot shit! The boldness in you to think you have any right to an opinion.


























Kidding. Ha. HA-HA. Laugh with me.

Wonderful. We can leave the grammar to simmer for a while and then come back to tie loose ends. Yes? Only remember that there are theories aplenty on human development. From Pavlov to Freude to the behaviorists, Piaget seems to be the one on par with I'm trying to do here since there is an organismic factor in it that's intriguing.

For what's next, the only thing we're going to need carry are those three phenomenal properties of language in a satchel:

vicariousness
displacement
Incursión

That's not too hard is it? One two three? Traveling light is always the funnest way to do it.

Remember also that in my book, spirituality centers around how quickly language transgressed from common invention to necessity to addiction. It so easily became a runaway culural developement and neglect is the key as to why.

I have to gather my strings and work up a tapestry. Ready?
 
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First things first:
What you must understand before anything is that this little theory of mine is not sitting in some glorious book nice and neat on a bookshelf. Its already woven superbly in my head- yet all my notes are scattered randomly between books, scribbled in margins, and strewn about between folders so maybe now you see why putting it all in order has been both slow and a pain in the ass.
But I’m loving every last second of it and since you’re still with me….

Firstly, a certain Marquis has provided some info concerning ‘desk clouds’ and research being done on how the human brain connects expressions not usually seen in context. For example, how does Bob react not to "salt and pepper" or a "desk job", but to a "desk cloud" or "salt crayon" instead? What fascinates me in all this is not that researchers are trying to find how but where it is that the brain is making its connection by means of ERP (which detects electrical activity in the brain). So far, results show that its short term memory that blazes alive to make the connection. Rats. I’d give anything to hear that it was the left side of the brain that flared up instead.
I still say they don’t know where they’re looking. Science can’t even poinpoint where memory even is.

But going back to what I started, my point is really quite simple: Language and religion are siblings.

My contention centers around language coming before anything. And everything.
I’m not sure that language itself came before a man first drew his art on cave walls but I’m positive that it came before civilization. Writing is traced all the way back to the Mesopotamians but surely man had been talking for at least hundreds of years before cuneiform. And all this talking allowed to roam among men unsupervised-
and without a medium to track its beginnings -
is what has made a once very simple invention (language) into a powerful giant- flexible, elusive and hopelessly implicit. And untamable. The same thing happens with heroine. All because of neglect.

And it was the inevitable neglect in which language was born in that gave way to its sister- religion. It was the mixture of the "untouchable" fomenting in language getting tangled with all the abstracts that made the entrance of all the world’s religions incredibly easy- and so the Druid, Celtic, Pagan, Aztec, Roman, Greek, Christian, Catholic, and Muslim religions, all the world’s religions that have been plaguing us since.

Remember now one of those three vexing properties in lanugage:
displacement: it allows you to talk about things that are not there, or never been there, or going to be there. It allows for things that both are and aren't. Like fairies.

The very fact that you can bring up something that’s not there or ever will be there is the only portal we have for the heavens. Wouldn’t you agree? The only one - (barring hallucinogens which are supplements only so don’t get fucking nitpicky)(ha)

Consider here that in Africa there are families who have a nasty habit of leaving children they don’t want to starve to death in the jungle. The Funali, for one, are nomadic peoples notorious for leaving disabled infants behind when crossing the Sahel. These infants have been taken up and adopted by monkeys, raised and naturalized by monkeys. So far there are some 30 or so documented cases of ferral children throughout the world, one as recently as 1991 being a young African boy named John Ssebunya. Some have been adopted by veret monkeys, dogs, wolves, bears, gazelles- its amazing. The most famous however was Victor who was found and “rescued” from the woods in France and immediately put to the textbooks under the leadership of a doctor. After trying to teach the boy language and to use it other than in uttering quasi-words for the immediate (like eating or drinking), Dr. Itard after trying for some six years finally wrote:

"Finally, however, seeing that the continuation of my efforts and the passing of time brought about no change, I resigned myself to the necessity of giving up any attempt to produce speech, and abandoned my pupil to incurable dumbness."



.......Still with me?
 
Says gendy:
The very fact that you can bring up something that’s not there or ever will be there is the only portal we have for the heavens. Wouldn’t you agree? The only one - (barring hallucinogens which are supplements only so don’t get fucking nitpicky)(ha)
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And in case one of you pukes decides to get nitpicky and rally around hallucinogens anway, I have something against that too.

Locoweed and valarian, for one.
So I dare you.
ha.
 
