12 GA. Several steps to understanding human tools-of-the-mind
I often talk about contexts. They are the verbal vision of what is possible in my world, and what is impossible. Most likely what is outside of the context, is not even in my consciousness.
[I’d like to go back to the beginning just for a moment, if I can get away with it. If you’ll bear with me?)
Background: Was there a “pre-verbal” human existence? That is pure conjecture based on our Darwinian theory of life. Why would I want to get tangled in conjecture of any kind? How will it support my understanding?
Food was there; people ate it. Sometimes the people were the food, and they got eaten. Life became more complicated, and there was a yearning to avoid some things. We call that yearning the will to live. People could mimic each other, and run away. But if it took two or more people for that avoidance, language was born.
That previous paragraph is just to say, anything done by collective effort is done through language. So, language is a “reality” superimposed on the more-simple “pre-verbal reality”. This former pure reality has its own characteristics. Language reality is arbitrary, made-up, different in different cultures. Individual insight CAN be more direct. We walk across a flowing brook on a fallen tree. Our orientation and our balance do that with no thoughts and no language needed. Thousands of things work like that for us, so automatic that they don’t come into awareness, and we would have trouble listing them. Also, a language is superimposed on them, so they look like “words”.
The study of language is our model for understanding what is happening in the collective human realm. Everything has been built by words, and everything will be deconstructed by words, (or maybe just by forgetfulness, or lack of sustained interest).
Language is a pyramid, built on axioms, or a foundation of agreed upon world views. Conclusions will crash if the foundation blocks are moved around. Also, some conundrums built into those foundations will vanish. Foundations can change with experience. Can we allow a new experience, or are they all disallowed? Social pressure keeps us on a track.
Different forces, different-interests in the collective, see it in different ways. The ones with power will disallow what does not support their interest. The ones without power will discover other ways of looking at it, that divide things more evenly, (or maybe in their favor).
That is the contentious condition of language in humanity from the get-go, and likely forever.
In the world of the “cold-war”, killing, sort-of stopped through deterrence. Deterrence means I am just as strong as you are. Should we fight it out, or is some kind of stability a benefit for all? On the domestic scene we don’t have this balance. Where the economic model is to “gather as much wealth as you can, unhindered”, we call that inequality. With growing inequality, no “deterrence possibility” will ever manifest. The powerful will always get their way. To claim that it will advance anyway through growing civilizational values is ludicrous nonsense. People with money can and do get away anything. (Just read the news).
In the language model, how do we proceed? A new idea enters our awareness, do we go up, or do we go down? Go-up means that I accept your premise, (maybe I have accepted it from before). I will try what you say and maybe I can build on it. Go-down means that I will scrutinize your premise. Does it rest on too many unexamined assumptions? Does it lead to consistent results, or any results at all? Or is it all just promises and then excuses? Have any other options been considered? Why were they thrown out?
Are those results all favoring one power sector? Results for those in power has always been the obvious choice. It is only lately that some seek a wider distribution. Are those words only window-dressing, covering up intentions toward the opposite?
The power of the human mind IS to scrutinize. If you don’t scrutinize you are bypassing your best tool for some other convenience. Are you afraid of social pressure to conform? Social pressure is how society is stabilized, all the way to lynching’s. Why not scrutinize everything? Especially scrutinize what you are believing and telling yourself.
Does accepting conventional wisdom benefit you? Of course, it does if you are already one of the privileged in prosperity, and not one that is barely surviving. You might say this is a ratio that has to change slowly through time. Which way is it changing? Are more people sharing prosperity, or are more people entering poverty, in your country, and in the world?
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