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PostSubject: Language Language EmptyMon Apr 09, 2012 5:39 pm

I found something besides motion, or activity, which can be universally applied to all people, places and things, or rather in this case, to all relationships between people, place and things. That something is inequality. There is no such thing as equality, in any way, shape or form, in terms of objective height, or weight, or ability, even in terms of what we subjectively value, only greater or lesser inequality. A thought. Perhaps words like equality and inactivity should be stricken from the English language, perhaps they're constricting our thought, and deluding many of us into thinking there is more, or less going on than there actually is, or can these words still have a use, and could it be fair to say, these things are equal, or relatively equal? I wonder what impact it would have on our collective psyche, if we expelled equality from the English language forever, and we could only say, we are not very unequal, you and I, yes, we are only a little unequal.
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Apr 09, 2012 5:45 pm

Would the removal of words like same, equal, inactivity and rest, cause us to be more anxious, bitter, and hostile toward one another, and would this hostility be warranted and welcome, since it is based on a more accurate approximation of reality. Perhaps the word justice should be removed as well, since there are only varrying degrees of injustice. Now, words like big and small, good and bad, are also misleading, perhaps more misleading than the aforementioned words, equality and the like, as they denote absolutes, and as most of here are aware, as far as the eye can see, and the ear can hear, and the mind can interpret, absolutes are nowhere apparent in nature, nothing is absolutely tall, or taller than everything else, and I'm sick of having to qualify these words to retards like Plato, who can't think outside the confines of our archaic language, or who postualate an alternate realm of absolutes, no one has ever encountered before, so they can keep their primitive conceptual and linguistic frame work.
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Apr 09, 2012 6:01 pm

"Inequality" or diversity is implied in activity.
Not even you are the same with yourself a month or a year ago.
Constant change means constant shifts due to (inter)action.

What retains a Becoming as a unity is memory.
Genes are a kind of codified memory: the sum of all previous nurturing, also called nature.
Experience is another. A first-hand encoding.
Knowledge is another. A second-hand encoding adopted and incorporated into first-hand activities, same way genetic encoding is.

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Apr 09, 2012 6:09 pm

Perhaps we should do away with words like tall and short, ugly and beautiful, and keeper words like taller and shorter, and make new words like beautifuller, so we would always have to finish the sentence with, she is beautifuller than my wife, or she is uglier than most, or he is taller than most, or he is shorter than me. Is humanity, or at least some portion of it, moving beyond language, knowing and understanding, seeing and hearing more than words can express, should our language evolve with us, as our civilisation and culture is dramatically changing, should our language not follow, perhaps it is time for a philosophically linguistic overhaul, rather descending into further madness with the introduction of ebonics into our linguistic milleu. Words like universe and God too, I think are holding us back, as it is absurd, ludicrous to talk of everything and nothing, as humanity has not, nor are we even capable of, contacting and comprehending all that is, so perhaps they too, should be removed.
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Apr 09, 2012 6:23 pm

Or, perhaps, something less drastic.
Simply to consider words metaphors, or symbols, or artistic devices.
Language is an art-form. Even everyday language should be considered as such.

Saying someone is tall does not mean you consider him the tallest creature in existence....yet when we use terms like power we sometimes mean omnipotence, and when we use the term beauty we mean perfect symmetry and when we use the term unity we mean a complete one and when we use the word thing we mean something static and unchanging.

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Apr 09, 2012 6:26 pm

It is somwhat meaningless to talk of everything, as everything as different, and it is meaningless to speak of all times, spaces and things, except to point that they are all different than one. We are, or should be moving to an age of greater complexity and sophistication, and I'm affraid our language may be holding us back. Words like God or ghost shouldn't even be in the dictionary, it give these ridiculous concepts creedance, instead, their status should be relegated to that of slang words, and then with the language, perhaps the concepts will follow shortly thereafter, they will be extricated from human consciousness. There is no bad, out there, so there should be no, this is bad, or this person is bad, or that action is bad, rather, we should say, that person is bading me, or perhaps we need a new suffix, like badek, or we could say badfull, like way say painful, we don't say this thing is pain, as nearly all, except primitive, anthropomorphic, animistic scum, recognise that pain is in the mind.
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Apr 09, 2012 6:29 pm

So we say, this thorn is painful, and so too we should say, that man is badfull, or bading, badek, causing me to feel bad, or injuring me.
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Apr 09, 2012 6:54 pm

The Koans and hwadu were methods like this, to shake off the staticity of thinking and language, and the equality of experience.

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"ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus]

"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

"The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.]

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Apr 09, 2012 7:16 pm

It would seem eyesinthedark has a difficult time reading text.