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Allright, now!
This doctor tried his very best to instill this wild boy with all the social mores that makes a ‘proper human’ even to the point of trying to channel Victor’s sexual urges into love when the boy hit puberty- he placed young girls near him and tried to tame Victor’s lashing out like an animal. Needless to say, Victor became violently frustrated and the little doctor gave up.

The wild boy could only symbolize objects with language as a means to an immediate end. The impossible was trying to teach this boy the abstracts like beauty, love, and hate.
What’s striking is that the only thing these ‘wild children’ can’t ever, ever, ever grasp is religion or for that matter the abstract.
These children are incredibly stoic, wild, and fickle yet they cry, love, and laugh like the rest of us.

The only things they can’t do is understand the invisible.

Methods to baptize John into the Christian faith have been futile. He doesn’t get it.
The same is seen in autistic children and autistic savants. The absolutely striking thing is that autistic savants take incredibly easy to music and math in spite of language, which in a way supports the biological stand I’m taking on the left side of the brain. But that’s beside the point here.

So what do all these children have in common? All of them grew up without language. None had ever been exposed and the ones that had been only got to the solid basics of a one or a two year old.

Tell them about love, angels and fairies and they look at you like you shit your panties- something they do anyway and bloody messier since they don't have panties on. Kidding.

But that's what's intriguing. Its intriguing to find that all the languages in the world have been invented in exactly the same way consisting of the same properties. And by having it, the focus of control was displaced as it is in the superstitious- which is perfect fodder for religion.

Isn't it fasninating to find that tribes from all corners of the globe that have developed 'in isolation' are religious also?
 
Interesting indeed...
Man, without others of his kind, finds no abstracts? Perhaps we should be sure of this and raise some kids in that kind of enviroment. Hey, lets raise a group of them that way and see what happens. I'm currious.
 
Mephura:
Hey, lets raise a group of them that way and see what happens. I'm currious.
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Ohohooh OH Ho but mon cheri….it has been done!
And it’s called the “Forbidden Experiment” among social scientists They gather around this golden apple salivating because they can't have it. But purportedly there actually was such an experiment performed long ago by an Egyptian pharoh. The story goes that he wanted to know which race came first- either his or some rival one so he took two newborns from a family and gave them to a shepherd to be brought up in a flock of sheep with strict orders that no one say a word, not even a peep, around the babies.

But the outcome sounds biased to me (supposedly the first word out of the babie’s mouth was a word 'becos' already known in a an already spoken tounge which is fucking BULLSHIT) but the interesting part is that this experiment was carried out all the same.

I’m planning to do it with my little boy if I'm destined to have one. Poor bastard.
Kidding.

I’ll be back tonight with the rest if you'll have me. Sevi?
 
Wes:
gendy you crack me up you freak. dig that
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But you know what I would really dig and really get me freaky?
If I heard that you've read this whole thread starting from exactly the 17th post on the first page. Therein starts what this thread is about.

Say you did, and you're a keeper.
Say you did not, and there's a claw on my paw with your name on it.
Kidding.
 
Originally posted by gendanken
FYI- most everything we do has a right "handedness" to it also.
When someone throws you a soccer ball, what foot do you hit it with?

WIth a microscope, what eye do you put to the lens?

Most people when asked to picture or imagine something, they tend to look to the right. Sure you can say most of this shit is subjective but DAMN is it interesting.
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While I find your analysis interesting, I'm not sure that the presumption that the point is to "conquer fear" is necessarily correct. Maybe, but I'd rather discuss it a bit.

I've been under the impression for some time now that the point of the mind is twofold:

1) To satisfy whatever need it percieves
2) To provide context for input

While I agree that conquering fear seems like an implicit aspect of the calling of conciousness... hmm. I dunno.

I guess "conquering fear" bothers me because fear is uh, primal and a seems to me to be a subset of the emotional component of mind rather than the main focus of existence. What do you think?
 
Wesmorris:
1) To satisfy whatever need it percieves
2) To provide context for input
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Of course. This is the only preservative medium the biped has for ideas, needs, input, output, and progress.
I guess "conquering fear" bothers me because fear is uh, primal and a seems
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And the point is that language has taken the primal and sat on it.

That's all.

The gest is this, Wessy:
Mephura sits down and writes him up a thread.
He wrote about how man as he moved himself out from the clutches of Mother Nature used his lingo to label the unknowable.
By doing so he weaned himself of instinct. And this gave way to herd mentality.

Then I come in, Mephura agrees with me and then lo and behold I go "Say.........I had a theory about language once. Care to hear it or would that be thread jacking?"
He gave me the go and I've been at it since.
Voila.

The crux of my theory revolves around trying to explain pesky religion away. How? By contending that language and religion are siblings.
Nothing more. Nothing less.

