Re: [xmca] Language, meaning and culture.

[Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com>]

Please read these writings on how language creates culture and let me  
know what you think of it. There is much redundancy here, some  
intentional and most because of editing shortcomings. I suggest that  
you read the LAST TWO Paragraphs First. I just wrote them and they  
seem to be more succinct.

		Joseph Gilbert  805-646-7686









Language functions, in human society, as the generator of culture. By  
the effects on us of the

sounds we utter, we inform ourselves of the effects on us of the  
things which make up our

world. Since the only sense of the meaning of any thing is one and  
the same as the effect

on us of the thing, and since we relate to our world through our  
words, language informs us

of the meaning of things. This informing takes place when we use  
words to refer to things.

We are born into a language-using group and learn the meaning of our  
world simply by

learning our group’s language.

	We have a distinct and unique reaction to each vocal sound just as  
we do to each

facial expression and postural position. All forms of body language,  
postural, facial and

vocal, are expressions of states of our internal goings-on and are  
born of feeling/emotional

states. and receate these states by resonant identification.

	The languages we humans speak currently are the results of the  
experiential

contribution of our ancestors. However they, (our distant relatives),  
felt about whatever they

had words for, we now feel again in the present moment, when we utter  
the words they

uttered. Therefore language functions somewhat as a seed: the  
experience of past

peoples was represented in the words they spoke and now, when we  
voice those words,

we re-experience what they did.

	So, language is institutionalized perception. How we, as a society,  
perceive our

world, is formed by the vocal sounds, a form of body language, we use  
to refer to the

things that make it up.

	Our actions are determined by our perceptions. If we want to change

the way we act we must change the way we perceive our world. And we  
can change how

we perceive our world by changing how we refer to the things that  
constitute our world.

	The feelings/emotions of actors on stage and of all of us are  
communicated by our

actions. The way someone walks tells us much about how they feel. Our  
face conveys

voluminous and subtle information about our emotional state. The  
sound of our voice

carries emotional content. And, although we normally are not aware of  
it, the acticulate vocal

sounds, (the sounds of our vowells and consonants), are loaded with  
emotional/feeling-

based information. The information that comes from the articulate  
sounds of our words is the

same no matter what mood we may be experiencing while we speak. That  
aspect of

information conveyance is institutionalized/standardized. The tone of  
voice, cadence, and

volume dynamics are unique to each situation.

	One can experience the effect on ourselves of the various vocal  
sounds by, while in

a sensitive, receptive mode, saying those sounds out loud and sensing  
their effects. I have

done that and have, it seems, discovered their meanings. You can do  
that also.

	This stealth function of language must be brought to light  if we  
would be able to

understand the importance of recreating culture. We must understand  
that our behavior, as a

society, is predominanrly linked to our culture, which is a result of  
our language.
	
	We do not objectively know the ultimate meaning of anything and  
consequently

derive our sense of the meanings of things from the effects on us of  
our words. Words, as

sounds, affect us subliminally, supplying us with a feeling for  
whatever we name. It is that

feeling that we experience from the sounds of our words that supplies  
us with a consensus

basis for our action.
	
	We cannot realistically expect humans to act in a way contradictory  
to their culture’s

bias. For example, Marx’s economic/social theory was used as a  
rallying standard to

enable regiem change. After those individuals who had experienced the  
despotism of the

czar had left the scene, the body-politic eventually rejected  
collectivism, the transplanted

economic organ. Russian culture is fundamentally feudal and Russian  
society naturally

reverted to its default mode, defined by its culture.

	The czar was replaced by the head commissar and nothing much  
changed. Marx

held that the economic relationships within society create all other  
human relations. It seems

that culture is the cause of the nature of human relationships within  
any society.

	
	Please contact me at <joeg4us@roadrunner.com> or call 805-646-7686.





                             The Culture Made Us Do It
                   “The unrecognized function of language”

    As an iceberg exists mostly under the surface of the water which  
supports it, hidden from view, the largest consequence of language  
tends to be hidden under the surface of our awareness. Most crucial  
human activities go on without awareness, for example, all of the  
bodily functions. Many deliberate activities proceed without much  
intentional awareness. For example, once one knows how to drive a  
car, much less awareness is needed to operate the vehicle, than when  
one is first learning. The subconscious mind supports the same kinds  
of activities as does the conscious mind, however, with less effort.  
Anything that can be automated, is.  Automating essential activities  
frees the conscious mind to focus on issues in relation to which we  
feel we need to learn to more effectively cope, (those issues that  
require conscious attention until new behavioral patterns are in  
place). There is no need to be aware of processes that take place  
well enough without attention. It is only when a problem arises that  
we humans, in an attempt to solve it, focus our awareness on it. If  
we are coping well enough without awareness, why be aware? We don’t  
fix something if it doesn’t seem broken. We don’t reinvent our wheel  
as long as it’s still rolling. However, upon examination, our human  
condition appears to have been painfully broken for as long as we can  
recall, and must be repaired. How may we fix it?

    Could it be that our behavior is governed by something that we  
cannot see, something of which we are not cognizant? Is there  
anything in our nature that would preclude such a possibility, the  
possibility that our behavior may be directed by forces not within  
the purview of our everyday consciousness? What could such a force be?

	The ability to produce vocal sounds made it’s appearance on the  
scene before our progenitors made words of those sounds. The ability  
to vocalize articulately is a prerequisite to the ability to  
verbalize. Words appeared when our ancient ancestors became cognizant  
of the relatedness of stimului and their vocal responses to them.  
When they began using vocalizations to bring to mind, things, they  
made the transition between obtaining their sense of the meaning of  
things from direct experience of the things to deriving a sense of  
the meaning of things from experiencing the the effects on them of  
the sounds of the words for the things. This supercession of the  
primal world by the symbolic world was the start of culture.

	Being able to talk about things was very advantageous to our distant  
relatives. They could confer and plan. More important, they  
experienced a common sense of the meaning of the things in their  
world by using common symbols with which to refer to them.

	Culture was advantageous to our ancestors in the ancient, pre- 
industrial environment. Now our technology provides us with the power  
to create and reside in an artificial environment, one made according  
to the values inherent in our primitive culture. Our culture provides  
us with marching orders and our technology enables us to march very  
forcefully. Are we marching toward the edge of a precipice?
	All action is preceded by a decision to act, be that decision  
consciously or subconsciously made. All decisions are based on a  
consideration of the consequences of those decisions. These effects  
on us of the consequences of our actions are the same as and  
identical with the meanings of those actions. How do we know the  
meanings of any thing? How do we know the effects on us of any thing?  
Do we know the effects on us of things directly as a consequence of  
our direct experience with them or by indirect experience with the  
symbols for those things?

    When we talk about culture, what do we have in mind? In the New  
World Dictionary of the American Language, the #6 definition of  
culture, is, ”The ideas, customs, skills, arts, etc. of a given  
people in a given period; civilization.” I define human culture as,  
“The values/assumptions that are shared by the users of any given  
language.”
    The history of the human race is basically, the record of the  
interactions of the people with their own and other cultures. We have  
been, for the most part, passive recipients of the cards dealt us by  
our cultures. Like passengers on a train, whose course is determined  
by the tracks that were laid down before they embarked on the train,  
our fates are largely determined by a course set previous to our  
birth and will continue to be unless we take matters into our own  
minds and hands. Wouldn’t we rather be active participants in shaping  
our destiny? We can be, if we understand how culture works. It is a  
simple and natural phenomena, and although we created it, we did so  
unconsciously and are not yet cognizant of how it works. Until we do  
become aware of the mechanics of culture, we will be merely actors in  
a script not of our choosing.
    Just as understanding our biology liberates us from some of the  
chains of previously “immutable law”, so too, knowing what culture is  
and consequently, how to alter it, will free us from our collective  
destiny determined by our acting upon the information contained  
within our language, that information being accepted by each of us in  
the process of learning to verbally communicate.
    When we realize that we cannot go on indefinitely, unaware of  
the root cause of our behavior, we may be more likely to look for new  
perspectives on the question of why we do what we do.
    Through the years, centuries and millennia, our culture has  
served us for better or for worse. It seems that we now acknowledge  
that we are dealing with challenging circumstances and that we need  
to somehow change our ways of dealing with our situation. Before  
technology and industrialization, we did not feel the need to address  
our cultural shortcomings nearly as much as we do now. The power to  
alter our environment given to us by our technology has brought the  
issue of our destructive behavior to the forefront. We are confronted  
by the results of our cultural inadequacy. However, as yet, we have  
not identified the source of our problem. We have not yet realized  
how we are possessed by our culture or even what culture is. We  
sometimes question why we act in ways so antithetical to our  
professed beliefs/values. We go to church on Sunday and are back to  
our normal patterns on Monday. Our saints and prophets tell us “The  
Truth”, and we agree with their teachings. Yet we continue to behave  
in contradiction to our professed beliefs/values, as we have for  
generations. We act in ways characteristic of our culture, not in  
ways representing of our best understandings. This contradiction  
between the values that we believe consciously and the values that  
seem to be truly motivating our behavior is the cause of much  
confusion, stress and cynicism. We are passive recipients of the  
perspective instilled in us by our culture. We must create a culture  
which contains a world-view with which we agree. Perhaps, if we  
became conscious of the nature of the relationship between ourselves  
and our culture, we would be able to do so.

					-------------------


    How can we experience the effects on our emotions of the vocal  
sounds we utter and/or hear? I did, by saying the sounds of our  
language in the sequence in which they occur in our alphabet and  
sensitizing myself to the emotional effects of those sounds.
				        ---------------------
    We used to live in whatever shelters, such as caves or rock  
overhangs, we found. Then we learned to make shelters where we  
wished. We have, until now, lived within and according to whatever  
culture in which we were born. We can now attempt to make our culture  
one that instills in us the values we consciously hold, rather than  
the values held by our distant ancestors.
    When I was in grade-school, it was commonly thought that culture  
is classical music, opera, the fine arts, classic literature, theater  
and such. I sensed that culture was far more than that; much more  
fundamental than that, and that culture existed deeply ingrained in  
each of us. Not until I discovered the mechanics of language did I  
realize what culture is, what it does to us and how it does it.

    Language is the factory and culture is the product. Culture is  
an abstraction and language is the physical mechanism from which it  
springs. Language is emotionally evocative sounds used to represent  
things, thereby conveying to us the affects-on-us/the-meanings-of  
those things. Our sense of our own role in our culture, directs us as  
to how to behave. The cultural values, derived from our ancestors’  
experiences long ago, as represented in our language, are instilled  
in us and direct our behavior today. A body continues in its state of  
motion until it is acted upon by an outside force. Human culture will  
remain fundamentally unchanged until it is deliberately changed; and  
that will not happen unless we feel the need to do so and know how to  
do it.

	Culture resides in the subconscious mind. Many others have spoken  
about the need to change the way we, as a society, think: many have  
tried, by using means such as meditation, sleep deprivation,  
psychoactive substances, chanting, philosophical in-query, etc. to  
accomplish this change and may have been successful, to a degree.  
However, it seems they were not able to lastingly infuse into society  
at large their newfound vision, due to not addressing the need for  
change at the root/source, which is the culture. One must understand  
a process before one can intentionally and deliberately alter it.  
Understanding how language functions makes it possible to change our  
culture.
    I am advocating cultural awareness. First we must identify what  
culture is and then discover how it functions. Most of us are not  
aware of the importance of culture in shaping human events. The idea  
that we are strongly influenced by a force invisible to us appears to  
be disturbing to most. The principle that binds us together as an  
organized society is ingrained in our lives so pervasively that we do  
not see it. It operates automatically. The question of whether we  
approve of its values almost never arises. Rather, we act as  
automatons, driven by the invisible program instilled in us by  
learning our language. Just as our physical bodies evolved by natural  
processes, so our culture evolved by natural processes, without our  
awareness. Culture was established by the emergence of language and  
it has served us for better or for worse. And since  
industrialization, the contradiction between our professed values and  
our way of life have become increasingly obvious. This is due to the  
amplifying effect of technology on the magnitude of the impact on us  
of our actions. Our actions today affect us far more than they did  
prior to modern technology. This forces upon us the issue of the  
correctness of the values that motivate us. We can no longer afford  
to proceed ahead with no regard for the consequences.
    The tension caused by the contradictions between our professed  
beliefs and the values actually driving our actions is caused by the  
isolation from our consciousness of the source of the values that  
motivate us. Our beliefs derive from our conscious intellectual  
workings while our actions are driven by our cultural conditioning,  
which resides in our subconscious. We, who share a given language,  
all have the same underlying values, while we have different beliefs,  
depending on what cognitive roads we have traveled. How we translate  
these common basic values into actions depends on our perception of  
who we are in our social context. In the script we are born into, we  
act the role we see ourselves as plausibly and convincingly being  
able to play, hopefully while being true to our beliefs. One’s  
assumed role in society must seem plausible to them given their  
assessment of themselves.

    How did language arise? Originally, our progenitors’ vocalizing  
only expressed internal-goings-on/emotion and did not refer to  
anything external to themselves. It was advantageous to members of  
the group to be informed of the emotional conditions of other  
members. Much later, when consciousness developed enough for them to  
see the connectedness of the sounds uttered to the things the sounds  
were uttered in reaction to, they realized that they could bring  
forth the thought of the things by uttering their associated sounds,  
(names). The beginning of talking about things was the start of  
culture,and the talking about things refocused the talkers’ conscious  
attention away from the experience of the emotional reactions to the  
sounds of the words and toward thoughts related to the things to  
which the words referred. While they were busy directing their  
attention to thoughts related to the things to which the words  
referred, they were still being emotionally affected, (in the same  
way as they were before they used their vocal sounds as words), by  
the vocal sounds they were making to form their words. So, the  
effects of the sounds they were making vocally were experienced  
subliminally, while consciously, they were dealing with the thoughts  
of the things referred to by their words. The affects-on-us/meanings- 
of things cannot be proven. All they had and all we have to go on are  
the effects on us of the things and the effects on us of the sounds  
of the words that represent the things. While the effects of the  
things are changeable over time and somewhat individual, the effects  
on us of the sounds of the words are relatively consistent and  
universal. Having nothing else to go on, we accept the effects on us  
of the vocal sounds of words as revealing/representing the effects on  
us of the things referred to by the words. In this way, culture is  
formed and passed to succeeding generations. Our world views  
typically come from the sense of meaning of things as represented by  
the sounds of our words rather than from the sense of meaning we may  
gain from the direct experience of the things themselves.


