I think in imagery, not in words. This essential difference enriches my life, but it also slows down the process of communication. I have to translate what I see (in my mind's eye) into actual words that more-or-less convey the content. I do not immediately have, at the tip of my tongue, the right words for every situation -- since situations are not, for me, replicable and interchangeable. Every single situation is a new one.
Due to the fact that I rely so heavily upon my own perception of any situation, I am not good at imposing order that I see to be arbitrary. I do not say, "Let such-and-such be a certain way!" I do not believe in Logos (language as efficacious "spirit") very much. (One would have to be a postmodernist to hold that language by itself changes reality at the speed of light.) I believe in a slow pace, a gradual adjustment of the inward lens until things come into sharper focus.
I believe that my approach towards understanding my world is akin to shamanistic ways of understanding. This does not mean that it is actually shamanism, but it is akin to that. On the other hand, it seems to me that those who take the opposite approach -- who view Logos itself as a command system, to control reality -- are the shaman's natural enemies. They are what Nietzsche refers to as the "priestly type". They are the philosophical idealists who hold that reality itself has no existence apart from the priestly law. The priestly law is that one must take what the priest says as authoritative, and not dare to look at anything with one's own eyes.
The priestly type is certainly the deadly enemy of the visual metaphor, whereas the shaman is its friend. The shaman says, "go forth and know for thyself and taste of this forbidden fruit - the knowledge of good and evil." The priest says, "it is forbidden."
My communicative processes are slow. I tred, at times, with heavy feet, and glib and well-sounding phrases do not immediately come to my lips. The signs for all to see, if they are capable of seeing, is that I am not one of the priestly type.
When I hear, at times, a priestly type speaking -- in his conventional priestly manner -- I hear that he wants to pull the wool over my eyes, by combating words with words. I wonder why he doesn't know that words are just an epiphenomenon of my vision -- and fundamentally inessential to it? Just because he speaks the opposite words to the ones I have just spoken, he believes himself to have thoroughly refuted me. Now he sits down and is content, believing himself to have cast the devil far asunder. Now he partakes of various other intoxicants of the mind; some 'good book' -- perhaps Nietzsche, whom he reads as just another Malleus Maleficarum. (For 'Logos' without vision means that all "authoritative" books are just another version of the One and Only Western priestly text: The Bible.)
But, I KNOW -- It's hard to get this message across.
I speak slowly.
2 comments:
You speak of the visual metaphor as your means of communication. I believe this can be effective, but only when the words are carefully chosen. The words must not obfuscate the message...the idea. Recently I was reading a small book of Hemingway on writing. He was the master of simple, precise writing. His goal to enable his writing to fairly melt away and dissolve, leaving only the story and ideas. Metaphor and simile for the sake of the words themselves, he felt, was egotism. I have a brief audio on the subject you can listen to: http://womensmemoirs.com/writing-alchemy/writing-in-five-hemingway-on-simplicity/
How does this mesh with your favored style of communication?
Kendra--you misunderstand me. The visual metaphor is not a form of communication with others. It is an intrasubjective form of communication. It is the way that the unconscious mind communicates with the conscious mind.
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