Wednesday, May 25, 2005

ATTN: Is dialogue about logos (words)?

I recently learned something exciting about words. It was something that i picked up from L.S. Vygotsky's book Mind in Society. I came to understand that words are signs. Suddenly i began to realize what Krishnamurti said "the word is not the same as the object that it points to". Let me take you with me on my tour of understanding.

Vygotsky mentions a very young child, stretching his fingers to grasp an object. But the object is too far away from the child. Then, the mother comes to the child's aid, and gives it to him. So there are in fact two movements; one is from the child, the other one is from the child's environment. Note that it is not the object responding, it is the environment, in this case the mother.

So when these two movements are internalized and become one, the stretching becomes pointing and the movement from the environment becomes an expectation, a demand or request to the child's environment to finish the action.

I realized that words are effectively the same mechanism of internalization. The very young child senses an object and the mother says the name of the object.

So when these two movements are internalized and become one, the sensing becomes labeling and the movement from the environment becomes an expectation, a demand or request to the child's environment to finish the action.

Can you feel the implications? To me it means that whatever word i use, the word itself is not me, is my call upon environment to understand what i mean. My part of the internalized movement is the sensing of the object.

So dialogue is not about words in the sense of "a word is an internalized single movement of what used to be my own sensing plus the environment's labeling". Dialogue is about my own sensing in a "conversation" with your own sensing; basically it goes without words while speaking.

In terms of attention: paying attention to the sensing within the internalized word with my intuition while paying attention to the label within the internalized word with my mind - these two can and must go together - dilutes the glue that holds them together.
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I-Name: =Ronald.Wopereis
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Freedom is about stopping the past
- Lawrence Lessig

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