	Do vocal sounds, themselves, communicate? When someone utters a  
vocal sound, such as a sigh, a growl, a whimper, a scream, etc., do  
we get a sense of how they are feeling? If so, they are communicating  
their condition. How does that communication take place? Do we  
receive information communicated in such a manner consciously,  
subconsciously or by both ways? What is the means by which an emotion  
can be conveyed by sound? Can emotion, or anything else be  
communicated by the articulate sounds of our vowels and consonants,  
or do only non-articulate vocal sounds convey meaning? If we allow  
that vocal sounds, simply as sounds, communicate,  then is it  
possible or likely that the vocal sounds we use to make words also  
communicate when used as words? What would be the effect of using  
inherently meaningful sounds as symbols to represent other things?  
Would the inherent meaning of the sounds affect our perception of the  
things represented by the sounds?
	It seems it would be fruitful to consider at length whether vocal  
sounds inherently communicate/convey meaning. If, upon thorough  
consideration, one concludes that the sounds we make with our voice  
convey/communicate emotion, it seems that one might ask how the use  
of spoken language affects our world view. Does the inherent effect  
on our emotional state of the sounds of our words affect how we  
perceive that to which we verbally refer?
	These considerations may shed light on the issue of the root causes  
of human behavior. Naturally, those who contemplate our condition and  
would improve it if they could, would be attentive to these matters.
	The vibrations made by the body convey the condition of the  
emotional body to other similar/human emotional bodies, and to some  
degree, to other animal emotional bodies. The more similar the other  
body, the more the condition is transposed. Humans receive each  
others’ vocal and other body-language communications more readily  
than other species receive human communication. Similar structures  
transmit their resonation/vibration to each other more readily than  
do dissimilar structures.
	
	My quest for understanding of human behavior began long ago. When I  
was around the age of six, I became increasingly aware that the  
folkways and formal institutions of our society were lacking in  
humanity and common sense. I asked myself why this was so. As a  
child, I attributed the problem to people’s personal psychology and  
it was not until I was in my late teens that I realized that the  
cause of the problem is our culture. It was then that I understood  
how verbal/vocal communication works. The cause of The Problem seemed  
and seems to be the culture which is created by the relationship  
between vocal sounds and what they refer to in our language.
	Some of the reasoning that preceded this realization was, first,  
that we are not created evil, but rather simply with survival  
instincts. Second, that if we were able to act sanely/rationally, we  
would be doing what produces the best results for everyone. Third, it  
must be something we learned, some false information, that causes us  
to behave in ways not in our own self-interest. Fourth, when I  
considered the question of from where this false information came, I  
identified as the source, the culture. Later, I realized that we do  
not, for sure, know the meaning of anything, and that, as far as we  
know, the only thing constant and predictable about any thing is its  
name, (the word-sound we produce in order to bring to consciousness  
whatever thing to which we choose to refer). After a time, I became  
aware of how the different vocal sounds we produce when we speak  
words each create in us a unique effect and how those effects inform  
us subconsciously of the affect on us, (the meaning), of the thing  
itself to which the sound, (word), refers.
	At this time, I also learned that the sequence of sounds of the  
letters of our alphabet represent a sequential delineation of  
emotional/experiential events. From A to Z, the succession of the  
sounds of the letters of our alphabet is an example of pattern- 
projection/recognition, the pattern, in this case, being the seminal  
emotional events that humans experience during their lives.
	Emotions happen to us: they seem to come from the “great mystery”,  
God, or whatever image we may use to portray a place from which  
strong and compelling feelings emanate.

	Given, all the vocal sounds that people can make, how would one  
arrange the sounds sequentially and from what archetype, (model),  
would the pattern of that sequence come? Even if the originators of  
the present alphabet deliberately imposed a pattern on their  
arrangement of the letter-sounds, whatever world view that existed in  
their minds caused them to feel most comfortable with the sequence of  
sounds they chose. The sequence they chose must have been agreeable  
with the story that was represented in their minds by those sounds in  
that sequence. If one admits that vocal sounds affect us, then how  
could a story, a sequence of affects,  not be told by the sequence in  
which the sounds exist? Whether or not the originators of any  
particular alphabet had a conscious reason for arranging the sounds  
of that alphabet in the sequence in which they appear, subconscious  
“reasons” were influencing their arrangement none the less.
	We tend to cling to our culture as if our lives depended on it, as a  
drowning person might cling to a life preserver. Culture offers an  
answer, -in this case subconsciously apprehended- , to the question,   
“What are the meanings of all things to which we refer with words?”  
Without culture, there tends to be no consensus about what things  
mean. Language informs us of the meanings of named things by the  
affects on us of the sounds of our words. Those who use the same  
language experience the same sense of the meanings of the things that  
make up their world. That sense emanates from the deep levels of  
their subconscious and their final assessment of the meanings of  
things results from their processing that deep, culturally caused  
base sense of meaning through the lens of their perception of their  
own relationship to the society in which they live.

	For the sake of clarity, let us consider, hypothetically,  what the  
result/s would be of using meaningful sounds to refer to things.  
Would the meanings of the sounds spill over into the perceived  
meanings of the things or would the meanings of the things influence  
the perceived meanings of the sounds? Or would neither influence the  
other or would they influence  each other? Which has a stronger  
meaning-pressure, the sounds we make with our voice or the things  
which with the sounds we name?
	The vocal sounds express/communicate states of the emotions first  
and foremost, and as an afterthought, so to speak, they are used to  
refer to things. They communicate emotion by moving the auditory  
apparatus of the hearer in a manner analogous to the movements of the  
vocal apparatus of the speaker, thereby creating in the hearer an  
emotion analogous to the emotion present in the speaker. Just as the  
touch of the hands conveys the intent of the toucher, so the vocal  
motion of the vocalizer creates in the hearer an emotional state  
analogous to that of the vocalizer.
								
	Just as our becoming-human ancestors were gaining consciousness,  
(the ability to know the consequences of their actions), they were,  
for the first time, using vocal expressions as words to refer to  
specific things, not only to express immediate emotional goings-on.  
Since they vocalized primarily under duress, their words were  
expressions born of fear rather than of conscious understanding. The  
mind concentrates on problems, on issues that could potentially be  
destructive to the thinker. When this fear-based thinking bias  
becomes institutionalized in language, we seem to have no relief from  
our anxiety. The more we verbalize about any given problem, the more  
stressed-out we become. This reminds me of the way Eskimos sometimes  
would kill a wolf. They would smear congealed blood on a very sharp  
knife and set it out where wolves frequented. When a wolf licked the  
blood, it would bleed and lick its own blood not knowing it was  
bleeding to death. We are wolfish for knowledge and we pursue it by  
using our main thinking tool, our language.
	


			The Unrecognized Role of Language in Society
	


	Culture is the hidden “law-of-the-land”. We are creatures of  
culture, and its subjects. Our culture originally  enhanced our  
survivability and, in a technologically modern world, may become the  
instrument of our destruction. Our culturally motivated ways of  
relating to one another may have once been viable, although perhaps  
immoral, and now, with our powerful ability to cause environmental  
change, are untenable.

	 ”The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of  
thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.  
If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.” --- Albert  
Einstein


	The referential function of human language is merely the “tip of the  
iceberg” of the role of language. Its larger and more profound  
function is that it informs us of the meanings of all to which we  
verbally refer. We are moved in a primal way by the sounds we produce  
with our voice and, in the absence of any “objective”, absolute  
information regarding (the affects on us)/
(the meanings of) the things of our world, we accept the affects on  
us of the vocal sounds of our words as representing the affects on us  
of the things to which our words refer. In this way, we are informed  
subliminally, simply by learning our language, of the meaning of our  
world. How else could we, as very young children, have achieved a  
sense of how we were affected by the numerous things that made up our  
world?
	This matter is of paramount importance because we act in accordance  
with how we perceive our world, (with what our world means to us),  
and our sense of that meaning is derived from  the affect upon us of  
our words. Much of human behavior that is commonly attributed to  
“human nature” is actually motivated by cultural nature, which is  
produced by language.
	How and what would our society be if we had a culture which  
instilled in us the values we would consciously choose to hold?  
Presently, we simply assimilate the culture in which we are born.  
Once we understand the mechanism of cultural transmission, we will be  
able to change our group program.
	However, it seems that many may be too timid to venture forth from  
the false security of our unquestioned and familiar values. Some have  
expressed to me that language, as it exists, is a product of nature  
and that to change it deliberately would produce an unnatural result,  
a Frankenstein culture, the consequences of which would be uncertain  
and therefore, too risky. To those I suggest that we are inherently  
unable to venture out of the natural realm, as we are inextricably  
woven into the web of nature. Furthermore it is entirely correct and  
wholesome for us, with the goal of improving our survivability, to  
choose to correct our culture at its source. Once we see how we may  
help ourselves, we would be entirely correct and within our  
progressive evolutionary tradition to use all our knowledge to do so.
	
	Vocal sounds either communicate as vocal sounds or they do not. If  
we assume that vocal sounds do not communicate, then language only  
blindly and unemotionally refers to things. If we assume that vocal  
sounds do communicate something, as vocal sounds, then language does  
more than merely refer to things: it also informs us about the things  
named. Which is true? Do any of us believe that our vocal sounds do  
not express/communicate anything? If we believe that vocal sounds  
communicate/express something, then what is it that they communicate/ 
express? If vocal sounds do communicate as sounds, do they loose that  
communicative function when incorporated into words or do they  
continue to be expressive when used in words?
	If vocal sounds that constitute words communicate something as  
sounds, then what effect does the sound of a word exert on our  
perception of the thing referred to by that word?
	Our vocal sounds affect us more articulately and consistently than  
do the things to which our words refer. The stronger effect on us of  
the sounds of words than the effect on us of the things which words  
label, the consensus regarding the meaning of things that words  
provide members of a language group and the constancy of the effect  
on us of the sounds we make vocally compared to the relative  
inconsistency of the affect on us of the things to which our words  
refer, all contribute to the result of we allowing and welcoming our  
words to replace the things to which they refer as the causal factor  
in forming our perception of the meanings-of those things.
	When we use words, we feel we have a firsthand experience of the  
things named. This experience with the linguistic representation of  
things provides us with a sense of their meaning. Because we really  
do not know how we are ultimately affected by any particular thing,  
we do not know the meaning of any thing. It is in this context, this  
meaning-vacuum, that the vocal sounds of our words, which are rich  
with emotional import, by default, inform us of the emotional affects  
of the named things and therefore with the meanings of those things.  
We associate the sounds of words and their effects with the things to  
which they refer. Furthermore, it is the effect of a thing and only  
the effect that lets us know that the thing is there. We have nothing  
other than the sounds of our words, (the sounds of our voice), that  
is common to we all, constant, and that affects us when the thing  
itself is not there in front of us. The effects on us of the sounds  
of our own voice take the place of the effects on us of the things  
themselves. We make our world familiar and handleable by using our  
bodily sounds to represent the things we encounter. We intuitively  
understand the meanings/effects of our vocal sounds while we do not  
as readily understand the effects on us of the things to which our  
words refer.



------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
------------------------------------------



	One common hurdle to achieving understanding that many seem to be  
unable/ unwilling to clear, is the idea that the primary meanings of  
vocal sounds, including the sounds of words, are the effects they  
cause within each of us and not the things to which they refer when  
uttered as words. Another point that aided me in understanding the  
function of language is that we really do not know the meaning of  
anything but rather behave as though our taken-for-granted  
assumptions are valid only because they have not been held to the  
light of scrutiny. It is only that which resides in our subconscious  
and of which we are not conscious and consequently do not question,  
that we act as if we “know” for sure. Remember the caterpillar in  
Alice in Wonderland? When asked how he managed to coordinate the  
movements of all those legs, he became aware of the previously  
unconscious process of walking and then could not walk. The only  
sense of the meaning of things that we dependably share in common  
with the others of our society is instilled in each of us by the  
relationship between the sounds of our words and the things to which  
those words refer. Words are the link between our “autonomic” sense  
of meaning and the things that make up our environment. We give  
things a familiarity by attaching to them sounds created by our body.  
What do things really have to do with our vocal sounds?

	What meaning, if any, do things have if we are not affected by those  
things? All meaning is relative. If we were totally unaffected by  
something, would it be meaningful? How would whatever meaning it may  
have be perceived? Clearly, what we want to know about something,  
(anything), is how it affects us, (what is it?).

	The lack of understanding, even more the lack of interest in  
understanding the ideas I was putting forth to the academicians,   
dampened my impulse to reach out to those I previously thought were  
most likely to understand and apprehend this discovery. It has been  
my role to carry this message and to seemingly have almost no one  
with which to share it.
	I figured that what I was saying was threatening on a deep level to  
most, who would otherwise gain a glimpse of it. My discovery, seems  
to threaten the sense of security of those who consciously or  
otherwise treat their culture as an idol. Some of us, especially  
those of highly exercised intellectual abilities, feel that security  
is to be had by being able to “explain” the meaning of things. By  
uttering words, (sounds), about things, what meaning is revealed?  
Doing so may create the illusion of understanding by seeming to make  
the named things familiar. But does it, only inform us with the  
effect/meaning of the sounds of words, or the meaning of the things  
as well?
	
	There are so many “issues” thrown up in our faces in this media- 
glutted world; and they all need attention. Like a word full of  
tubercular patients each a worthy cause and in desperate straits.  
There is no way I can address each one, or even one of them  
effectively when they are all tied together and dependent on one  
another. It appears that culture is the root of all of the  
manifestations of human behavior. We all behave according to our  
values and assumptions and those derive from our culture.
	Do our academicians know what culture is, how it relates to the  
people who are instilled with it and how it may be changed?
	We are informed subliminally of the meaning of our world by the  
language that we speak.

