Marshall Rosenberg used to talk about this! He founded Nonviolent Communication (now called Comapssionate Communication) - that the English language is full of violence. It truly does matter.
Dec 17, 2022·edited Dec 17, 2022Liked by Gary Sharpe
What came first? Thoughts, emotions, experiences, or the language which has evolved and which still evolves in order to communicate and translate those experiences, thoughts and emotions? A bit of both I would suggest. One reinforces the other.
"Conversely, according to Dr Iain McGilchrist and others, our experiences of right hemisphere ascendant states, when we connect with each other or nature on a deep level, and maybe also psychedelic healing experiences, are actually ineffable and indescribable through words. This is because the right hemisphere's way of attending contributes metaphor, poetry and prosody (melodic quality of voice) to language, but just doesn't have the words that the left can muster, yet the left can't know what the right knows."
I experienced this directly once, having dined on a few psilocybe mushrooms! I spent most of the night awake in my right brain, blissfully watching 'words in bubbles' float serenely past my consciousness. They were the 'thoughts' emanating from my Left Hemisphere. The problem is, the only way we know how to communicate complex ideas efficiently and effectively is to use the spoken or written word, which is itself constrained within the cultural framework of those words, the language. So we have to burst the bubbles, and then the magic is gone. Or is it? Can the Right Brain sneakily imbue our dreary sequences of words with at least some inner magic or hidden meaning? I think so. Some written and spoken words 'speak' to us far more powerfully and eloquently than others, beyond their simplistically interpreted literal content. Great works of poetry and literature are as much products of the Right, intuitive brain as they are of the Left, rational, brain. Hell, even inspirational books on science subjects get some much needed input from the Right Hemisphere! The lines of communication between Left and Right are always open, and often powerfully expressed; it's just that we don't perceive them directly.
Words form language that enable communication. What you are pointing to is the inability to clearly communicate what we mean simply by using words. Notice how people are offended when you tell them you don’t really understand or that what they are saying is the result of programming rather than direct experience. It is all part of The Spectacle of the Real - https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/the-spectacle-of-the-real.
All this changes when you are placed in a situation where you must communicate with someone or a group where there is no common language. I spoke at a conference in Benin, West Africa, in 2020. I had three translators. One for French speakers and the other two for two tribal languages. I was told one of those tribal languages only had 800 words. Imagine the difficulty the translator faced in translating the words leadership, organization, values, and purpose. I asked the translator how she did it. She said, using hand motions to indicate a circle, “I tell a story, then another story, and another story, and another to give them the idea of what you were saying.” In speaking at this conference of several thousand people, I realized the privilege of seeing what the real world of language was about. There was a husband and wife team who spoke. He was the keynote. She was his translator. He was very animated. She mimicked his every body movement as he spoke. I now realize that I was witnessing McGilchrist’s embodied right brain communication.
There are also thousands of cult children who are taught from a young age that their brains have a physical division, a wall between left and right if you will, and the two sides are prohibited from 'crossing over'. The programmers then install 'good' personalities on one side, and 'evil' personalities on the other, like two trunks of a bifurcated tree growing up on either side of the Berlin wall, forever forbidden to interact with the other half, but at the base they are one.
Built into this system are layers of double meanings for words. One side sees a bus as a means of public transport, but the other side was taught "Whenever you see a bus, you will remember what happens to traitors of our cult." So this can result in sudden anxiety in the presence of a bus for the other side, but the 'front person' in this kind of programmed mental system does not know why they feel anxious or nervous every time they're on a bus. Other programs they install of a similar nature include amnesia ("Every time you see/hear ..., you will forget all the evil things our cult does"), physical pain ("whenever you hear MJ's Thriller, you will feel electrocution in your teeth"), and ritual participation ("On such and such date, you will go to so and so's place for the Beltane sacrifice"), etc. These programs can run simultaneously. More generalised systems are installed on non-cult minds through propaganda apparatuses (esp. MSM, modern music and Hollywood).