The radical reinvention of the English language he proposes is easily made unnecessary if one simply changes how one thinks of language.
For instance, if one thinks that a word is a real absolute and not an artificially constructed simplification only existing in his mind, then he is a moron; if one sees language as not being literal but merely figurative, artistic, then one need not go through all the trouble of changing language so that a few imbeciles do not fall into the trap of believing that the word God signifies the existence of a real absolute Being or that the word tree signifies an unchanging, static, thing and not a dynamic, ephemeral, process.

Should we reinvent painting so that humans with the minds of children do not mistaken the images, the representations, for the real?

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Apr 09, 2012 10:52 pm

No, I've always had a flexible, versatile mind.

The English language has been reinvented many times, to make it more flexible, and versatile, perhaps another reinvention is an order, not for my sake, but for the sake of many idiots, who abuse language and thought.

Koans eh, hwadu, I'm not familiar with such things.
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyTue Apr 10, 2012 8:26 am

Too bad you do not speak a more versatile language, like Greek or Latin, or German.

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyTue Apr 10, 2012 2:46 pm

No, not too bad for me, I'm doing just fine, thanks. I like English... Eng, glissssssh.
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptySun May 27, 2012 1:05 pm

eyesinthedark wrote:

Koans eh, hwadu, I'm not familiar with such things.

Its somewhat similar to one of Satyr's random thoughts:

"Two people may experience the same phenomenon, like a movie or a musical piece or a traumatic event or a common event, and still understand it on different levels and remember it as such – why?
Because experience is not enough. If it were, then similar education would produce uniform minds…and it DOES NOT!!!
One’s acuity and perceptual abilities play a far more decisive role in understanding, as the phenomenon is sometimes but a mere stimuli that churns within the consciousness what is already there.
The supposition that experiences are enough, takes it for granted that all who experience the same thing experience it on the same level.
The presupposition is one, again, founded on equalitarianism and the usual self-placating post-modern[ism]." [62]

The same structure of language cannot evoke the same equal understanding or experience. And conversely, even if lang. were altered to allow for a wider differentiating pathos, those whose powers of discrimination are weak, will brutalize/commonal-ize the experience no matter how much you make the language structure rich to express heightened/inequal feelings.

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"ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus]

"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

"The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.]

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptySun Jun 03, 2012 3:21 pm

Zarathustra’s Philosafari:

Quote :
"A human being may well ask an animal: “Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?” And the animal would like to answer, and say: “The reason is I always forget what I was going to say”— but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent: so that the human being was left wondering. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations

Since Aristotle infamously defined man as a “speaking animal” (zoon logon echon), language has often been employed by philosophers to trace the demarcation line distinguishing the animal from the human. In an ironic gesture, Nietzsche suggests that language might not simply be the human’s privilege over animals that are presumed to be speechless, but rather the symptom of his compulsion to express himself, his having “forgotten how to be silent” (108), or better, his having forgotten how to forget. It is not language as such, Nietzsche tells us, that distinguishes men from animals, but the use humans make of it. It is the human’s ex-pression — his propensity to speak in order to extract himself from life (which The Genealogy of Morals describes as a stream of forgetfulness) and, as a result, to negate his animal nature — that makes him a specific kind of animal: “the animal with red cheeks” (Zarathustra 112), “the animal with the right to make promises” (The Genealogy of Morals 57), “the animal not yet properly adapted to his environment” (Beyond Good and Evil 62). The human’s supposed superiority is thus not inherent in his exceptional or divine nature; rather, it is merely an aftereffect of a language that “overnames” (überbenennt), to borrow Walter Benjamin’s terminology, and thereby grants the human the illusion of “being above the animals.”

Spectatorial Distance. Nietzsche’s bestiary is so unique within Western philosophy that it cannot be reduced to a simple metaphoric system.
Zarathustra’s tutelary companions – the eagle and the serpent, “the proudest animal under the sun and the wisest animal under the sun” (53) — are endowed with undeniable allegorical prestige; doubtless, the “amen”-able donkey and the glazed cows have not been chosen for legendary brightness; and, to be sure, the lion licking Zarathustra’s tears should be read as announcing the impending accomplishment of the prophet’s last prediction. Zarathustra’s animals are burdened with a lot of figurative baggage. They are not observed by the honed gaze of the naturalist but are seen from an allegorical distance. As in a safari, the reader walks among the animals and yet is isolated from them. Like the flâneur who sees “the city as hunting ground,” the reader “feels himself viewed by all” yet simultaneously “utterly undiscoverable” (Benjamin, Arcades 420).

My friends, your friend has heard a satirical saying: ‘Just look at Zarathustra! Does he not go among us as if among animals?’
But it is better said like this: ‘The acknowledging one goes among men as among animals.’ (112*; emphasis in original)

We could gloss the two sentences thus:

1. Zarathustra goes among men as he would if men were animals (but they are not, this is pure speculation).
2. The acknowledging one goes among men as he would if men were animals (and they may well be).