	Why is it so difficult for people to understand how language  
generates culture? What is/are the missing piece/s of information  
that they need in order to grasp that concept?
	The world would be a lot friendlier than it is if humans would act  
in ways more humane than they currently do. A better way is possible.  
We need only the vision of this better world as an everyday  
experience in order for us to act in accord with it. The  
consciousness of how to act in order to create the world we wish must  
be the status quo not the rarity that it now is. This changing of the  
status-quo can be accomplished by changing the culture and changing  
culture is accomplished by changing language.
	
	We have no way of knowing the ultimate meaning of anything. When we  
become aware of something, we question its meaning and once something  
is questioned, we never gain a true sense of its absolute meaning. Of  
only that which we do not question do we act as if its meaning seems  
to be clear. It is “unquestioned”. By questioning, the professed  
certainty of the uninformed is replaced by the wonderment of the  
“enlightened”.
	Our culture/language supplies us with a sense of knowing the meaning  
of all things for which we have a name. A sense of the meaning of  
things contributes to our feeling of safety in the face of an  
otherwise uncertain, threatening world. We gain that sense of knowing  
the meaning of things simply by being able to refer to them with  
words. Our subconscious minds accept the affects on us of the sounds  
of the words as being the affects on us of the things to which the  
words refer and being informed of the effects of things is the same  
as being informed of the meanings of things. What other meaning can  
there be of a thing than its affect on us? The words stand in for the  
things we name with them and our perception of the sounds of our  
words replaces, subliminally, our perception of the things  
themselves. The words are all we, as a group, have to go on to  
achieve a sense of the meanings/affects of the things.
	Being informed  of the meanings/affects of things has some  
advantages compared to being informed of the meaning/affects of  
things by direct perception of the things. All those who use a  
particular language have the same fundamental sense of the meanings  
of named things and consequently, are able to participate in a  
consensus-based group interaction. The words for things stay constant  
through time while how we are affected by things changes. We can  
share our experiences with words. Without words, or any other form of  
body-language our own personal experience would remain solely our  
own. Furthermore, words enable abstract thought and planning. While  
we think using the perception of things created by words, we feel as  
though we were thinking with the perception of the things themselves.
	Are we conscious that we are affected by the sounds we make with our  
voice? Most would acknowledge that they are emotionally affected/ 
moved by the voices of singers and actors in dramatic moments.  We  
know that great orators affect us with their delivery and vocal  
qualities. We seem to be unaware that we are affected by the phonemic  
sounds we utter, even absent any intentional emotional overlay or  
coloring. The sounds of the human voice affect us deeply.
	When we utter vocal sounds that are simply sounds and not words, we  
may, more easily,  experience consciously, the effects of the sounds,  
than when we speak words. When we speak words, we typically  
consciously experience the referential function of the words and not  
the affects on us of the sounds of the words, while we experience the  
effects of the vocal sounds of words subliminally. Because we  
experience one thing, (the meanings of the words), consciously, and  
another thing, (the affects on us of the sounds), subconsciously, we  
subconsciously interpret the subliminal effects of the vocal sounds  
as being the effects of the things to which the words refer. The  
subconscious mind supplies us with the bottom line of the meaning of  
whatever it is we are considering because we cannot reason with it.  
Whatever we are conscious of, we can question and whatever we  
question is uncertain. However we have a subconscious reaction to  
that which the (meaning-of)/(effect-on-us) is consciously unknown, as  
long as we have a word for it, and that subconscious reaction creates  
an experience of and hence a sense of knowing of the meaning of that  
which, prior to being named, did not seem to be known. The word, made  
of familiar sounds from our body, stands in for the unknown thing,  
separate from our body. In the absence of any objective sense of the  
meaning of things, we rely on our words to provide us with a sense of  
knowing, because knowing relieves us of the stress of anxiety. We are  
driven into the perceived safety of the familiarity of our culture,  
as represented in our language, by the stress of the fear generated  
by not knowing. One must be willing to embrace the mystery of  
existence in order to experience, free from the bias of existing  
culture.
	Considering words to be things in and of themselves, as sounds, and  
not only a means to refer to things, will enable us to examine them  
for their inherent meaning. The primary meaning of a word is not the  
thing it represents. It is, rather, the way we are affected by it’s  
sounds. We consciously consider the meaning of the word to be the  
thing to which the word refers and we subconsciously experience the  
meaning of the word as the effects on us of its sounds. Because we  
experience, profoundly and consistently, the effects on us of our  
human vocal sounds while we experience less intimately and less  
consistently the effects on us of the things to which we refer with  
words, the emotional effects of the words as sounds overrides the  
emotional effects of the things named, and informs us of the nature  
of named things. In a similar way that explorers laid claim to land  
in the name of the monarch, we tend to lay claim to that which we  
name in order to render it seemingly familiar and known.
	
	Everything that we perceive subconsciously affects us on that level  
and sends emotional information to our conscious minds and everything  
that we perceive consciously affects us subconsciously as well. We  
consciously perceive the sounds of spoken language and we are also  
affected subconsciously by those same sounds. In the course of verbal  
communication, we think of the things to which our words refer while  
subconsciously we are emotionally affected by the sounds of our  
words. This simultaneous occurrence of the thought of a thing and the  
subconscious experience of the emotion generated by the sound of the  
word we use to refer to that thing, subliminally informs us of the  
affect-on-us/the-meaning-of the thing. In this way, we acquire a  
sense of the affects-on-us/the-meanings-of everything for which we  
have a word. This is important because our actions in relation to the  
things that make up our world are driven by our perception of the  
meanings of those things. Therefore, if we would change for the  
better our societies’ behavior, we ought to change our languages.
	Since spoken language is crucial in determining the course of human  
events, it would be better if it instilled in us meanings of things  
with which we consciously agree rather than meanings of which we are  
not aware and with which we may not agree if we were. We humans are  
not doing so well with our relationships with one another that we  
should be complacent regarding the improvement of our culture.

	People have been attempting to address our social and economic  
challenges ever since there were people. All the religions were  
attempts to provide a basis for our behavior. Marxism was/is an  
attempt to correct the social and economic hardships caused by  
inequality and exploitation. Communes were typically instituted to  
provide healthy social environments. Organized politics and codified  
legal systems were/are created, supposedly, to improve our condition.  
Why is it unclear whether any of these deliberate social structures  
actually made/make our situation better or worse? Could it be that  
the cause of our malaise is something that is not being recognized by  
those who strive to improve our lot? For how many years, for how many  
centuries and millennium will we try to fix our broken world by  
creating laws, religions, political and economic institutions before  
we decide that doing so does not deal with the source of the problem?  
				Marx’s mistake was believing that economics is the foundation  
upon which all society’s other institutions are based. It seemed  
reasonable to him that since life is dependent upon the biological  
economics of survival, that economics must be the determining force  
in society. He did not see that our culture provides us with a sense  
of the meaning of all recognized things thereby assuaging the fear/ 
terror that naturally arises as a result of our consciousness of our  
physical mortality and that we tend to protect and defend that  
culture because of the apparent security which it provides.
	
			   What is the root of the problem?

	The culture, created by language forms our values which then  
strongly influence the decisions we make consciously and especially  
subconsciously?

                                              What is culture?	

	I define culture as the common fundamental values held by the  
members of a society. These values derive from our perception of the  
meanings of the things that make up our world. “Things” are whatever  
we identify as being distinguishable from other things, which include  
feelings, thoughts, values, people and ideals. The meanings of things  
are one with and the same as the affects on us of those things. How  
do we acquire our sense of, (the affects on us of)/(the meanings of),  
things? Is it from our own individual experience with things? Is it  
from what we say to ourselves and to each other about things? If it  
were based on individual experience, how would we achieve consensus  
and why would all cultures not be pretty much the same?
	Most would hold that even within a given society our values are not  
the same and surely the popular view that our values are indicated by  
a cursory survey of our behavior seems to support that conclusion.  
When attempting to assess the values that underlie behavior we should  
consider the influence of the role that each individual sees them  
self as playing within their culture. Given the same fundamental  
values, individuals within any society tend to behave not only  
relative to those basic values but also in relation to how they  
perceive them self, (who they perceive themselves to be).
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
---------------------

	It seems that the cause of the problem of why we do so many  
seemingly destructive and self-defeating things must be so basic, so  
fundamental as to escape our awareness. It must be housed in the  
subconscious mind since all our attempts to address it have been  
futile. It is that which we don’t consciously know that we  
subconsciously know that can cause us the most trouble. Our emotional  
reactions are influenced by that which resides in the subconscious  
just as they are by that of which we are conscious, and often, we  
create rationales to explain our behavior, while the actual reasons  
for the feelings that motivate us may be otherwise.
	What does every cultural group share within itself that affects its  
members profoundly and without their conscious knowledge? Where are  
the hidden rules by which we live to be found? Our culture is an  
artifact, inherited from distant ancestors, formed in an environment  
vastly different than today. Ways of interacting with one another  
that may have seemed to work then now appear to be dysfunctional. The  
primary example is war, which before weapons of mutual destruction,  
was rationalizable by the victors. But now, with nuclear weapons,  
would there be any victors? We still think as we did then but we  
cannot afford to act today as we may have believed we could then. Our  
technology has evolved tremendously but our culture has not. We are  
ill-equipped to cope with the situation our technology has enabled us  
to create. Even if war seemed winnable, wouldn’t we prefer peace?
	
	If we admit that vocal sounds inherently affect us, as do facial  
expressions and general body posture, then we may ask how our sense  
of the meaning of the things which make up our world is affected by  
using inherently meaningful symbols to refer to them. What is the  
relative strength of the emotional effects upon us of our symbols  
compared to the emotional effects of the things to which they refer?  
Considering that the emotional effects of the things themselves vary  
with context and is particular of each of us, and that the emotional  
effects of the vocal symbols is relatively constant and universal,  
can we assume that the meanings of the symbols create the perceived  
meanings of the things? Is this relationship the same or different  
within the conscious and subconscious minds? Does our conscious or  
subconscious mind more strongly influence our behavior? Are our  
behaviors affected by our subconscious minds even when we are trying  
to do what we consciously think we should do?

	We either are or are not affected by our vocal utterances. I see  
that we are. If we were not affected by our vocal utterances, we  
would not vocalize. The whole purpose of vocalizing is communication!  
And in order to communicate among ourselves, we must be affected by  
one another.
	What, we may ask, is communicated by vocalizing? What is  
communicated when other animals vocalize? It is clear that animals  
communicate their instantaneous emotional states by their  
vocalizations. How is this communication accomplished? The vibrating  
of the body of the vocalizer, (sender),  causes the body of the  
receiver to vibrate in sympathy and by the imposing/sharing of  
vibratory activity. The receiver experiences the motions and  
consequently the emotions of the sender. This simple process is the  
foundation of our vocal activity, our verbal activity, (our  
language), and our culture. Many of us seem to balk at accepting the  
idea that our lofty retorical proclamations are founded upon such  
primal processes. If you are one of these, consider that our genetic  
blueprint is shared, in the majority, by all other vertebrates and  
largely by all other animals. To those who disparage animals, please  
be reminded that the Grand Creator authored ALL of everything, not  
only us and those with whom we approve.

	What are the ingredients that make up the mix of influences that  
determine human behavior? Given that we are intelligent enough to  
appreciate and cherish the truths that are our guiding principles,  
and given that we are not born self destructive, then for what reason/ 
s do we act as we typically do? From where does the false information  
come that motivates much of our behavior? “Human nature” does not  
account for our inhuman actions. It must be that the cause of our  
destructiveness exists among the things which we learn.
	 From what ultimate source do we acquire our information regarding  
the meaning of our world? Our culture is that source.
	What have we got to go on in order to achieve a sense of the meaning  
of our world other than the words we speak?
	Do we have a benchmark for establishing the meaning of things?  If  
everything is relative, to what does it all relate? We need not look  
further than ourselves to find that. How could it be otherwise? How  
we are affected by the things that constitute our world establishes  
their meaning. The vocal sounds we make express and convey the  
different emotional affects we experience. Our words are made up of  
these body-sounds. Therefore, our words convey emotional meaning and  
inform us of the effect on us of things for which we have names and  
consequently, of which we are aware.
	Language functions as a link between the conscious and the  
subconscious. We are conscious of the words we speak while they  
inform us subconsciously of the meaning of things.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Does it matter what things mean? Does it matter what we think they  
mean? Do our actions relative to them depend on what they mean to  
us?  Do we act in relation to things according to what they mean to  
us? How do we know the ultimate effect on us of any thing? Is the  
effect on us of any thing its meaning? How can any thing mean to us  
anything other than what its effect on us is? How do we obtain a  
sense of the meanings of things? Do we get that sense of the effect- 
on-us/ the-meaning-of things directly from our own experience with  
things or as mediated by language?

-----------------------
	
	Of all forms of body language, (vocalization, facial expression and  
overall body posture), only one of them,vocalization, is commonly  
used to represent things other than conditions of the emotional body.  
Our general posture is very communicative of our physical-emotional  
state without our deliberate intent and is also used deliberately to  
convey the same. Facial expression can be more finely communicative  
of our state of being/feeling than is general body posture.  
Vocalization, while being profoundly expressive/communicative, is  
ordinarily exclusively used for uttering words. While we are not  
aware of the effect upon ourselves of the phones we utter, we are  
aware of the effect upon ourselves of the emotional embellishments we  
add to them. Often, we consciously add emotional content to our words  
in order to embellish their referential meaning. Since we are busy,  
often consciously, processing the referential meaning of our words,  
we are unaware of the emotional impact of the sounds that make them  
up. Each distinct articulate vocal sound affects us in its own unique  
way. Understanding this is crucial to understanding the workings of  
the culture-creating function of language.
	We not only refer to things with our words. More profoundly, we  
inform ourselves of the very meaning of those things merely by using  
a word, (a vocal sound), to refer to them.  This information as to  
the affect upon us/ the meaning of the things which make up our world  
constitutes our culture. Culture is information. Since we are not  
aware of the nature of this information, it exists in our  
subconscious minds. We act according to a subconscious program put in  
place by our language. If we understand how we receive information  
regarding the meaning or our world, we can change that information so  
that it agrees with what we believe to be the nature of our world.  
Our culture is passed down, from long ago; from before electronics,  
before motorized transport and the printing press. If we were to  
deliberately create our language today, would we create the one we  
currently use? If so or if not, why? Would we know how to create a  
language that conveys the meanings of things that are their actual  
meanings? If we would know, how would we know? If not, why not?
-----------------------------------------------------------------

	The ability to produce the vocal sounds made it’s appearance on the  
scene before our progenitors made words of those sounds. The ability  
to vocalize articulately is a prerequisite to being able to  
verbalize. Words appeared when our ancient ancestors became cognizant  
of the relatedness of the stimulus and the vocal response to it. When  
they began using vocalizations to bring to mind, things, they  
transitioned between obtaining their sense of the meaning of things  
by direct involvement with the things to deriving a sense of the  
meaning of things by involvement with the words for the things. This  
supercession of the primal world by the symbolic world was the start  
of culture.
	Being able to talk about things was very advantageous to our distant  
relatives. They could confer and plan. More important, they  
experienced a common sense of the meaning of the things in their  
world from using common symbols with which to refer to them.

