Reality 101 (part ii.)

In part i. — which you ought go back and read — the nature of our “world” was laid out: how we weave the five senses into that complex and richly textured simulation of “real” reality, and how we define what is “real.”*

[* Real in the sense of “truth that I can act on, that can form the basis of my decisions.]

But that’s only part of it. This is the OTHER part:

Humans are inherently social animals. We communicate, we cooperate, and we serve, in our civilizations, a “higher” purpose that no member of that civilization might be aware of. (We call it the force of “history,” and our history is, paradoxically, a history of individuals who advanced that collective flow.)

Indeed, many inventions, advances and revolutionary ideas have no particular individual value to the individual who “realized” the notion. They MUST exist in context of society, as an automobile must exist within a society with a road system and a widespread fuel distribution network. We even call them “stations.”

This is our paradox. We may have evolved from — and share — the instinctual drives OF the anthropoids slash mammals, but our closest analog in nature are the hive insects, the bees, the termites, the ants. If you look at the center of our great cities, they appear, if you squint your eyes, as termite mounds.

But, perhaps unlike those insects, perhaps not, we are not individually aware of our deep social connections (having begun within the social unit of the “family” and, unless shipwrecked on a desert island for years, never having acted outside of the social matrix), and experience life as “individuals.”

Individuals with an astonishing capacity for, and an operating system hugely constructed of language. The very concept of language presupposes another to whom the concepts embodied in the language are to be communicated – even if it is only notes written to a future self, as in a diary.

To truly work, there must be a speaker and a listener.

From the earliest coos of the mother, to the chatter in the other room as dinner is getting ready and you’re reading this on the computer screen, we are surrounded, suffused in language. We think in language. WE TALK TO OURSELVES when alone, if only silently.

(Let us leave aside who is “speaking” and who is “hearing” during an internal monologue for another day.)

Language is how we create the consensus world of “objective reality.” That consensus that creates all of the benefits of civilization and much of its chafing, as well.

Language is so terrifically important to us that if we find a feral child, beyond a very early age, they cannot be taught language, and can only be institutionalized. Without language, they cannot exist in our society, no matter what society it is. For the mute and the deaf, we have sign language. The American Indians and the traders and trappers communicated through a sophisticated sign language, as well.

Language is, according to recent scientific suggestion, a big chunk of the brain’s processing usage. It is, in many ways, our Operating System.

And we humans have a great hole in our perception of reality, one so large you could drive the Titanic through it if you could raise her: We accept language – what we have been told – as EQUALLY real to that which we have experienced.

Mark Twain’s home state, Missouri, has a motto that speaks to this paradox of “reality”: Show me.

In other words, “I do not fully accept as real that which you have communicated to me: provide pentasensorial evidence.”

Adding “Please,” if you’re polite and something else or nothing if you aren’t.*

[* “Please,” “Thank you,” “pardon me,” “I’m sorry,” “excuse me,” and a thousand other innocuous phrases speak to our social nature, which requires the lubricant of manners to avoid constant conflicts. Another paradox of human existence: while we are utterly dependent on one another’s cooperation for our “individuality,” (for instance, the thousands of loggers, truckers, mechanical engineers, machinists, miners, drillers, refiners, designers, distributors, accountants, stock boys and cashiers it took to get ONE sheet of paper into your hands), we are a species that is constantly in conflict within our societies.]

There’s a joke on the Hopi reservation in Arizona that bespeaks what it’s like to live side by side with others for thousands of years:

Q: What do you call Hopi Alzheimers’?

A: You forget the reason for the grudge.

“Show me,” means, give me proof so that I know it is “real” and can be acted upon.

Language: we have built our society of it. We build our beliefs and knowledge of the world on it. We construct our ENTIRE politics of it. Our religions claim (at their esoteric or hidden levels) that there is experience BEYOND it, while they are entirely dependent on language to communicate the existence of something beyond language.

The English language just passed one million words to describe things – “things” being the proper term, since English is a language rich in nouns (things) but not so much in verbs (actions). It bespeaks the limitations of my language (English) that the language itself doesn’t see the universe so much as a process as just a big barn full of STUFF.