Zarathustra — if he is the acknowledging one in question — is not animalizing men in order to debase them; on the contrary, he calls into question the discursive grounds on which the ontological barrier that separates human from animal has been established. Language has long been thought to be the decisive criterion justifying this classic partition. Nietzsche seems to agree, but he operates a subtle, if radical twist by suggesting that the difference might not result so much from the animal’s speechlessness, but rather from the unacknowledged illusion produced by a moralizing and petrifying usage of “our” human language.

In the preface to the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche asks his reader to reassess the logical connectors that articulate “our” systems of value: “do our ideas, our values, our yeas and nays, our ifs and buts grow out of us with the necessity with which a tree bears fruit—related and each with an affinity to each, and evidence of one will, one health, one soil, one sun” (16; emphasis in original).

Human language, with its immoderate use of “as ifs” (i.e. of speculations unbounded “by conceivability”) has lost touch with its animal self. This may be how Nietzsche’s famous aphorism describing “the internalization of man” should be understood:

"…thus began the gravest and uncanniest illness, from which humanity has not yet recovered, man’s suffering of man, of himself—the result of a forcible sundering from his animal past, as it were a leap and plunge into new surroundings and conditions of existence, a declaration of war against the old instincts upon which his strength, joy and terribleness had rested hitherto.

Let us add at once that, on the other hand, the existence on earth of an animal soul turned against itself, taking sides against itself, was something so new, profound, unheard of, enigmatic, contradictory, and pregnant with a future, that the aspect of the earth was essentially altered. Indeed, divine spectators were needed to do justice to the spectacle that thus began and the end of which is not yet in sight — a spectacle too subtle, too marvelous, too paradoxical to be played senselessly unobserved on some ludicrous planet!" (Genealogy 85; emphasis in original)

The human seems to be in denial, refusing to recognize his kinship with non-human animals, inventing “new conditions of existence” that ironically appear to be unconditional. Nietzsche reveals the scopic nature of humanist egotism: requiring a witness whose grandeur is worthy of his narcissism, man invents transcendental omniscient spectators characterized by their inconceivableness and their irreducible remoteness."

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When a language is not organicized by its own internal necessities in its links with its past, its yeas and nays, it tends to petrify into words and concepts so remote and inconceivable that anyone can 'share equaly' in it...  like 'God'...

Hence the famous zen koan has the master uttering the non-sensicial 'Mu' when the disciple asks him 'Does a dog have Buddha nature?'.

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"ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus]

"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

"The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.]

*Become clean, my friends.*


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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyFri Jul 13, 2012 8:28 pm

Lyssa wrote:
Zarathustra’s Philosafari:
"A human being may well ask an animal: “Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?” And the animal would like to answer, and say: “The reason is I always forget what I was going to say”— but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent: so that the human being was left wondering. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations


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"ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus]

"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

"The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.]

*Become clean, my friends.*
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyTue Jul 17, 2012 7:36 pm

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"ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus]

"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

"The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.]

*Become clean, my friends.*
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyTue Jul 17, 2012 7:36 pm

"The strange family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophizing is explained easily enough. Where there is affinity of languages, it cannot fail, owing to the common philosophy of grammar–I mean, owing to the unconscious domination and guidance by similar grammatical functions–that everything is prepared at the outset for a similar development and sequence of philosophical systems; just as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities of world-interpretation. It is highly probable that philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic languages (where the concept of the subject is least developed) look otherwise “into the world,” and will be found on paths of thought different from those of the Indo-Germanic peoples and the Muslims: the spell of certain grammatical functions is ultimately also the spell of physiological valuations and racial conditions." [N., BGE; 20]

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"ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus]

"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

"The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.]

*Become clean, my friends.*
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyFri Jul 12, 2013 7:41 pm

For a Mono-linguistic Future?

Quote :
If language evolved for communication, how come most people can't understand what most other people are saying?

FOR ANYONE interested in languages, the north-eastern coastal region of Papua New Guinea is like a well-stocked sweet shop. Korak speakers live right next to Brem speakers, who are just up the coast
from Wanambre speakers, and so on. I once met a man from that area and asked him whether it is true that a different language is spoken every few kilometres. "Oh no," he replied, "they are far closer together than that."

Around the world today, some 7000 distinct languages are spoken.
That's 7000 different ways of saying "good morning" or "it looks like rain" - more languages in one species of mammal than there are mammalian species. What's more, these 7000 languages probably make up just a fraction of those ever spoken in our history. To put human linguistic diversity into perspective, you could take a gorilla or chimpanzee from its troop and plop it down anywhere these species are found, and it would know how to communicate. You could repeat this with donkeys, crickets or goldfish and get the same outcome.

