RE: [xmca] Simile, Metaphor and the Graspture of Conscious Awareness

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

Apologies to the list! I meant that last bit for Rod and Larry alone. In grossly inadequate recompense (or perhaps aggravation) I have some sleepy Monday comments on the (not always very explicit) links between chapters in Thinking and Speech, which relate (eventually) to the child's graspture of conscious awareness.
 
In Chapter Four, we've got four "stages" in the "vrashevaniye" of any mental function which never overtly reappear again anywhere in the book. They are:
 
a) the "natural" stage of the non-socialized phylogenetic endowment (e.g. preintellectual speech and preverbal thinking)
 
b) the "naive" stage of the non-psychologized sociogenetic endowment (e.g. unanalyzed, purely functional use of language and ideas)
 
c) the "extramental" stage of tool and sign use (e.g. counting on your fingers)
 
d) Vraschevaniye, or the "introrevolvementolution" of a psychological function (e.g. the kind of mastery we can see on the face of this child in this painting by Bogdanov-Belsky:
 
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_SqhhJb_P3Kk/S4Ff4UzgIAI/AAAAAAAALHA/I5CB8MFgWhM/s1600-h/Math+puzzle+painting.jpg
 
 
(Check this site for a discussion of the math puzzle on the blackboard!)
 
http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html
 
In Chapter Five, we've got:
 
a) the period of syncretic heaps, produced by the natural, physical activity of the subject  (the natural phase)

b) the period of objective complexes, produced by the unanalyzed, naive use of objective concrete features (the naive phase).
 
c) the period of potential concepts, where the independent function of ABSTRACTION removes certain features for special consideration and discounts others (the extramental phase)
 
d) the period of true concepts, where the abstract features are resynthesized into a true ideal representation (the period of intro-revolvement-olution).
 
Many readers and some writers have complained that Chapter SIX, written three or four years later, follows but does not follow on from Chapter Five.
 
See, for example, Towsey, Kellogg, and Cole:
 
http://vimeo.com/13550409
 
Properly understood, however, Chapter Six does follow from Chapter Five. Vygotsky ended the last chapter noting a contradiction. On the one hand, adolescents tend to use concepts in practical, even visual situations rather than in abstract definitions, and on the other they find it very difficult to apply abstract concepts learnt in the classroom to real life. 
 
For example, they may think in terms of a 24 hour day and even be able to calculate time zones when making telephone calls but they cannot explain the concept of the international date line over the phone to a friend in another country except in complexive terms (e.g. “It’s tomorrow over here, and yesterday over there”). 
 
The contradiction is easily explained when we distinguish between everyday concepts, which are initially concrete and only later abstract, and academic concepts, which are initially abstract and only later concrete. That distinction, as Vygotsky would say, runs like a red thread through Chapter Six; verily, it is the life blood that goes first to and then from the heart and lungs of thinking and speech. 
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

 On Sun, 10/31/10, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: [xmca] Simile, Metaphor and the Graspture of Conscious Awareness
To: "Culture ActivityeXtended Mind" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Sunday, October 31, 2010, 5:59 PM


Rod, Larry:
 
Thanks for your very kind comments, but above all for your copious references (we are still using Rod's paper in our grad school, and I am currently reading Herb Clark's book with great interest). 
 
Here's my paper, in grossly inadequate recompense! Actually, reading it over, I would be tempted to agree with the reviewers, except that these issues DO seem very discussable, and some of the papers that make it past the reviewers and into MCA and then onto xmca for discussion seem much less so. The current paper is, alas, a case in point.
 
This morning I found a ref to Stern's photograph in Chapter Six of Thinking and Speech. It's the footnote on p. 184 of your Minick (Vol. 1 of the Collected Works). You will find it on pp. 164-165 of the 1986 Kozulin edition (MIT Press). 
 
dk



--- On Fri, 10/29/10, Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:


From: Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: [xmca] Simile, Metaphor and the Graspture of Conscious Awareness
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Friday, October 29, 2010, 3:28 AM


Hi David,

Yes please, I would love to see your violently rejected paper.

Your point about understanding (or 'getting') Homer via a translation reminded me of the comment by teachers in the acclaimed Reggio Emilia preschools in Northern Italy that they have been influenced by what they call 'our Piaget' and 'our Vygotsky' - acknowledging that their understanding is necessarily limited because they have not been able to read Piaget and Vygotsky's work in their original languages but also because they recognise that their contact with P and V's ideas has been limited and partial.

One could argue that no one could ever have an absolutely accurate understanding of another person's ideas so we are all operating with 'our' Vygotsky (even Vygotsky himself is unlikely to have retained a fully comprehensive grasp of everything he had ever previously said or written). When groups gather to study a body of work they can co-construct, for example, a more localised and specialised 'our Vygotsky' but everyone will still, I think, retain a series of distinctions between 'my Vygotsky', 'xmca's Vygotsky', and 'introductory text-books' Vygotsky' among countless others.

What we know (as for the three year olds' enactive response to a photo) must, surely, always greatly exceed what we are ever able to say about anything - successful communication must, I think, acknowledge that other people know infinitely more than they can say. I am conscious as I type this that it comes over as rather trite and platitudinous so I hope that readers will do me the favour of assuming that there is something behind it! If you have a reasonable idea about what your 'audience' expects and assumes you have a better chance of making what you say to them interesting. If you set out just to correct their failures in seeing things as you do you may have less success!

Violent rejection of papers may result from a collision of incompatible 'Vygotskys'

All the best,

Rod

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
Sent: 29 October 2010 04:49
To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
Subject: RE: [xmca] Simile, Metaphor and the Graspture of Conscious Awareness

Rod:

Yes, it seems nonaccidental that we say "I feel LIKE my brain is an erogenous zone" (for example) but we have say "I think THAT my brain is an erogenous zone".  The obvious comparison is indirect reported speech for feelings (and thus simile) but more direct forms for thoughts and words (we can say "Richard Shweder says, 'my brain is an erogenous zone'").

But Vygotsky considers even the language of the Odyssey to be "lyrically colored" and therefore emotional rather than ideational; when Homer says "And they lay down by the shelving sea" or "When rosy fingered dawn touched the sky" we feel like we know what he means even though we cannot really say that what it is.

Of course, in order to really understand this lyrical coloration, you need to be able to read hexameters in ancient Greek. But that's the whole point; the emotional substratum of language is always there and it never goes away; there is no point of entropy where thinking and feeling are completely merged.

The photo experiment is described in Volume Four, pp. 193-194, of Vygotsky's Cllected Works, in a chapter called "Development of Speech and Thinking". Here's the key passage.

“(I)f one and the same picture (let us say, the prisoner in jail) is shown to a three-year-old, he will say 'a man, another man, a window, a mug, a bench', but for a preschool child it would be 'a man is sitting, another is looking out of a window, and a mug is on the bench'. (...) A five-year-old establishes a connection between words in a single sentence, and an eight-year-old uses complex additional sentences. A theoretical assumption arises: can the story about the picture describe the child's thinking? (...) We will ask two children not to tell a story, but to perform what the picture shows. It develops that the children's play about the picture sometimes lasts twenty or thirty minutes, and primarily and most of all in the play those relations are captured that are in the picture. (...) The child understands very well that the people are in jail: here the complex narration about how the people were caught, how they were taken, that one looks out
the window, and that he wants to be free is added. Here a very complex narration is added about how the nanny was fined for not having a ticket on the trolley. In a word, we get a typical portrayal of what we see in the story of a twelve-year-old. (1997, pp. 193-194)"

We did a whole foreign language replication of this experiment with using a video clip (with an added time element) and some second graders and wrote it up for MCA, but it was (violently) rejected so we gave up. I still have a copy of the paper if you are interested though.

