Friday, February 25, 2011

Y A B150N?

As I walked into the room it was the first thing I noticed.  I suppose he purposefully chose that spot so that all that entered would have their eyes drawn to it.  I'm certain of it.  He was a man of the theater and was always concerned about placement.  Like most things he said or did, you always knew there was a story lurking just under the surface.  Some nugget of information that you knew he wanted to share, but would rather have you reach on your own.  He admired Socrates, and if you spent enough time around him you started getting the feeling that Socrates never drank the Hemlock, but instead sneaked off, and had somehow ended up here.  He told us about Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Joyce, Chekov, Hemmingway.  He was an English teacher, although looking back, he never taught us.  This isn't to say we didn't learn.  No,  we learned plenty, however, he never taught us as much at point us towards the path of experience.  Much like the twisted figures in Plato's cave, we sat there.  He didn't breaks our bonds, or drag us from the supposed safety of our gloomy world.  Rather he simply handed us a key, and told us of another world.

While labeled as an English class, sitting in his room was one of my earliest, and probably many of my peer's experience with Philosophy.  Or classical music.  Or archaeological psychology.  Or dadist paintings.  Or obscure 50s science fiction.  Or Sixteenth century Sonnets.  Or obscure stage shows.  Absurdly enough, which would be appropriate for his class, when we had a substitute we ended up doing more actual work than when he was in.  But we learned much less.  We would sit and listen to him explain the significance of lions in Old Man in the Sea, or how the opening notes of Beethoven's 5th were a reaffirmation of life, or the importance of when Henry Jones senior called his son Indiana instead of "Junior", or the use of clothes, cloth and rope as imagery in MacBeth - these days were always more informative than doing a crossword trying to fit characters from the Divind Comedy into the grid, or filling in the blanks with the names of Greek and Roman historical figures.  The class should have been called: "Subtext: Finding the Meaning in Life."

Class was easily derailed, but it never seemed like a minute was wasted.  One minute we'd be analyzing hartless hinds, and how it was a phrase that worked on multiple levels, and the next we'd be discussing Waiting for Godot.  I don't think any of us appreciated, or even now fully appreciate the role he played in preparing us for what waited us after we stepped outside of class.  The thing that always struck me was his perceptiveness.  He seemed to be able to read people as well as any book, even when it seemed like he wasn't paying attention.  Connections seemed to float out of the air, and his class was the only time I've ever witness students learning during roll call.

It didn't take long for the question to arise.  But that was how he designed it.  The poster's location was no mistake.  Neither was it's crude image.  Something that used to roam the Earth before men developed culture.  As this was the beginning of culture.  A picture of a bison.  "Why a bison?"  read a classmate, the words sitting lazily beneath the representation of the creature.  "Why not?"  was the reply.  We had barely finished roll call, which took two days, but the discussion that followed would set the standard for the rest of the year. He walked over to the chalk board.

"A"  "B"

Alpha,  bet.  The foundations of language.  He flipped the "A", and extended the crossbar, turning it into a crude bison head.  Next he rotated the "B", modifying it slightly to make it look like a primitive hut.  Somewhere in a cave thousands of years ago, someone decided to engage in prehistoric grafitti.  Indeed, history wouldn't exist without this grafitti.  From a picture of a bison, it became simplified to just a crude head.  A mark of trade.  The hut became a mark of population.  The beginning of culture.  The beginning of the written word.  The beginning of history.  All because of some marking in a cave.  Much like the Promethues who discovered fire, or realized the potential of the wheel, the artist who decided to decorate the inside of that cave altered human history - by creating it.

Much like fire or the wheel, language is a tool.  We often don't think of it as such, but we implement it and it modifies us.  Language subconsciously rewires how we view, interact, and interpret our world.  Even right now, you most likely are hearing yourself read this in your head.  Or have an inner monologue about examining yourself reading this passage.  It plays a key role in the conceptualization of one's self.  Much like any other tool, it can be used in a variety of ways.  Like the exacting precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel in a dictionary, to the flowing of prose, to the butchered semantics of text type; language reflects its use and user.  Function following form, or vice versa?  Perhaps neither.  While it may be obvious to most that it bridges the gap between individual consciences, language also plays an equally important, if perhaps not more interesting role.  It creates the framework around which we analyze our own mind - our thoughts, dreams, realizations, hopes, desires, musings, and beliefs.  If is both a tool of simplification and complication.  Pulling in two different directions it helps boil abstract concepts down to a form that can easily be shared between people, as well as taking a simple concept and showing the complex detail that isn't apparent upon a cursory glance.  Since time immortal, poets, painters, priests, and the general public have been concern with a simple four letter word.  The Greeks recognized its complexity and created alternate words for the variations.  While everyone may be referring to the same thing in much the same way, the individual experiences and conceptualizations may differ.  However language allows these divergent principles to be brought together.  It functions as our consciousness' lens to the external world and a bridge to others.  And all from such humble beginnings.

"Why a bison?"
"Why not?" he replied.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

If you take the high road and I take the low road

If there ever was an important lesson to learn in life it's this: ultimately you're responsible for yourself, and really only yourself.  I don't mean this in an hyper-individualistic sense, but rather that as individuals, we are ultimately responsible for our own choices and decisions.  However, herein lies the frustration.  Autonomy carries with it a limiting factor.  Just as you are the captain of your own destiny, those other ships twinkling in the night have someone else at the helm.  Persuasion, trickery, coercion, and deceit are fundamentally limited as they ultimately rely on the consent, mistake, acceptance, or acquiesce of another.  Conflict is a product of individualism.  It's inevitable.  Rarely do people's plans mesh perfectly together; and if they are - pinch yourself, you're probably just dreaming.  It's not a bad thing.  Much like wind disturbing water makes it seem like the sky is dancing on the water's surface, variety makes life all the more interesting.  A lot more interesting than the alternative, lockstep restriction.

Besides, there's not much we could do about it anyways.  Imagine how astronomical it would be to get everyone to agree on everything.  Just to put it in perspective, imagine how hard it would be to get yourself to agree on the same thing after some period of time.  Unless you happen to own a time machine, have been travelling at near light speed, or were frozen (all very unlikely), you are probably a different person to some degree from only a few years ago.  Duplication of thought- imagine what it would take.  Thought processes are the product of electrical and chemical reactions in our brain.  These reactions result from and impress upon the external world in a intricate interplay.  To end up with the same result would require the same external stimuli perceived in the same way, and processed by the same system.  But our minds are products of the past, so that would have to be accounted for to.  See where I'm going?  If not impossible, improbable.  Highly improbable.  The amazing differences between people can be easily summed up in our eyes.  While the iris is such a small area, the extreme uniqueness only serves to underscore our individuality.  (So technically David Bowie counts as two people, although it should be more considering how many phases he's gone through)

So the challenge: surviving and thriving in a world with inevitable conflict.  Realize that you can change your own future by the choices you make, and try not to get bogged down because of others choices.  Ultimately you have to realize that others are going to make their own choices, according to whatever wishes, plans or schemes they have.  The paths that people take will always be different - as different as the people themselves.