I note that these programs are always installed with a combination of verbal, visual and auditory cues at an individual level. The cults call it 'magick'. I call it trauma-based mind control. Think of your programmed reaction to the following words: "Russia"; "COVID-19"; "Safe and effective"; "lockdown"; "mandate" just from recent times (earlier iterations include "terrorist"; "AIDS"; "Nazi"). Words are powerful, especially when combined with hypnotism, trauma and the pliable minds of young children and adults alike.
I find this article quite fascinating. It explains a bit of my dissonance with my fellow Americans as I’ve always been told I was a bit too blunt in my communication, but in my native language, ‘sugar coating’ is considered down right offensive and the culture is encouraging of direct and clear communication. I’ve also been told that Bulgarian sounds like dogs barking. But the lack of saccharine tones sound to me as being more authentic. It’s harder to lie in Bulgarian. Is that even possible? Interestingly, there is a word that literally means the process of stitching up a story made of plausible fibs. I’m not sure if there is a similar word in English. Great topic, Gary.
Great essay Gary! I would like to add this to the mix ... The dumbing down of America by the “education” system results from the students being forced by educators to use the right brain to perform a left-brain function. “This is done by forcing children to learn a sight vocabulary, to look at our alphabetic words as little pictures, when in reality our alphabetic words are symbolic representations of language sounds.” Blumenfeld, Samuel L.; Newman, Alex. Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America's Children https://www.amazon.com/Crimes-Educators-Utopians-Government-Americas/dp/1938067126/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0
Fascinating topic. I think there is still a lot we still don't understand about words in relation to communication. In some instances, words not only fail to communicate, they get in the way of communication. And as we've seen they can be used intentionally to steer unassuming populations towards an end result they otherwise would not have agreed to. "Lockdown" is a prison term. Agreeing to lockdowns are you agree to act as prisoner, as example.
"Accordingly, different cultures with different languages, including having words which just don't exist in English, experience the world radically differently, even the feeling of different emotions. Likewise, according to Barrett, folks who have a richer vocabulary for emotions, have a richer emotional life."
I suspect, how we frame our experiences with words (which are symbols of concepts/beliefs) would profoundly impact how we interpret those experiences. I remember reading - believe it was a Ken Wilber book - that a group of indigenous people who had never come across the concept of a ship, failed to see one, when it was in view on the horizon. As if it literally didn't exist. (The word didn't exist because the concept didn't exist.) It makes you wonder. If someone provides a new concept to me, say for multi-dimensional awareness, will that concept create the possibility of experiencing it?
Re: Barrett, folks who have a richer vocabulary for emotions, have a richer emotional life.
I suspect she's put the cart before the horse here. The richer vocabulary for emotions arises to capture the experience of those richer emotions. That makes sense to me. When we struggle for the right word - as I so often do now - we ate attempting to express a new experience.
Margaret Anna Alice's - philanthropath - is a perfect example - a new word attempting to capture how psychopaths hide behind their personas as philanthropists.
My own was indoctorination - to try to explain why so many doctors were silent. The words are secondary to the experience. Once we have them though, does it allow for richer communication - I would think so.
Dec 17, 2022·edited Dec 17, 2022Liked by Gary Sharpe
So many thoughts around this, starting with: "according to Barrett, folks who have a richer vocabulary for emotions, have a richer emotional life." My first thought is that I have a much richer "silent" (reading) language than spoken language. I easily read, for instance, 19th century novels, but have learned not to use many of the words, especially multi-syllable words. There is such a massive diminishing of language - including that my "silent" language will be lost with me, as I don't pass it on - almost the way many people who speak a language and emigrate to a place where it isn't spoken don't pass it on - it's a "secret language." Also, as I speak several languages, I know very well how the language one speaks can influence what we communicate - including that when I'm speaking a language I speak less well, I say simpler stuff. Finally, I wonder about the deliberate interference with our language by whoever/whatever is behind things - like Mr Global (CAF) or the Global Predators (the term used by the Breggins).
