MEMORIES ARE STORIES, AND VICE VERSA
Human Consciousness should be a required course of study, before you tackle some other, more specialized investigations; I say this, because a much greater degree of success would almost certainly follow your having acquired a basic understanding of how we hominids do that.
How we make MEMORIES, and how we make DECISIONS are the two, most elusive neurological processes, currently under intense scrutiny by those scientists, being paid to apply the latest technological investigative tools to these specific mysterious, yet continually ongoing functions of our central nervous system.
There is, among the many 'administrative' entities that carry out their duties, within that 'interior space,' loosely referred to as our consciousness, one that keeps dropping hints, into our speech, and our written communications; that entity(perhaps it could be considered a fragment of our personality; I'll consult with Freud on this, the next time he manifests in one of my dreams), must be intimately associated with the Broca region, where we process language. Through this entity's use of carefully-crafted idiomatic phrases we adopt, to speak casually of our thinking process, its zany substitution of incorrect words into our speech, commonly referred to as Freudian slips & through its use of symbols(frequently taken from our mostly-unremembered dreams), which we gleefully incorporate into our stories, and try later, after some cerebral critic has pointed out these thematic correspondences, to claim as evidence of our superior artistic capabilities.
So, in pursuit of my stated theme, the importance of a/the CONCEPT, in both of these necessary, but poorly analyzed mental processes, is not easily denigrated; with no concept of lunar effects on the tides, for instance, their risings, and fallings would be so chaotic, as to defy any reliable predictions. It might be fruitful for the further development of my theme, to point out at this juncture, that this important concept came into existence, long before we developed alphabets, so we could stop being prehistoric. It was the CONCEPT, that allowed for the 'logical' organization of measurements being made at/near coastlines, where these predictions had economic value to fishermen, cargo-shipmen & shellfish gatherers.
Each WORD is itself, a symbol for a CONCEPT; without the concept, there is no need for making up a new word;1)try to name something that does not exist, & 2)conversely, to say that vampires, werewolves & zombies do not exist(or are not real), begs the question, "Where do we get this word:Vampire?" - or, what was the word, vampire, needed for, in the first place? There are some authors, whose 'fantasies' arise directly from their repetitive 'invention' of novel new words(that you often can't spell or pronounce); I find the reading of such stories, both insanely difficult & ultimately pointless! J.R.R. Tolkein, on the other hand, was a linguist, and spent about 30-years, inventing the characters and novel concepts, we find in his The Lord of the Rings trilogy; his Tree essay, explains just what the Fantasy Genre is/should be.
CATEGORIES, much like the FOLDERS Windows-users are familiar with, are inescapable aids to the memory process; when we try to recall a person's name, or where we may have met this person, we search through our mental archives, skipping from one category to the next, until we find what we have searched for, and blurt out the person's name, or the unforgettable location where the two of you were introduced! Errors, in the original selection of a category, for this all-important filing process, can come back years later, to bite one in the posterior regions of the torso; a for-instance here, of a rather dangerous, though quite common, effect of choosing the wrong category, involves those disposable gloves seen on the hands of food-servers; if you observe just one of the employees, that works where you can keep your eyes on them, for several minutes, you may see that they are using a different category than you would, and one that is simply the wrong one; your expectation is, that your server has been trained, to keep gloved-up, to prevent the contamination of your food, with anything that poses a health threat to you, and a liability-concern to the employer; all too often, it becomes woefully obvious, that the server that you are observing, has been trained(by some other untrained employee), that these gloves must be worn, to keep their hands from being exposed to greasy food-residues, that should not transferred to the equipment and serving utensils found in the kitchen and/or employee areas.
EPITHETS are categories we use, to put persons, confronted in our environment, into manageable pigeon-holes, so we can more quickly, efficiently & correctly DECIDE how to act, whom to speak to, or ask something of & who can be safely ignored or should be considered a viable threat, and thereby, avoided at all cost, and perhaps pointed out to the authorities. The hidden danger, inherent in this classification process, and with the other two subjects in this essay, found in the Title above, as well, is the POWER these three 'forces' have to create, distort & pervert realities, that are arbitrary in nature, restrictive in effect & utterly useless for inter-communication. I found a rare video, purely by accident, that I think, would not be a waste of your time, if your desire is to disarm some of these destructive forces, ensconced firmly in your brain, so that you can see more of the reality surrounding you, escape from the bonds that control your actions & finally ENJOY a freedom that blesses you, your family & all the persons encountered in 'your goings out' & 'your comings inside.'
Comments
Post a Comment