Language as a Blunt Object

[vexaph0d]

or, How Emotional Fillibustering could Save the Human Tongue

IT SEEMS, at least to me, that as intellectual humans continue to outpace non-intellectuals in the realms of abstract thought and ethical contemplation, while non-intellectual humans continue to outpace intellectuals in the realm of social authority, we are missing some vital thing.  We are not communicating with each other nearly as well as we used to.  Why?

I think it has to do with relativity.  Einstein, chief braniac of the modern age, didn't exactly know what the hell he was getting us all into, I suspect.  Abstract thought and popular intellectualism is now chiefly concerned with how everything means something different to different people, while society at large is nearly offended with the idea that there is probably no Absolute Dogmatic Truth out there.

In many of the popular texts today whose purpose it is to "enlighten" the "common person," we find a weird sort of translation matrix which has the intent to take highly abstract, deeply relativistic ideas and somehow transform them into solid "reality"-based concepts through the use of traditional metaphors.  This, of course, being nearly impossible because of the inherent opposition between relativism and the literalism of the masses.

My suggestion is that uberthinkers, to which I have been accused of belonging (although I am not entirely convinced), need to reinvent the way we speak to the Public At Large.

Our language was invented and has been refined throughout the centuries with the sole intent of conveying specific messages and making specific points.  With the advent of relativity, especially Discordianism, we are finding it is more important that somebody gets A point, than that somebody gets a specific point.  With that in mind, I propose the use of Language as a Blunt Object.

We should use malformed, half-cocked metaphors with the intention of conveying cannotation and free-thinking type associations above the intention of conveying specific, cold-hard-fact analogies and conclusions.  In an age of relativity I think it is far easier to be "accurate" in conveying abstract thought by getting your audience to think like you are thinking, instead of trying to translate your thoughts into the way they are thinking.

To this end, most of my writing employs the use of colorfully out-of-place adverbs and adjectives, because if you can evoke a certain reaction to a phrase and follow it with another phrase that hammers out of your audience a related reaction, you can forge a train of thought in them that is not necessarily linked to which words you are using.  That, and like I said, it doesn't matter if they understand what you are saying, as long as they are inclined to interpret it somehow.  That they think at all is usually miraculous enough.  If you can mean one thing very explicitly, and they very explicitly understand something quite different, at least they have found a point.  And then they can tell you what they think, and you can discover something they didn't intend at all.

This is probably all just a lot of rambling.

[Michal]

People underestimate the value of a good ramble. Yours is not only coherent, it is articulate, and not only is it articulate, it makes a solid point. I'm channeling my English teacher here (and probably the debate team coach), but, tack on a concluding sentence that nicely sums this up.

"In conclusion..."

[vexaph0d]

IN CONCUSSION...

Gaining truth-ground today is the condition that people are not going to be swayed by listening to one another's honest rhetorical appeals to emotions or reason.  It is deeply imbedded in even the most literalist of us that our truth is THE truth, and so derailing a person's subjective views of reality and crashing them into our line of thought will increasingly prove ever more difficult.  This is as it should be, and it is what Goddess intended.

Therefore, we ought to, instead of swaying one another's opinions like has been done in previous and more concrete ages, support and encourage our audience's ability to think whatever they want.  Through the use of Language as a Blunt Object, using intentionally inaccurate and out-of-place figures of speech and appealing to the subconscious reactions of our audience that cannot be tempered by social programming, we can effectively institute the Ultimate Goal of Global Un-Domination.

----

happy now? :P

[deet]

We are less able to communicate effectively due to a number of modern inventions. All of which have created the medium of Near-Real-Time messaging.

Take for instance MSN Messenger. I can edit a single sentence three, four times before I send it. This allows me a few seconds to compose my thoughts that would be an uncomfortable silence in a spoken conversation. It would also come across as dishonesty; why am I spending several seconds to say one word? In MSN, however, it is barely noticed.

Forums, such as this, allow much more time. I am able to use my backspace key to rewrite entire paragraphs. I am able to review what has been said, without having to listen and I am not able to ask for clarification if I do not wish to wait several minutes, hours or days for a response. Not to mention the editing feature, which allows me to change what I have said _after_ the response, or remove the post entirely.

This is leading us to a point where we will be able to convince ourselves that we are intellectual behemoths, capable of the most articulate statements that our families could muster. In the Real World, we'll still sound like dumbasses, but only our on-line buddies will know our true(ish) abilities.

This written with only two words changed. Because I'm that damn smart.  

[East Coast Hustle]

I am intrigued by the concept laid out in the OP.

[vexaph0d]

Contents of a Silverware Drawer

It could be assumed, of course, that all of this is only bananas.  And without the rigid firmness of a sturdy banana, my argument would probably be no more than pile of words.  When people find it difficult to relieve themselves of their cultural grid, yet find the idea of being relieved irresistible, we could throw them to the proverbial wolves.  But that really doesn't accomplish anything for us; for them, doubly so.

