h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah...so 'I have a spiritual connection to the land' equates (reduces?) to 'I had a happy childhood scrumping for apples.' Nothing wrong with that - nothing at all.

Yes, yes, I know that this urge of mine to puncture any talk of spirituality is lamentable and pathetic - conceivably it derives from my own 'Issues'. But I do have the that high-falutin' talk of spirituality equates to some quite ordinary, prosaic, common-or-garden feelings that we all share.

These feelings are great, no doubt about that - they're what makes life worth living. But do they deserve a special word?

We all agree what apples are so the easiest way to speak about them is to use the word apples.

Though we don't agree on the source of spiritual feelings, we all agree what they feel like so why not have a special word?

Well...true. I don't have less woo-woo words for concepts like Blues or Soul.



Blue was the colour associated with the Yoruba god, Shango. He was the keeper of the Mojo, or life force.

You're right Ed, from now on I'm not going to say I'm feeling spiritual, I'll just say "My Mojo's Workin'"

'We're on a mission from God'.

Seriously, though...do you see what I'm getting at?

We can get to 'I have a spiritual connection with the land' from 'I like pretty landscapes' or 'I liked scrumping for apples when I was wee.' We can get to 'He venerates his ancestors' from 'He misses Gran'. Aren't we talking about common human experiences dressed up in mystifying words? These words are useful abstractions, no doubt about that - just so long as we don't elaborate them to encompass meaningless intangibles.

>Of course, a poem is about more than its "meaning". If it was just about the "meaning" the poet could have said it in a much more straightforward way. It's about the beauty of the language, or even of the sound. And imagery.< trig

Yes I agree. For me it's as much about rhythm. And yes the pictures a poem creates in your mind.

I suppose for me I trust my opinion when something is teaching me something 'new', be it a poem or learning about some scientific discovery or idea, or seeing something in my garden. That leads to pleasure and excitement for me. And I just hold onto the new thing I've learned.

>Almost everywhere else I sometimes feel I'm faking it to myself. But I feel that less than I used to. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?<trig

Stop worrying trig..I have heard others say the same for themselves, although its not like that for me. But from what you post here on h2g2 you don't come over as a faker, whatever that really means.

A little on spirituality - first person experience.

I don't doubt that it is in fact nothing more than an illusion created, under certain circumstances, by the brain. However, it is so different to normality that it demands to be noticed and I, for one, treat it as *real* (and so, it is).

The most mundane circumstances can offer extraordinary experience.

At one time I could, on occasion, *feel/see* my way through the equipment I was responsible for (a Sonar installation) - if a particularly awkward fault occurred I would click into a state where traced through a mental three dimensional circuit diagram, following through components (resistors, capacitors, valves...) to visualise the problem.

Some years later, the same 'trick' served me well on a mainframe computer, wending through gates, registers, instruction sequences etc.

Years later again, I had a friend who could do that with a complex system of computer, electrics, hydraulics, mechanics... Towards the end of the project, I thought I was beginning to find it.

(Then technology overtook me)

I imagine there are those around who do similar now - with computers, neurology, quantum physics, genetics...

More recently, anhaga's experience with woodworking is not uncommon. With woodturning there's a technique known as 'riding the bevel', getting the tool just...so on the workpiece when the cut just flows, almost on its own.

Further and deeper, it can affect a whole piece of work - a bowl, say - where 'riding the bevel' becomes *riding the bowl* and produces the most satisfying feeling (and my best work - though it can't be called excellent).

The MRI scan of the golfer is suggestive here. Those activities, under high concentration where the brain bypasses the byways to run on the highways so that your whole system (your whole *being*) is running at maximum efficiency, coordination, perception seems to suggest a *different state of existence*...

That is one aspect of spirituality as I see it - the chi bit.

What I meant to say before my last (post 628)

This is a superb thread. I've expressed my appreciation for kea's contribution, now I extend it to the rest of you. Much in the way of thought provocation, giving rise to a bit of analysis of my own experiences.

It looks as though the time has passed for this contribution but I am not repentant.

Now read post 628!

I get what you're saying Ed, I'm suggesting that we keep using the words often and in the mundane sense to de-mystify them. Think about how oaths once were powerful magic but became common profanity from casual overuse.

>> ...my first scholarly article was accepted by Modern Philology <<

Is there a link anywhere.

I found the current page:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/mp/current

And I understand they have been publishing since 1903,
which explains the apparent oxymoronic potential of the
title, suggesting that Modern and Love of Words were not
then mutually exclusive concepts.


~jwf~

>> But do they deserve a special word? <<

Only if you want to talk about them. A mutually understood word
can go a long way toward successful communication. That's why
Marxism failed; no one knew what 'materialism' meant, and what the
hell does boojois mean. Pro-low-terriat? Means nought to most.


