Do we know how to think? That's not as crazy a question as it seems. It started this morning with my wondering why we become entrapped in stories that we take to be reality. Like the Bible, or Koran, or the Tao te Ching, or the Mahabharata. These books are holy books, yes, and at the core of their culture's belief systems, but they are only stories. Stories that tell us how about the meaning of the world, how to act in it, and how to think. Because our thoughts are where we are most puzzled. The rest is easy, eating, sleeping, making love, working. Yet our thoughts affect our day-to-day reality and shape who we are and what we do. They are crucially important to our self-identities. Our thoughts compose us and compose our view of the world around us. But the ability to do this is a relatively new creation, entirely dependent on a 2mm layer on top of the cerebral hemispheres, the neopallium (Latin for "new mantle"), or neocortext as it is more commonly called, only about 200 million years old. This tiny layer, which is wrinkled into deep grooves in humans, thus packing in the neouronal columns, composed of some 10 billion neurons, is responsible for "sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, and in humans, language and conscious thought."
It is the language and conscious thought part that I am musing on. It seems to me that our thoughts are a giddy, wild place, composed of giddy, wild language bits, and that, to tame the inner riots, we create stories that tell us how to think. Because we don't know on our own. We are all busy searching for 'states of consciousness' that will enable us to exist peacefully with the rampant energies of the synaptic connections in our modern brains. Afterall, we're not just thinkers, but conscious of our thinking. And being 'self-conscious' is one of the most difficult states to be in.
Is that why we believe the powerful stories of our culture? Why we take them to be accurate versions of the truth? Because it settles our thoughts, having a specific set of ideas to work with, a certain way to think?
This post is only about some questions I had preparing an omlette for my son, who is visiting for a few days.
Did the omellete curve and bellow like a neopallium? I can't say, but perhaps.
Sheath of feeling. Words groping to touch air.
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Oh hey, I'm rather fond of my giddy, wild language bits! ;-)
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to think about this post a while...
Feeling better?
I think it's more than that. I think the stories serve to express our emotions, to communicate what is in our hearts, as well. There are things that can be expressed in words, metaphor being a fine example, that can't be precisely expressed any other way. Metaphor can certainly be expressed other ways - art, music, etc - but not precisely the same way as with words (not saying it's better or worse). I think the stories are for the purpose of connection with others over issues of the heart, as much as thoughts.
ReplyDeleteHow are you feeling?
mb, thank you for your comments... this was a quick post, and hopefully more is brewing on the giddy wild language bits.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was thinking of stories I was thinking more of myth than metaphor, though I realize they are similar processes. The stories are ways that we explain ourselves to ourselves, and are also rites of passage in many ways, transitions, transformations, rituals for crossings and understandings. I can see much validity in our stories. The changing shape of myth reflects our changing collective consciousness. Campbell said that myths are the collective dreams of the race. Yes, they're important. But they are only stories, and not the "Truth." Meaning, they are not keys to understanding every sort of behaviour, every event, every conversation, book or show. Perhaps I'm talking about fundamentalism, which mistakes the vehicle for the destination. When our stories enslave us in ideologies they become dangerous, or we do.
On Paintings in the Sand was probably a more successful attempt at writing this idea about the large, collective stories, like the Bible, Koran, Tao ti Ching, Mahabharata. I did a recording of the sand painting piece, but I go off on a tangent explaining how there is no present either...
On Paintings in the Sand (6:42min): lo-fi;
hi-fi.
Oh, sorry... dull ache in the back of my head, it spans down the shoulders & upper back, but fine otherwise. Thanks *hugs xo
ReplyDeleteGlad to see your beautiful brain is unimpaired by the fall. Hope you feel completely better soon.
ReplyDelete"Why does what flows have to adhere to processes of fixing, stabilizing, pinning, eternalizing?
ReplyDeleteIf I throw away all my weavings, crumpled and shredded and scattered, recycling into the earth, and let time undo itelf through me, will I levitate through the landscape of the unburdened heart? " (from "On Paintings in the Sand")
These are profound searchings, Brenda. I've been thinking along similar lines recently -- how to go beyond story into some kind of truth which story masks, even though story is also a revealer of some kinds of truth. Is th answer just to meditate? Just to describe things as they are without invoking figurative comparisons? Just to see what is? To try to experience one's larger self, unlimited by the myth of one's life story and social character? And how does one do these things? I don't have answers, and if you ever do, I would love to find out about them.
Jean, thanks! :)
ReplyDeleteRichard, all those possibilities sound ripe for exploration, and I am looking forward to your explorations in your writing...
Who has answers... and am not sure about "answers" at all, either. I love the stories, their rich sensuality, the way they uplift me, cause me to think, but I love them like bright weavings, incredible silk saris, ways to clothe ourselves. Being naked is edenic in its own way.
If we can get to that state mentally, if it's even possible among our excitable neurons. Oh, the stories of Science are so lush, too!
Just to describe things as they are without invoking figurative comparisons? Just to see what is? To try to experience one's larger self, unlimited by the myth of one's life story and social character? Richard's got interesting questions here. I have experienced things I cannot describe adequately except by use of metaphor, of some kind of comparison. There are always things that can only be described by being suggested as fitting between two other things -- not one or the other, but somewhere in the inbetween. Or perhaps suggested by a lack of something else rather than by positive definition...... how does that fit in? how is metaphor different from the stories? Where would one draw a line?