Dec 19, 2022·edited Dec 19, 2022Liked by Gary Sharpe
I speak light language. For me it is a quantum language of the soul. For other speakers, it is angelic, galactic or elemental. It is as unique as we all are. To me, everything is energy, information and light. Our mutually agreed words can be spells (spelling) and can be used wisely or nefariously, as blessings or curses. When I speak light language, the sounds, clicks and tones bypass my mental mind and are way beyond the left hemispheres linear knowing. Beyond syntax and etymology. I feel they arise as gamma (McGilchrist might say right hemisphere?) frequencies, symbols, written, signed or verbal, multidimensional light codes that can speak to the dormant (far from junk) strands of our DNA. I sense and feel that we are all capable of this kind of communication and I am encountering more and more humans who can connect in this way. Apart from anything else, it feels much more expansive and loving than how our enculturated languages have developed. Particularly English which I do feel has a tendency towards contraction and verbal violence.
I think the accepted observation that '90% of all communication is nonverbal' certainly needs to be acknowledged here. As someone who married a non-English speaking person, I have several observations (whether they are unique to us or universal I cannot prove).
Firstly, although I spoke Spanish as a second language (learned through years of schooling) it wasn’t until I immersed myself in a South American population that I realized I was missing 90% of the nuance and subtlety of communication. It wasn’t just the idioms (although that was important), it was the way of thinking – the way of looking at the world around us. I can very well believe the reference to rainbows and their colors.
My second largest epiphany came after we moved to the United States and my wife started learning English. After 25 years I still have to sometimes pause and reflect upon this – the Spanish language is much less specific than the English language. It is not just the vocabulary (although certainly true), but it is also reflected in everyday communications. In my extensive travels throughout Central and South America (as well as Mexico) it is my impression that people don’t feel the need to be as specific in their communications. It is very difficult to explain and not something that one example could illuminate.
I can really only speak with any authority about the Germanic and Romance (Latin-based) languages, but I believe my observations hold true.
I am a professional Political Analyst and amateur historian (among other things) and I believe I see these differences in the effect of language played out in the world of politics. It would make for a fascinating book someday…
Marshall Rosenberg used to talk about this! He founded Nonviolent Communication (now called Comapssionate Communication) - that the English language is full of violence. It truly does matter.
What came first? Thoughts, emotions, experiences, or the language which has evolved and which still evolves in order to communicate and translate those experiences, thoughts and emotions? A bit of both I would suggest. One reinforces the other.
"Conversely, according to Dr Iain McGilchrist and others, our experiences of right hemisphere ascendant states, when we connect with each other or nature on a deep level, and maybe also psychedelic healing experiences, are actually ineffable and indescribable through words. This is because the right hemisphere's way of attending contributes metaphor, poetry and prosody (melodic quality of voice) to language, but just doesn't have the words that the left can muster, yet the left can't know what the right knows."
I experienced this directly once, having dined on a few psilocybe mushrooms! I spent most of the night awake in my right brain, blissfully watching 'words in bubbles' float serenely past my consciousness. They were the 'thoughts' emanating from my Left Hemisphere. The problem is, the only way we know how to communicate complex ideas efficiently and effectively is to use the spoken or written word, which is itself constrained within the cultural framework of those words, the language. So we have to burst the bubbles, and then the magic is gone. Or is it? Can the Right Brain sneakily imbue our dreary sequences of words with at least some inner magic or hidden meaning? I think so. Some written and spoken words 'speak' to us far more powerfully and eloquently than others, beyond their simplistically interpreted literal content. Great works of poetry and literature are as much products of the Right, intuitive brain as they are of the Left, rational, brain. Hell, even inspirational books on science subjects get some much needed input from the Right Hemisphere! The lines of communication between Left and Right are always open, and often powerfully expressed; it's just that we don't perceive them directly.
Words form language that enable communication. What you are pointing to is the inability to clearly communicate what we mean simply by using words. Notice how people are offended when you tell them you don’t really understand or that what they are saying is the result of programming rather than direct experience. It is all part of The Spectacle of the Real - https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/the-spectacle-of-the-real.