This highlights an intriguing paradox at the heart of human communication. If language evolved to allow us to exchange information, how come most people cannot understand what most other people are saying? This perennial question was famously addressed in the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel, which tells of how humans developed the conceit that they could use their shared
language to cooperate in the building of a tower that would take them to heaven. God, angered at this attempt to usurp his power, destroyed the tower and to ensure it would not be rebuilt he scattered the people and confused them by giving them different languages. The myth leads to the amusing irony that our separate languages exist to prevent us from communicating. The surprise is that this might not be far from the truth.

The origins of language are difficult to pin down. Anatomical evidence from fossils suggests that the ability to speak arose in our ancestors some time between 1.6 million and 600,000 years ago
(New Scientist, 24 March, p 34). However, indisputable evidence that this speech was conveying complex ideas comes only with the cultural sophistication and symbolism associated with modern humans. They emerged in Africa perhaps 200,000 to 160,000 years ago, and by 60,000 years ago had migrated out of the continent - eventually to occupy nearly every region of the world. We should expect new languages to arise as people spread out and occupy new lands because as soon as groups become isolated from one another their languages begin to drift apart and adapt to local needs (New Scientist, 10 December 2011, p 34). But the real puzzle is that the greatest diversity of human societies and languages arises not where people are most spread out, but where they are most closely packed together.

Papua New Guinea is a classic case. That relatively small land mass - only slightly larger than California - is home to between 800 and 1000 distinct languages, or around 15 per cent of all languages spoken on the planet. This linguistic diversity is not the result of migration and physical isolation of different populations. Instead, people living in close quarters seem to have chosen to separate into many distinct societies, leading lives so separate that they have
become incapable of talking to one another. Why?

Thinking about this, I was struck by an uncanny parallel between linguistic and biological diversity. A well-known phenomenon in ecology called Rapoport's rule states that the greatest diversity of
biological species is found near to the equator, with numbers tailing off as you approach the poles. Could this be true for languages too? To test the idea, anthropologist Ruth Mace from University College London and I looked at the distribution of around 500 Native American tribes before the arrival of Europeans and used this to plot the number of different language groups per unit area
at each degree of latitude (Nature, vol 428, p 275). It turned out that the distribution matched Rapoport's rule remarkably well (see diagram).

The congruity of biological species and cultures with distinct languages is probably not an accident. To survive the harsh polar landscape, species must range far and wide, leaving little opportunity for new ones to arise. The same is true of human groups in the far northern regions. They too must cover wide geographical areas to find sufficient food, and this tends to blend languages and cultures. At the other end of the spectrum, just as the bountiful, sun-drenched tropics are a cradle of biological speciation, so this rich environment has allowed humans to thrive and splinter into a profusion of societies.

Of course that still leaves the question of why people would want to form into so many distinct groups. For the myriad biological species in the tropics, there are advantages to being different because it allows each to adapt to its own ecological niche. But humans all occupy the same niche, and splitting into distinct cultural and linguistic groups actually brings disadvantages, such as slowing the movement of ideas, technologies and people. It also makes societies more vulnerable to risks and plain bad luck. So why not have one large group with a shared language?

An answer to this question is emerging with the realisation that human history has been characterised by continual battles. Ever since our ancestors walked out of Africa, beginning around 60,000
years ago, people have been in conflict over territory and resources. In my book Wired for Culture (Norton/Penguin, 2012) I describe how, as a consequence, we have acquired a suite of traits
that help our own particular group to outcompete the others. Two traits that stand out are "groupishness" - affiliating with people with whom you share a distinct identity - and xenophobia, demonising those outside your group and holding parochial views towards them.
In this context, languages act as powerful social anchors of our tribal identity. How we speak is a continual auditory reminder of who we are and, equally as important, who we are not. Anyone who can speak your particular dialect is a walking, talking advertisement for the values and cultural history you share. What's more, where different groups live in close proximity, distinct languages are an effective way to prevent eavesdropping or the loss of important information to a competitor.

In support of this idea, I have found anthropological accounts of tribes deciding to change their language, with immediate effect, for no other reason than to distinguish themselves from neighbouring groups. For example, a group of Selepet speakers in Papua New Guinea
changed its word for "no" from bia to bune to be distinct from other Selepet speakers in a nearby village. Another group reversed all its masculine and feminine nouns - the word for he became she, man became woman, mother became father, and so on. One can only sympathise with anyone who had been away hunting for a few days when the changes occurred.

The use of language as identity is not confined to Papua New Guinea. People everywhere use language to monitor who is a member of their "tribe". We have an acute, and sometimes obsessive, awareness of how those around us speak, and we continually adapt language to mark out
our particular group from others. In a striking parallel to the Selepet examples, many of the peculiar spellings that differentiate American English from British - such as the tendency to drop the "u"
in words like colour - arose almost overnight when Noah Webster produced the first American Dictionary of the English Language at the start of the 19th century. He insisted that: "As an independent nation, our honor [sic] requires us to have a system of our own, in
language as well as government."