David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Wed, 10/27/10, Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:


From: Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: [xmca] Simile, Metaphor and the Graspture of Conscious Awareness
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, October 27, 2010, 3:55 AM


Apologies for missing this, David

I suspect that the relationships between affective metaphor and cognitive metaphor are as messy and complicated (or rich and intricate) as any other form of (imagined) boundary between thinking and feeling.

When we use a simile I think we invite listeners/readers to colour one concept with features of another, often (though not always) in a rather generalised way. When we use a metaphor I think there is more of an invitation to the listener/reader to haul up associations from the murk of personal experience (what does a hot liquid feel like, what does it make me feel like). I realise as I write this that I am assuming that there is a difference between a person's 'own' 'lived-in' associations with particular words/concepts and that person's sense of a 'common' or widely shared set of associations (what this can be assumed to mean to other people) - actually probably many different sets of 'common' meanings for different subgroups of 'other people' (people of my generation, people in my professional field, 'kids today', people who have adolescent children .....).

To a degree, our sense of how much like another person we are will depend on how well that other person is able to find a fit with our own meanings. We can manage an academic conversation with a relative stranger but it won't feel the same as a conversation with a relative or with someone who likes us enough to bother to remember how we feel about things. For babies it is quite easy to differentiate between 'people who like me' and 'people who don't know me' because the former engage in a noticeably more contingent/reciprocal way (they 'like' me both in the sense of caring about me and in the sense of adjusting to me) and this is surely a useful distinction to be able to make. For adults it is more complicated because there are so many gradations of liking to keep track of (guided by the steer from embarrassment when we get it wrong!) but I still think that most of us are highly skilled in (unconsciously) picking up cues about the degree to which someone
is adjusting to us (how much they like us). I also think that our own awareness of the adjustments we make when we interact with others forms an important part of our knowledge about other people (we can even make these adjustments when they are not present so that we can imagine, for example, how they would feel about something we are considering suggesting to them).

I like the word 'graspture' but for me (and for those who like me enough to know what I am like!) simile is less 'violent' than metaphor, a black and white diagram of the full colour collision.

I would like to read more about Vygotsky's replication of Stern's photograph experiment - something I know nothing about - where can I find this?

All the best,

Rod

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
Sent: 15 October 2010 04:55
To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
Subject: [xmca] Simile, Metaphor and the Graspture of Conscious Awareness

Rod:

I agree that there is an AFFECTIVE difference between simile and metaphor. Actually, I think that the use of "like" as a preposition is related to the use of "like" as a verb; the prepositional form is an objectified version of the affective affinity we see in the verbal form. I think that the existence of these two quite different forms is a good example of the DIFFERENTIATION and PARTITIONING that language brings about in affect (the word "articulation" springs to mind in this context).

So I'm very interested in what you say about the "distancing" effect of simile. Do you think grammatical metaphor has the same effect of distantiation. Does "growth" suggest an objective view when we compare it to "grow", because "growth" does not have an identifiable subject or object?

Of course, what Lakoff and Johnson are writing about is not affect but COGNITIVE metaphor. The idea is that underlying a whole range of linguistic expressions is some kind of non-verbal IMAGE, e.g. "anger is a hot liquid", quite independent of its verbal expression. From that perspective, there is no difference between simile and metaphor, and there is also no difference between metonymy and metaphor (because metonymy is simply a special case of a linguistic realization of a cognitive metaphor). All stem from a completely undifferentiated, unpartitioned, unarticulated mental equivalence (I think it's no accident that almost all of Lakoff's and Johnson's cognitive metaphors can be expressed as mathematical equations, although none of them are really reversible the way that equations are: we cannot say that a hot liquid = anger).

Actually, I didn't say that Piaget believed that children are capable of reasoning "What kind of thought would I be expressing if I were making the acoustic sounds/articulatory gestures that I am now hearing?" Quite the contrary. This belief is the core of the "analysis by synthesis" views of speech perception, whether they originate in New Haven (Liberman) or Cambridge, MA (Halle). Piaget holds that the child's thinking does not achieve the Copernican Revolution of decentration until seven or eight, so Liberman or Halle would have to argue for innate mechanisms that "think" in a decentred way quite against the child's grain.

Vygotsky has no such problem. The child is a social being from birth, and it is some time before children actually differentiate themselves from the "Ur-wir", the proto-we. It seems to me that this is completely consistent with an ontogenetic "analysis by synthesis"; the child understands because the child has not really differentiated speaker from hearer. The occasional failures of this type of understanding, in fact, play a not inconsequential part in the process of the child's differentiation of "I" from "we", which is only expressed, not generated, in the child's use of negation.

Vygotsky mentions his replication of the Stern photograph experiment, where a three year old is given a photo and responds with a list of the objects in it ("a man", "another man", "a window", "a mug") and a five year old can add processes ("the man is sitting" "the other man is looking out the window") but only the twelve year old can tell the story of how the men came to be sitting in prison. When Vygotsky replicates this, he asks the children to ROLE PLAY the picture. Since this forces the kids to add the element of time, the five year olds come up with a twenty minute role play that is fully as complex as the narrative of the twelve year olds.

When Vygotsky does this, he is trying to show that the idea that young children see pictures as a whole and do not differentiate the life stories within it is simply wrong. But in interpreting his result, we risk falling into a rather Piagetian analysis, which holds that speech is really an afterthought and not the cause of the child's thinking, because the child is capable of expressing in action so much more than what he can articulate in differentiated speech. I think this is part of what is bugging Martin.

Two ways of debugging this occur to me. The first is that if we accept Vygotsky's account that verbal thinking (not all thinking) develops from the "introvolution" of speech, we have to clearly differentiate between the child's UNDERSTANDING of speech in the environment (which is semantic, i.e. NOT entirely dependent on a phasal, lexicogrammatical, partitioning of speech) and the child's ability to "articulate" (which is).

The second point is that Vygotsky's definition of speech changes. For the very young child, speech includes the child's actions and in fact is more about the child's gestures and the child's use of the affordances in the environment than about vocabulary and grammar. Early speech is dominated by indication and nomination; signifying comes later.

In the same way, metaphor comes first, because the child has to be able to accept that a gesture can "stand for" an object, and a word can "stand for" the idealized relationship between gesture and object. Similes are a kind of violent graspture of the conscious awareness of metaphor. So to speak.

David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education


--- On Wed, 10/13/10, Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:


From: Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: [xmca] The "Semantics" of Vowels and Consonants?
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, October 13, 2010, 1:08 AM


So many ideas to respond to and so little time!