It isn't about a specially crafted message, encoded in some kind of nanometric hyper-encryption, being transmitted to the lower animal lobes of your victim's brain.  To the contrary, such things have proven somewhat ridiculous, to the point of being of not much use even to Discordians, whose diet consists mainly of ridiculosity and absurdiness.  It's a sort of trick, like a pony, but more spectacular (and it doesn't leave road apples).

People are glued to their culture grids.  Many have been progurammed in such a way that an assault on their culture grid is seen as an assault on their persons.  One way I have found is closely espoused by Discordians everywhere, and that is nonsense.  It is to use that grid against itself.  If I want to call some random person fat, I could say...

HEY COW! Your meat is what's for dinner!

But, likely, it would only enrage the person.  I could likewise tell him...

It has been discovered by leading planetologists
That bodies exerting a gravitational pull substantially greater
Than the bodies near them
Are likely to induce collisions among the affected regions
Namely my stomach.

Now, of course, I get to be content that I called him a great big wallowing sloth-cow, but he, being but the unsuspecting reader of some chickenscratch on a bathroom stall, would probably not understand what the hell it was all about.  If it is sufficiently verbose, he's liable to carry something away from it, even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with my original theory, which was less important at this point anyway, being at least one time removed from the NOW.

Language as a Blunt Object, or, the Science of Discordian Chaospeak: a primer to the Greater Mysteries of Wrongful Diagnosis in Human Communication.

Forcing one to read between the lines by making the lines themselves, while probably talking about something, mean very very little without the input of the reader's subconscious.  It's something most Discordians are already fairly decent at, myself less so.  I have only convinced myself that this entire exercise was pointless since I'm only talking about the obvious to some, and to others, giving away the castle without so much as a maiden in payment.

[LMNO]

1.  Einstenian Relativity isn't about how "nothing is true".  It'a about making sure the equations you use are accurate regardless of the frame of reference.  I think you're referring to "moral relativity", which is more of a dodge used by dogmaticists to attack people who are open to different points of veiw.

2.  I like the idea of subjective interpretation as communication, but i also feel that this happens every day, where as accurate communication is much more difficult, as well as much more powerful when successful.

[vexaph0d]

1.  Einstenian Relativity isn't about how "nothing is true".  It'a about making sure the equations you use are accurate regardless of the frame of reference.  I think you're referring to "moral relativity", which is more of a dodge used by dogmaticists to attack people who are open to different points of veiw.

2.  I like the idea of subjective interpretation as communication, but i also feel that this happens every day, where as accurate communication is much more difficult, as well as much more powerful when successful.

You're probably right about Einstein, he being a physicist and all.  But it is relativity that began with him, and has crept into other areas of human society.  Whether the relationship between Einsteinian relativity and moral relativity is one that the greyed out masses would accept or not, I think it's all some cosmic conspiracy to undo the way we used to think.

I'm not simply talking about subjective interpretation of communication, although from my lack of clarity in this thread I can see how you would assume such.  What I am talking about is the conveyance of abstract ideas through the use of apparent contradiction and out-of-place oddball metaphors.  I mean that constructing an abstract idea in someone's head is better achieved by fooling their brain into actually thinking that abstract thought than by trying to relate it to something they already recognize.

The subjective interpretation bit is more along the lines of, if they think the same abstract thought that you are thinking, we'll probably never know, because they will manifest that thought in some completely different way.

[B_M_W]

Nahh, absolutism is being broken down and built up all the time. A culture might reach a point where they feel things are quite relative (not ours, right now) and then theres an event where that goes 180.

Things like ideas, they tend to work in cycles.

[LMNO]

1.  Einstenian Relativity isn't about how "nothing is true".  It'a about making sure the equations you use are accurate regardless of the frame of reference.  I think you're referring to "moral relativity", which is more of a dodge used by dogmaticists to attack people who are open to different points of veiw.

2.  I like the idea of subjective interpretation as communication, but i also feel that this happens every day, where as accurate communication is much more difficult, as well as much more powerful when successful.

You're probably right about Einstein, he being a physicist and all.  But it is relativity that began with him, and has crept into other areas of human society.  Whether the relationship between Einsteinian relativity and moral relativity is one that the greyed out masses would accept or not, I think it's all some cosmic conspiracy to undo the way we used to think.

I'm not simply talking about subjective interpretation of communication, although from my lack of clarity in this thread I can see how you would assume such.  What I am talking about is the conveyance of abstract ideas through the use of apparent contradiction and out-of-place oddball metaphors.  I mean that constructing an abstract idea in someone's head is better achieved by fooling their brain into actually thinking that abstract thought than by trying to relate it to something they already recognize.

The subjective interpretation bit is more along the lines of, if they think the same abstract thought that you are thinking, we'll probably never know, because they will manifest that thought in some completely different way.

ok, then.  I think I see.

Get the audience to experience the concept, not just learn it.


so: cognative dissonance, paradox, juxtaposition, etc.