Know where things stand now?
 
I can dig it you can dig it they can dig it we can...

Meph, man I dig what you're saying but I think you err slightly. Though it is slight, to me I lose you a bit because you seem to forgo the premise at some point. Could be that I'm wrong about my ideas or I interpreted your words incorrectly but you seem to forget to attempt to ensure that the idea of evolution, more specifically - survival necessarily pervades this subject as ultimately all can be interpreted back to 'being' rather than not. Life is the semi-perpetual compulsion to not not be. That given, all aspects of it have to be though of as a fact of this compulsion... and it's increase in effieciency in not not being over time. (on a side note, to me that is a direct implication that the 'life-force' (that which makes things want to be alive, the "spark of life") is the exact universal opposite of entropy since it is order from chaos. Maybe it's an order of order within chaos. That made me dizzy.

Originally posted by Mephura
I've been threatened with bodily harm if I don't keep this alive, so....
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Hehe, don't let her boss you! Well hey if you're into it. ;)
Originally posted by Mephura
Let's recap (mind you this will not be in chronological order)
Here is my theory thus far for those new to this thread:

In days long ago, when man was less developed as a species, we lacked the ability to reason and imagine as we do now. Our minds where governed primarily by instincts. Language, except on its most basic level, had not developed.

Instincts, acting as a set of intructions, told us how to deal with fear/the unknown. Because of this, fear held little sway over us and actually fell out of our mind until it was present: i.e. a lack of conscious worry.

With the development of language came labling and thinking. I am not saying that language caused us to think or that thinking caused us to create language. I believe that the two developed hand in hand. Bigger thoughts required bigger words so to speak.

Labling and thinking allowed us to control our environment, but it also lead to instincts being banished to the deepest darkest parts of our minds.
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I'm pretty much completely with you up until this point, but might argue a few details. Close enough.
Originally posted by Mephura
Fear jumped to the for front because as thinking man, we realized that the unknown was all around us, and we had to know how to react to it if we wanted to survive.
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I think you're mostly right, but now you've gotten into a distribution of attributes rather that for some people fear is an issue, some not - even in the beginnings. What evolutionary trait of weakness survives unless some are immune to that weakness to protect the rest (or I guess the species somehow impervious but that's unlikely)? It's a matter of chemical distribution, come combinations of nutrients and DNA leads to a connection with fear, some doesn't as is necessary for the species to survive or it doesn't. So while you may have a bit of merit as a generality.. I think adding the specificity of "fear" and THE prime motivator instead of ...
well do you simply interpret fear as the instinct to not die? if so, then yeah you'd be right I guess... if fear is only a subset of instinct (in that context) then your comment's pertinence subsides proportional to its percentage of the populous for which is a big deal. Er, that's my rant anyway
Originally posted by Mephura
Labling things was done in order to communicate concepts quickly.
Wich is more dangerous the rabid wolf or the friendly puppy.
You get the point. We lable in an attempt to destroy/remove the unknown, and thus 'crontrol' or environs more.
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Certainly. That's the survival instinct kicking it old school. Control is the means by which not to die. Further as per my earlier assertion, control allows us to achieve our percieved need.
Originally posted by Mephura
Labling ourselves has led us to a problem. We began to lable for control.
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You could put it that way, but maybe it's important to add the consideration that as concepts develop, words are developed in the act of honing them. Note that our vocabulary does not shrink. Some of it is about control, some of it is about the inherent 'momentum' of abstraction. I suppose it might be argued that they are one and the same. I mean, if you don't control your abstraction, you're probably not going to survive very long. That doesn't make for a successful species. Back to evolution.
Originally posted by Mephura
Now, we have reached the point where our lables have begun to control us.
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Regardless of how you got there that's a good point. I just had the thought that it seems to me that you're labelling the details and I'm trying to piece together the architecture or geometry of the system. You're talking about a branch whereas I'm referring to the relationship to the base. Maybe I'm just :m:.

I need to say more, but later.
 
Christ Wess!!

You trying to thread jack this beauty?

Kidding..

so are you going to continue gendanken, or are you just going to leave me wanting (as seems to be your M.O.)
 
Originally posted by gendanken
By contending that language and religion are siblings.
Nothing more. Nothing less.

Know where things stand now?
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As far as that goes, I reached that conclusion long ago - though via a slightly different route. For instance I contend that it is inherent to the condition of consciousness (at least as I know it) to seek, provide and establish context. The mind performs this function and it's other function in an exceedingly compulsory fashion. The question "whassup wit dat" is required to establish context. The base of that context is self, the base of self is "why is there self?" (if you're equipped to get that far anyway, regardles in a soceity the question will arise, be posed by those who did get that far and addressed anyway). With no context (in the sense that hehe.. concepts in the societal or language sense are like a giant dungheap with signs on it which grows with the knowledge of each generation or something like that), bullshit suffices. As with the development of language, you just start making shit up. Eh, I'll stop.