	That which affects us profoundly and constantly must be in close  
proximity. Things right in front of us are often overlooked when we  
consider that which affects us powerfully. We tend to assume that if  
the cause of major difficulties were so close to us, we would have  
discovered it by now. Let us reexamine our major influences  to look  
for what causes us to behave in such untoward ways.
	As a species, we are plenty smart enough to understand why our  
saints and prophets are correct when they exhort us to be good.  We  
create secular laws that mirror our religious tenants and are  
sensitive to any critique of our behavior. Our feelings of guilt seem  
to be well developed. Why then do we act as we do; making war against  
one another, smoking, drinking and engaging in all kinds of  
destructive activity?
	I have heard many claim that it is simply “human nature” to be as we  
are. Those who believe that feel that there is nothing to be done to  
correct our human malaise other than punishment. Evil ones must be  
trimmed back, like a noxious and thorny vine. I do not subscribe to  
that depressing idea and know that the truth of the matter is that we  
humans are inherently survival oriented and will learn whatever seems  
as though it will further that purpose. It is because of our native  
intelligence coupled with our survival desire that we voluntarily  
stretch our consciousnesses in order to glimpse a better way for  
ourselves to carry on.
	What forces influence our behavior? What we believe to be good and  
correct does not, it seems, determine our actions. Do we not fully  
believe that what seems right to us is truly right? Or is there some  
other influence that informs us of what the world and all the things  
and concepts and people in it mean to us; something else that  
influences our perception of how we must behave in order to survive?
	Our behavior is related to how we are affected by the things that  
make up our world. We behave in relation to the various things that  
fill our awareness according to how they affect our survivability,  
( how we PERCEIVE that they affect our survivability). We perceive  
the world directly through personal contact with it and indirectly  
through contact with that which re-presents the world to us, (our  
language). Language re-presents the world by labeling everything  
about which we speak, with sounds made by our bodies in reaction to  
states of our emotion. Our ancestors and our children, when young,  
make vocal sounds in reaction to environmental stimuli. Those emotive  
sounds are intuitively made sense of by all who hear them. We sense  
the vocalizations and they make sense to us. The vocal sounds are  
made by a body in an emotional state and cause that state to be  
replicated in the emotional body of the hearer of those sounds. The  
sending body vibrates and the receiving body vibrates similarly. An  
emotionally linked vibrational pattern is spread from the originator  
of the vocal sound-vibration to whoever’s auditory apparatus is moved  
by it. The transmittance of the vibrational pattern is the  
transmission of the emotion. The more empathetic we are, the more we  
are affected by the emotions of others.
	Language is an institutionalized way we move our bodies,  
specifically our ears, central nervous system and emotional  
apparatus, in relation to the various things that make up our world.  
In relation to a book, we who speak English, utter the sound, “book”.  
In relation to a book, a Spanish-speaking person utters the sound, “  
libre”. These two different sounds move us in different ways, giving  
us a different experience of that which re-presents that object, the  
word for it. The primal meaning of a word is the affect it, the sound  
of it, wroughts within us. The secondary, more distant meaning of a  
word is that to which it refers. The secondary meaning is what we  
commonly accept as being the one and only meaning. We are generally  
not aware of the primary meaning for we are affected by the vocal  
sounds of our words subliminally and by the secondary, referential,  
meaning of words consciously.
	To understand the functionality, the “nuts and bolts”, of language,  
is to be free of domination by culture, to be the masters of culture  
rather than its subjects. We have been inextricably attached to  
culture, for better or for worse, ever since our use of language  
began. Now we can intentionally create a language/culture that  
informs us as we would like to be informed, of the effects on us, the  
meanings of all the things we name.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
---------------------

	Certainly we agree that we are affected by the sounds we utter. What  
then is the consequence of referring to all the things to which we  
refer, with inherently meaningful sounds? If we were able to refer to  
things with “meaningless” symbols, then all we would be conveying is  
the thought of the thing. Is there such a thing as a meaningless  
symbol? In order to perceive anything, including a symbol, that  
symbol must register upon our senses and in order to register upon  
our senses, the sensed thing must affect us. No effect on us equals  
no perception by us. Whatever the effect on us is, is the fundamental  
meaning of the sensed thing. When we refer to things, we are  
primarily being affected by the symbol which we use to do the  
referring and secondarily by the memory, if there is a memory, of the  
thing to which we are referring. When we refer to something with  
which we have no direct experience, we have only the symbol, (word),  
to affect us and thus to inform us.

	If there is a discrete connection between a vocal sound and   a  
thing, and a connection likewise between a particular vocal sound and  
an a specific effect on the emotions, then there is a connection  
between the effect on us of the sound and the thing to which that  
sound, (word), refers.

	We are aware that sound has an effect and that the word is sound and  
that the word has an effect and that the word refers to a thing. Are  
we aware that, for all intents and purposes, the effect seems to be  
the thing. How we are affected by a thing, our perception of a thing,  
is accepted subliminally as being the meaning of the thing. Our acts  
relative to the things in our world, are related to the perceived  
meanings of those things.
	
	We feel the feelings generated by the sounds of our words at the  
same time as we are deliberately focusing on the things to which the  
words refer. As a consequence, we associate particular sound- 
generated feelings with particular things. The thing does not define  
the feeling. Rather, the feeling defines the thing. The feeling of  
the word determines what is accepted subliminally as the meaning of  
the thing. The word enables us to experience feelings of the meanings  
of things not present and unknown by direct expeience. It establishes  
a sense of consensus which wells up from the subconscious mind among  
the speakers of a given language.

	All throughout human history, language has been playing this role of  
consensus creator based on the information we derive from the sounds  
of our words regarding the affects-on-us, the meanings-of the things  
that make up our world. If we would rather live in a culture of our  
own creation than in any one in which we happened to be born, we  
might consider experimenting with cultural change through language  
renewal.

	I have been asked what I hope to achieve with this information. My  
desire is that we become aware of the forces that affect us so that  
we may be able to change the circumstances that exist to  
circumstances that we would like to exist.



	It all started a long time ago; relatively speaking, of course. I  
was a young child when my parents instilled in me a very strong sense  
of social justice and a belief in the ultimate good of humanity. I  
was taught to see the world as a work in progress, one that needed  
attention. Only by dedication to principle, I was told, could we make  
it a better place in which to live.
	Both my father and mother were labor organizers. My dad emigrated to  
the USA from Ukraine. My mother was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She  
had no dad present as her mother and an unknown partner collaborated  
without the formality of legal marriage and did not remain together.  
She was adopted by a somewhat successful business man and his wife  
and received a scholarship offer to study singing at a university.  
She chose to organize coal miners in West Virginia rather than to  
pursue the scholarship.
	My dad arrived at Ellis Island in 1922 at the age of 15. He, his  
mother and sister stayed with a family member in Boston where he  
worked in his uncle’s furniture store. At 15 1/2, he was run over by  
a gasoline truck with solid hard rubber wheels while riding a bicycle  
and lost his left leg from below the knee. Although he wished to  
study engineering, financial necessity caused him to work in a  
furniture factory. He was thrown down the stairs of the shop by goons  
because he was talking about the union. After that, he vowed that  
they would never treat him in such a way again. At 19 years of age,  
he was elected to be the president of his local furniture workers union.
	His early life seems to have been quite difficult. His father died  
of tuberculosis when my dad was 13; the various armies of the period  
were ranging across the countryside raping and conscripting and  
taking whatever they wanted; he, his mother and younger sister waited  
for two years in Poland for papers to immigrate. He told me of a time  
when he got drunk at a party and woke up three weeks later in a  
strange hotel room in a strange town, with no memory of the three weeks.
	My mother and dad were both married and divorced before they married  
each other; my mother to a minister and my dad to a woman who later  
married a minister.
	For most of my childhood, I was read to alot by my mother and I  
listened to music on a then state of the art high fidelity record  
player/radio. My dad would talk to me somewhat seriously, (as one  
would with a child, being straightforward while avoiding dark and  
gloomy proclamations), about all sorts of things, philosophical and  
current.
	I would listen for hours to the 78s and old lps and watch the needle  
track along the grooves. “How can the sound, which affects me so  
profoundly, come from these inanimate records?”, I thought. My mother  
explained that the grooves have ripples in them and when the needle  
travels along the ripples in the grooves it  moves in a way  
representative of that shape. Those movements are then converted to  
electrical impulses and then to sound. the same sound that caused the  
ripples to be made when the record was recorded. So the shape of the  
ripples on the record store the sound that made them. That sound can  
be recreated by reading that shape with a needle. I was fascinated.
	As I grew up, I became progressively more and more aware of  
injustices and atrocities and asked myself why it was that way. I  
knew that the answer was discoverable and that I felt I could  
discover it. I determined that I definitely did not want to be a  
martyr by “fighting the good fight” only to be gloriously defeated by  
some obstacle caused by an undiscovered relationship between one  
thing and another.  For several years that question percolated in my  
mind as bits and pieces of relevant findings were added to my  
reservoir of information. I assumed that we humans are not born  
fundamentally destructive. It seemed, from what I had learned, that  
we inherently want to survive and reproduce and that in itself was  
not problematical. Therefore, behavior that violates this principle  
must be informed by what we learn. We learn our fundamental values  
and assumptions from our culture. I asked how those values and  
assumptions transfer from the culture to the people. I remembered  
that my mother said that it is not what is said but rather how it is  
said that really informs us. I wondered what, exactly, that meant. I  
knew that culture could work for us rather than against us. We simply  
had to discover how it works and remake it.
	In 1969, I was living in a commune in Placitas, New Mexico. There  
was a child’s phonograph player there and a John Coltraine album  
which I played. The instrumental music inspired images of such  
strength and clarity that I marveled that that could be. Since there  
were no words included in the piece, I asked how music, (simply  
sounds), could convey such definitive meaning. The answer came that  
words are sounds also, so how could words convey meaning? The same  
way nonverbal sounds do.
	I hitchhiked from Placitas, in the snowy winter, back to Los  
Angeles, to the house where I lived when I was in grades four through  
twelve. There, in the quiet evening, in the room that previously was  
my bedroom, while lying in bed, I reasoned that if vocal sounds  
affect us emotionally, I ought to be able to perceive that effect by  
saying the sounds out loud and feeling my reaction to each of them. I  
proceeded to say the sounds of the letters of the alphabet. After  
experiencing the effects of the first few letters, I realized that a  
story was unfolding. The ways I was being affected by the sounds of  
the letters of the alphabet, in the order of their appearance in the  
alphabet, was telling a story of a person’s life. Although I thought  
that that was profound and was fascinated by this finding, I did not  
believe that  that story was an accurate representation of the major  
events in a person’s life.
	My first reaction to this revelation was that I could become  
renowned for the discovery. But immediately I thought that that could  
not happen because the prerequisite understandings did not exist in  
the peoples’ minds. They had not gone through some of the things that  
I had, things that seemed to be essential to the understanding of how  
language works.
	Not until 1982 did I decide to try to communicate my findings to  
others on a large scale. I did not have any idea what I was to do, if  
not to attempt to share this most significant revelation with the  
others on this planet. I wrote approximately 300 letters to  
professors, mostly within the USA. Two from the then Soviet Union  
wrote back in longhand, in Russian, stating that my “theory” could  
not be correct because it contradicted Marxist theory, which contends  
that the economic relationships within society determine the nature  
of the culture, not the other way around, as I was proposing.
	The failure of the Russian revolution seems to support my view. The  
Marxist economy was rejected by the body politic due to its  
incompatibility with the existing culture, a culture which produced  
czars and then commissars. Although the titles had changed, the  
functions had remained pretty much the same. The American labor  
movement is another example of how the default mode of the culture  
reestablishes itself after relatively brief diversions. We come from  
the monarchal systems of England and Europe and, but for the titles,  
have changed little from our origins. I received about fifty replies  
from professors of linguistics and some people of notoriety and none  
of them, it seems, understood the concept I expressed.
	One common hurdle to achieving understanding that they seemed to be  
unable/ unwilling to traverse was the idea that the primary meaning  
of vocal sounds and, by extension words, is the affect they cause  
within each of we humans and not the things to which words refer.  
Later I also surmised that they did not realize that we really do not  
know the meaning of anything. We behave as though we know our taken- 
for-granted assumptions, only because they have not been held to the  
light of scrutiny. It is only that of which we are not consciously  
aware and consequently do not question, that we act as if we “know”  
for sure. Remember the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland? When asked  
how he managed to coordinate the movements of all those legs, he  
became aware of the previously unconscious process of walking and  
suddenly could not walk. The only sense of the meaning of things that  
we share in common with the others of our society is instilled in  
each of us by the relationship between the sounds of our words and  
the things to which those words refer. Words are the link between our  
“autonomic” sense of meaning and the things that make up our  
environment. We give things a familiarity by attaching to them sounds  
emanating our body. What do they really have to do with such sounds?
	What meaning, if any, do things have if we are not affected by those  
things? All meaning is relative. If we were unaffected by something,  
would it be meaningful? How would that meaning be perceived? Clearly,  
what we want to know about something, (anything), is how it affects  
us, what its meaning is.
	The lack of understanding, even more the lack of interest in  
understanding what I was putting forth to the academicians,  dampened  
my impulse to reach out to those I thought were most likely to  
understand and appreciate my discovery. It has been my lot to be  
charged with this message and to seemingly have almost no one with  
which to share it.
	I figured that what I was saying was threatening on a deep level to  
most who might otherwise gain a glimpse of it. My discovery, seems to  
threaten the sense of security of those who consciously or otherwise  
treat their culture as an idol. Some of us, especially those of  
highly exercised intellectual abilities, feel that security is to be  
had by being able to “explain” the meaning of things. What meaning is  
revealed by uttering words, (sounds), about things? Doing so may  
create the illusion of understanding by seeming to make the named  
things familiar but does it really prove anything about the things?
	Words can be used in a kindly manner to help get us back on track  
when we lose our way. But they cannot convince any one who is  
determined to see things in a certain way. Only the willing can be  
helped and, if they are truly willing, it seems likely that they  
would need none.
	