~jwf~

So let's establish a vocabulary we all agree on to describe the 'non-material' whirled of painting, mojo, woodworking, the blues...

I'll start (where it all started 5000 years ago):

A - is for apple


DAMN! Y'd think a site as hip as this one would have an apple smiley!


~jwf~

I thought you said 'I understand *you* have been publishing since 1902'


No, I don't think I've ever found a link to that first wee piece of mine.

It was a ripping two page discussion of the meaning of a single word in a certain Old English poem.

Your modesty is at least on-topic.
May it shine on into the future.

~jwf~

Go on...tell us what the word was.

Back to Topic Drift...

R4's 'Word of Mouth' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ls65t#synopsis) covered Sapir-Whorff territory, including a contribution by Lera Boroditsky: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html

This is the business about how the language we speak 'fundamentally shapes our thought processes.' But what's meant by this? One thing that the Sapir-Whorffians seem to me to miss is that we can generally understand what another language is trying to get at, even if we can't translate into our own efficiently or elegantly. Examples given in the programme were the 'untranslatable' words 'gemütlich' (German) and 'hygge' (Danish). No, we don't have words for them - they sort of relate to cosiness, but not quite - nor do we have cultural attributes related to them (Danish homes have a (sp?) 'hyggenook' - sort of 'hugging nook' - the inner sanctuary of the home)...but the point is that we English speakers have no real difficulty getting to grips with them. Similarly, English-speakers can easily learn Chinese concepts of vertical time - and bilingual speakers can switch easily between languages and the modes of thinking they imply - a bit like 'register switching' within a language, eg switching between writing a scientific paper; discussing TV; talking to a child; receiving a monarch).

So how fundamentally do these languages - or, indeed, cultures - affect our thinking? If a Danish person has a concept of 'hygge', a Zimbabwean a non-English undetsnding of 'cousin' or an Aboriginal Australian refers to locations as points of the compass...what, if anything, do these *really* imply about their fundamental outlooks on life?

Could it not be that these linguistic and cultural differences equate to...surface features...window dressing?

Yeah but you're using these definitions in isolation, like something in a dicitonary. It's about how language is used in context, in communication. You only have to look at this thread, where most of us appear to come from the same basic western background tradition, all using English, to see the confused and even possibly non communication going on at times, at least that's how it feels from my POV.

There's some people with their arses firmly parked on bit by bitty bit, type analysis thing. Yes all well and good, anyone can learn to do that. As kea said, 'clock bits'. And then there's some who are prepared to play around a bit with concepts and mode of posting in a more synthetic way; and look at how synthesis and analysis can interact and something unexpected might happen.

I'm a great fan of the American land artist, Robert Smithson who compared language to geology. I've quoted him before. It's stuff, and it all depends on how it's laid down, and the way geothermal forces tangle it around. Untangling the tangling of all those strata is a pretty futile to put it mildly.

I much prefer his metaphor than 'window dressing'...but hey different strokes.

Well...I get you. There's more than one way of describing stuff. If I've a fault - and if it's a fault - I like to go for the prosaic language. Let's not get too fancy! (I don't think of myself as someone who picks things apart, though - I'm more of a Big Picture thinker than a details person).

But what I'm really poking at is...how drastically different are all these perspectives? In take it as a given that different cultures will tend to look at things in different ways. Maybe other people don't get that and need to have it explained to them. But isn't there a danger in going to the other extreme? In treating other cultures as totally exotic and incomprehensible?

It also works *within* cultures, of course. I have a colleague who discovered, fairly recently and fairly late in life, that other people don't break down problems in quite the same way as he does. And he was genuinely surprised! (But then - he is an engineer.) Maybe some people haven't realised the obvious...that not everyone thinks the same.

I've noticed this on a cultural level when taxi drivers try to engage me in conversations about football on the assumption that I'll care. Why wouldn't I?

That so many words and concepts exist in other languages for which we have no equivalent has always been a sore point with me.

And that so many languages do not have words for some of our ideas is equally perplexing. Is there no Arabic word for 'groovy'? No Swahili word for 'chillin'. No Innuit word for tooth decay.


The most obvious, and most often discussed examples here-about are the fact the Irish have no words for 'yes' and 'no' and English has no equivalent of the German word which means 'taking pleasure in the suffering of others'. Neither of these can be considered mere 'window dressing' - whatever that is - (some sort of exhibitionist reverse strip-tease?)


~jwf~

I'm not sure I agree. The *concepts* can be meaningful within our culture, to the extent that as soon as we realise we need a word for something like ''taking pleasure in the suffering of others' pick we right up on it...and it becomes part of the zeitgeist. On the other hand, I find it difficult to believe that the Germanic psyche is significantly shaped by their not having a word for 'glove'. (They put shoes on their hands).

There's a nice, short word in Czech which means 'to forget what you were going to say because you were talking to much.' That's a concept I can easily understand, too.