Starting this chapter, even with no religious intent I fell upon the intriguing first line of the Book of John in the New Testament. There are interpretations of it and it invites interpretation. The first rule of interpretation is to go to the original, and the original was not English but Greek and so it was not Word but Logos, which presumably roughly means "word". Then we should look whether it is intended literally, or figuratively.
I would like to write, with words no less, on the literal understandings of words. Words are such a part of our world and thinking that it is hard to remove them from our thinking or even in our sight. One of the reasons for my need to approach this early in my writing is that I have only recently begun to have genuine suspicion about words, generally thinking that while useful, they must be used very carefully and with an understanding of their limitations in any particular situation. Any situation or thing cannot be just words; words can only hold a few fields of information on anything, as all things are boundless in their complexity. Words are bluntest of tools, for which we sometimes think we are able to sculpt David; and when we see someone else's sculpted prose we must take on a lot of faith that there is some similarity with the actual King David. If there is a God, it must be before the "Word". Words are just an attempt to write the detail of reality, and as anyone know the Devil is in the detail. Or rather, the reality is in the unwritable detail.
Probably one of my greatest hatreds is the simplification of something organic into something textual. It is the degradation of something four dimensional into something that is less than a single dimension, words. Words can only capture something incontestable, or something oversimplified or, worse, misleading. And that is for almost anything that can be put into words.
For a good many years in my twenties I labelled myself a philosophical Daoist, a conceit that could only come from those precious years of youth. I really did have an intellectual interest in the ideas of Zhuangzi and Laozi, and understood them in my own way. Whether I naturally thought or acted in accordance with them would be debatable. Some ideas are like seeds though and may of those seeds are reflective in many of my instincts and reactions now.
Zhuangzi (Chuangtzu) in particularly was skeptical about words, with plenty of wordy quotes to demonstrate: “The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?” Nice, right? The most apt part of that is the subordination of language as a mere tool that could be disposed of once the truth is apparent.
The problem though is that the mediation role that words have taken in our perceptions has led us to only see them. We only see the agents and forget the product they are selling. Laozi (Laotzu) said: "The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth" and there is more than an element of that in the exaggerated field of real estate.
Both Daoists quotes, themselves, are undoubtedly beautiful. The first talks about words as a disposable means to an ends, that ends being to have a clear understanding of meaning. The second that they play on our senses and truth is not necessarily a pleasing, acceptable thing. My current feeling is that words are almost always inadequate to show meaning, approximations at best; and at worst, they damage meaning in the snaring, trapping process to the point that it leads to wrong understanding or self-deception. Be that as it may, I concede that they are probably the best we have to communicate.
Words, being mere tools, can be misused or abused to create impossible artworks akin to Escher paintings. As we think in words, it is easy to be caught in an infinity loop created by them, unless you constantly subordinate the lingual meaning to a limited aspect of a non-lingual reality. The Chinese word for contradiction 矛盾 (máodùn) comes from the story of a man selling two different products: 矛, a spear that was described as capable of piercing any armour or protection; and 盾, a shield which in this case is absolutely inpenetrable. In the story, of course, a stander-by asked that obvious question: what happens when his two products are used against each other. Clearly there is a contradiction there but it is only an intellectual word game at the end of the day, because two physical objects can be speculated about but at the end of the day the theory can be tested and one object will win. And in it winning, it might only mean that it wins now - can one really know about something being the most of anything without an impossibly omniscient perspective.
Words can only show a few dimensions of any idea, object, person or place, when there are countless others. Take our hypothetical spear. Actually, don't. It is hypothetical and is literally only words. I do not know if you have ever seen a spear before so please hold in your mind the conception of the sharpest knife you actually have in your cutlery drawer. This is your 矛. Unlike a word spear with extraordinary word powers, your knife is, well, your knife; only you know it. Imagine the feeling of holding the material of the handle; its weight and dynamics in the hand when you want to use it; recall the age, how it came to be your knife; recall what you have eaten with it, or the foods you have prepared with it; though you probably cannot be sure, imagine its production; the origins of each of its components; then look at any grooves or any imperfections on it; do any of those scars have a story? As for whether it is sharp enough to slice through your bulletproof chopping board, or whether the blade will snap upon the first, second or third attempt, let us leave that to our imagination.
I would aver that the knowledge and the actuality of the knife that you have in your mind, after this mental probing of the knife ,cannot be adequately reflected in text. Even if you write answers to the questions above in text, it is still a mere shadow of the actuality with plenty of scope to underrepresent or misrepresent. And there are far more so for things more complex than an inert kitchen object. All of which means that we should treat meaning and truth represented words bring as approximations, and definitely cast the words away when the obscure sight of what you are trying to see.