All this changes when you are placed in a situation where you must communicate with someone or a group where there is no common language. I spoke at a conference in Benin, West Africa, in 2020. I had three translators. One for French speakers and the other two for two tribal languages. I was told one of those tribal languages only had 800 words. Imagine the difficulty the translator faced in translating the words leadership, organization, values, and purpose. I asked the translator how she did it. She said, using hand motions to indicate a circle, “I tell a story, then another story, and another story, and another to give them the idea of what you were saying.” In speaking at this conference of several thousand people, I realized the privilege of seeing what the real world of language was about. There was a husband and wife team who spoke. He was the keynote. She was his translator. He was very animated. She mimicked his every body movement as he spoke. I now realize that I was witnessing McGilchrist’s embodied right brain communication.
I wonder how much of the fragmentation is a feature, not a bug.
It's possible that the more insane societies get, the more they branch out to (hopefully) find sanity again.
There are also thousands of cult children who are taught from a young age that their brains have a physical division, a wall between left and right if you will, and the two sides are prohibited from 'crossing over'. The programmers then install 'good' personalities on one side, and 'evil' personalities on the other, like two trunks of a bifurcated tree growing up on either side of the Berlin wall, forever forbidden to interact with the other half, but at the base they are one.
Built into this system are layers of double meanings for words. One side sees a bus as a means of public transport, but the other side was taught "Whenever you see a bus, you will remember what happens to traitors of our cult." So this can result in sudden anxiety in the presence of a bus for the other side, but the 'front person' in this kind of programmed mental system does not know why they feel anxious or nervous every time they're on a bus. Other programs they install of a similar nature include amnesia ("Every time you see/hear ..., you will forget all the evil things our cult does"), physical pain ("whenever you hear MJ's Thriller, you will feel electrocution in your teeth"), and ritual participation ("On such and such date, you will go to so and so's place for the Beltane sacrifice"), etc. These programs can run simultaneously. More generalised systems are installed on non-cult minds through propaganda apparatuses (esp. MSM, modern music and Hollywood).
I note that these programs are always installed with a combination of verbal, visual and auditory cues at an individual level. The cults call it 'magick'. I call it trauma-based mind control. Think of your programmed reaction to the following words: "Russia"; "COVID-19"; "Safe and effective"; "lockdown"; "mandate" just from recent times (earlier iterations include "terrorist"; "AIDS"; "Nazi"). Words are powerful, especially when combined with hypnotism, trauma and the pliable minds of young children and adults alike.
I find this article quite fascinating. It explains a bit of my dissonance with my fellow Americans as I’ve always been told I was a bit too blunt in my communication, but in my native language, ‘sugar coating’ is considered down right offensive and the culture is encouraging of direct and clear communication. I’ve also been told that Bulgarian sounds like dogs barking. But the lack of saccharine tones sound to me as being more authentic. It’s harder to lie in Bulgarian. Is that even possible? Interestingly, there is a word that literally means the process of stitching up a story made of plausible fibs. I’m not sure if there is a similar word in English. Great topic, Gary.
Great essay Gary! I would like to add this to the mix ... The dumbing down of America by the “education” system results from the students being forced by educators to use the right brain to perform a left-brain function. “This is done by forcing children to learn a sight vocabulary, to look at our alphabetic words as little pictures, when in reality our alphabetic words are symbolic representations of language sounds.” Blumenfeld, Samuel L.; Newman, Alex. Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America's Children https://www.amazon.com/Crimes-Educators-Utopians-Government-Americas/dp/1938067126/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0
Fascinating topic. I think there is still a lot we still don't understand about words in relation to communication. In some instances, words not only fail to communicate, they get in the way of communication. And as we've seen they can be used intentionally to steer unassuming populations towards an end result they otherwise would not have agreed to. "Lockdown" is a prison term. Agreeing to lockdowns are you agree to act as prisoner, as example.
"Accordingly, different cultures with different languages, including having words which just don't exist in English, experience the world radically differently, even the feeling of different emotions. Likewise, according to Barrett, folks who have a richer vocabulary for emotions, have a richer emotional life."