	There are so many “issues” thrown up in our faces in this media-rich  
world; and they all need attention. Like a word full of tubercular  
patients each a worthy cause and in desperate straits. There is no  
way I can address each one, or even one of them effectively when they  
are all tied together and dependent on one another. It appears that  
culture is the root of all of the manifestations of human behavior.  
We all behave according to our values and assumptions and those  
derive from our culture.
	Does anyone really know what culture is, how it relates to the  
people who are instilled with it and how it may be changed?
	I observe that culture is the unconscious of the mass, that which we  
who live in a society share with one another and have in common. It  
has to do with our world-view and with what things mean to us. Our  
world view is formed by what things mean to us. How do we obtain our  
sense of the meaning of our world? Do we share that sense with the  
others in our group or is it individual to each of us? Is it a  
conscious, subconscious or unconscious sense?
	When I discovered that the sounds of words convey a sense of  
meaning, I realized that I had found the answers to these questions.  
We are informed subliminally of the meaning of our world by the  
language that we speak.


	
	Why is it so difficult for people to understand my language-culture  
discovery and its importance? What is/are the missing piece/pieces of  
information that they need to know in order to fully appreciate it?
	The world could be a lot better than it is. Humans could act in ways  
far better than they currently do. A better way is possible. We need  
only the vision as an every-day experience in order for us to act in  
accord with it. The consciousness of how to act in order to create  
the world we wish must be the status quo not the rarity that it now  
is. This changing of the status-quo can be accomplished by changing  
the culture and changing the culture is accomplished by changing the  
language.
	We have no way of knowing the ultimate meaning of anything. When we  
become aware of something, we question its meaning and once something  
is questioned, we never gain a true sence of its absolute meaning  
Only that which we do not question seems to be true absolutely. The  
certainty of the inimformed is typically replaced by the wonderment  
of the “enlightened”.
	Our culture/language supplies us with a sence of knowing the meaning  
of all things for which we have a name. This sense of the meaning of  
things helps us to feel secure in the face of an otherwise uncertain,  
threatening world. We gain that sense of knowing the meaning of  
things simply be having words for things. Our subconscious accepts  
the affects of the sound of the words as being the affects of the  
things to which the words refer.  The words stand for the things we  
name with them and replace, subliminally, our perception of the  
things referred to with our perception  of the words themselves. The  
words are all we have to go on for the sensing of the meaning/effect  
of the things.
	Having words imform us of the meaning/effect of things has some  
advantages compared to being informed of the meaning/effect of things  
by direct perception of the things themselves.  All those who use a  
particular language have the same sense of the meaning of named  
things and consequently, are able to participate in a group dynamic.  
The words for things stay constant through time while how we are  
affected by things changes. We can share experience, knowledge and  
wisdom with words. Without words, our own personal experience would  
remain only our own. And words enable abstract thought and planning.  
We think with the perception of the words for things and feel as  
though we were thinking with the perception of the things themselves.
	Are we conscious that we are affected by the sounds we make with our  
voice? We should be. We are commonly aware that the quality of  
singers voices affects us. We know that great orators affect us with  
their delivery and vocal character. The same is true with actors.  
Everyone whose voice we hear affects us. The human voice affects us  
deeply and without our conscious effort.
	When we make word-free sounds with our voice, we experience the  
effect of those sounds. When we make vocal sounds in order to utter  
words, we generally do not sense the effect of those sounds because  
our attention is redirected from the affects on us of the vocal  
sounds to the task of comprehending the connection between the words  
and the things they represent.  The affects upon us of the sounds of  
our words remain, on a subliminal level, when we use our vocal sounds  
as words. Using the sounds as words diverts our attention from the  
awareness of the affect on us of the sounds and directs it to the  
awareness of the referential functioning of our words. We are  
affected by sounds of our words whether we make them simply as vocal  
sounds or as words.
	When we utter vocal sounds that are simply sounds and not words, we  
experience with awareness, the way the sounds affect us. When we  
utter the samevocal sounds as words, we experience the meanings of  
the words with awareness and not the affects on us of the sounds of  
the words. When we utter words, we experience the affects of the  
vocal sounds subliminally. Because we experience one thing, (the  
meanings of the words), consciously, and another thing, (the affects  
on us of the sounds), subconsiously, we interpret the affects of the  
sounds as being the affects of the things to which the words refer.  
The subconscious mind supplies us with the bottom line of the meaning  
of whatever is is we are considering because we cannot reason with it  
and with the conscious mind, we can. Whatever we are conscious of, we  
can question and whatever we question is unclear/ However we have a  
subconscious reaction to that which is unknown, as long as we have a  
word for it and that subconscious reaction tends to create an  
experience of and hence a sense of knowing the meaning of that which  
was unknown. The word stands in for the unknown thing. And what do we  
truly know? We tend to rely on our words to provide us with a sense  
of knowing because knowing relieves us of our anxiety and stress. We  
are driven to the familiar circle of our culture, as embodied by and  
in our language, by the stress of the fear generated by not knowing.  
One must be willing to embrace the mystery of existence in order to  
experience free from the bias of existing culture.
	Considering words to be things and not merely representations of  
things will free us to examine them for their meaning. The meaning of  
a word is not the thing it represents. It is the way we are affected  
by it. We consciously consider the meaning of the word to be the  
thing to which the word refers and we subcinsciously experience the  
meaning of the thing refered too to be the affects on us of the  
sounds of the word. Because we experience profoundly and reliably the  
affects of our human vocal sounds while we experience less intimately  
and less reliably the affects on us of the things represented by  
words, the affects of the words as sounds overrides the affects of  
the things named, and informs us of the nature of whatever things we  
name. The way explorers laid claim to land in the name of the  
monarch, we lay claim to that which we name in order to render it  
seemingly familiar and known.



				How We Are Affected By Our Culture			
				       And How We Can Change It	




	It all started a long time ago; relatively speaking. When I was a  
young child my parents instilled in me a very strong sense of social  
justice and a belief in the ultimate good of humanity. I was taught  
to see the world as a work in progress, one that needed attention.  
Only by dedication to principle, I was told, could we make it a  
better place in which to live.
	Both my father and mother were labor organizers. My dad emigrated to  
the USA from Ukraine. My mother was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She  
had no dad present as her mother and an unknown partner collaborated  
without the formality of legal marriage and did not remain together.  
She was adopted by a somewhat successful business man and his wife  
and received a scholarship offer to study singing at a university.  
She chose to organize coal miners in West Virginia rather than to  
pursue the scholarship.
	My dad arrived at Ellis Island in 1922 at the age of 15. He, his  
mother and sister stayed with a family member in Boston where he  
worked in his uncle’s furniture store. At 15 1/2, he was run over by  
a gasoline truck with solid hard rubber wheels while riding a bicycle  
and lost his left leg below the knee. Although he wished to study  
engineering, financial necessity caused him to work in a furniture  
factory. He was thrown down the stairs of the shop by goons because  
he was talking union. After that, he vowed that they would never  
treat him in such a way again. At 19 years of age, he was elected to  
be the president of his local furniture workers union.
	His early life seems to have been quite difficult. His father died  
of tuberculosis when my dad was 13; the various armies of the period  
were ranging across the countryside raping and conscripting and  
taking whatever they wanted; he, his mother and younger sister  
traveled to Poland, where they waited for two years in for papers to  
immigrate to America. He told me that, as a young adult in Boston, he  
got drunk at a party and woke up three weeks later in a strange hotel  
room in a strange town, with no memory of what he did during the  
three weeks.
	My mother and dad were both married and divorced before they married  
each other; my mother to a minister and my dad to a woman who later  
married a minister.
	For most of my childhood, I was read to alot by my mother and I  
listened to music on a then state of the art high fidelity record  
player/radio. My dad would talk to me somewhat seriously, (as one  
would with a child, being straightforward while avoiding dark and  
gloomy proclamations), about all sorts of things, philosophical and  
current.
	I would listen for hours to the 78s and old lps and watch the needle  
track along the grooves. “How can the sound, which emotionally  
affects me so profoundly, come from these inanimate records?”, I  
thought. I asked my mother how the sound came from the record and she  
explained that the grooves have ripples in them and when the needle  
travels along the ripples in the grooves it  moves in a way  
representative of that shape. Those movements are then converted to  
electrical impulses and then to sound. the same sound that caused the  
ripples to be made when the record was recorded. So the shape of the  
ripples on the record store the sound that made them. That sound can  
be recreated by reading that shape with a needle. It was fascinating.
	As I grew up, I became progressively more and more aware of  
injustices, atrocities and disparities between what we seem to  
ideologically subscribe to and how we behave and asked myself why it  
was that way. I knew that the answer was discoverable and I felt I  
could discover it. I determined that I definitely did not want to be  
a martyr by “fighting the good fight”, as my parents and countless  
others had done, only to be gloriously defeated by some obstacle  
caused by an undiscovered relationship between one thing and  
another.  For several years that question percolated in my mind as  
bits and pieces of relevant findings were added to my reservoir of  
information. I assumed that we humans are not born fundamentally  
destructive. It seemed, from what I had learned, that we inherently  
want to survive and reproduce and that in itself was not  
problematical. Therefore, behavior that violates this principle must  
be informed by something we have learned. We learn our fundamental  
values and assumptions from our culture. I asked how those values and  
assumptions transfer from the culture to the people. I remembered  
that my mother said that it is not what is said but rather how it is  
said that really informs us. I wondered what, exactly, that meant. I  
knew that culture could work for us rather than against us. We simply  
had to discover how it works and remake it.
	In 1969, I was living in a commune in Placitas, New Mexico. There  
was a child’s phonograph player there and a John Coltrane album which  
I played. The instrumental music inspired images of such strength and  
clarity that I marveled that such definite images could be conveyed  
by musical sounds rather than by words, and wondered how that could  
be. The answer came that words are sounds also, so how could words  
convey meaning? The same way nonverbal sounds do.
	I hitchhiked from Placitas, in the snowy winter, back to Los  
Angeles, to the house where I lived when I was in grades four through  
twelve. There, in the quiet evening, in the room that previously was  
my bedroom, while lying in bed, I reasoned that if vocal sounds  
affect us emotionally, I ought to be able to perceive that effect by  
saying the sounds out loud and feeling my reaction to each of them. I  
proceeded to say the sounds of the letters of the alphabet. After  
experiencing the effects of the first few letters, I realized that a  
story was unfolding. The ways I was being affected by the sounds of  
the letters of the alphabet, in the order of their appearance in the  
alphabet, was telling a story of a person’s life. Although I thought  
that that was profound and was fascinated by this finding, I did not  
believe that  that story was an accurate representation of the major  
events in a person’s life.
	My first reaction to this revelation was that I could become  
renowned for the discovery. But immediately I thought that that could  
not happen because people lacked the prerequisite knowledge in order  
to understand my discovery. They had not gone through some of the  
things that I had, things that seemed to be essential to the  
acquiring of the understanding of how language works.
	Not until 1982 did I decide to try to communicate my findings to  
others beyond immediate contacts. I did not have any idea what I was  
to do as a member of the human family, if not to attempt to share  
this most significant revelation with the others on this planet. I  
wrote approximately 300 letters to professors, mostly within the USA.  
Two from the then Soviet Union wrote back in longhand, in Russian,  
stating that my “theory” could not be correct because it contradicted  
Marxist theory, which contends that the economic relationships within  
society determine the nature of the culture, not the other way  
around, as I was proposing.
	The failure of the Russian revolution seems to support my view. The  
Marxist economy was rejected by the body politic due to its  
incompatibility with the existing culture, a culture which produced  
czars and then commissars. Although the titles had changed, the  
functions had remained pretty much the same. The American labor  
movement is another example of how the default mode of the culture  
reestablishes itself after relatively brief departures from the  
ordinary. We come from the monarchal systems of England and the rest  
of Europe and, but for the titles, have changed little from our  
origins. I received about fifty replies from professors of  
linguistics and some people of notoriety and none of them, it seems,  
understood the concept I expressed to them.
	One common hurdle to achieving understanding that they seemed to be  
unable/ unwilling to overcome was the idea that the primary meaning  
of vocal sounds and, by extension words, is the affect they cause  
within each of we humans and not the things to which words refer.  
Later I also surmised that they did not realize that we really do not  
know the meaning of anything. We behave as though we know, for a  
fact, our taken-for-granted assumptions, only because they have not  
been held to the light of scrutiny. It is only that of which we are  
not consciously aware and consequently do not question, that we act  
as if we “know” for sure. Remember the caterpillar in Alice in  
Wonderland? When asked how he managed to coordinate the movements of  
all those legs, he became aware of the previously unconscious process  
of walking and suddenly could not walk. The only sense of the meaning  
of things that we share in common with the others of our society is  
instilled in each of us by the relationship between the sounds of our  
words and the things to which those words refer. Words are the  
creator of our “autonomic” sense of the meaning of the things that  
make up our environment. We give things a familiarity by attaching to  
them sounds emanating our body. What do they really have to do with  
such sounds? The relationship between the sounds of words and their  
referential usage only makes sense when viewed from the perspective  
of those who first uttered them in reaction to that for which they  
became the word.
	What meaning, if any, do things have if we are not affected by those  
things? All meaning is relative. If we were unaffected by something,  
would it be meaningful? How would that meaning be perceived? Clearly,  
what we want to know about something, (anything), is how it affects  
us, what its meaning is.
	The lack of understanding, even more the lack of interest in  
understanding what I was putting forth to the academicians,  dampened  
my impulse to reach out to those I thought were most likely to  
understand and appreciate my discovery. It has been my lot to be  
charged with this message and to seemingly have almost no one with  
which to share it.
	I figured that what I was saying was threatening on a deep level to  
most who might otherwise gain a glimpse of it. My discovery, seems to  
threaten the sense of security of those who consciously or otherwise  
treat their culture as an idol. Some of us, especially those of  
highly exercised intellectual abilities, feel that security is to be  
had by being able to “explain” the meaning of things. What meaning is  
revealed by uttering words, (sounds), about things? Doing so may  
create the illusion of understanding by seeming to make the named  
things familiar but does it really prove anything about the things?
	Words can be used in a kindly manner to help get us back on track  
when we lose our way. But they cannot convince any one who is  
determined to see things in a certain way. Only the willing can be  
helped and, if they are truly willing, it seems likely that they  
would need none.
	