Isn't it more likely that our associations between 'mmm' and baby related concepts may be more to do with the fact that this is one of the first recognisable sounds produced by babies? Mamas, Moms, mothers and mummies all over the world have reason to like the idea that these first sounds refer to them (fathers are left with papa or dada). But how things may have begun is always only a part of the story - layers upon layers of cultural associations and connotations are wrapped around the infant word as it is used in particular kinds of situations and contexts.

A Carol pointed out, phonemes are category labels rather than names of 'things' - a way of splitting the infinite variations of sound into a limited number of chunks. After the age of about 9 months we begin to actively filter our perception of speech sounds to privilege meaningful distinctions in the languages used around us so there are probably many more SPEECH sounds than any one of us thinks there are because we think only of the sounds we are still able to discriminate.

Where J.G. differs from David's version of Piaget's view, that 'You have to imagine what you would be thinking if you were making the noises that you are hearing', he seems to me to be closer to Reddy's 'second person perspective' which has been aired here in the past - babies don't have to 'imagine' or 'think' - they have only to engage or respond.

Also, while there may be some very general, physiological, associative principles in the affective force of sounds (large, grande, enorme versus little, teensy weensy, petit, piccolo for example, and associations with 'squeak' and 'roar') there is also space for enormous variation in the effect that words have when they are spoken in different ways by people with different kinds of voice and by people in different moods (you really can hear the difference between someone reciting letter of the alphabet while smiling or while frowning).

Here's an experiment - download the transcript of Vikram Ramachandran's lecture 'Phantoms in the brain' from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/print/radio4/reith2003/lecture1.shtml?print 

Read the first paragraph or two before you click on the 'listen' button and then compare the experience of your reading and hearing Ramachandran's voice (all of the lectures from this series are still well worth listening to).

Sounds and words may 'have' some power of signification, whether because of their/our physiological properties or because of the layers of association they have accumulated (some of which may be forgotten by or unknown to most of us) but this is a thin, diagrammatic sort of meaning. It is when they are performed by a speaker (or singer) that they can serve as an interface, allowing us to hear through them and engage with/respond to the life of another person.

So - apologies for my thin, diagrammatic contribution.

All the best,

Rod

P.S. I still think there is a significant affective distinction between the effect of a simile and the effect of a metaphor - a simile announces itself while a metaphor can get to you more immediately.

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
Sent: 13 October 2010 06:58
To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
Subject: Re: [xmca] The "Semantics" of Vowels and Consonants?

We can see that J.G. really does believe that vowels and consonants are semantic, just as Khlebnikov did. Leonard Bernstein, in his Harvard Lectures on the "Semantics of Music" had a very similar theory about "mmm"; associating it with nursing, nipples, and micturation. It's the kind of thing that the "perceptionists" that Vygotsky criticizes in "Psychology of Art" believed.

Of course, there is some evidence to support this; we often find that "milk" and "mammary glands" and "mothers" and "mommas" are associated with the first bilabial sounds that babies make: Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Tibetan and many other languages can provide us with examples, and it's easy to imagine a world where babies are responsible for teaching mothers Motherese as an international language. It's our world, more or less.

But there are many languages, including English, where the /m/ sound is associated with NEGATIVES: "malady", "malevolent", "malefactor", etc. Worse, there are certain "things" or even "emotions" which by their very nature cannot be directly expressed in a vowel or a consonant.

Consider the number "zero" or the grammatical category of negation. It's really NOT possible (IMpossible, to use an "em") to express something that does not exist by something that does exist in a direct, iconic manner. Something that exists, exists. It doesn't not exist. The only way for it to mean something that does not exist is indirectly, that is, symbolically.

We had a related problem in class. The kids are playing a game with cards, where they are supposed to ask "Can you swim?" and if the responder answers "Yes, I can" (because there is a sign on the back of the card indicating "yes") the child is allowed to keep the card.

But the teacher has to begin by explaining what the cards mean. And the problem is that the card shows an actual child swimming, not a child who "can" swim. So the solution is a process of what Robert Lake would call metaphor, of having something stand for something else (e.g. "one minus one EQUALS zero").

T: Look (indicating the card)! She is swimming. She's swimming. So...she can swim. Now...(indicating himself). I am not swimming. I'm teaching, right? BUT...I can swim. Can you swim?
S: Yes.
T: Good. Can she swim? Can he swim? Ask her. Ask him. How many swimmers in this group? How many swimmers in our class?

You can see that the way the teacher handles the problem of presenting POTENTIAL rather than ACTUAL swimming is to TRANSFER the meaning to another situation; to have the card stand for something else.

I guess I would simply call this process semiosis, and that's why I think that it is part of language development at every single point, bar none. Every form of semiosis, without exception, is a form of metaphor, because the creation of a sign is precisely the creation of something that stands for something else that is not itself.

BUT...phonemes really do not exist, except as abstractions (in fact, I think they do not even exist as abstractions except for people who are literate). They are like the spaces that we IMAGINE we hear (but do not actually hear, except in quite special circumstances) between words. Since they don't exist, they can stand for other things that don't exist. As Lear says, "Nothing will come from nothing". He forgot to add that this nothing gives us everything!

Never mind. Let's notice the form of Mike's question. He doesn't ask whether phonemes exist or not. He simply asks whether one can produce a particular sound (the example he gives is only an example; it's the letter "em") without there being more than one phoneme "there". Where? In the mind, of course.

The simple, snotty answer is YES, because phonemes ONLY have psychological reality (and even then only in the minds of literate people, not in the minds of illiterates and children).

So there are as many sounds as you think there are: no more and no less, and if you go "mmmmmmm" as J.G. suggests and ask how many sounds your hearer hears, he or she will probably say "one". We can easily find people who will say the same thing about the letter "em" in almost any first grade class.

But the complex answer is much more interesting. It seems to me that consonants DEPEND on vowels in a way that is not reciprocally true. You CAN pronounce the sound "a" without any vowel, and "a" is in fact a word (and one of the most common words in our language).

At the morphological level, we see the same non-reciprocal dependency relation: In the word "reworked", both "re-" and "-ed" depend on "work" for their meaning, but not vice versa. Which can also be seen at the level of relative clauses.

In an exchange (which is where I think J.G. really needs to look for the emotional fountainhead of his semantic system) we find that we can have an initiate ("Who are you?") without a response, but a response without an initiate is not a response at all.

Why? As far as I know, non-human systems of communication (e.g. bird calls, whale songs, computer coding) do not have this kind of non-symmetrical dependency at any level at all. It's one word = one emotion, more or less like the extremely impoverished view of language that J.G. presents in his paper.

It seems to me that non-symmetrical dependency is an essential resource for making a very finite group of phenomena potentially stand for a potentially infinite one (as is polysemy, or as Robert Lake says, "metaphor").

This super-productivity is what allows human languages to SIGNIFY rather than simply SIGNAL. But of course this superproductivity brings with it developmental crises, too.

I have one other comment on the "reception by production" theories that Joseph Gilbert, Liberman, and Chomsky and Halle are putting forward. ALL of these theories assume a kind of RECIPROCITY, an act of EMPATHY, a DECENTRATION that Piaget rules out until the child is at least seven years old. You have to imagine what you would be thinking if you were making the noises that you are hearing. So if Piaget is right, children should not be able to learn to speak until they are seven or eight.