Use of language to define group identity is not a new phenomenon. To examine how languages have diversified over the course of human history, my colleagues and I drew up family trees for three large language groups - Indo-European languages, the Bantu languages of Africa, and Polynesian languages from Oceania (Science, vol 319, p 588). These "phylogenies", which trace the history of each group back to a common ancestor, reveal the number of times a contemporary language has split or "divorced" from related languages. We found that some languages have a history of many divorces, others far fewer.

When languages split, they often experience short episodes during which they change rapidly. The same thing happens during biological evolution, where it is known as punctuational evolution (Science, vol 314, p 119). So the more divorces a language has had, the more its vocabulary differs from its ancestral language. Our analysis does not say why one language splits into two. Migration and isolation of groups is one explanation, but it also seems clear that bursts of linguistic change have occurred at least in part to allow speakers to assert their own identities. There really has been a war of words going on.

So what of the future? The world we live in today is very different from the one our ancestors inhabited. For most of our history, people would have encountered only their own cultural group and
immediate neighbours. Globalisation and electronic communication mean we have become far more connected and culturally homogenised, making the benefits of being understood more apparent. The result is a mass extinction of languages to rival the great biological extinctions in Earth's past.

Although contemporary languages continue to evolve and diverge from one another, the rate of loss of minority languages now greatly exceeds the emergence of new languages. Between 30 and 50 languagesare disappearing every year as the young people of small tribal societies adopt majority languages. As a percentage of the total, this rate of loss equals or exceeds the decline in biological
species diversity through loss of habitat and climate change. Already a mere 15 of the Earth's 7000 languages account for about per cent of the world's speakers, and most languages have very few
speakers.

Still, this homogenisation of languages and cultures is happening at a far slower pace than it could, and that is because of the powerful psychological role language plays in marking out our cultural
territories and identities. One consequence of this is that languages resist "contamination" from other languages, with speakers often treating the arrival of foreign words with a degree of suspicion - witness the British and French grumblings about so-called Americanisms. Another factor is the role played by nationalistic agendas in efforts to save dying languages, which can result in policies such as compulsory Welsh lessons for schoolchildren up to the age of 16 in Wales.

Linguistic creativity

This resistance to change leaves plenty of time for linguistic diversity to pop up. Various street and hip-hop dialects, for example, are central to the identity of specific groups, while mass communication allows them easily to reach their natural constituencies. Another interesting example is Globish, a pared-down form of English that uses just 1000 or so words and simplified
language structures. It has spontaneously evolved among people who travel extensively, such as diplomats and international business people. Amusingly, native English speakers can be disadvantaged around Globish because they use words and grammar that others cannot understand.

In the long run, though, it seems virtually inevitable that a single language will replace all others. In evolutionary terms, when otherwise equally good solutions to a problem compete, one of them
tends to win out. We see this in the near worldwide standardisation of ways of telling time, measuring weights and distance, CD and DVD formats, railway gauges, and the voltages and frequencies of
electricity supplies. It may take a very long time, but languages seem destined to go the same way - all are equally good vehicles of communication, so one will eventually replace the others. Which one
will it be?

Today, around 1.2 billion people - about 1 in 6 of us - speak Mandarin. Next come Spanish and English with about 400 million speakers each, and Bengali and Hindi follow close behind. On these
counts Mandarin might look like the favourite in the race to be the world's language. However, vastly more people learn English as a second language than any other. Years ago, in a remote part of
Tanzania, I was stopped while attempting to speak Swahili to a local person who held up his hand and said: "My English is better than your Swahili". English is already the worldwide lingua franca, so if
I had to put money on one language eventually to replace all others, this would be it.

In the ongoing war of words, casualties are inevitable. As languages become extinct we are not simply losing different ways of saying "good morning", but the cultural diversity that has arisen around our thousands of distinct tribal societies. Each language plays a powerful role in establishing a cultural identity - it is the internal voice that carries the memories, thoughts, hopes and fears
of a particular group of people. Lose the language and you lose that too.

Nevertheless, I suspect a monolinguistic future may not be as bad as doomsayers have suggested. There is a widely held belief that the language you speak determines the way you think, so that a loss of linguistic diversity is also a loss of unique styles of thought. I don't believe that. Our languages determine the words we use but they do not limit the concepts we can understand and perceive.
Besides, we might draw another, more positive, moral from the story of Babel: with everyone speaking the same language, humanity can more easily cooperate to achieve something monumental. Indeed, in today's world it is the countries with the least linguistic diversity that have achieved the most prosperity.

THE United States and Britain are two countries "divided by a common language", George Bernard Shaw allegedly quipped.

