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Title: Deconstructing Meaning Author: Victor Steel Date: 03/03/2014 Language: en Topics: meaning, life, understanding, becoming Source: https://rathbonezvizionz.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/deconstructing-meaning/
In this world, meaning hides all over, but for us humans, meaning is
found solely in our language. We cannot think without language. We
cannot see without language, in the respect that we may be seeing, but
we will have no ideas what we are looking at. Listening, the sounds
would go on namelessly. And I am not here passing judgment one way or
another, although it is simply inconceivable to grasp what it would be
like to be alive and be isolated, without some sort of language, viewing
the world from a mind untouched by conditioning. But as we look around,
as we take in the surroundings, we see that things themselves will
always remain themselves, what changes the world is the ideas we infuse
into those things, how we see them, and how those ideas alter who we
are.
But first, let us take a closer look at the breakdown of ideas. There
are really only two kinds of ideas, ideas came upon individually, and
ideas brought up from others (who not necessarily came up with them
individually, although if we follow the trail long enough, someone did
come up with various forms of the fragments of the evolved idea). Now
ideas are usually reactions to obstacles. One sees a new value to this
object because of a new-found value. So there can be a combination of
the aforementioned class of ideas. There can be a societal idealism,
that all of the individuals embrace as a class, but because of this
societal outlook, there too will be individuals, sole individuals acting
as individuals, that will base each one’s new ideas (on how to act, how
he perceives his self in relation to this new society, to those he
knows, his value, where his place in the world is, etc..) on the new
idealism (or against) of the society. Just as conversely, because
society wants to be a multiplicity, acting as a whole, it will grow its
own idealism against those very idealistic individuals within its
societal walls. Can meaning be found within a group, as a group, as a
group identity, and is it really meaning at all, or is it a need to
belong, which reaches even deeper into that individual’s psyche,
questioning what he is missing which makes him crave external
acceptance? Or is meaning only to be found on an individual level, from
the individual, as individual to individual, from a sharing process,
where individual A contemplates his own meaning, shares it with
individual B, and the communication interchange that occurs, leads to a
deeper understanding of the selves of both, if each knows how to use the
process of communication to its fullest powers.
Language is societal, in that it is a shared tool that everyone can
learn in order to understand one another. But it is also individual so
that man can know his self. And this is precisely where the cross point
occurs. As man uses a tool meant for the whole of society, he learns of
his self, shares that self with another, and learns what that other
thinks of his self, how that other interprets what he is saying and
relays that understanding in its own language and interprets what he has
heard. Because this is the phenomenon that is communication.
Communication is not the dull lifeless interchange where two beings
merely speak at one another, telling what they are, awaiting a pause in
the noise that she may say her piece and then be on her way. No.
Communication is an alive symbiosis of metonymyc interchange, that is a
constant interpretation of what the other is saying. Many people have
similar definitions of the things that are found within the world, both
in things and ideas, but what is missing most from these interactions,
is that there are not many people that are willing to find out what
differences there are, in their selves or in their others.
What most people do not realize is that communication, and how one
communicates is really what makes him what he is. I have written it
before, and the key is this: If you cannot listen and communicate and
interpret and see the depth and the reflections in what an other is
saying unto you, then how is it possible for you to see all of those
variations and depths within your own self? Listening is the miraculous
tool that allows you to get right next to that other speaking and
visualize the process that is going on in his mind as he chooses words,
uses experience within his self to relay a story, and gives you the
opportunity, once he has finished speaking, to let him know what it is
that you heard, and as you tell him what you heard, a shared experience
is being created for the both of you, one that lets each of you know
that what you are thinking is being acknowledged, one that transforms
what is inside you and becomes something new when shared between the
both of you. A new perspective is added into your mix, and hopefully, if
the other whom you share with is open enough and able to listen to his
self properly, then the interchange of the messages will offer new
insight into each of who you are. For there is nothing like another set
of eyes, another set of ears to shed some light, a vision, on what the
world around him means as well. And then once your are home all alone,
contemplating your day on your chari, it is then that you will see that
the same processes you saw occurring in the other, occur in you too….you
and others are only as alive as you and the other allow you and the
other to be. yet you can only do what you are able to do in the complex
interchange…
one obviously must interpret his world as he sees it, and can only do it
alone, for he is the only one isolated within his body. but in a world
full of selfs and others, the languages that not only separate us, but
can also bring us together. words sound comforting when they bounce
around our own skulls spoken in our own voices, but the new voice, from
across the room, whom our reflection sits in the glass of her eyes, of
his eyes, lets us see the inner working of the mind making meaning of
its own, making judgments, discernments, and we can learn just as much
from what other people say, positively and negatively, as we can from
the whole worlds that have been created within the universes that exist
within the strongest individuals amongst this planet….
share. listen attentively. give feedback. accept criticism. no matter
how harsh. change for you, growth, destruction of the self, only has a
lifespan of x number of years. be your self….but learn what that self is
by exposing it by holding it up to the mirrors of others.
words can have so many uses. who do you want to be. what words embody
the you? are your ideas yours, or are they a rehashing of what you have
heard of others.
making meaning begins with listening, and the best practice is to begin
to listen to your self. make some time to spend alone, and write the
things you find within. each day listening deeper to what you can hear.
then time and practice and practice of time will let you perform the
same thing yet when others talk….what was it he said? you would have
written it down in your mind…
I learned to listen by taking notes in class, lots and lots of notes,
and then going home and trying to interpret, based upon the subject
matter i knew that the professor was talking about, how he structured
his lessons, and what the people he talked about in his lessons
wrote…then I could make a good analysis of what was going on. after many
years of constant attention, this became second nature, and when i
interacted with others, i watched how they behaved all the time, what
their verbal response reactions were on a daily basis, and what those
responses seemed to mean to them psychologically. from that i could
build a pretty accurate self profile. listening more and more i became
able to continue to build on their profiles, or find that there was not
much more depth than my original findings.
and listening…well…i could see my own profile, and i began to
deconstruct myself, by learning to listen and take notes of what my self
said, and then building my own profile. there is no better road to
meaning than the art of listening…the complex relation of your self to
the otherness of your self, will all be found when you open your
senses….
“deconstruction is the relentless pursuit of the impossible, which
means, of things whose possibility is sustained by their impossibility,
of things which, instead of being wiped out by their impossibility, are
actually nourished and fed by it.” Derrida