English is, in fact, so noun-oriented that we can take a perfectly wonderful and delightful verb as “read,” which is what you are doing, and turn it into a noun: “Hey! That was a good read.” “Buy Jerry’s book. It’s a fast-paced, entertaining read.”

We have words for every mood, every cloud, every stone, every molecule that we can get our hands on. Every animal, every street, every country, every plant. We even send brave scientists into hostile, unexplored environments to find NEW stuff to name.

And we become so dependent on language that we generally forget the difference between reality (the simulation of the Real World that we weave) and the MAPPING of reality, which is our language.

Certainly we often feel verbal “bricks” tossed at us every bit as keenly as we would feel actual bricks. There is not an aspect of our lives that we have not mapped with language, unless we have not noticed it.

Here’s one. Look closely at your visual field. You will see the remains of the amniotic fluid of your mother’s womb in your corneal fluid, with little bits of flotsam and jetsam, and dust over your pupils. You will see the fine pixellation of the visual field.

And you will note a fuzzy flesh-colored cloud at 4 o’clock and 8 o’clock in your right eye and left eye respectively. That’s your nose, which always blocks your stereo vision annoyingly, so you filter it out. Since you are used to NOT seeing it, you have no word for it. Now that you see it, what word is that? (I’m sure that somebody’s come up with one at some time or another.

If you cannot speak the language and are in a foreign country, you are utterly helpless, unless you can find someone who speaks both your language and the common language of the land (or are good at pantomime). You are almost as helpless as a feral child beyond the age of learning speech.*

We accept what is TOLD us (language) as being as REAL as that which we have experienced.

[* At a certain level, of course.]

Now, what is “real”?

Real is information that we consider important enough to form the basis of our actions.

Once I was crossing a stream. I was young and perhaps not as observant as I should have been, and I saw a series of three stepping stones across a Rocky Mountain stream. I stepped on the first one and then all the way to my waist in the stream.

What I had thought was “real” and acted upon, was a gray swirl of foam in an eddy between the two real gray stepping stones. But my “reality” concept had accepted the illusion as real, and I had acted on it, getting drenched in a cold stream as a reward for not paying attention.

The glory of language is that someone could have warned me, watch out for that foam in the stream!

The sorrow of language is that someone could have just as easily said “jump on the middle one! Quick!”

Most of us don’t have any filter between what we know indisputably (that brick that just dropped on my head hurt, and all the sophists in St. Louis couldn’t convince me otherwise) and that which we know linguistically: When I die, I will go to heaven, because [state your reason].

This is where faith comes in. It is even a legal concept: to negotiate in good faith.

It means that the language that I use will be true and what I say will be “real.”

Unless, of course, it isn’t.

To disagree with St. Paul’s definition, in practice, “faith” is the acceptance of stuff I’ve been told about.

Hey, we even swear “oaths” to divinities with our hands on (in the USA, generally a Bible) a sacred text or relic that we will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us Deity.

Kids used to make you “cross your heart and hope to die” that you were telling the truth. Relaying accurate “real” knowledge, in other words.

And by “reality,” we must remember that there are SOCIAL realities just as real as any “real” reality, like, say, a brick on the head. And those social realities rely on language as well, as in: You do not walk on this side of the street without OUR permission.”

(Generally followed by an insulting and/or humiliating phrase.)

But those realities are as real as the brick to the head realities, and often intersect.

Because it is human nature to confuse the map with the territory, and we take our reality from a hybrid version of our sensual impressions and what we’ve been TOLD is true.

That’s a pretty big hole in the “reality” principle that we depend on for our survival.

It’s the false rock in the middle of the stream.

Which brings in the whole concept of the “lie.”

And its attendant wingmen, the mistake and the misspoke.

A lie is an intentional distortion of the map to NOT reflect the ‘factual’ world.

And Scheherezade perceived the coming of day and fell silent.

Tomorrow: Sects, Lies and Videotape.

Courage.