David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Tue, 10/12/10, Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com> wrote:


From: Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] The "Semantics" of Vowels and Consonants?
To: lchcmike@gmail.com, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Tuesday, October 12, 2010, 9:55 PM


Dear Mike Cole:
The sound of the voiced "M" is mmmmmmmmmm, commonly uttered to express pleasure, as in the reaction to something good tasting. The name of the letter is a peripheral issue.

        J.G.


On Oct 12, 2010, at 6:44 PM, mike cole wrote:

> David and Joseph.
>
> A question. The alphabetic character, M, may represent a phoneme. But can
> one say the letter M without there being two phonemes there?
> mike
>
> On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 4:26 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>> I just want to pick up on ONE aspect of this (very long and almost
>> completely unsourced) document, and try to source it, because it's a truism
>> in our field that none of us can stand alone.
>>
>> Even if this were not true in an epistemological sense (there is only so
>> much brilliance a lone genius is capable of) it would be absolutey true in a
>> publishing sense (a long document is unpublishable without a long list of
>> references, preferably including all of its potential reviewers).
>>
>> It's this:
>>
>> "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."
>>
>> This is the "reception through production" theory of speech perception that
>> was popular in the 1980s. It does have BIG advantages over passive theories
>> of reception that preceded it(for one thing, it's much more parsimonious;
>> the same system can be used for receiving speech and for transmitting it).
>>
>>  There are really TWO variations of this theory:
>>
>> a) The "motor" theory, associated with Alvin Liberman and the Haskins
>> Laboratories. This theory relies on the idea of "articulatory gestures". By
>> recognizing the kinds of "articulatory gestures" required by particular
>> sounds, the hearer, through an act of empathy with the speaker, asks
>> himself/herself "What would I be saying if I were making gestures like that
>> in this situation?"
>>
>> b) The "analysis by synthesis" theory, associated with Chomsky and Halle at
>> MIT. This theory relies on pure unempbodied ACOUSTIC knowledge rather than
>> articulatory gestures. By recognizing the acoustic patterns (see the theory
>> of "distinctive features" laid out in Chomsky and Halle, The Sound Patterns
>> of English), the hearer through an act of empathy with the speaker, asks
>> himself/herself "What would I be saying if I were making gestures like that
>> in this situation?"
>>
>> I think that BOTH of these variants of the theory have in common a
>> recognition that in perception we get a lot more than we hear; people do NOT
>> rely on the stream of vowels and consonants as their sole source of
>> information. Perception is a supreme act of what Bruner calls "going beyond
>> the information given".
>>
>> Contrary to this, all theories of perception which are based on an analogy
>> with the ALPHABET assume that the stream of vowels and consonants really
>> does carry the information (or, as Joseph Gilbert puts it, emotion).
>>
>> In Vygotsky's time, this theory was advocated by the brilliant futurist
>> poet Khlebnikov, who wrote quite extensively on the "emotional valence" of
>> particular phonemes, and constructed whole poems on this association (e.g.
>> "Zangezi", which was composed after a long series of experiments on the
>> "semantics" of individual phonemes). As you can imagine, they don't
>> translate very well!
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Seoul National University of Education
>>
>>
>> --- On Mon, 10/11/10, Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> From: Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com>
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] The Genetic Belly Button and the Functional Belly
>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> Date: Monday, October 11, 2010, 11:03 PM
>>
>>
>>                                                                 1
>>
>>                      Language Creates Culture
>>
>>     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 meanings of things. This informing
>> takes place when we use vocal sounds as words to refer to things.
>>
>>     We exist in a vacuous condition vis-à-vis any objective knowing the
>> ultimate meaning of anything. We do not know the ultimate affect on us of
>> anything. If we operated by instinct, our choices would not depend on
>> knowing, as our choices do. In this culls context, we are informed by the
>> affects on us of the sounds of our words of the affects on us of the things
>> to which our words refer.
>>
>>     In the vacuum of outer space, a ship can be propelled by the constant,
>> subtle force of an ion drive. In the outer space of our cluelessness as to
>> the meaning of anything, we are informed of that meaning by the affect on us
>> of the sounds of our words.
>>
>>     Spoken language is sound made by the body and used to refer to, to
>> signify, things. We must thoroughly understand the basis of language in
>> order to understand anything else about language. Why do we use certain
>> words to signify certain things? Why are there similarities and differences
>> among the various languages in how sound is used to refer to things? Is
>> there a correlation between and among emotional states and vocal sounds?
>> These and other questions must be answered if we are to know how language
>> works.
>>
>>     We are born into a language-using group and learn the meanings of the
>> things that
>> make up 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, are born of
>> those feeling/emotional states. and recreate these states by resonant
>> entrainment.
>>
>>         The languages we humans speak currently are the results of the
>> experiential contributions 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 originally 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.
>>
>>     Language is institutionalized perception. How we, as a society,
>> perceive our world, is
>>                                                     2
>>
>> determined by the the affects on us of our 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 moves tells us much about how
>> they feel. Our face conveys extensive and subtle information about our
>> emotional state. The sounds of our voices carry emotional content. And,
>> although we normally are not aware of it, the articulate vocal sounds, (the
>> sounds of our vowels and consonants), are loaded with information about our
>> emotional goings-on. The information that comes from the articulate sounds
>> of our words rather than from the emotional overlay we place on them due to
>> our transitory emotional states, is the same no matter what moods we may be
>> experiencing while we speak. That aspect of information conveyance is
>> institutionalized/standardized. The tone of voice, cadence, and volume
>> dynamics can be unique to each situation without altering the fundamental
>> referential communication.
>>
>>     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. Doing so oneself will give one a more
>> complete sense of the effects of vocal utterances than one could experience
>> by reading what someone else has written about the effects of the vocal
>> sounds on the emotions.
>>
>>     This covert function of language must be brought to light  in order for
>> us to be able to understand the importance of recreating culture. We must
>> understand that our behavior, as a society, is fundamentally linked to our
>> culture, which is a result of our language.
>>
>>     We do not objectively know the ultimate meaning of anything and
>> consequently experience our sense of the meanings of things from the effects
>> on us of our words.
>>
>>     These familiar phrases suggest a perception, perhaps a mystical
>> perception, of the importance of the spoken word.
>>
>>     The final word.
>>
>>     What’s the word?
>>
>>     In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word
>> was God.
>>
>>     The tongue is the rudder of the soul. It is not what passes into our
>> lips that defiles us but
>>                                                     3
>>
>> every untoward utterance that proceeds out of our mouths.
>>
>>     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 subliminal consensus for our
>> world-view.
>>
>>     We cannot realistically expect humans to act in a way contradictory to
>> their culture’s bias. Marx’s economic/social theory was used as a rallying
>> standard to
>> enable regime change. After those individuals who had experienced the
>> tyranny of the czar had left the scene, the body-politic eventually rejected
>> collectivism, (the transplanted economic organ). Russian culture is
>> fundamentally the same as it was when the roots of its present language were
>> established and Russian society naturally reverted to its cultural default
>> mode after the revolution. After a short time, the czar was replaced by the
>> head commissar. 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.
>>
>>                                                       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, the fundamental 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 conscious
>> activities proceed without much deliberate awareness. Once one knows well
>> how to drive a car, much less awareness is needed to operate the vehicle.
>> 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 about which we feel we need to learn in order 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
>> 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 influences not within the purview of our
>> everyday consciousness? What could such a force be?
>>
>>     The ability to produce simple vocal sounds made it’s appearance on the
>> scene before our
>>                                                     4
>>
>> 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 stimuli to
>> their own vocal reactions to them. When they began deliberately using
>> vocalizations to bring to mind things, they made the transition between
>> deriving their sense of the meaning of things by direct experience of the
>> things to deriving a sense of the meaning of things by experiencing the