In terms of my own growth, especially in the last ten years, it would have been towards leaving linear thought, perhaps a sign that the seeds from my twenties are bearing fruit. Linear thought is a product of the oversimplicity that word thinking can instill. For me linear thinking is the kind that is pure, reasonable, on-paper analysis without any dimensions of rough-and-ready reality. It is what I have an innate ability to do and regrettably has been one of the biggest obstacles for understanding the nuances of the real world.
What I am calling linear thought is best shown by obviously reasonable but clearly wrong conclusions:
- A smart couple will have smart children.
- He is the smartest so he will be the most successful.
- He is successful so he must be happy.
Similar certainties are commonly heard. Anyone with any worldly experience knows these are reasonable possibilities but definitely nowhere near the certainties logical, linear thinking should dictate. The sentences should clang in the ear in their arrogant certainty; so many truisms have this kind of reasonability about them that almost certainly recalls Laozi's observation about beautiful words not being true; and true words not beautiful. A smart couple could have a range of children with different intellectual talents; they may have one on the autistic spectrum, a child with Downs Syndrome and a rebel who distains learning and resents the expectations of their parents. Our own experiences of real people will show the linear thoughts to be clearly wrong about success and happiness: Anthony Bourdain, Michael Hutchence, Heath Ledger and Greg Boyd were all smart successful people whose lives ended by their own hands probably in lives where true happiness was a rarity and the agony of being was beyond belief. Linear thinking would not make sense of these people, and to be clear a lot of people still cannot understand their acts of suicide.
Yet for most of my life I have thought this way. Being someone with a strong affinity to words, I would write down my ideas and draw conclusions. When things did not go according to logic, I would say that it happened incorrectly, rather than to see that I had an inadequate tool for understanding why things happened the way they did. It might be an age thing - we see so much and realise that the inherent complexities in things and people are much more than can be perceived.
Apparently F. Scott Fitzgerald was the first to say the line: "The sign of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." When I heard it it nailed a notion that I have enjoyed pondering for some time: If one statement is 80% likely to be correct to a degree of 80% or more and a completely contradictory second statement is 80% likely to be 80% correct, it is entirely possible that both seem correct and consistent with most of the evidence. Therefore, if you negate one on the basis of another, you are in jeopardy. I would like to stand up and bear witness to holding two contradictory thoughts. Yet, I am sure it would not be understood.
Words fail in just the same way that numbers do. A staff headcount, something that is always lurking at the background of my managerial life, counts each person as an identical unit, whereas they are all different people with respect to ability, productivity, legacy and fit, not to mention the importance of their ongoing employment to their financial viability. The headcount could be a proxy for an accountant for the cost of salaries, which is only a financial perspective, whereas it loses relevance for the operation in the business and the human side of a working staff. Death tolls are the same, counting each person as an equal unit, which for public health monitoring may be useful but from any other angle had blinders towards the age, family impact of loss, contribution to society, etc. These two counts of human bodies is equal but not equitable and, more to my point, only ever meant to be taken as one dimension because there is no true way to count absolutely. Words are no different.
Clearly I've rambled for quite some time in words. Obviously the suspicion of words has not stopped me being prolix in my elaboration. I do not find it discouraging for my use of language, but it rather pushes me to try better to touch the concrete, the real and ask the questions without prejudice or prejudgement.
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?
2 comments:
I agree with the theme of your post that words will always be inadequate to convey true meaning of something. They can't possibly cover all of the dimensions.
In conversation, words can be supplemented with tone of voice, gesture, other body language to give extra meaning that words can't cover.
Have you read any Wittgenstein? I haven't, but I have heard of an interesting idea of his: the meaning of words depends on their context and how they are used. So, would it follow if we roughly share the same understanding of context, then we can roughly understand the meaning behind the words we say to each other?
The thing is I don't think the voice, gesture and body language get to cover all the meaning. It still relies on imagination (to intuit what could be in the gaps) and faith (that the gap-fillers are what you think they are).
I have probably indirectly read what other people read of Wittgenstein. As a language teacher, I would routinely look at how words change meaning with regard to different elements of context. To your point, I guess it depends how "rough" we are roughly going to understand. I think language is a flexible enough tool to allow us to handle rather complex interactions and enterprises. But I'd say that is due more to the genius of humankind to have the practiced imagination to read past the words and have such regularly proven faith that what they have understood is what they understand. When you have to handle, say, buying something many times, you become very adept at imagining all aspects of the intention from very little, and the repetition of the act enhances the faith. And if you misunderstand through misinterpretation, overimagination or misplaced faith in your own rectitude, reality will usually correct you.
But in the philosophical realm there is little practice to build faith, only imagination to fill the gaps, and it's of an intangible gapfilling nature which means that reality is not fact-checking what you fill the gaps with.
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