	There are so many “issues” thrown up in our faces in this media-rich  
world; and they all need attention. Like a word full of tubercular  
patients each a worthy cause and in desperate straits. There is no  
way I can address each one, or even one of them effectively when they  
are all tied together and dependent on one another. It appears that  
culture is the root of all of the manifestations of human behavior.  
We all behave according to our values and assumptions and those  
derive from our culture.
	Does anyone really know what culture is, how it relates to the  
people who are instilled with it and how it may be changed?
	I observe that culture is the unconscious of the mass, that which we  
who live in a society share with one another and have in common. It  
has to do with our world-view and with what things mean to us. Our  
world view is formed by what things mean to us. How do we obtain our  
sense of the meaning of our world? Do we share that sense with the  
others in our group or is it individual to each of us? Is it a  
conscious, subconscious or unconscious sense?
	When I discovered that the sounds of words convey a sense of  
meaning, I realized that I had found the answers to these questions.  
We are informed subliminally of the meaning of our world by the  
language that we speak.

	

	
	Why is it so difficult for people to understand my language-culture  
discovery and its importance? What is/are the missing piece/pieces of  
information that they need to know in order to fully appreciate it?
	The world could be a lot better than it is. Humans could act in ways  
far better than they currently do. A better way is possible. We need  
only the vision as an everyday experience in order for us to act in  
accord with it. The consciousness of how to act in order to create  
the world we wish must be the status quo not the rarity that it now  
is. This changing of the status-quo can be accomplished by changing  
the culture and changing the culture is accomplished by changing the  
language.
	We have no way of knowing the ultimate meaning of anything. When we  
become aware of something, we question its meaning and once something  
is questioned, we never gain a true sense of its absolute meaning  
Only that which we do not question seems to be true absolutely. The  
certainty of the uninformed is typically replaced by the wonderment  
of the “enlightened”.
	Our culture/language supplies us with a sense of knowing the meaning  
of all things for which we have a name. This sense of the meaning of  
things helps us to feel secure in the face of an otherwise uncertain,  
threatening world. We gain that sense of knowing the meaning of  
things simply be having words for things. Our subconscious accepts  
the affects of the sound of the words as being the affects of the  
things to which the words refer.  The words stand for the things we  
name with them and replace, subliminally, our perception of the  
things referred to with our perception  of the words themselves. The  
words are all we have to go on for the sensing of the meaning/effect  
of the things.
	Having words inform us of the meaning/effect of things has some  
advantages compared to being informed of the meaning/effect of things  
by direct perception of the things themselves.  All those who use a  
particular language have the same sense of the meaning of named  
things and consequently, are able to participate in a group dynamic.  
The words for things stay constant through time while how we are  
affected by things changes. We can share experience, knowledge and  
wisdom with words. Without words, our own personal experience would  
remain only our own. And words enable abstract thought and planning.  
We think with the perception of the words for things and feel as  
though we were thinking with the perception of the things themselves.
	Are we conscious that we are affected by the sounds we make with our  
voice? We should be. We are commonly aware that the quality of  
singers voices affects us. We know that great orators affect us with  
their delivery and vocal character. The same is true with actors.  
Everyone whose voice we hear affects us. The human voice affects us  
deeply and without our conscious effort.
	When we make word-free sounds with our voice, we experience the  
effect of those sounds. When we make vocal sounds in order to utter  
words, we generally do not sense the effect of those sounds because  
our attention is redirected from the affects on us of the vocal  
sounds to the task of comprehending the connection between the words  
and the things they represent.  The affects upon us of the sounds of  
our words remain, on a subliminal level, when we use our vocal sounds  
as words. Using the sounds as words diverts our attention from the  
awareness of the affect on us of the sounds and directs it to the  
awareness of the referential functioning of our words. We are  
affected by sounds of our words whether we make them simply as vocal  
sounds or as words.
	When we utter vocal sounds that are simply sounds and not words, we  
experience with awareness, the way the sounds affect us. When we  
utter the same vocal sounds as words, we experience the meanings of  
the words with awareness and not the affects on us of the sounds of  
the words. When we utter words, we experience the affects of the  
vocal sounds subliminally. Because we experience one thing, (the  
meanings of the words), consciously, and another thing, (the affects  
on us of the sounds), subconsciously, we interpret the affects of the  
sounds as being the affects of the things to which the words refer.  
The subconscious mind supplies us with the bottom line of the meaning  
of whatever is is we are considering because we cannot reason with it  
and with the conscious mind, we can. Whatever we are conscious of, we  
can question and whatever we question is unclear/ However we have a  
subconscious reaction to that which is unknown, as long as we have a  
word for it and that subconscious reaction tends to create an  
experience of and hence a sense of knowing the meaning of that which  
was unknown. The word stands in for the unknown thing. And what do we  
truly know? We tend to rely on our words to provide us with a sense  
of knowing because knowing relieves us of our anxiety and stress. We  
are driven to the familiar circle of our culture, as embodied by and  
in our language, by the stress of the fear generated by not knowing.  
One must be willing to embrace the mystery of existence in order to  
experience free from the bias of existing culture.
	Considering words to be things and not merely representations of  
things will free us to examine them for their meaning. The meaning of  
a word is not the thing it represents. It is the way we are affected  
by it. We consciously consider the meaning of the word to be the  
thing to which the word refers and we subconsciously experience the  
meaning of the thing referred too to be the affects on us of the  
sounds of the word. Because we experience profoundly and reliably the  
affects of our human vocal sounds while we experience less intimately  
and less reliably the affects on us of the things represented by  
words, the affects of the words as sounds overrides the affects of  
the things named, and informs us of the nature of whatever things we  
name. The way explorers laid claim to land in the name of the  
monarch, we lay claim to that which we name in order to render it  
seemingly familiar and known.

	









	I would like to share with you a discovery I made regarding how our  
use of spoken language creates consensus-reinforced perception and,  
since we act in accordance with how we perceive things, to that  
extent, determines our actions.
	The behavioral choices we make are informed by our perceptions of  
the affects on us of the things that make up our world. We achieve a  
sense of how we are affected by things more as a result of our  
language than as a result of our own nonlinguistic experience. Is  
that sense, due to the actual firsthand effect of things on each of  
us individually? How do we/can we know what the ultimate effect of  
anything is upon us, either as an individual or as a society? Do we  
even know the meaning of life? How can we know the ultimate effect on  
us of anything if we do not know the purpose/goal of life? A  
particular way we are affected is either desirable or not as that  
effect relates to that large purpose, and who among us knows that  
purpose and is able to show others, by proof, what it is? We seem to  
share, with other “reasonable” people, what we think is a commonsense  
view of life, but there is so much room for different choices. How do  
we make our choices?
	In the vacuum created by the questioning mind, we have only our  
conventional wisdom, as represented by our culture, to inform us. The  
more we question, the more we realize that we do not know. How can we  
act not knowing what things mean? We must have something to go on, a  
given, on which to base our choices. That given is our language. The  
sounds we use to refer to the various things we refer vocally to,  
seem to enable us to get a feeling of the affect/meaning of the  
things named. We have nothing else to rely on, as individuals and  
more-so as a group, since our common language provides us with a  
common frame of reference.
	Vocal sounds themselves, whether they are within words or simply as  
sounds, are richly meaningful in the sense that they affect our  
emotional state.
	 Vocalizing communicates states of our organism. Each particular  
vocal sound communicates/conveys a particular state. When we use  
these vocal sounds, each with its own effect/meaning, to refer to  
particular things, as we do when we speak with words, we bestow  
meaning upon the things to which we vocally refer, things that we  
would otherwise not perceive as we do if not for their names. The  
sounds of our language are by, for and of our body/emotions/feelings,  
while the things we name are relatively removed from our immediate  
experience. Naming things seems to render them understandable. This  
sense of knowing is created by associating our familiar body-made  
vocal sounds with them.
	The perceived meaning-strength of our verbal utterances is greater  
than the perceived meaning-strength of the things named by them and  
thus, the affect on us of the sounds of our words pushes aside and  
replaces the affects on us of the things themselves. The symbol not  
only represents the symbolized in  our consciousness, more  
profoundly, the effect of the symbol, (in this case, the word),  on  
us subliminally, takes the place of the effect on us of the  
symbolized: the map replaces the territory. As we are beings who  
manipulate symbols to gain understanding, we live in a world of our  
own making, not because of intentional design, but rather by the  
nature of language/culture.
	In a world prior to the proliferation of technology, using language  
enhanced our survivability. However, in a world in which we are  
surrounded by the results of our own efforts, (our artifacts), as we  
are now, our language/culture may be a major cause of our  
difficulties. Culture is a living artifact, representing the  
mentality of our ancestors and instilling that mentality, that world- 
view in us.
	I believe that once we understand the mechanism of culture, we will  
choose to create it deliberately.
	Some say that existing culture is natural and that to tinker with it  
would be risky and of no certain benefit. I say that we cannot afford  
to fear to experiment with new ways of seeing our world. After all,  
we are not in such a favorable position relative to our prognosis for  
survival as a species, -precisely because of the effect on us of our  
culture-, that we should adopt a passive attitude regarding our  
culture. “If we do not change our direction we will end up where we  
are headed.”
	The meaning of any thing is the same as its affect on us and its  
affect on us is its meaning. It is the effect of a thing that we  
perceive and that perceiving informs us of the existence of the  
thing. It is only that which affects us that we perceive, and it is  
that effect on us that is its meaning. It defies logic and experience  
to hold that we are unaffected by our vocal sounds, either used as  
words or not. If we accept the premise that we are affected by our  
vocal sounds, that our vocal sounds communicate, we might ask  
ourselves what the affects upon us are of those sounds?


	As a society,we are affected by things subliminal including the  
sounds of words. The sounds of words do not cease to be things  
themselves, when they are used as words to represent other things.  
The use of vocal sounds to represent other things is a relatively  
recent development in our species’ evolution. Prior to that, our  
forbears’ vocalizing simply expressed immediate body-mind states.
	We are affected subconsciously by the sound/sounds of any given word  
in the same way as our forbears were affected by the thing that now,  
the word represents. They reacted to a thing: the vocal part of that  
reaction later became a word and we who use/hear that word, react to  
the sound/sounds of that word as they reacted to the thing.  
Experiencing the word replaces experiencing the thing the word  
represents. Culture is instilled in us in that way. The word acts as  
an experiential transmitter. The experience that caused the word to  
be uttered is represented in those who hear that word at a later  
time. By this means, our forbears’ experience of a thing becomes our  
experience of that thing.
	Thus, we are at once, informed and defined by our language/culture.  
Our culture is the real status quo, the actual “law of the land”. It  
rules from our unconscious minds, beyond the reach of our  
deliberative process. Since we cannot, in the final analysis, prove  
anything at all, it is by default that the values, the unquestioned  
assumptions, which reside in the unconscious mind, constitute our  
foundation.
	Furthermore, while our own experiences are unique to each of us, it  
is our culturally/ linguistically-created experiences that we share  
as a group. To be a part of the group, one must adopt the group’s  
consensus experience as one’s own. To be conventionally understood,  
one must speak the mother tongue.
	Similar to an iceberg. the preponderance of the import of language  
occurs beneath the surface of awareness. One must consider the role  
of the unconscious mind in order to grasp the true function of  
language. Language is based on sound, sound made with the human  
voice. The sounds we produce vocally communicate our emotional  
condition. When we vibrate that part of our body specifically  
designed to vibrate, (the vocal apparatus), we show others what is  
going on with us, we cause others specialized vibration-receiving  
body parts, (the auditory apparatus), to vibrate in kind. The motion  
of the auditory apparatus mimics the motion of the vocal apparatus.  
After being vibrated by an other’s voice, we are able to reproduce  
those vocal sounds.
	When we hear someone speak, at the same time that we are trying to  
understand what is being said, (what is meant by any particular  
words), our emotions/feelings are being informed by the effects on us  
of the sounds that constitute the words we hear. We do not need to  
consciously try to apprehend the meanings/ effects of the vocal  
sounds themselves, the meanings are the effects on us of the sounds.  
We do need to consciously try to understand the meanings/ referential  
functions, of the words. Because of that, the focus of our conscious  
attention is removed from the affect of our vocal sounds and placed  
upon the relationship between the words and the things they signify.  
That type of meaning is peculiar to each language and is not  
necessarily intuitive.
	As for the demand that the claim that vocal sounds are  
communicative, be proven; why is there not a demand that the claim  
that facial expression and body posture in general are communicative,  
be proven? Why does no one dispute the second claim while   
establishment linguists deny that vocal sounds convey meaning? Is it  
because they are so caught up with considerations of the referential  
function of words that they cannot  experience the effects on  
themselves of the sounds that make up the words? Does it not stand to  
reason that vocal sounds must affect us? Is it not true that  
everything we perceive affects us and that it is precisely that  
effect which we perceive? Can there be perception without being  
affected? And is it not also true that the meaning of anything must,  
in the final analysis, be simply its effect upon us?   		