ReplyDeleteWhile I certainly think metaphor and myth are similar processes in many ways, and would not want to live without either, it's perhaps like meditating, when you can see your thoughts as thoughts that move through your consciousness like schools of fish, graceful, colourful or silvered. That's when we realize "we" aren't "our thoughts." Thoughts come and go. Stories that express and embody culture come and go. The deeper reality is more wondrous and miraculous than the stories. I'm not saying do away with language, metaphor, myth, stories, but don't be too attached to them either. The Bible is only a story, afterall. An amazing one, certainly. But were humankind to be wiped off the earth and then it begins again would the Bible be written again? How could it? It's a document based in the context and history out of which it arose. That history would be gone. Those tribes would be gone. That particular representation of God would be gone. But, being creative beings, we would surely weave new stories to explain ourselves to ourselves and to create social consensus on a moral code of conduct towards each other. Surely we would. But surely that means that the stories are only stories...
ReplyDeleteAnd then there's the story of our lives... our main narratorial voice tells it. One reason why cognitive therapy is so successful is that it helps the client to retell their story. It changes the narratorial structure. It helps the ego to view the events of one's life from a different perspective, one that's less painful perhaps, that gives more hope, that frees the person from the difficulties of their past so that they can live with more freedom in the present.
Metaphor, ah, mb, I, too, love metaphor! But we are using metaphor to tell a story, to organize experience into comprehensibility, to explain what is difficult to explain, and with metaphor we don't just simply compare one thing to another but do an amazing transformative leap, connecting disparate things. To study of metaphor would be a most rich endeavour. While I haven't read in the area of literary theory for quite some time, I still like Ezra Pound's elucidation of metaphor, succinctly summed up in his haiku, faces in the metro station/petals on a wet, black bough," if I've quoted that correctly, Ricour, but I can't remember what, only that the study of metaphor was what he mostly did, and contrasted metaphor with metonymy, and, oh, "The Myth of Metaphor," a sociological linguistic book that enabled me to understand how metaphor is absolutely central to the process of understanding. Without metaphor, we could not communicate. Extended metaphors can be found in any and every comprehensible piece of writing, from business writing right through to spiritual poetry.
And, over at Richard's site, he recently wrote a post on synchronicity, and I thought the process he spoke of, the prone body of the dead bird on the sidewalk, the Taitian inscription written into the sidewalk later on, it's connection to an upcoming trip, as very like the process of metaphor. And so I thought, hey, synchronicity is a form of metaphor too...
I love discussions, so please let loose if you feel so compelled. xo
A subnote, while not exactly related to our discussion on stories, interesting nevertheless. Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteMetonymy vs. Metaphor
Metonymy works by contiguity rather than similarity. The printing press produces newspapers (hence, "the press" for the news media); food is presented on a dish (hence "dish" for entree). However, when people use metonymy, they don't typically wish to transfer qualities as they do with metaphor: there is nothing house-like about the president, crown-like about the king, or plate-like about an entree. Rather, metonymy transfers a whole set of associations which may or may not be integral to the meaning.
In linguistics, as in rhetoric, the distinction between metaphor and metonymy is important. Two examples using the term "fishing" help make the distinction clear (example drawn from Dirven, 1996).
The phrase "to fish pearls" uses metonymy, drawing from "fishing" the idea of taking things from the ocean. What is carried across from "fishing fish" to "fishing pearls" is the domain of usage and the associations with the ocean and boats, but we understand the phrase in spite of rather than because of the literal meaning of fishing: we know you do not use a fishing rod or net to get pearls.
In contrast, the metaphorical phrase "fishing for information", transfers the concept of fishing (waiting, hoping to catch something that you can't see) into a new domain.
Thus, metonymy works by calling up a domain of usage and an array of associations (in the example above, boats, the ocean, gathering life from the sea) whereas metaphor picks a target set of meanings and transfers them to a new domain of usage."
Shall we go fishing? :)
Then there's metalepsis, referencing something by something else dimly associated with it. Oy! I could browse Wikipedia all day!
ReplyDeleteSurely these are the tools by which we weave our stories...
It's getting worse, I just can't stop! Here's a beauty:
ReplyDeleteCatachresis is the (usually intentional) use of any figure of speech that flagrantly violates the norms of a language community. Compare malapropism.
Common forms of catachresis are:
* Using a word to denote something radically different from its normal meaning.
'Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon's purse – Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
* Using a word out of context.
'Can't you hear that? Are you blind?'
* Using paradoxical or contradictory logic.
* Creating an illogical mixed metaphor.
To take arms against a sea of troubles... – Shakespeare, Hamlet
Catachresis is often used to convey extreme emotion or alienation, and is prominent in baroque literature and, more recently, in the avant-garde.
Brenda, you are funny! Just couldn't resist, could you. ;-) Yes, what you say makes sense — we build stories by use of metaphor, and we build them in the context of the current experience — but in fact, I also think of metaphor as a kind of story in itself. That's a different point from the one you make, but I think it has its place. The creative use of language, imagery, etc., to draw connections between apparently unrelated things and thereby illuminate something about their nature or our relationship with them — is that not a form of story, too? Because it reflects our interpretation of experience?
ReplyDeleteI don't think I could live without it!
Could we live without our thoughts, mb? If we want to exist in vegetative states... No, I couldn't live without the richness of our stories either, nor the processes of metaphor that underlie them, but don't see them as 'ultimate reality,' but understand sometimes the need to shed outworn ideas, clothes, places, stories, though the story of unweaving the weaving is a metaphor too!
ReplyDeleteYup.
ReplyDelete:-)
I like Brenda's metaphor (!) of stories as being like clothing. And of course clothing has an important sometimes beautiful function though it isn't our purest natural state. And MB's idea that some things can only be expresse din metaphor: the in-between states, the things not yet conmpletely describable. And Brenda's idea that synchronicity is metaphor. These ideas all make me have more affection for metaphor. (In fact I've sometimes been known to write a metaphor myself.)
ReplyDeleteWe, and I'm sure I speak for MB too, think you're an affectionate metaphor, Richard.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the thoughtful comments, too.