a bunch of pieces came together. Single conceptual network where nodes, fuzzy nodes of nature to be determined, connect to two types of edges: ontological and taxonomical. I will not detail that here, there should be an article about it coming soon. It feels so good when a system perceived as chaotic starts to form a more coherent picture. writing this article helps a lot in the process. I decided to state the obvious. As the loss of information when using written forms for any transcription of an oral form. Also the fact that we are trying to model the serialization system we call grammar that maps conceptual architectures to a sequence of sounds or drawings and that this system is far from perfect, we just assume that a given grammar is good enough at any moment in time to be used by humans to communicate and bears characteristic properties of language.
Is language and accident? Existing in just one among many thousands intelligent species. it could be an experiment, 90% failed by now. Or language could be its own life form. maybe a parasite, which through evolution transforms the brain of the host so that it's more and more adapted to it. And this brain structure is either initially not inhabited by language at all, language is injected through interactions with all the hosts of the same parasites, or the parasite succeeded in becoming encoded in human DNA so that we were all born with a dormant version that awaits activation by other instances of the parasite. And this parasite could be as aimless as most parasites. Using their host with no other intent than satisfying their reproductive needs, behaving as a species with no other intent than perpetuating the existence of the species. This is what humans do in their own flavor of being a parasite. But language could also be something more interesting: a stage in the evolutionary process of another entity. Imagine that: language is some kind of larva. It's infecting a species, progressively influencing their behavior to make them transform their planet, engineer it, set all the conditions for the emergence of the adult stage of their own life form. The adult form feeds on what remains and prepares for another cycle. if the larva stage lasts for 500,000 years, we are dealing with something extraordinary. And we are the host, and we can be aware of it, and what allows us to be aware of it is the parasite itself. To protect us from this terrifying realization, the parasite is very good at making us believe in whatever fantasies relieving the anxiety. Religions, mystics. Intriguing isn't it?
Can you really manipulate someone just because they seem clueless? Is there a direct correlation between cluelessness and susceptibility to control, one that escalates with increasing cluelessness?
I doubt that. The sheer billions funneled annually into marketing efforts to get people buy stuff strongly debunk the notion that people are easily controlled.
But there is such an ascending curve for predictability. I can't control but I can predict. In some way it's positive, helps me stay out of the way. But it's mostly a source of anger and frustration. Individually, and even more as a group, I can anticipate their decision process and foresee outcomes even before they recognize a decision is being made within their own minds. The only thing that stands between me and constantly predicting what's next for them is my desperate hope that I'll be wrong. Anger because usually their actions violate principles I hold dear. Like respecting nature, other species, thinking as a whole planet to preserve and not as one dick to satisfy. Anger because I know the next scene of the movie, I have already seen the rushes, and they keep playing it anyway.
I'm often dumb myself.
My father wrote his long twisted memoirs in French. Even though, until the end, his French was the equivalent of my English now: Acceptable, but limited. Anyway, who would have read his writings in Slovenian before his death. I wonder if he nurtured with French the relationship I have with English. A language without the embedded trauma of the first one. I keep being surprised by my internal monologue being in English, even when I imagine having conversations with French friends. Even here in Tahiti where people speak a mix of Tahitian and local French, I often realize that that I am rehearsing upcoming interaction… in English. Yes, I rehearse interaction. I am still not good at real time discussion, except when I am really good at it.
I often think about Sarah Sellers, who made second place at the 2018 Boston Marathon. She was not in the top of the charts, not expected to be that strong a contender. The weather was awful that year, with strong winds and rain. And she said that as a full time nurse with kids, she had to train whenever she had time, being most of the time exhausted by her long days of work, training outside whatever the time or the weather. So running the marathon in bad weather after a bad night was just a usual running day for her, and that made a difference.
It has been hard progressing lately, as I was still unhappy with the definition of grammar and what grammatical features as seen in litterature was. Then I hit some kind of breakthrough yesterday, at least something new that made me go haha. I saw certain classes of abstract concepts being so frequently used in combination with other concepts that their expression used either short words or become part of the word expressing the associated concept. These forms coexist with longer forms, that would be seen as obnoxiously convoluted in comparison. These short forms are called grammatical features, as if they belonged to some entity that would be grammar. But they're just these frequently used abstract concepts that have short forms in a given language. Turns out that a number of these frequently used concepts is similar across languages, which is not that surprising.
So far, this view holds.
Documenting the decisive leg
Of this overtold quest of mine
Cheap music blaring on my right
Doggies just living the life
On my way to Moorea
Meaning can't be amorphous, we just can't figure out in what space does meaning exists.
Intricate design of primitives of all levels, from the most ancient instinct to the most volatile abstract product.
And crawling on the planet's face
Some insects called the human race
Lost in time
Lost in space
And meaning