	Please let me know whether you relate to these ideas.

		Joseph Gilbert

	
	What is language doing to us, that we don’t know about? What do  
these sounds that come forth from our bodies mean? What does anything  
mean? Is finding what anything means the same as discovering how it  
affects us? Is the meaning the same as the emotional effect? Could it  
be anything other than that? How do we know how anything emotionally  
affects us? Do things affect us? Are we emotionally affected by the  
sounds we produce vocally? If so, how are we affected? Are we  
emotionally affected more strongly by the sounds we vocally produce  
or by the things in our environment? Where do emotional reactions  
come from? The conscious or the subconscious?
	Do we obtain a sense of the meaning of a thing from deliberative  
thinking about it or from our subconscious reaction to our mental  
process regarding it? Emotions well up from the depths of our occult  
minds. Once we become aware of our reactions to a thing, we can  
question the reason for the reaction and reinform ourselves about the  
thing affecting us. With new information, our emotional reaction  
changes. What do the very words we use to describe a thing to  
ourselves do to our sense of the meaning of the thing? When we  
compare the thing in question to other things not in question, we are  
not really discovering its meaning. We are rather, assuming that the  
meaning of the things we use to clarify the meaning of our subject,  
are themselves clearly meaningful. What if they are not? Is it  
possible for them to be not? The only thing in this scenario that is  
unquestionably meaningful is the sounds of the words we use to label  
the things. And, we normally, do not even consider our vocal sounds  
to be meaningful.  Because their affect on us is through our  
subconscious, we are not aware of it and thus are affected more  
unalterably than if we were aware of the fact that we are being  
affected by the sounds of our words.
	Although logically, it is impossible for us to not be affected by  
our vocal sounds, we do not dwell on that phenomenon and do not  
consider it an issue of moment. Supposing we were affected by vocal  
sounds: what would that mean? Would our perception of the things we  
refer to verbally be influenced? Would our sense of the meaning of  
named things be determined by the vocal sounds we use to refer to  
those things?

	


                                                         The Culture  
Made Us Do It
                                                “The unrecognized  
function of language”

    As with an iceberg, the largest consequence of language is under  
the surface. The iceberg is ninety percent under water and language  
effects us predominantly from beneath the surface of awareness. Many  
crucial human activities go on without awareness. All of the  
digestive, circulatory and, most of the time, the respiratory  
functions take place without conscious awareness. The subconscious  
mind supports the same kinds of activity as does the conscious mind.  
Anything that can be automated is, by nature.  Automating essential  
activities frees the conscious mind to dwell on issues for which  
coping behaviors are not yet firmly established. There is no need to  
be aware of a process that takes place well enough without awareness.  
It is only when a problem arises that we humans, in an attempt to  
solve it, focus our awareness on it. It is not the importance of an  
issue that dictates whether we pay conscious attention to it: it is  
how well we are coping with that issue. If we are coping well enough  
without awareness, why “reinvent the wheel”? “If it ain’t broke,  
don’t fix it” As most of us know, our human condition is painfully  
broke and has been for as long as we can recall. How can we fix it?
    Could it be that that we are governed by something we cannot  
see, something of which we are not cognizant? Is there anything in  
nature that would make such a situation impossible or improbable?
    We all talk of culture. What do we mean by “culture”? In the New  
World Dictionary of the American Language, definition number 6 of  
culture, states, ”The ideas, customs, skills, arts, etc. of a given  
people in a given period; civilization.” I define culture as, “The  
values/assumptions that are shared by the users/practitioners  of any  
given language.”
    The history of the human race is basically, the record of intra  
and inter-cultural “chemistry”. We have been, for the most part,  
passive recipients of whatever was dealt us by our cultures. Like  
passengers on a great yacht, our fates are sealed by the course  
charted in advance by the directives mandated by our culture.  
Wouldn’t we rather be active participants in shaping our destiny? We  
can be if we understand how culture works. It is a simple and natural  
phenomena, and, although we created it, we do not understand it.  
Until we do, we will be merely incidental and directed actors in a  
script not of our choosing. Just as understanding our biology  
liberates us from the chains of previously immutable “law”, so too,  
knowing what culture is and consequently, how to alter it, will free  
us from our collective destiny of carrying out the plan set in motion  
by the emergence of language/culture.
    We will become aware of our culture when we realize the  
necessity of doing so. When we know that we cannot go on indefinitely  
with our current flight plan, unaware, on autopilot, we will look for  
new understandings of our human behavior.
    Through the years, centuries and millennia, our culture has  
served us in whatever way it has, for better or for worse. It seems  
that we now acknowledge that we are, “up against it”, and that we  
need to change our ways. Before technology and industrialization, we  
did not feel the heat of our cultural impasse nearly as much as we do  
now. The power to alter our environment given to us by our technology  
has brought the issue of our inappropriate behavior to the forefront.  
The results of our cultural inadequacy is right in our faces.  
However, we have not yet, as a society, identified the source of our  
problem. We have not yet realized how we are possessed by our culture  
or even what culture is. We sometimes question why we act in ways so  
antithetical to our professed beliefs/values. We go to church on  
Sunday and are back in the lurch on Monday. Our saints and prophets  
tell us The Truth and we nod our heads in agreement. Yet we continue  
to behave as we have for generations, in ways characteristic of our  
culture, not in ways representative of our professed beliefs and  
values. This contradiction and dissonance between what we believe  
consciously and what seems to be truly motivating our behavior is the  
cause of much confusion and angst. We are passive recipients of the  
hands dealt us by our culture not the masters of our destiny. Let us  
become conscious of the nature of the relationship between ourselves  
and our culture.
    How can any of us experience the effect on our emotions of the  
vocal sounds we utter and/or hear? I accomplished that by saying the  
sounds of our language, using the alphabet as a sequential guide, and  
sensitizing myself to the emotional effect of each sound in turn.
    We used to live in whatever shelters, such as caves or rock  
overhangs, we found already existing. Then we learned to make  
shelters where and when we wished. We have, until now, lived within  
and according to whatever culture in which we happened to be born. We  
can now attempt to make our culture one that instills in us the  
values we consciously hold, rather than the values we inherited from  
our distant ancestors.
    When I was in school, I was taught that culture is things like  
classical music, opera, the fine arts, classic literature and  
theater. I sensed that culture was far deeper than that, that culture  
existed in each of us, deeply ingrained in our minds. Not until I  
discovered the mechanics of language did I clearly realize what  
culture is, what it does to us and how it does it.
    Before I discovered how language works, I did not understand  
what culture is. The two, language and culture, are identical twins,  
each with a different name and apparent mission but made from the  
same dna. Culture is an abstraction and language is the physical  
mechanism from whence it springs. Language uses emotionally evocative  
sounds to represent things, thereby suggesting the meanings of those  
things. The sense of the meaning of things derived from words,  
accompanied by our sense of self identity, directs us as to how to  
behave in relation to those things. The values etched in our culture  
by language long ago are instilled in us and direct our behavior today.
    A body continues in its state of motion until it is acted on by  
an outside force. Human culture remains fundamentally unchanged until  
it is changed by those who sense a need to change it.
    The subconscious mind is where culture resides. Culture remains  
unexamined and unchanged within the subconscious mind until we see a  
need to change it. Many others have spoken about the need to change  
the way we, as a society, think: some have tried, by using means,  
such as meditation, sleep deprivation, psychoactive substances and  
chanting to accomplish this change and have been more or less able to  
do so for themselves. However, it seems they were not able to  
lastingly infuse society at large with their newly-found vision, due  
to not addressing this issue from the root. One must understand a  
process before one can intentionally and deliberately alter it.  
Understanding the “nuts and bolts” of language makes it possible to  
change our culture, providing we have the will to do so.
    Cultural awareness is what I wish to create. First we must  
identify what culture is and then discover how it functions. The  
awareness of the importance culture in shaping human events is  
lacking in most of us. The idea that we are strongly influenced by a  
force invisible to us tends to be strange and unsettling. The glue  
that binds us together as a society is so much an ingrained part of  
our lives, that we do not perceive it as a force. It operates  
automatically and therefore requires no attention in order to  
function as the organizing premise of society. The question of  
whether we approve of its values almost never arises. Rather, we act  
as automatons, driven by the invisible program instilled in us with  
the learning of our language. Just as features of our physical bodies  
evolved by natural selection, so culture evolves by natural processes  
without our conscious consent. Culture has served us tolerably well  
through most of our species’ history. However, since the emergence of  
mechanization, the contradictions between our professed values and  
our way of life have become increasingly obvious. This is due to the  
magnifying effect of technology on the impact of human actions. What  
we do today affects our shared environment far more than what we did  
prior to technology, while our culture is basically the same as it  
was before industrialization. This forces upon us the issue of the  
correctness of the values that underlie our assumptions about the  
nature of reality. We can no longer afford to forge ahead willy-nilly  
with no regard for the consequences of our actions.
    The tension caused by the contradiction between our professed  
beliefs and the beliefs implied/expressed by our actions is caused by  
the isolation from our conscious apprehension of the source of the  
values that drive our actions. Our conscious beliefs derive from our  
intellectual workings while our actions are driven by our cultural  
conditioning, which resides in our subconscious minds. We all have  
different beliefs, depending on what mental roads we have traveled  
and we who share a given language, all have the same underlying,  
subliminal values. How we translate these common values into actions  
depends on our perception of what character we are in the script of  
our society. In the script we are born into, we act the role we see  
ourselves as plausibly and convincingly being able to play. One’s  
assumed role in society must seem plausible to one given one’s  
assessment of oneself. However, if one sees oneself as crazy, one may  
exempt oneself from needing to be rational and may engage in wishful  
thinking in selecting their role.
	Our understanding of culture is vastly more incomplete than is our  
understanding of mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology or even  
psychology and sociology.  The radio-telescope, electron microscope  
and other information gathering tools continue to enable us to  
conceive of that which we previously could grasp only metaphysically.  
We can also build our awareness of the machinations of human culture  
by focusing our attention on it and bringing to bear, in our quest  
for understanding, whatever relevant knowledge we may have. If we  
widely saw that culture impacts our everyday life to the extent to  
which it does, we would feel a powerful motivation to discover its  
inner workings. Language is the body whose “physics” we must  
comprehend in order to understand the “nuts-and-bolts” of culture.



			The Unrecognized Role of Language in Society
	


	Language is the stealth “law-of-the-land”. We are creatures of  
culture, originally unconscious creators of culturre and its  
subjects. Our culture originally  enhanced our survivability and in a  
technologically modern world, may become the instrument of our  
demise. Our culturally derived ways of relating to one another may  
have once been viable, although perhaps immoral, and now, with our  
powerful ability to cause environmental change, are untenable.
	 ”The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of  
thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.  
If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.” --- Albert  
Einstein
	 I aim to change the way we think. By changing our culture we may  
change our perception of the meaning of our world.

	The referential function of human language is merely the “tip of the  
iceberg” of what language does. Its larger and more profound function  
is that it informs us of the meanings of all that we name. We are  
moved in a primal way by the sounds we produce with our voice and, in  
the absence of any “objective”, absolute information regarding (the  
affects on us)/ (the meanings of) the things of our world, we accept  
the affects on us of the vocal sounds of our words as representing  
the affects on us of the things to which our words refer. In this  
way, we are informed subliminally of the meaning of our world simply  
by learning our language. How else could we, as very young children,  
have achieved a sense of how we were affected by the numerous things  
that we identified as being things?
	This matter is of paramount importance because we act in accordance  
with what our world means and our subliminal sense of that meaning is  
derived from the relationship between how we are affected by our  
words. Much of human behavior that is commonly attributed to “human  
nature”, is actually cultural nature, caused by the influence of our  
culture/language on our world-view.
	How/what would our society be if we had a culture which instilled in  
us the values we consciously and deliberately hold? Presently, we  
simply assimilate the culture we were born into without knowing how  
we are being formed by its handed-down world-view. Once we understand  
the mechanism of cultural transmission, we will be able to change our  
group program. I’m sure some of us will be eager to do so.
	However, it seems that many of us are too timid to venture forth  
from the fold of our familar assumptions. Some have expressed to me  
that language, as it exists, is a Natural phenomenon and that to  
change it deliberately would produce an unnatural result the  
consequences of which would be uncertain. To those who believe that,  
I suggest that we are inherently unable to venture out of the natural  
realm, as we are inextricably woven into the web of nature.  
Furthermore it is entirely correct and wholesome for us to choose to  
improve our society with the intention of increasing our chance of  
survival. Once we see how we may help ourselves we would be correct  
to use all our knowledge to do so.
	Vocal sounds either communicate just as vocal sounds or they do not.  
If we assume that vocal sounds do not communicate anything, then  
language only refers to things. If we assume that vocal sounds do  
communicate something simply as vocal sounds whether or not they are  
used as words or parts of words, then language does more than merely  
refer to things: it also informs us about the things named. Which is  
the case? Do any of us believe that none of our vocal sounds express/ 
communicate anything? If we believe that vocal sounds communicate/ 
express something, then what is it that they communicate/express? If  
vocal sounds communicate as sounds separate from words, do they loose  
that communicative function when incorporated into words or do they  
express something when used in words?
	If vocal sounds that constitute words communicate something as stand- 
alone sounds, then what effect does the sound of a word exert on our  
perception of the thing refered to by that word?
	The sounds we make with our voice, were made them long ago, before  
we used them as words, and they conveyed feeling and emotion. We  
still make sounds and they convey feeling and emotion now as they did  
then. Using them as words, to designate things, does not cause them  
to cease conveying emotion. The stronger affect on us of the sounds  
of words than the effect on us of the things which words label, the  
consensus regarding the meaning of things that words provide members  
of a group who speak a common language and a constancy of  the sense  
of the meanings of things we name, all contribute to our subconscious  
acceptance of the effect on us of the sounds of words as representing  
the effect on us of  the things which words represent. When we use  
words, we feel we have a sort of first-hand experience with the  
things named. This experience with the linguistic reflection of the  
things named provides us with a sense of their meaning. The sound,  
which is rich with emotional affect, by default, informs us of the  
emotion associated with the thing. We associate the sound of a word  
for a thing with the thing; so we associate the effect of the sound  
as a thing, with the effect of the thing, for it is the effect of a  
thing and only the effect of a thing that lets us know that the thing  
is there and what it means. We have nothing else common, constant,  
and which affects us more strongly when the named thing itself is not  
there in front of us, than the sounds of words, (the sounds of our  
voice). The affects on us of the sounds of our own voice takes the  
place of the affects on us of the things themselves. We make our  
world familiar and handleable by using our bodily sounds to represent  
the things we encounter. We intuitively understand the meanings/ 
effects of our vocal sounds while we do not as readily understand the  
effects on us of the things in our world. Our vocal sounds are of by  
and for us while the world-out-there is much less familiar and more  
difficult to relate to intuitively.