>> affects of the sounds of the words for the things. This supersession of the
>> primal world by the linguistic 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, however 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 things? How do we
>> know the affects 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 them by using and experiencing the words for those things?
>>
>>     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 a sense of the affects-on-us/the-meanings-of those things.
>> Our sense of our own role in our culture provides us with our identity and
>> therefore with guidance for our behavior. 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 unless it is acted upon by an outside force. Human culture will
>> remain fundamentally unchanged unless 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 inquiry, 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 status quo at the
>>                                                     5
>>
>> root/source, which is the culture. Understanding how language functions
>> makes it possible to change our culture.
>>
>>                        How did language arise?
>>
>>     How did language arise? Originally, our progenitors’ vocalizing only
>> expressed internal-goings-on/emotion and did not refer to anything external
>> to them. 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 to mind 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 being emotionally
>>  affected 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 through time and somewhat
>> unique to each 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 the 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 as well when
>> used as words? What would be the effect of using inherently emotionally
>> meaningful sounds as symbols to represent external things? Would the
>> inherent meaning of the sounds affect our perception of the things
>>  represented by the sounds?
>>
>>                                                     6
>>
>>     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.
>>
>>     All of life’s processes exist as movements. Emotional conditions are
>> patterns of motion. Similar structures, in keeping with the mechanics of
>> resonation, impart, on each other, their movements. Our vocal apparatuses
>> facilitate our ability to move with each other.
>>
>>     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 shortly
>> after that 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, as words, refer to.
>>
>>     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 misinformation, 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 word
>> sounds refer.
>>
>>     At this time, I also learned that the sequence of sounds of the letters
>> of our alphabet represents 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, in chronological order.
>>
>>                                                     7
>>
>>     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. Does this story, told by our
>>  alphabet make sense? Does it seem to be an accurate representation of the
>> main events in a human’s life?
>>
>>     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 things?” 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
>> worlds. 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 progenitors were gaining consciousness, (the
>> ability to
>>                                                     8
>>
>> contemplate 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 perceiver. When this fear-based
>> thinking bias becomes institutionalized in language, the language itself is
>> a source of anxiety. The more we verbalize about any given problem, the more
>> stressed-out we become. This reminds me of an Eskimo method of killing a
>> wolf. They would smear congealed blood on a very sharp knife and set it out,
>> with the blade pointing upward, 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
>>
>>     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 advanced 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
>>
>>     I wish to change what is in that “heart”.
>>
>>     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
>> unacknowledged: It is spoken language’s informing 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 affects upon us of our words.
>> Much of human behavior that is commonly attributed to “human nature” is
>> actually motivated by cultural nature, which is created by language.
>>                                                     9
>>
>>     How and what would our society be if we had a culture which instilled
>> in us the values that 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 of us may be too timid to venture forth
>> from the false security of our unquestioned and familiar values. Some have
>> expressed to me that language is a product of nature and that to change it
>> deliberately would produce an unnatural result, a Frankenstein culture, the
>> consequences of which would probably be destructive. 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 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
>> unintelligently 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 to which that word refers?
>>
>>     Many seem to have difficulty accepting 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 inquiry. 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 meanings of things that we dependably share 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, cultural sense of meaning and the things that make up our
>> world. We give things a familiarity by attaching to them sounds created by
>> our body. Our words are related to things because the vocal sounds of our
>> words are related to our reactions to those things. We may not ordinarily
>> experience an emotional reaction to the things that
>>                                                     10
>>
>> make up our world. It is during our seminal moments that we experience
>> emotional reactions to things.
>>
>>     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 it is?).
>>
>>      After many attempts to share these findings with those in academia,
>> their lack of understanding, even more their lack of interest in
>> understanding the ideas I was putting forth , dampened my impulse to reach
>> out to those whom I previously had thought were most likely to understand
>> these findings.
>>
>>     I figured that what I was saying was challenging 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 with the meaning of the
>> things as well? What are the meanings of the things?
>>
>>     It appears that culture is the root of all normal 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?
>>
>>     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.
>>
>>     Are we conscious that we are affected by the sounds we make with our
>> voice? We are commonly aware that the quality of singers voices affects us.
>> We know that great orators and actors affect us with their delivery and
>> vocal character. Everyone’s voice affects us. We are aware of the affect of
>> tone of voice but not of the affect of articulated phonemes per se.
>>                                                     11
>>
>>     We have no way of knowing the final meaning of anything. We might think
>> we know what a thing will do to us in the immediate future but what about
>> how it will affect us much later? When we become aware of something, we
>> question its meaning and once something is questioned, we never gain a sense
>> of its absolute meaning Only that which remains in the subconscious we do
>> not question. The feelings that well up from our subconscious, in reaction
>> to various things, seems to be true absolutely. Our feelings strongly affect
>> our train of thought.
>>
>>     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 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 meanings/effects of things seems to have
>> some advantages compared to being informed of the meanings/effects of things
>> by direct perception of the things themselves.  All those who use a
>> particular language have the same basic subliminal sense of the meanings of
>> named things and consequently, are able to participate in the group dynamic
>> of their society. The words for things stay constant through time while how
>> we are affected directly by things changes. We can share experience,
>> knowledge and wisdom with words. Without words, our own personal experience
>> would be all we would have and we would not be able to share it. Words
>> enable abstract thought and planning.
>>
>>     We think, influenced by the feelings of the sounds of 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 are commonly aware that the quality of singers voices affects us.
>> We know that great orators and actors affect us with their delivery and
>> vocal character. Everyone’s voice affects us. We are aware of the affect of
>> tone of voice but not of the affect of articulated phonemes per se.
>>
>>     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 experience
>> consciously 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 the one thing, (the
>> referential meanings of the words), consciously, and the other thing, (the
>> affects on us of the sounds), subconsciously, we
>>                                                     12
>>
>> 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 the subconscious mind and we
>> can with the conscious mind. Whatever we are conscious of, we can question
>> and whatever we question becomes uncertain. However we have a language-based
>> 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 the meaning
>> of that which, prior to being named, did not seem to be known. The word,
>> made of sounds of our body, stands in for the unknown thing, the thing
>> separate from our body. In the absence of any objective sense of the
>> meanings 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 our familiar culture, as represented in our
>> language, by the stress of the fear generated by not knowing. One must be
>> willing to accept the mystery of existence in order to experience, free from
>> the bias of existing culture.
>>
>>     Considering words to be things in and of themselves, (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 which it
>> represents. It is, rather, the affects on us of 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 creates an emotional