I think it's a valid argument (and utterly crushes religion), but you must consider: if it can't be comprehended does it exist? Why the duality for an answer? Because that's how it is. It exists because you can conceive of it but is a null as the time before time to those who cannot. That's a hard pill to swallow for me, but I've long since choked it down. I think that means that even an irrifutable argument, if sufficiently esoteric, is significantly comprimised from what might consider it worth if clearly concieved.
 
Re: Christ Wess!!

Originally posted by Mephura
You trying to thread jack this beauty?

Kidding..

so are you going to continue gendanken, or are you just going to leave me wanting (as seems to be your M.O.)
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Just attempting to participate. Thought I'd slide you some thoughts.
 
Re: I can dig it you can dig it they can dig it we can...

Originally posted by wesmorris
Meph, man I dig what you're saying but I think you err slightly. Though it is slight, to me I lose you a bit because you seem to forgo the premise at some point. Could be that I'm wrong about my ideas or I interpreted your words incorrectly but you seem to forget to attempt to ensure that the idea of evolution, more specifically - survival necessarily pervades this subject as ultimately all can be interpreted back to 'being' rather than not. Life is the semi-perpetual compulsion to not not be. That given, all aspects of it have to be though of as a fact of this compulsion... and it's increase in effieciency in not not being over time. (on a side note, to me that is a direct implication that the 'life-force' (that which makes things want to be alive, the "spark of life") is the exact universal opposite of entropy since it is order from chaos. Maybe it's an order of order within chaos. That made me dizzy.
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I see what you are saying. I was viewing it as an evolutionary thing. If instincts control everything, there could easily come a tiem when those instincts cause you to react wrongly to the situation. Evolution is know for tryign out alot of different approaches to things. One could argue that the different philosophies/methods of thought that developed from different cultures aren't reflections of environment but, rather, differnt avenues evolution is taking with the whole thought governing action idea.

Evolution doesn't just automatically go for the most efficient way. It many times a case of trial and error, with the errors dying out. In simpler mechanisms such as fur coloration and whatnot, those dead ends become apparent faster. We are dealing with speach generally, but more specifically the way the mind is working deep down. Speach is merely our measuring tape. Certain things can be spotted in language that show us how the mind is working. (maybe. after all this is all just conjecture)




Hehe, don't let her boss you! Well hey if you're into it. ;)
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She can boss me into anything she likes.. ;)

I'm pretty much completely with you up until this point, but might argue a few details. Close enough.
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The devil 's in the details wes. I am in no way educated enough about this shit to even attempt to play with details. Its all general. Thanks for realizing that.


I think you're mostly right, but now you've gotten into a distribution of attributes rather that for some people fear is an issue, some not - even in the beginnings. What evolutionary trait of weakness survives unless some are immune to that weakness to protect the rest (or I guess the species somehow impervious but that's unlikely)? It's a matter of chemical distribution, come combinations of nutrients and DNA leads to a connection with fear, some doesn't as is necessary for the species to survive or it doesn't. So while you may have a bit of merit as a generality.. I think adding the specificity of "fear" and THE prime motivator instead of ...
well do you simply interpret fear as the instinct to not die? if so, then yeah you'd be right I guess... if fear is only a subset of instinct (in that context) then your comment's pertinence subsides proportional to its percentage of the populous for which is a big deal. Er, that's my rant anyway
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Fear is a touchy subject. I started to try to analyze it once. messy messy...I agree with your begining statements here. However, when i say fear is the prime motivator, I mean fear in all its forms. What I am saying is that it is the one things that overrides all others. Whether that fear is for your self or another, well... We are getting really subjective then. That is why I was just sticking to generalities. Maybe I will go back to the fear analysis.

However, there are certain traits that are harmful to species if they are removed from their nitch environment. SInce fear is controllable, in the present state, there would be no need to end that avenue. Fear is actually quite useful.


Certainly. That's the survival instinct kicking it old school. Control is the means by which not to die. Further as per my earlier assertion, control allows us to achieve our percieved need.
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exactly my point. Christ, maybe you're crazy too! you actually agree with me and can understand what I am saying.