This statement, amusingly paradoxical on the face of it, might be more accurate than it seems. On "War of words: The language paradox explained", evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel argues that languages proliferate to differentiate competing groups.

If so, a shared tongue is not what the transatlantic rivals would have wanted. Sure enough, they quickly diverged; some of the differences between US and British spellings seem to have arisen as
part of a knowing attempt to widen the gulf.

So perhaps it was Shaw's fellow wit Oscar Wilde who got closer to the mark when he observed in his 1887 story The Canterville Ghost that "we have really everything in common with America nowadays,
except, of course, language".

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"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

"The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.]

*Become clean, my friends.*


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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Jul 15, 2013 1:40 pm

Essence:
Another term for nature, past, sum of all nurturing.
Another term for spirit, soul.

A word must refer to reality for it to be useful and realistic.
In other words it must refer to nature, or sensually perceived reality, which is the ongoing (inter)activity, of the manifestation of this essence/nature/sum of all nurturing/past.
The more referential points, using sensual stimuli, such a word has - reflecting the mental abstraction it symbolizes - all the more useful, in reality, it is.
The less referential points it has, the more detached from reality the abstraction, it symbolizes, is.
It is a fantastic word...and if taken literally, it becomes nihilistic, as it contradicts the sensually perceived.

For example the concept of "equality" is nihilistic if taken literally rather than a as a useful social myth, because it is contradicted by sensually perceived reality and it depends on a simplification and selective, imprecise, appreciation of the phenomena being compared and evaluated as being equal. Furthermore, the term equality presupposes a static, immutable, thing, which is then measured, known completely, and judged to be absolutely the same as an other.

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Jul 15, 2013 10:10 pm

J'apprends à parler est écrire le français.

Quelqu'un parle le français ici ?
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Jul 15, 2013 10:12 pm

The age of rationality has taken away the spiritual by confusing the symbol, the representation of the mental abstraction, created by gathering and simplifying sensual data, for the phenomenon itself.
Geometry, math, the foundations of modern science, are both mental methods of assimilating, representing and simplifying/generalizing, sensual data.

They are, a priori methods of interpreting the phenomenon.
The disagreement between Newtonian and Quantum Physics is a result of this error, of accepting the symbol literally, rather than artistically.
There is no point, no particle, no start/end, no here, now, no Being.

There is only process, exhibiting patterns of fluidity, (inter)acting.

The concept of existing must be redefined, not using Parmenidean thinking but Heralitean.
The Laws of Identity should also be rethought.

The idea that A=A is self-evident once A is taken for granted, as an absolute Thing, rather than a symbol in the brain, which has no precise reference outside of it.
Heraclitean contradictions make sense only when you alter your understanding of what existence means.
no Being, but Becoming.
No thing, but a manifestation of the past, intepreted as a object/objective by eliminating all dimensions the mind cannot integrate into a cohesive unity; an abstraction, a mental singularity.

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Jul 15, 2013 10:13 pm

reasonvemotion wrote:
J'apprends à parler est écrire le français.

Quelqu'un parle le français ici ?

 Moi, je parle plus que je ecris.
J'apprend le francais dans la rue.

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyMon Jul 15, 2013 10:20 pm

Excellent, mieux que je suis

Je suis simple encore, LOL

Oh I made a mistake above, pardon, not est should be et.
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyTue Jul 16, 2013 7:01 am

My spelling French is worse than in Greek.
I can communicate, living in a francophone Canadian province, but I am not fluent enough to discuss philosophy.

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyTue Jul 16, 2013 7:10 am

The circle I a three-dimensional representation of the four-dimensional sphere.
It is the most stable shape in a vacuum and so roundness becomes a symbol for stability, and attractive.

The roundness of the female breast, buttocks, being an example of how spherical perfection attracts as being a consequence of natural beauty and health.
Roundness is also associated with robustness, voluptuous energies bursting with possibilities.

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyTue Jul 16, 2013 9:06 am

Satyr:

Quote :
My spelling French is worse than in Greek.
I can communicate, living in a francophone Canadian province, but I am not fluent enough to discuss philosophy.

Pas un problème. Merci beaucoup

I am the opposite. In a country with no spoken French. Have to resort to seeing French films, listening to French news and having a meal with the other French students, trying to speak in French only. I have a long way to go, but it is all good. Je l'aime!
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyTue Jul 16, 2013 11:03 am

Wikipedia wrote:

Ethos:

“Ethos θος ἤθη, ethea ἤθεα is a Greek word originally meaning "accustomed place", 'custom, habit’, equivalent to Latin mores.

Ethos forms the root of ethikos ἠθικός, meaning "moral, showing moral character".

Conformity to communal standards becomes the moral code of conduct.
To be ethical is to be concerned and in-line with the group’s interests, which ensure your own interests, and/or adjust them.

