One day I realized that when asked to explain things to someone, I reach for the precise words in my own private vocabulary to match the idea in my head, as opposed to finding the words that unlock the idea in theirs. Sometimes, when I try to visualize this shift in behavior within myself, I imagine it as the difference between a hammer and a river.
A hammer is a tool that strikes at one point until it pierces straight through, as if nothing were there in the first place. The wood can crack, and the absence becomes a pressure. The hammer’s journey starts and ends in one direction, the only evidence of an other being the force of its strike.
A river meets its banks, and finds the cleanest path around them, with a certain cosmic patience. If its course stands to be corrected, it travels onward, pivoting to the lesson of its substrate. And, the river doesn’t stop at the soil; it nourishes life near and far, endlessly cycling water, as an event, not an object.
Here’s a question:
Do we think in terms of language, or is there something more atavistic about thinking? Is there a language of the mind? Does this lie in the subconscious, the conscious, both, or neither?
One day I realized that when asked to explain things to someone, I reach for the precise words in my own private vocabulary to match the idea in my head, as opposed to finding the words that unlock the idea in theirs. Sometimes, when I try to visualize this shift in behavior within myself, I imagine it as the difference between a hammer and a river.
A hammer is a tool that strikes at one point until it pierces straight through, as if nothing were there in the first place. The wood can crack, and the absence becomes a pressure. The hammer’s journey starts and ends in one direction, the only evidence of an other being the force of its strike.
A river meets its banks, and finds the cleanest path around them, with a certain cosmic patience. If its course stands to be corrected, it travels onward, pivoting to the lesson of its substrate. And, the river doesn’t stop at the soil; it nourishes life near and far, endlessly cycling water, as an event, not an object.
Here’s a question:
Do we think in terms of language, or is there something more atavistic about thinking? Is there a language of the mind? Does this lie in the subconscious, the conscious, both, or neither?