Language
Thoughts as of 3/21/2024
A recurrent thought as of late has been the limitations of language in communication and in understanding more broadly.
People often speak of certain words or expressions in other languages that do not have an equivalent in English. Just this morning in an audiobook the author mentioned how “casa” in Spanish is different from the word “home” in English.
While true, I believe that the problem lies a bit deeper, and is more prevalent than we might realize.
I would argue that it is unlikely that the word “home” in English even means the same thing to two different native English speakers. There is an unnavigable gap between the thoughts in my mind, the words on this page, the words you read, and the thoughts that come from them in your mind.
I have found so often that arguments on the news, online, or in the media generally stem around differences in the definitions of terms rather than the substance of arguments.
There are a plethora of videos online lampooning folks on either side of the aisle where an interviewer asks protestors how they feel on a subject, intending to elicit a negative response from the interviewee. Then the interviewer asks the interviewee to define that subject, only to watch them struggle.
In my own life, I have realized more and more just how little I understand, and how my assumptions can get me into trouble.
Now, when having serious conversations with friends or family, I try to define the purpose of the conversation and establish some definitions at the outset.
It may sound somewhat alien to conduct yourself this way instead of letting the natural flow of conversation run its course, but if you are not on the same page, then you may just end up talking around each other.
I refer to this as being on the same page, just in different books.
A recent book, Awareness by Anthony de Mello, helped to formalize these thoughts for me.
He talks about how concepts are static while reality is dynamic.
Using the example of looking at a tree, he explains that the word tree does not do it justice. Even if you specified the type of tree, the height, width, the number of branches, and described it in as much detail as possible, there would still be something divorced from reality.
“There is no word for reality.”
“You don’t need to be a mystic to understand that reality is something that cannot be captured by words or concepts. To know reality you have to know beyond knowing.”
However, language is by no means useless. Rather, it is through wrestling with these ideas and concepts and trying to put words to them and debate them amongst each other that we can get closer to new insights.
Cal Newport has had some podcast guest spots lately promoting a new book. He confessed that he does not invent anything new in his incredibly successful books, but rather he is able to put language to an idea that we already know to be true.
I have found this to be the case in a lot of self-help books. The concepts are intuitive and once you hear something, there is a sense that it is obvious. Reminds me of some of the thoughts surrounding my simple vs. easy post.
As I realize I am running a bit long in this post relative to some others, I will try to bring things home with a final example.
Over the past several months, I began reading the bible cover to cover, aiming to read a chapter per day.
Believe it or not, the bible is a pretty contentious piece of literature.
Whether you believe it to be divinely inspired and the word of God, or not, the truth is, if you read it in English, the words are not the same as what the author wrote.
Even if you read it in the original language, you will not have the context of the audience it was written for, nor what the author intended in choosing this specific verbiage over any other.
Further, I would go as far as to argue that even the intended audience, in the native language, at the time of writing, would not have a perfect one-to-one mapping of what the author meant in each line.
This; however, does not make the reading any less valuable.
Knowing that what I am reading has been translated and chopped up over centuries does not make it less impactful. Instead, I am able to argue with the text and think about what the author might have meant by phrasing something a certain way or choosing to include certain details in a story.
I do the same for books written this year in English.
In conversations, listening to podcasts, or reading books, there is (for better or worse) no such thing as objective truth. There is what was meant, what was said, what was heard, and what was internalized.
Becoming increasingly conscious of this fact of life over the past several weeks has helped me read and listen more critically while simultaneously communicating with greater clarity.