Your Words are Suck
Created | Updated Aug 28, 2013
Anyone who has played a simple game of ‘telephone’ understands how easily a message can be warped. Without proper training, here is my philosophical exploration of how this may happen. First, allow me to structure a model of how humans may think into three parts: input, abstraction, and output. Do NOT take this model as something concrete. It is rhetoric developed purely for the purpose of communication and confusion. You could assassinate a politician, climb a mountain, or condemn me to eternal damnation (all of which I condone); but to take this as a theory to be preached in the halls of universities or implemented outside the context of this issue would be a great disservice to intelligent discourse. I apologize if I have insulted my humble audience capable of differentiating a model from a theory with this long winded warning; otherwise you deserve to be insulted.
Anyway, back to the model. Input is the summation of information processed by the senses. Abstraction is the understanding or rationalization of said information. Output is the act of justifying or expressing information. What needs to be acknowledge here is that no part of the thought process is 100% accurate… ever… Don’t deny it, I know you want to, I know the impulse, but do not, whatever you do, wherever you do it, deny the inaccuracy of human thought. Moreover, ask yourself who is aware that this process is faulty during its very procedure?
If you need convincing that mental input (or the senses) is fallible, spend thousands of dollars at your local college on a degree in philosophy. Or, for a more personal experiment in detailing the difficulties of the senses; take three bowls of water, one room temperature, one really hot, and one really cold. Then play in the water like a child, breaking barriers of understanding the self and maturing new cognitive facilities. Now put your playlist on pause as it is distracting you from paying attention to what you’re reading and go do the experiment. It is very different to actually do it than just read it. Or, you could just Google-image optical illusions to see that even you see things that are not there… or could be there depending on your metaphysics and epistemology. I’ll leave out the semantics here with a much more pragmatic nod to Rudolph Carnap.
Philosophers have been aware of the fallibility of the senses since ancient times. So enough time has been wasted on it already as I have forgotten my agenda in this essay, treatise, blog thingy. What I would like to make clear is really hard to make clear considering the very topic. In addition, my short attention span doesn’t help and neither does yours, so bare with me now. The transferring of information via human language is a process that should be scrutinized with extreme prejudice. Maybe I’m wrong and there is enough prejudice applied to this process. If so, it is not apparent to me.
The moment an output is offered for input, it is warped. As I hope I have already made it clear (or more muddled), the input is susceptible to misinformation. But to deepen the complexities in the case of communication, what one hears is scrambled by the entity’s prejudices. Even more so than the simple fallibility of the senses, this transmutation of information is processed along side one’s personal preferences. In other words, rather than hearing specifically what is said, what is heard is what the individual wants to hear. I’m sure you may have already heard this before, but are you aware of it right now as you are interpreting what you’re reading? Am I penetrating your system of beliefs? I wonder...
In addition to these primary intricacies, there remains the more elaborate difficulties contained in abstraction. Every abstract is unique each time it is abstracted, which is to say memories change over time. Experiments exist that expose this fact, but I forget what they are. Funny thing, those memories. Plus, each entity attempting to abstract an input is unique, thereby multiplying the abstracts available for output. In other words; once again, as an output is offered and converted through the multitude of receiving inputs, each input then is morphed by each entities’ preceding abstracts while the current input is being abstracted. Or something of that sort.
Which brings me back to the output. However complex, unique, and malleable each and every abstract is, the event in which one develops an output, whether it be in a journal, conversation, or publication it must be contextualized. What brought the original output through to where it is being expressed again? This question is beyond the scope of my agenda. While it is relevant, I cannot wrap my head around it to address it at the moment. What I will address is again the transferring of information and ask the audience to recall the multitude of possible paths information may take. Then confront that diverse process with humanity’s stubborn drive toward certainty and try to ascertain what I just said, because I don't quite get it yet.
If this issue appears to be original, it is an illusion. At this point I am reminded of Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. While I have only read summaries on this and due to the nature of the issue I am currently speaking of, I will suggest that his work is a much better and broader analysis of this phenomenon, which is an improper inference.