I suspect, how we frame our experiences with words (which are symbols of concepts/beliefs) would profoundly impact how we interpret those experiences. I remember reading - believe it was a Ken Wilber book - that a group of indigenous people who had never come across the concept of a ship, failed to see one, when it was in view on the horizon. As if it literally didn't exist. (The word didn't exist because the concept didn't exist.) It makes you wonder. If someone provides a new concept to me, say for multi-dimensional awareness, will that concept create the possibility of experiencing it?
Re: Barrett, folks who have a richer vocabulary for emotions, have a richer emotional life.
I suspect she's put the cart before the horse here. The richer vocabulary for emotions arises to capture the experience of those richer emotions. That makes sense to me. When we struggle for the right word - as I so often do now - we ate attempting to express a new experience.
Margaret Anna Alice's - philanthropath - is a perfect example - a new word attempting to capture how psychopaths hide behind their personas as philanthropists.
My own was indoctorination - to try to explain why so many doctors were silent. The words are secondary to the experience. Once we have them though, does it allow for richer communication - I would think so.
Thanks - really enjoyed it.
So many thoughts around this, starting with: "according to Barrett, folks who have a richer vocabulary for emotions, have a richer emotional life." My first thought is that I have a much richer "silent" (reading) language than spoken language. I easily read, for instance, 19th century novels, but have learned not to use many of the words, especially multi-syllable words. There is such a massive diminishing of language - including that my "silent" language will be lost with me, as I don't pass it on - almost the way many people who speak a language and emigrate to a place where it isn't spoken don't pass it on - it's a "secret language." Also, as I speak several languages, I know very well how the language one speaks can influence what we communicate - including that when I'm speaking a language I speak less well, I say simpler stuff. Finally, I wonder about the deliberate interference with our language by whoever/whatever is behind things - like Mr Global (CAF) or the Global Predators (the term used by the Breggins).
I speak light language. For me it is a quantum language of the soul. For other speakers, it is angelic, galactic or elemental. It is as unique as we all are. To me, everything is energy, information and light. Our mutually agreed words can be spells (spelling) and can be used wisely or nefariously, as blessings or curses. When I speak light language, the sounds, clicks and tones bypass my mental mind and are way beyond the left hemispheres linear knowing. Beyond syntax and etymology. I feel they arise as gamma (McGilchrist might say right hemisphere?) frequencies, symbols, written, signed or verbal, multidimensional light codes that can speak to the dormant (far from junk) strands of our DNA. I sense and feel that we are all capable of this kind of communication and I am encountering more and more humans who can connect in this way. Apart from anything else, it feels much more expansive and loving than how our enculturated languages have developed. Particularly English which I do feel has a tendency towards contraction and verbal violence.
I think the accepted observation that '90% of all communication is nonverbal' certainly needs to be acknowledged here. As someone who married a non-English speaking person, I have several observations (whether they are unique to us or universal I cannot prove).
Firstly, although I spoke Spanish as a second language (learned through years of schooling) it wasn’t until I immersed myself in a South American population that I realized I was missing 90% of the nuance and subtlety of communication. It wasn’t just the idioms (although that was important), it was the way of thinking – the way of looking at the world around us. I can very well believe the reference to rainbows and their colors.
My second largest epiphany came after we moved to the United States and my wife started learning English. After 25 years I still have to sometimes pause and reflect upon this – the Spanish language is much less specific than the English language. It is not just the vocabulary (although certainly true), but it is also reflected in everyday communications. In my extensive travels throughout Central and South America (as well as Mexico) it is my impression that people don’t feel the need to be as specific in their communications. It is very difficult to explain and not something that one example could illuminate.
I can really only speak with any authority about the Germanic and Romance (Latin-based) languages, but I believe my observations hold true.
I am a professional Political Analyst and amateur historian (among other things) and I believe I see these differences in the effect of language played out in the world of politics. It would make for a fascinating book someday…
StressFreeBill