	The sounds that a musical instrument makes are a result of the  
materials and construction of the instrument. When something  
vibrates, it  makes sounds according to its physical structure.  
Whatever is doing the vibrating is what sounds. Mothers sing sweetl  
lulabys to babies, not pirate drinking songs. Why? Bcause the sounds  
the mother makes cause the baby to vibrate in a similar manner.  
Entrainment is a word that may be used to describe this phenomena.  
There is the driver and the driven. The mother is the driver and the  
baby is the driven. The mother establishes a pattern of motion and  
the baby assumes motion in that pattern. If one wishes to calm  
another, one speaks calmly. Elemental states are being transmitted/ 
communicated by the mother to the baby. Are elemental states  
communicated by phonemes? Is there a relationship between the vocal  
sounds we make and our emotive/feeling states? Do our vocal sounds  
correlate to our feelings/emotions?  Are vocal sounds meaningful? Do  
they cause an effect in us? As a form of body language, are vocal  
sounds meaningful as facial expressions are meaningful?
   ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
	All animals that breathe make sounds when they breathe. The air  
passing into and out of the body makes sounds and those sounds are  
formed and shaped by whatever the condition of the body is. Think of  
The Star Wars character, Darth Vader, as he breathes. How  
communicative is the way he breathes?! One may ask how does the sound  
of breathing communicate and what does it communicate? If simply  
breathing communicates, then does vocalizing communicate? Do the  
sounds that we produce, in order to form our words, communicate? If  
they do, then what it that they communicate? There are some vocal  
sounds to which One may feel a reaction, such as the sound of the  
letter, “R”, or that of the “M”, or the “A”, or “E”, etc..

	 Supposing that all the sounds we make communicate; would our  
feelings about a thing be affected by what the sounds we use to refer  
to it communicate to us? Many linguisrs and others maintain that the  
sounds we make when we speak, in and of themselves, have no meaning.  
By saying that they have no meaning one is holding that they do not  
communicate. But if Darth Vader’s breathing communicates, which it  
obviously does, then even breathing is meaningful, its meaning being  
the affect it causes in us. One may say that the affect on us of the  
sounds of breathing is an emotional affect and therefore has no  
meaning per se’. At this point one would be separating the concept of  
emotional effect from the concept of meaning. If emotional affect is  
not meaningful, what is? One may say that the meaning of a word is  
the thing to which it refers. If this were true, we would have no  
clue of the meaning of any thing. We would know what the sounds of  
theword mean but we would have no sense of what the thing means. We  
need to know what the thing means: we already know what the sounds of  
the word mean. And can a sound mean a thing? Or does a sound have  
meaning of its own? Does the thing have meaning of ots own? It seems  
likely that vocal sounds have effect/meaning and it seems impossible  
that things have particular meanings. After all, it is how any thing  
affects us that is its meaning. The way a thing affects us changes  
through time and is different folks, whereas the effects on us of the  
sounds of our own voices affects us the same through time and for all  
of us.           However, if, on the other hand, we derive our sense  
of the meaning of a thing from the sounds of the word for it, we do  
have a definite sense of its meaning because we are affecdted  
emotionally by those sounds.
On Aug 3, 2009, at 8:49 PM, michael wrote:

> Thank you, Joseph.
> Michael
>
> Michael G. Levykh, Ph.D.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca- 
> bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf Of Joseph Gilbert
> Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 5:58 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Language, meaning and culture.
>
> Michael,
> By way of explanation: A scream of distress is distressful: A
> soothing croon is soothing.: A lullaby helps to calm a child: A cry
> or alarm is alarming. Why and how is this phenomena what it is?   How
> does a vibrational pattern sent out by one organism create a reaction
> in another? What is an emotional condition? Could it be a pattern of
> energy? Can the vibrational signature of an emotional state cause an
> organism to assume that emotional state when moved according to that
> pattern?
> 	If there are two conga drums in the same room and someone slaps the
>
> head of one of the drums, another person with their finger tips
> lightly touching the head of the other drum can feel  that drumhead
> move in reaction to the pressure waves sent out by the struck drum.
> The struck drum drives the driven drum. The driven drum does not
> interpret or "understand" the "meaning" of the movement imparted upon
> it by the movement of the struck drum in order to be moved by it. It
> simply assumes a state, a vibrational condition, analogous to that of
> the driving drum. It is this exact way that vocal sounds communicate
> emotional states among humans. Our language is based upon this
> elemental, primal process, just as our very life is based upon the
> chemistry of d.n.a. replication. When we consider questions about
> language, we need to remember its fundamental basis.
> 	By using our bodies' resonant states to refer to things, we create
> in our minds, a sense of the affects on us, (the meanings of), the
> things that make up our world.
> 	If you feel willing and ready, I can email youall several pages of
> writings on this subject. It is important to me because I see that
> our behavior is, as a mass, determined by our language through the
> culture which it produces.
>
> 		Joseph Gilbert
>
>
> On Aug 3, 2009, at 12:42 PM, michael wrote:
>
> > Joseph,
> >
> > Talking about sympathetic resonance, when my wife and I hear a  
> > student
> > and/or a poor professional singer singing "in his/her throat" at a
> > singing
> > recital, within 10 minutes we both feel some tension in our
> > throats. Of
> > course, my wife and I are professional voice teachers and vocal
> > coaches
> > (among many other things). So, when we hear other people sing, we
> > "understand" (using your expression) their voices through sympathetic
> > resonance.
> >
> > However, my questions are:
> > 1. Why many other people don't experience the same discomfort while
> > listening to the same "poor" singers?
> > 2. Why neither of us (my wife and/or I) feels the same or similar
> > discomfort
> > when listening to, let's say, Louis Armstrong's raspy and throaty
> > voice?
> >
> > Michael
> >
> >
> > Michael G. Levykh, Ph.D.
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
> > bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> > Behalf Of Joseph Gilbert
> > Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 11:35 AM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] Language, meaning and culture.
> >
> > Michael,
> > Any and all vocal sounds emanate from and express states of the
> > organism. Perhaps this analogy may help to clarify.         If two
> > pianos are placed close to each other and the sustain pedal of one is
> > held down while a chord is struck and held on the other, the strings
> > on the unstruck piano that correspond to the ones that were struck on
> > the struck piano will begin vibrating. Like structures cause each
> > other to vibrate when either of them vibrates. They resonate with
> > each other. This is the same principle that radio tuners work by.
> > When we tune a radio to resonate at a certain frequency, it will
> > receive signals at that frequency. When one human vibrates, others in
> > the vicinity are caused to vibrate in sympathy. We intuitively
> > "understand" facial expressions and general body language involving
> > posture and motion. We understand vocal utterances in the same way,
> > simply by experiencing the affect of them on us.
> >
> > 		Joseph Gilbert
> >
> > On Aug 3, 2009, at 10:48 AM, michael wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Joseph,
> > >
> > > In your phrase "We feel the affects of our vocal sounds internally,
> > > intuitively, intimately and with consistency..." what do you mean
> > > by vocal
> > > sounds? Are you talking about prosody and intonation of a meaningful
> > > discourse, or some separate vocal sounds being detached from a  
> > > bigger
> > > (social, cultural, historical) discourse?
> > >
> > > Michael G. Levykh, Ph.D.
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
> > > bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> > > Behalf Of Joseph Gilbert
> > > Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 10:30 AM
> > > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > > Subject: Re: [xmca] Language, meaning and culture.
> > >
> > > Ivan,
> > > The culture is established by all the talking people. What  
> > > percentage
> > > of the population are deaf? A relatively very small number. It  
> > > seems,
> > > they probably take their lead from the group as a whole.   Thanks  
> > > for
> > > replying. If you want, I'll send more.
> > >
> > > 		Joseph Gilbert
> > >
> > >
> > > On Aug 2, 2009, at 9:48 PM, Ivan Rosero wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hello Joseph,
> > > > I'm trying to follow what you are saying.  How do deaf individuals
> > > > fit into
> > > > the ideas you're presenting?
> > > >
> > > > Ivan
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 8:54 PM, Joseph Gilbert
> > > > <joeg4us@roadrunner.com>wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Andy, Thanks for replying.
> > > > >
> > > > > It is my understanding that the doctrine among linguists is that
> > > > > since
> > > > > different words are used to refer to the same things in different
> > > > > languages,
> > > > > there must be no absolute, universal relationship between the
> > > > > sounds of
> > > > > words and their "meaning", that meaning being the things to which
> > > > > they
> > > > > refer. Therefore, linguists generally hold that the relationship
> > > > > between
> > > > > sound and meaning is "arbitrary". If we look at relationship
> > > > > between sound
> > > > > and internal emotive state, a new panorama opens up and we see
> > > > > that there is
> > > > > a direct and deep relationship between sound a meaning, that
> > > > > meaning being
> > > > > the emotive states that vocal sounds emanate from and create. That
> > > > > we are
> > > > > affected by the sounds we vocally produce provides us with the raw
> > > > > material
> > > > > for a system of assigning meaning to things simply by naming them.
> > > > > We have
> > > > > nothing other than the affects on us of our words with which to
> > > > > collectively
> > > > > ascertain the affects on us of the things that make up our world.
> > > > > We feel
> > > > > the affects of our vocal sounds internally, intuitively,
> > > > > intimately and with
> > > > > consistency, and all of us who speak the same language share the
> > > > > same basic
> > > > > perception of how we are affected by the things of our world. We
> > > > > process
> > > > > this basic consensus world view through the lens of our own unique
> > > > > self
> > > > > images.
> > > > >        One can sense the affect of any vocal sound on one by
> > > > > vocalizing
> > > > > that sound repeatedly while sensing what emotive state/feeling
> > > > > state that
> > > > > sounds stimulates/suggests. Try the sound of the letter, "R",
> > > > > "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr". Or the sound of the letter, "M",
> > > > > "mmmmmmmmmmmm".  Do
> > > > > these sounds conjure up/ suggest any particular state of being?
> > > > > Try the "A"
> > > > > sound and the the "D" sound. I went through the alphabet, from a
> > > > > to z when I
> > > > > first discovered this phenomena and is appeared to me that the
> > > > > sequence of
> > > > > sounds represented by our phonetic alphabet tells a story. I'd
> > > > > like to know
> > > > > if you discern a story in that sequence. If so, a story of what?
> > > > >        It may be helpful to note that before the progenitors of we
> > > > > humans
> > > > > used vocal sounds as words to refer to things outside of
> > > > > ourselves, we used
> > > > > them to convey emotional states to one another as other social and
> > > > > somewhat
> > > > > social species do.
> > > > >
> > > > >                Joseph Gilbert
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > On Aug 2, 2009, at 7:59 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >  Joseph, welcome to xmca.
> > > > > > I am no linguist Joseph, but I gathered from reading Saussure  
> > > > > > that
> > > > > > linguists in his day (100 years ago) did "look for relationships
> > > > > > between
> > > > > > sounds and things" because he argued against that idea. But
> > > > > > surely, no
> > > > > > linguist has looked at it that way in recent times. Who do you
> > > > > > have in mind?
> > > > > > And surely the idea of sounds relating to emotive states is more
> > > > > > relevant to
> > > > > > the animal kingdom than culture. Or am I misunderstanding you?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Andy
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Joseph Gilbert wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > >    Is our intellectual activity driven by a quest for answers to
> > > > > > > specific
> > > > > > > questions, or is it more like a game or sport we engage in for
> > > > > > > the sake of
> > > > > > > participating in society? What questions do we ask?    I wanted
> > > > > > > to know why
> > > > > > > people behave destructively, as they do. I allowed that question
> > > > > > > to exist
> > > > > > > for many years until the answer became clear. It related to
> > > > > > > culture.
> > > > > > >    When we use words, we are making a statement about whatever
> > > > > > > things we
> > > > > > > name. By referring to things vocally, we are, virtually,
> > > > > > > informing ourselves
> > > > > > > of the affect/meaning of those things. The sounds we utter
> > > > > > > correlate to
> > > > > > > emotive states, which we experience subliminally. Consequently,
> > > > > > > we associate
> > > > > > > those emotive-feeling states with the things to which the sounds
> > > > > > > refer.
> > > > > > >    Linguists have been looking for relationships between the
> > > > > > > sounds of
> > > > > > > words and the things to which they refer, and have been, for the
> > > > > > > most part,
> > > > > > > frustrated by that search. Vocal sounds relate primarily to
> > > > > > > emotive-feeling
> > > > > > > states, and only secondarily to the things to which our words
> > > > > > > refer. Are we
> > > > > > > able to discover to what emotive states each of our vocal sounds
> > > > > > > refer?
> > > > > > >    If we would change our human behavior, which is often
> > > > > > > misidentified as
> > > > > > > "human nature",  we must address the cultural values, the
> > > > > > > unquestioned
> > > > > > > givens by which we perceive our world. These givens, these
> > > > > > > values, our
> > > > > > > culture, is a result of our language.
> > > > > > >    I would like to share more of this with youall if you want to
> > > > > > > know
> > > > > > > more.
> > > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > > xmca mailing list
> > > > > > > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
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> > > > > >
> > > > > > --
> > > > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- 
> > > > > > -
> > > > > > -
> > > > > > -
> > > > > > ----
> > > > > > Andy Blunden (Erythrós Press and Media) http://
> > > > > > www.erythrospress.com/
> > > > > > Orders: http://www.erythrospress.com/store/main.html#books
> > > > > >
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