You could put it that way, but maybe it's important to add the consideration that as concepts develop, words are developed in the act of honing them. Note that our vocabulary does not shrink. Some of it is about control, some of it is about the inherent 'momentum' of abstraction. I suppose it might be argued that they are one and the same. I mean, if you don't control your abstraction, you're probably not going to survive very long. That doesn't make for a successful species. Back to evolution.
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As for the back to evolution and shrinking vocab, go back to one of the first couple of pages (I think). I believe that I came to the conclusion that thinking is bad for survival and evolution is attempting to get rid of it with social dynamics. Its the whole herd mentality bit.


Regardless of how you got there that's a good point. I just had the thought that it seems to me that you're labelling the details and I'm trying to piece together the architecture or geometry of the system. You're talking about a branch whereas I'm referring to the relationship to the base. Maybe I'm just :m:.

I need to say more, but later.
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That seems to happen alot with me. Everyone is talkign about the ass end of the beast and the shit that its making and I would rather look at the head and see what is feeding into that shit. (so to say) I guess I am just a nitpicker by nature perhaps.
 
Wes:
As far as that goes, I reached that conclusion long ago - though via a slightly different route
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Surely you have. And that's what blows about the sophies- there's always someone out there that gets to it first, on a different footing, but still different means to parallel ends.
Happenened to Shcopehaeur with the Easterns. Liebniz with Newton. Even the gendy.

But you've arrived at your end using contexts. I'm saying language was neglected to the point of renegadism and this is what mistyfied its properties. Made a hairy homonid's invention acend the throne and become the stuff of legends.

The neatest thing I've read in your.....uhm....vivisection was this:
if it can't be comprehended does it exist?
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If your talking about soul........does it exist?



What I’m also trying to say is that perhaps the only reasons why we humans coined the term "soul’ or ‘spirt" is because language has allowed us to go ‘in’ (recursion) and think something’s there. Language can make a hundred people where there’s only 4, and two people out of one, no?
And two people out of one is what’s got us thinking there’s a mental voice, no? Mine sounds British. But anyway- isn’t it the easiest thing in the world to think that this thinking voice is a soul?
And who or what is accountable? L-a-n-g-u-a-g-e.
Philosophers (like Plato and some others too comfortable up on their ivory towers to put the books down and go out in the hot sun to see what’s really there) have written on the elusive quality in man known as ‘personality’ or 'character'. And I believe the general consensus is that society and language is what bestows a man with this quality.

But its not personality that is given a man by language for animals of all stripes have a personality too- from the busybody beaver, to the nitpicking bower bird, to the panicky zebra, the mischevious capuchin monkey, the passive koala, all the way down to the naughty little parakeet.
All my dogs and cats have beautiful personalities.
One is playful. The other reminds me of Eeyore the depressive donkey. Another one is a wuss and gets beat up alot. Another is loveably stupid. One is paranoid and the other one is one hell of a fearless little sunuvabitch.
What language gives us is not personality, but a fallacious sense of spirituality. And that’s culprit.

The question now is why? Why do we have to be spiritual? What’s the need other than the obvious? Why did we even start spirituality in the first place? I’m so tired of hearing the same things- man needs Zeus, Dios and God because he’s a manic depressive, beastly little coward afraid of dying. He’s insecure. He’s lazy and meek. Whatever.
There has to be a more poignant reason why there’s a rift between man and the house dog.
Dogs dream all the time. I’ve seen it. And surely my dog sees me in his dream sometimes. No doubt if I died he’d still dream of me.
So why would a dog dreaming of loved ones and seeing the skies blaze with thunder not mystify the happenings whereas a man would?

What do you think? Yes, I'm allowing my lords a breather for opinions. Tee hee.....
 
Originally posted by wesmorris
As far as that goes, I reached that conclusion long ago - though via a slightly different route. For instance I contend that it is inherent to the condition of consciousness (at least as I know it) to seek, provide and establish context. The mind performs this ......
....for me, but I've long since choked it down. I think that means that even an irrifutable argument, if sufficiently esoteric, is significantly comprimised from what might consider it worth if clearly concieved.
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I am seeing two sides of the same coin again. I think you are right on the money wess, but then you have (well, ok you don't have to but..) ask why do we want those answers anyway? what is drivingus, eating at us, day and night, to figure this shit out? Wouldn't it be much more relaxing if we just shrugged and said "whatever"? I think what we are really digging for here is not the how and why of religion, but the how and why of the how and why, you know? And when we figure that out, we are going to ask ourselves the how and why of why we were asking the how and why of the how and why..or something like that:confused:

and as for the other

Just attempting to participate. Thought I'd slide you some thoughts.
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I know and i appreciate it.

Now just don't make me start the primative male chest beating and we'll be cool..dig?
 
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