In the realm of my analysis, however, it is Nietzsche’s reputation that provides an adequate anecdote. Many of professors and acquaintances of mine have claimed him to be a proto-Nazi. The internet on the other hand admits controversy to this claim. It is rumored that after his death, it was his sister who exaggerated his original works to appear racist. Whether or not his sister actually did this, it is also possible that his audience as racially prejudiced as they may have been, projected the racism and antisemitism upon his works. It is my belief that Nietzsche did not intend for Hitler to carry his concepts into the holocaust, but that’s just me.
Anyway, back to the model. Input is the summation of information processed by the senses. Abstraction is the understanding or rationalization of said information. Output is the act of justifying or expressing information. What needs to be acknowledge here is that no part of the thought process is 100% accurate… ever… Don’t deny it, I know you want to, I know the impulse, but do not, whatever you do, wherever you do it, deny the inaccuracy of human thought. Moreover, ask yourself who is aware that this process is faulty during its very procedure?
If you need convincing that mental input (or the senses) is fallible, spend thousands of dollars at your local college on a degree in philosophy. Or, for a more personal experiment in detailing the difficulties of the senses; take three bowls of water, one room temperature, one really hot, and one really cold. Then play in the water like a child, breaking barriers of understanding the self and maturing new cognitive facilities. Now put your playlist on pause as it is distracting you from paying attention to what you’re reading and go do the experiment. It is very different to actually do it than just read it. Or, you could just Google-image optical illusions to see that even you see things that are not there… or could be there depending on your metaphysics and epistemology. I’ll leave out the semantics here with a much more pragmatic nod to Rudolph Carnap.
Philosophers have been aware of the fallibility of the senses since ancient times. So enough time has been wasted on it already as I have forgotten my agenda in this essay, treatise, blog thingy. What I would like to make clear is really hard to make clear considering the very topic. In addition, my short attention span doesn’t help and neither does yours, so bare with me now. The transferring of information via human language is a process that should be scrutinized with extreme prejudice. Maybe I’m wrong and there is enough prejudice applied to this process. If so, it is not apparent to me.
The moment an output is offered for input, it is warped. As I hope I have already made it clear (or more muddled), the input is susceptible to misinformation. But to deepen the complexities in the case of communication, what one hears is scrambled by the entity’s prejudices. Even more so than the simple fallibility of the senses, this transmutation of information is processed along side one’s personal preferences. In other words, rather than hearing specifically what is said, what is heard is what the individual wants to hear. I’m sure you may have already heard this before, but are you aware of it right now as you are interpreting what you’re reading? Am I penetrating your system of beliefs? I wonder...
In addition to these primary intricacies, there remains the more elaborate difficulties contained in abstraction. Every abstract is unique each time it is abstracted, which is to say memories change over time. Experiments exist that expose this fact, but I forget what they are. Funny thing, those memories. Plus, each entity attempting to abstract an input is unique, thereby multiplying the abstracts available for output. In other words; once again, as an output is offered and converted through the multitude of receiving inputs, each input then is morphed by each entities’ preceding abstracts while the current input is being abstracted. Or something of that sort.
Which brings me back to the output. However complex, unique, and malleable each and every abstract is, the event in which one develops an output, whether it be in a journal, conversation, or publication it must be contextualized. What brought the original output through to where it is being expressed again? This question is beyond the scope of my agenda. While it is relevant, I cannot wrap my head around it to address it at the moment. What I will address is again the transferring of information and ask the audience to recall the multitude of possible paths information may take. Then confront that diverse process with humanity’s stubborn drive toward certainty and try to ascertain what I just said, because I don't quite get it yet.
If this issue appears to be original, it is an illusion. At this point I am reminded of Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. While I have only read summaries on this and due to the nature of the issue I am currently speaking of, I will suggest that his work is a much better and broader analysis of this phenomenon, which is an improper inference.
In the realm of my analysis, however, it is Nietzsche’s reputation that provides an adequate anecdote. Many of professors and acquaintances of mine have claimed him to be a proto-Nazi. The internet on the other hand admits controversy to this claim. It is rumored that after his death, it was his sister who exaggerated his original works to appear racist. Whether or not his sister actually did this, it is also possible that his audience as racially prejudiced as they may have been, projected the racism and antisemitism upon his works. It is my belief that Nietzsche did not intend for Hitler to carry his concepts into the holocaust, but that’s just me.