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptySat Mar 08, 2014 6:51 pm

Lyssa wrote:
Lyssa wrote:
Zarathustra’s Philosafari:
"A human being may well ask an animal: “Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?” And the animal would like to answer, and say: “The reason is I always forget what I was going to say”— but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent: so that the human being was left wondering. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations


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(Backs my thinking that grammar belongs to the feminine, and voice to the masc....)

Sloterdijk wrote:
"Recent psychoacoustic research, especially that of the French otorhinolaryngologist and psycholinguist Alfred Tomatis and his school, has attempted a suggestive explanation of the unusual selectivity of the human ear that manifests itself in the siren effect. Not only do these investigations in the human auditory sense and it’s evolution show beyond doubt that unborn children can already hear extremely well because of the ear’s early development – possibly from the embryonic stage onwards, and certainly in the second half of pregnancy; in addition, there are impressive observations showing that this early listening ability does not result in the fetus being passively at the mercy of the mother’s sonic inner life, or the water-filtered voices and noises of the outside world. Rather, the fetal ear already develops the ability to find it’s bearings in the ever-present, invasive sonic environment actively through independent, lively listening and non-listening. As Tomatis untiringly emphasizes, the child’s stay in the womb would be unbearable without the specific ability not to listen and to mute large areas of noices, as the mother’s heartbeat and digestive sounds, heard in such close proximity, would be like the noise from a 24-hour building site or lively barroom conversation. If the child did not learn to avert it’s ears at an early stage, it would be ravaged by permanent noise torture." [Bubbles]

Quote :
"The child’s state as the object of the mother’s expectations is conveyed by the audio-vocal means to the fetal ear, which, upon hearing the greeting sound, unlocks itself completely and takes up the sonorous invitation. By adopting a posture of listening, the happy and active ear devotes itself to the words of welcome. In this sense, devotion is the subject-forming act par excellence, for devoting oneself means rousing oneself into the necessary state of alertness to open up to the sound that concerns you. (…)
From the subject’s earliest beginnings, the ray of intentionality with which it “relates” itself to something given has an echo character. Only because it is intended by the mother’s voice can it intend the enlivening voice itself. The audio-vocal pact creates a two-way traffic in a ray; enlivening forces are answered with a rising of the self to liveliness." [ib.]

Quote :
"Because it is able to listen, the fetal ear can selectively highlight the mothers affirming voice amid the constant intrauterine noise. In this gesture the incipent subject experiences a euphoriant stimulation; according to Tomatis, it is the overtones of the mother’s soprano voice in particular that offer an irresistible stimulus of joy. To make these claims plausible, Tomatis interpreted the mother’s entire body as a musical instrument – albeit one that does not serve to play a piece to the listener, but rather brings about the original tuning of the ear. The transmission of high and extremely high frequencies in the soft, sound-swallowing bodily milieu is enabled, according to Tomatis, by the unusual conductivity and resonant quality of the skeleton; the mothers pelvis in particular is supposedly capable of conveying the subtlest high frequency vibrations of the mother’s voice to the child’s ear like the back of a cello. This ear listens at the mothers pelvic floor and spine as a curious visitor listens at a door behind which he suspects delightful presents. What the little guest cannot yet know is that this listening is its own reward, and that seeking to reach the other side would be futile. The joy of anticipation already contains the wealth of the enjoyable." [ib.]

Quote :
"“This shows that humans emerge without exception from a vocal matriarchy: this is the psychological reason for the siren effect. But while Homer’s Sirens produce sweet obituaries, the mother’s siren voice is anticipatory: it prophesizes a sounding fate for the child. In listening to it the fetal hero embarks on his own odyssey. The irreplaceable voice utters an immediately self-fulfilling prophecy: “you are welcome” or “you are not welcome”. Thus the mother’s vocal frequency becomes a Last Judgment shifted back to the beginning of life." [ib.]

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"ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus]

"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

"The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.]

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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptySun Apr 20, 2014 9:11 pm

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"ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus]

"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

"The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.]

*Become clean, my friends.*
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PostSubject: Re: Language Language EmptyThu Apr 24, 2014 10:17 am

Language = art, metaphor, symbol...

Language refers to the mental abstraction, the interpretation, the perception – noumenon.
The mental abstraction refers to the phenomenon, which is perceived partially and known incompletely.
Flux renders the phenomenon unknowable, in an absolute sense.
The noumenon symbolizing the continuing reinterpretation is static, coded, formalized, ritualized, by simplifying/generalizing, and by utilizing ambiguity.
The phenomenon can only be perceived if it is dynamic, if it continuously changes and so is other than itself.

Consciousness is a discrimination, based on patterns.
Patterns are consistent, repetitive, (inter)actions.
The mind juxtaposes perceptions, in a linear fashion (past>future), creating what we call movement, and we measure using dimensions (time being one of them).
The perception of divergence in this continuous juxtaposition is what we call consciousness.
Even phenomena that appear static are constantly altering in relation to the observer and other phenomena. If there was no fluidity in the seemingly static we would not perceive anything.