>> reaction that may be experienced consciously 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 motivated by our perceptions 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
>>                                                     13
>>
>> better if we consciously agreed with the subliminal sense of the meanings
>> of things which is instilled in us by our language.
>>
>>     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 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 remedy social and
>> economic inequality and exploitation. “Hippie” 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 of society’s other institutions
>> are based. It seemed reasonable to him that since life is based 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
>> vulnerability and that we tend to protect and defend that culture because of
>> the perceived security which it provides. Once culture is established, it
>> causes the economic and social relationships to be what they are, and they
>> cannot be lastingly changed without changing the culture.
>>
>>     The culture, created by language forms our values which then strongly
>> influence the decisions we make consciously and  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 affects on us 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 experiences 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 if we could, why
>> would all cultures not be pretty much the same?
>>
>>     Most would hold that even within a given society our individual values
>> are not the same and
>>                                                     14
>>
>> surely the popular view of what 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 themselves as playing within their
>> culture. Given the same subliminal, fundamental values, individuals within
>> any society tend to behave not only relative to those basic values but also
>> relative to how they perceive themselves, (who they perceive themselves to
>> be), within their society.
>>
>>     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 sometimes makes us wonder
>> why we do what we do. 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 other than what
>> we choose to think.
>>
>>     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. Furthermore, 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 peculiar
>> of each of us, and that the emotional effects of the vocal symbols is
>> relatively consistent 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
>>                                                     15
>>
>> communication! And in order to communicate, we must be affected by that
>> which we use to communicate.
>>
>>     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. 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 of
>> 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 did we act as we have?
>> From where does the false information come that motivates much of our
>> behavior? “Human nature” does not account for our inhuman actions. The cause
>> of our destructiveness must exist 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, what is it relative to? We need not look further
>> than ourselves to find that. How could it be otherwise? We look out from our
>> eyes and hear with our ears and think that we can objectively determine the
>> nature of each and every thing that we examine. However, with our survival
>> in the balance, as it inescapably is, how whatever it is that we examine
>> relates to our survival determines what it must mean to us. 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 effects
>> we experience. Our words are made up of these body-sounds. Therefore, our
>> words convey emotional meaning and inform us of the affects on us of things
>> for which we have names.
>>
>>     Language exists in both the conscious and the subconscious. We are
>> conscious of the words we speak and of the things to which they refer, while
>> they inform us subconsciously of the effects on us, (the meanings of), those
>> things to which they refer.
>>     Does it matter what things mean? Does it matter what we think they
>> mean? Do our actions
>>                                                     16
>>
>> 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
>> affects-on-us/ the-meanings-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 sometimes 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, by civilized people, ordinarily
>> exclusively reserved for uttering words. While we are not aware of the
>> affect 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 simply by using a word, (a
>> vocal sound), to refer to them.  This information as to the affects upon us,
>> (the meanings of), the things which make up our world, constitutes our
>> culture. Culture is information, (in-formation). 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 was 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?
>>
>>     That which affects us profoundly and constantly must be in close
>> proximity. Things right in front of us are often overlooked when we search
>> for that which affects us powerfully. We tend to assume that if the causes
>> of major difficulties were so close to us, it would be obvious and we would
>> have discovered them by now. Let us reexamine our major influences  to look
>> for what causes us to behave as we do.
>>
>>     Our species, is 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
>>                                                     17
>>
>> 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
>> and engaging in all kinds of destructive activity?
>>
>>     I have heard many claim that it is simply “human nature” to act in
>> destructive ways. 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 our survival. It is because of our native intelligence coupled with
>> our survival desire that we voluntarily stretch our consciousness in order
>> to glimpse a better way for ourselves to carry on.
>>
>>     What are the forces that influence our behavior? What we believe to be
>> good and correct does not, it seems, by itself, determine our actions. Do we
>> not fully believe that what seems to be 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
>> represents the world to us, (our language). Language represents the world by
>> labeling everything about which we speak, with sounds made by our bodies.
>> Those vocal sounds are part and parcel of states of our emotions. Our
>> preverbal progenitors and our children when young, make vocal sounds in
>> reaction to various 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 reproduced 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. We are emotionally affected by the emotions of
>> others.
>>
>>     Language is an institution, a standardized way we move our bodies,
>> specifically our vocal apparatuses, our ears, central nervous system and
>> emotions, 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, “ libro”.
>> These two different sounds move us in different ways, giving us a different
>> experience of that which refers to and represents that object and
>> consequently, of the thing referred to. The primal meaning of a word is the
>> effect the sound of it creates 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
>>                                                     18
>>
>> generally not aware of the primary meaning, because we are affected by the
>> vocal sounds of our words subliminally and by the secondary, referential,
>> meaning of words consciously.  Awareness of the primary meanings of vocal
>> sounds was superseded by the awareness of the secondary, -referential-,
>> meaning of vocal sounds used as words.
>>
>>     To understand the functionality, the “nuts and bolts”, of language, is
>> to free ourselves 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, (all the
>> things that make up our conscious world), 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. When we refer to things with
>> inherently meaningful symbols, we are also informing ourselves of the
>> meanings of the things to which we are referring. Is there such a thing as a
>> meaningless symbol? Is anything meaningless? 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 affect 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 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 actions 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 vocal-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 experience. It establishes a sense of
>>                                                     19
>>
>> consensus which wells up from the subconscious minds 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 worlds. If we would rather live in a culture of our own creation than in
>> just 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 prefer.
>>
>>     Because of the inherent shortcomings inherent in existing languages,
>> although words can be used in a kindly manner to help get us back on track
>> when we lose our way, they cannot, in and of themselves, guide anyone who is
>> determined to see things in a certain way. Only the willing can be helped.
>> How can we help people to be willing?
>>
>>     I observe that culture is the prosthetic subconscious of society, that
>> which we who live in a particular society share with one another and have in
>> common. It has to do with our world-view. 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, or more
>> than one of them?
>>
>>     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.
>>
>>     Having words inform us of the meanings/effects of things seems to have
>> some advantages compared to being informed of the meanings/effects of things
>> by direct perception of the things themselves.  All those who use a
>> particular language have the same basic subliminal sense of the meanings of
>> named things and consequently, are able to participate in the group dynamic
>> of their society. The words for things stay constant through time while how
>> we are affected directly by things changes. We can share experience,
>> knowledge and wisdom with words. Without words, our own personal experience
>> would be all we would have and we would not be able to share it. Words
>> enable abstract thought and planning.
>>
>>     We think, influenced by the feelings of the sounds of 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 are commonly aware that the quality of singers voices affects us.
>> We know that great orators and actors
>>                                                     20
>>
>> affect us with their delivery and vocal character. Everyone’s voice affects
>> us. We are aware of the affect of tone of voice but not of the affect of
>> articulated phonemes per se.
>>
>>     When we make word-free sounds with our voice, we more readily
>> experience the effects of those sounds than when we utter words. We
>> generally do not sense the effects of those sounds when we verbalize because
>> our attention is redirected from the affects on us of the vocal sounds to
>> comprehending what the words represent. The primary 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 directs our attention to the
>> things to which the words refer. We are affected by sounds of our words
>> whether we make them simply as vocal sounds or as words.
>>
>>
>>                 How We Are Affected By Our Culture
>>                           And How We Can Change It?
>>
>>
>>
>>     The behavioral choices we make, be they deliberately or subliminally
>> driven. are informed by our perception of ourselves in context to our
>> perception of the world, -by the affects on us of the things that make up
>> our world. We achieve a sense of how we are affected by the world 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. On what basis do we make our choices?
>>
>>     In the vacuum created by the questioning mind, we have only our
>> conventional wisdom, residing subliminally, 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 experience a feeling of the effect/meaning of the named things.
>> 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
>>                                                     21
>>
>> 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 deliberate 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 culture deliberately.
>>
>>     Some say that existing culture is natural and that to tinker with it
>> would be risky and probably harmful. 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 of those sounds are.
>>
>>      The sounds of words do not cease to be things themselves, when they
>> are used in words to represent other things. On the scale of the evolution
>> of the human species, the use of vocal sounds to represent things is a
>> relatively recent development. Prior to that, our forbears’ vocalizing
>> simply expressed immediate body-mind states.
>>                                                     22
>>
>>     We are affected subconsciously by the sound/sounds of any given word in
>> the same way as our forbears were affected by the things that now the word
>> represents. They reacted to  things: the vocal part of that reaction later
>> became  words and we who use/hear those words, react to the sounds of those
>> words as they reacted to those things. Experiencing the word replaces
>> experiencing the thing the word represents. Culture is instilled in us in
>> that way. The word acts as a transmitter of experience. The experience that
>> caused the sounds to be uttered is represented in those who hear those
>> sounds/words subsequently. By this means, our forbears’ experience of things
>> becomes our experience of those things.
>>
>>     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 us from
>> our subconscious minds, beyond the reach of our deliberative processes.
>> 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
>> subconscious mind, form 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
>> subconscious 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 conditions.
>>
>> When we vibrate that part of our body, specifically evolved as a
>> vibration-making apparatus, (their vocal apparatuses), 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 of
>> the words we hear. We do not need to consciously try to apprehend the
>> meanings/ effects of the vocal sounds themselves to perceive them. The
>> meanings are the affects 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 effect 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 unless one has adopted the world-view of that
>> language.
>>
>>                                                     23
>>
>>     As for the demand that the claim that vocal sounds are communicative,
>> be proven; there is not a demand for proof that facial expression and body
>> posture in general are communicative. 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 that we perceive
>> affects us and that it is precisely that effect which we perceive? Can there
>> be perception without being affected? And the meaning of anything must, in
>> the final analysis, be simply its effect within us. Though one may agree
>> that we are affected by vocal sounds,  one may not agree that we are
>> affected emotionally by vocal sounds. We are accustomed to not reacting
>>  emotionally overtly to our vocal sounds.
>>
>>     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/body 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, or both?
>>
>>     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 how the thing affects 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 of which we do not question
>> the meaning is the sounds of the words we use to refer to 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 are 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?
>>
>>                                                     24
>>
>>     We all talk of culture. What do we mean by “culture”? In the New World
>> Dictionary of the American Language, the definition number 6 of culture, is:
>> ”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 intracultural
>> and intercultural “chemistry”. We have been, for the most part, passive
>> recipients of whatever paradigm was dealt us by our cultures. Like
>> passengers on a great ship, our fates were 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 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 the
>> destiny of carrying out the plan set in motion by the emergence of
>> language/culture.
>>
>>     We will invest in becoming 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 a new understanding 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 need
>> to 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 now do. 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, 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/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.
>>
>>                                                     25
>>
>>     Our progenitors used to live in whatever shelters, such as caves or
>> rock overhangs, they
>> found already existing. Then they learned to make shelters where and when
>> they 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 with 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 unless it is acted on by an
>> outside force. Human culture remains fundamentally unchanged unless it is
>> changed by those who sense a need to change it.
>>
>>     The subconscious mind is where culture resides within us. Culture
>> resides without us in language. 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.
>>
>>     The idea that we are strongly influenced by a force invisible to us is
>> strange and tends to be 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 evolve by
>> natural processes, so culture evolves by natural processes without our
>> conscious collaboration. Culture has served us tolerably well through most
>> of our species’ history. However, since the emergence of
>>                                                     26
>>
>> 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 our actions did prior to industrial technology, while our
>> culture is basically the same as it was then, 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 with no awareness of the reasons for our choices.
>>
>>     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 or even 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.
>>
>>     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 likewise increase 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 workings of culture.
>>
>>     The vocal sounds our pre-linguistic progenitors made conveyed feeling
>> and emotion. We still make sounds and they convey feeling and emotion now as
>> they did then. Using them as words, to refer to 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 affects
>> on us of the sounds of words as representing the affects on us of  the
>> things which words represent. When we use words, we feel we have a sort of
>> firsthand experience with the things named. This experience with the verbal
>> representation of 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
>>                                                     27
>>
>> 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, and even when it is, 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 affects 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 sweet lullabies to babies, not pirate
>> drinking songs. Why? Because 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 is 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.. Are any vocal
>> sounds meaningful to you?
>>
>>      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 linguists 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 affect from the concept of meaning. If
>> emotional affect is not meaningful, what
>>                                                     28
>>
>> is? One may say that the meanings of words are the things to which they
>> refer. If this were true, we
>> would have no clue of the meaning of any thing. We would know what the
>> sounds of the words mean in terms of the things but we would have no sense
>> of what the things mean. We need to know what the things mean: we already
>> subconsciously know what the sounds of the words mean. And, can a sound mean
>> a thing? Or does a sound have meaning of its own? Does the thing have
>> meaning of its own? It seems likely that vocal sounds have effects/meanings
>> and it seems questionable 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 for different folks, whereas the
>> affects on us of the sounds of our own voices is 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 naturally affected emotionally by those
>>  sounds.
>>
>>      On one hand, we are affected deeply by the sounds made by our bodies
>> and on the other hand, we are not consistently and uniformly affected by the
>> things that make up our world. When the two things are associated with one
>> another, the one with the strongest affect-pressure defines the one with the