Non-Fluidity is another way of describing the opposite of the experienced, the existent.
Our senses may not be able to pick up on the minutia of fluctuations occurring, or perceive what exactly the pattern is, but that it perceives a phenomenon, in relation to itself, means that change is occurring on a level the organism cannot focus upon, cannot bring into clarity.
The perception of other, of this unknowable phenomenon (the apparent), presupposes a separation, a distinction, a distance, a division.
Synthesis presupposes antithesis.
For a similarity to be perceived in the pattern of fluidity we call phenomenon, a divergence must precede.
Similarity is what is added onto difference, once difference is achieved, even if it is not perceived or recognized.
A similarity, unity, is an integration of abstractions where difference is ignored, or taken for granted.

Discrimination is the process of becoming conscious.
The integration of what is other than into groupings along the lines of shared patterns is part of the mind's later synthesis of abstractions into categories.
The category "human", for example, is one founded on similar physical traits, and behavioural consistencies, produced by a reproductive symbiosis, resulting in uniformity of potentials, we describe as human traits, or species traits.
The concept of human is a reproductive one. What multiplicities are produced via this reproductive (inter)activity, must be uniformly distributed, in time/space, otherwise a splintering will occur... a divergence.

Sex is how traits are reaffirmed and reintegrated back into the genetic code and male/female are the specialized forms of sexual behavior that facilitate this process – making it efficient by focusing characteristics/traits to meet a reproductive role.

The category human, along with its sub-categories of male/female, don to only (inter)act internally, within the categories reproductive, creative, procreative premises, but also outwardly, in relation to the world.
The category, and its sub-categories reaffirm, and reintegrate, activities/behaviors, that replicate its dynamics in relation to the otherness we call World, or Reality.
Reality is indifferent to the internal structures and (inter)activities (relationships) of the category.
The human species, as far as we know, is the only species which can interfere, manipulate, the affects, relationship of the category and what is outside the category's premises, outside its dynamics – indifferent to them.
As the intervention increases the effect of the world upon these internal structures, the internal dynamics, decreases, or alters in intensity, but it never goes away, it is never totally erased.
This alters, with unforeseeable, consequences, the traits being distributed within the category, referring to the population group, and so it also alters the male/female dynamics, as these have been shaped before this intervention created this cocooning, this detaching.
I call this artificial, as opposed to natural.

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Within these manmade settings, these artifices can be produced, and can be maintained, by the constant effort of its synergy, its shared myth.
The SuperOrganism is born.
A mental abstraction that would have no reference point in nature, such as justice, equality, humanity as a spiritual non-biological concept, and so on, can now attain relevance within the requirements of internal dynamics. They now refer not to phenomena, but to noumena (the noetic) attempting to become phenomena...by imposing themselves upon the participants, spreading as would a genetic mutation within the population.

This is the reverse movement I have connected to the more honest definition of Nihilism.
It imposes a behavior based on an abstraction that has no reference to anything phenomenal, apparent, and it may also be contrary to what is apparent, as in the multiplicity of divergence.
The participants may continue to exist within this solipsistic self-referential dynamism, if the world itself is kept at a distance... if this artificial cocoon remain distinct from reality itself.
The internal structures are now engaged in (inter)actions that may contradict, or ignore, the indifferent world of Flux.
Male/Female loses meaning within this artificial environment.
Any designation referring to a hierarchy, a type, outside the artifice's context is detrimental to the harmony of this artifice.

The separation is never absolute, it is never completed (perfect), and so try as it may, the emergent organism, in this case the emergent SuperOrganism is continuously threatened by an indifferent world, and by a past that cannot be fully dismissed, forgotten, nullified, distanced from.
The abstractions may have relevance within the artifice's contexts but remain meaningless outside of its promises, and the enforced behaviors (thinking included) imposed upon its participants.
As a defensive tactic the SuperOrganism imposes a strict control over knowledge, and its interpretation, and might, if it is fully Nihilistic, reverse the meaning of words, such as "Nihilism" itself, or accuse reality of being an illusion, a construct, so as to hide its own methodologies.

A good example would be the concept of eugenics.
Nihilistic social structures, often calling themselves "open" or "Democratic", accuse others of eugenics when it is practicing a subtle form of it – not genetic natural selection, but mimetic social selection.
The association of certain words with particular feelings, images, is part of the methodology.
Anyone threatening, or exposing this structure, for what it is, will be considered a cancer, a disease, a dysfunctional component, Freud's "discontents," labeled with emotionally laden words, referring, via pop-culture, and historical interpretations, to "negative", on an organic level, sensations.

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