>> lesser affect-pressure.
>>
>>     No one that I have spoken with about the subject maintains that the
>> sounds we make with our voices are non-communicative. Rather, people
>> commonly report that they feel clearly affected in particular ways by
>> different vocal sounds and a thread of commonality runs through their
>> reports. So, if we know that we are affected by our voice sounds, why do we
>> deny that  we may be affected by the sounds of our words and that how we
>> are  affected by the sounds of our words may influence our perceptions of
>> the things we name?´
>>
>>     There are conscious processes and subconscious processes And processes
>> can migrate from one realm to the other. Driving a car or playing a piano
>> are examples. When we talk, we are conscious of the things we are talking
>> about. When we vocalize non-verbally, we are conscious of the sounds of our
>> voice and, if we are on the lookout for it, we may be aware of the effects
>> on us of those sounds.
>>
>>     What we suppose to be the reasons why we act as we do may not be the
>> real or sole reasons. The quest for psychological self-discovery is about
>> becoming aware of the real reasons for our behavior. Many of us use our
>> rational minds to create plausible explanations for our behavior. Some of us
>> who are more dedicated to the truth of the matter rather than to simply
>> defending whatever we may do, use the rational mind to examine our behavior
>> in the light of understanding. In the ultimate shakedown, do we really know
>> why we do what we do? Can we prove it to anyone else: can we prove it to
>> ourselves? Looking at what influences us seems to be useful in ascertaining
>> exactly what motivates us. Since we are all about survival, whatever affects
>> our survivability, obviously affects our behavior. Our relationship with our
>> caregivers, if we are dependent on another, with our employer, if we are
>> working for someone else, with the legal
>>                                                     29
>>
>> structures, if we live in civilization, with our perception of the affect
>> on us of our actions, whether that
>> perception is conscious or subconscious, and with our sense of morality, if
>> we are so disposed, are all important to us. Whatever bears on our  survival
>> and metasurvival influences our behavior.
>>
>>     How do we ascertain the affects on us, (the meanings of), the myriad of
>> things that make up our world? It is impossible to think our way through the
>> question of how we will be affected by all the various choices we may make,
>> as a chess player attempts to do. We would need to know the ultimate affect
>> on us of all things and all actions relative to those things. This is not
>> possible, at least for now. In the absence of any definitive proof of the
>> meaning of anything, we feel the need to know what exactly things are, what
>> each thing is. The final word on this issue is THE WORD itself. The word for
>> a thing is what we have to go on for sensing what the thing means to us.
>> Since the effect on us of a thing and the meaning for us of that thing are
>> one and the same, and since the actual sound of the word affects us deeply,
>> reliably and in the same way as it affects everyone else, we lean on this
>> word-sound-affect thingy to inform us of what any particular
>>  thing means for us. It is the collection of word sounds called language
>> that creates human culture. We have a world full of things, of which we know
>> naught; and we have sounds we make with our body, the affects of which we
>> experience subconsciously.
>>
>>     Spoken language tends to be quite stable through time and hence,
>> culture is likewise stable.
>>
>>     We can sense the meaning of things only in those ways that we can be
>> affected by things. In order to sense, one must be affected. If one is not
>> affected, one does not sense. In how many different ways can one be affected
>> by things? How would we determine that?  In how many different ways can we
>> be affected by the sounds we make with our voice? How would we determine
>> that? The way we are affected by things is different with different people
>> and at different times with each person. The ways we are affected by our
>> voices is the same for all people and at all times with each person. The
>> effects on us of our voices is the currency we use in order to determine the
>> effects on os of all other things. As we are affected by the sounds of any
>> given word for any given thing is how we assume we are affected by that
>> thing. The word acts as a kind of magical window through which we peer in
>> order to seemingly gain a glimpse of the true nature of whatever it is
>>  we are considering. When we consider a thing, we have the thing itself in
>> front of us. It is alien to us. It does not talk. It does not tell us what
>> it is. It just exists mysteriously. However, we do have the word for the
>> thing. The word speaks to us in our own language. It moves us literally with
>> the motions of our bodies. And we are affected deeply by its presence. Which
>> one informs us of the affect on us of any given thing, the thing itself or
>> the word for the thing? The word is the handle we use to get a feeling of
>> the meaning of the thing. We derive a sense of the meaning of any thing by
>> hearing the word for that thing.
>>
>>     This sense of meaning we acquire from our language is not based on
>> absolute knowledge of the ultimate affect on we humans of any thing. It is a
>> product of our own particular language and different from the sense one
>> acquires from using another language.
>>
>>
>>    30
>>
>>     So, what does this matter? If our only sense of the meanings of things
>> derives from our language, then what we subliminally assume to be the givens
>> of our world are bestowed upon us, as a people, by our language. This sense
>> of what our world means informs our decisions, be they consciously or
>> subconsciously motivated, for underlying all conscious considerations is
>> whatever resides in our subconscious. The contents of the subconscious sends
>> compelling feelings and emotions which drive behavior, behavior which we
>> rationalize by explaining why we do what we do.  If one disobeys the
>> emotional promptings/demands of one’s subconscious, one experiences a sense
>> of disassociation and consequently anxiety. Anxiety is disabling and we
>> strongly tend to avoid it. Therefore, we are held hostage by the contents of
>> our subconscious minds. Our culture, which is the product of our language,
>> is the most influential factor among those that contribute to the values
>>  we have stored beneath the surface of our awarenesses.
>>     We humans live in a sea of mystery. Non-cognitive creatures are
>> informed of the import of the varied situations they encounter by their
>> instincts, whereas we are mainly informed by culture. This provides us with
>> greater adaptability and also creates the risk of us “falling off the apple
>> cart” of the sense of knowing provided by culture. Culture is somewhat like
>> an overcoat which we can remove, and instincts are more like fur,
>> (permanent). If we remove our cultural coat we are then without our familiar
>> input of information as to the meanings of the things that make up our
>> world. Without our common culture, (a product of our common language), we
>> have only our individual experiences, and nothing to provide a basis for
>> society. Nonverbal species have instincts to guide their social behavior.
>> Humans have culture. Xenophobia is a result of identification with the
>> familiar. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, most humans have little
>> time to
>>  question and to seek answers. We are geared up for a competitive, rat-racy
>> way of life, in which “wars and rumors of war” are commonplace. We simply
>> absorb our culture and then act out our role in it.
>>
>>                                How Do We Know Anything?
>>
>>     We know when we need to pee. We know when we are hungry, tired or
>> attracted to a potential mate. How do we know these fundamental things? We
>> FEEL them. We don’t wonder if they are true or ponder how we know them. We
>> just know. How could we prove that any of the things that we feel actually
>> exist? We would not be able to prove their existence or the existence of any
>> other given. We go by what is there. Our feelings inform us of how we are
>> affected by whatever it is that is there that affects us. The subconscious
>> rational mind accepts our feelings as givens and operates according to them
>> as starting premises.
>>
>>     While our beliefs are in relation to our feelings, also our feelings
>> are in relation to our beliefs. That is why we, as humans, are capable of
>> heinous acts, acts that a non-idological person would recoil from. Whatever
>> beliefs we adopt are part of the lens through which we gaze when we
>> interpret more primary things. If we dare to abandon our beliefs and to
>> simply allow ourselves to perceive our world as it is, without being
>> interpreted according to beliefs, we then feel it as it is. If we realize
>> that we really do not know what anything means separate from how we feel it
>> is, that its ultimate meaning is a mystery, then we are able to perceive it
>> without the intermediation of our
>>                                                     31
>>
>> cultural conditioning.
>>     Since we react emotionally to the emotive processes of others, to the
>> sights and sounds of others’ emotional goings-on, the sounds of others’
>> words, as well as the sounds of our own words, affect us emotionally.  We
>> are affected by human vocal sounds as sounds separate from words and as
>> components of words. When we use vocal sounds as words, the affects on us of
>> the sounds stand as representing the affects on us of the things which we
>> label with those words. The affect on us of the sounds of the word,
>> “walrus”, is accepted by us as revealing the affect on us of the thing,
>> “walrus”. The effect of the word replaces the effect of the thing; the
>> material is superseded by the abstract; the map replaces the territory. In
>> this way, we become creatures of our culture. Spoken language uses emotional
>> feelings to represent the various things in our world.
>>
>>     Ever since language started, it has been informing us of h
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