Questions are strange proportions. Proportions in the sense,they lend harmonious arrangement or relation of parts or elements within a whole design. Yes. Questions lend balance to uncertainties and evolve in to what they speak for - realisation of paradigms. They indeed are strange proportions.
But my thoughts over their authority to existence and evolution has led me to writing this. The generalia acceptance is that, the realisation of existence is the proof of it. This is the base on which knowledge has been acknowledged over the years. But of late, even in theoritical physics, the evolution has led to quantum entanglement from just classical qunatum physics. And i feel it is time we understand the same for all the age old praxis, which, rooted in realisation, spell the death knell for the unseen.
I rue why indefinitive things cannot command existence in this world. Do everything that has been reasoned out do imply the reason that define them? It pains to realise that we catch holdof the purpose defining the reason rather than the other way.
I wish to quote a small but interesting example. When back from a hard day's work, energy completely drained out, you pine to take a bath. Open the shower, feel the first few droplets of that lukewarm ( or what is it??) -- there is a feeling that transcends all languages and description, a sense of pain and bliss that whips every muscle and nervelets and as the water reaches the floor, you sense as though you are washed away in the cosmos, floating the best moment of your time. You can simply cannot capture this feeling in a single word, leave alone in English, in any language. This doesnt mean the language is lame; but there is a terminal point after which the expression or reasoning fail. The word ceases to exit. The power of sensation defeats the power of expression. You cannot see it, you are in a no man's land; you dont have the power to explain it and you give a name and a character. And more appalling is that, you never know if thats what it actually is!
Silence frightens. Darkness frightens more. Entities that metaphor lacunae fill our hearts with insecurity. "Let there be Light" is everyone's prophecy here. We fail to acknowledge that beauty and sense is not proprietious to definitives alone. I feel a feeling undefined, a meaning unexplained - one much similar to a tamarind leaflet's journey wafting through a brook - that flows through the interrogatives. Let us listen to them. The music of silence. The shades of darkness. The peace in red and the gore in white. ( I am sorry if that lasts sounds a little leftist..haha.)
Acceptance and denials are the pans of the balance of cognizance. But the world has erraneously calibrated it to nullify the inherent visciousness.
I want us to leave the unanswered lead a life of their own. Answers are for cretins. What you say?
P.S: 1. The stimulus for this post was my intuitive denial to Chomsky's statement that knowledge and probability of existence is directly relative to the effectiveness of expression of the same.
2.I am not averse to the basic human instinct of logic and knowledge, but I have seen on many occasions, to me, the conclusion and derivatives professed just doesnt fit in. I am thankful to K.B. and Kannadasan, as men who had silently inspired me to see things from this plane, and admire the unanswered, and not push them to extinction by passing biased judgement.
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15 comments:
Avi, as i set out to write this text, i would like to aver that ,firstly this is not necessarily a refutaion..nor is it an acknowledgement of your case. AS it happens your article itself gives latitude to bring in other perspectives. But i donot rule out either possibility arising as a consequence of my perspective. Hahaha. We're going round and round with words arent we?? Alright...
It was a wonderul point you'd made about 'indescribables' with the exceptionally befitting example of the first touch of water on skin.
But I think expressio hasnot much to do with what we know of as our "Basic instincts" as only our animal insitincts come under the commonly understood sense of the term. But one of our "Human Natural instincts" is "EXPRESSION".
The very fact that we try to give a name to even an "indescribale feeling" as you yourself have (though only to exemplify your point), is proof enough, to me, of the nature of this instinct to express. This 'impulsive propensity to express' can further be proved by an examination of our motive behind saying out loud that a certain feeling or sight/sound of beauty/ugliness is "indescribable".Though on the outside it appears to us logical to submit to the realm of the "nameless", If we were to completely submit to it, shouldnt we actually even abstain from making a point that something (whatever it might be) is indescribabale...as the very act of saying so is a matter of expression.
......contd
MY TAKE ON IT:
I think what we have here is a problem of semantics- a misconception on a much larger scale. 'Silence', for example, is generally regarded as an ANTONYM to 'Speech'. But it is common knowledge that silence sometimes communicates much more effectively than speech.... Leading people to say "Silence speaks much louder than words"..and the commonly known oxymoron- "Deafening silence". Given these premises (commonly held), it follows that silence can speak..and therefore "the logical contradiction" does ,after all, exist. OR that "Expression" itself is lame...OR that we have been confronted with something/someone that is beyond the reach of expression.
But the fault here, i believe, lies in the fact that the premise on which the argument is weak.
Here,
SPEECH = COMMUNICATION
COMMUNICATION = EXPRESSION
while it is not necessarily so.
AS, for example, SPEECH and SILENCE, both fall under the genus COMMUNICATION. They are only subsets of a larger whole.
I think, the core of your theme should be (or is) the "Tendency to express". and not the "EXpression" itself...as once a movement is made towards expression, it subverts the theory that 'indescribables' be left 'indescribables'.
The act of saying something is "indescribable" itsel is an EXPRESSION and that too a succesful one.
.........contd.
My extra-take on this is that "I find it a common tendency for people to 'elevate' to the realm of "indescribable"- things/people/feelings/...etc whenever they are found to be subject to the risk of not being comprehended by people, when expressed in terms of commonly understood semantics."
Yes!! It is certainlty a "wordy" deal. I have not called my responses "refutations" as, as i have stated- "i believe it miiiight juusst be a problem of semantics".
And in all honesty, I realise that THAT is exactly what you set out to prove in my view (although of course it is my difference in view that has let me to write in response).
subbu, great analysis in first place! Before giving my comments, I would throw some more light in to my presentation. Apart from "the light and sound" concept ( as I would call it),which obviously is a great eye-catcher, I personally held up some other things to be discussed in the comments section rather in the post, for the matter of it. My questions , along with the indescribables, also encompass the gamut of feelings and emotions, which fascinate me as equally as entities do..More about this and many in the comments below
Coming to OUR fascination towards darkness and silence, I would like to present the equations a little differently.
REALISATION=IDENTIFICATION
IDENTIFICATION=EXPRESSION.
Take for example darkness. Everyone can realise (or can even say "see" darkness. The phase of realisation ends there. Now in order to express the realised, we are forced to present an identity to it. The fun creeps in when the identification happens in relative terms .It is indeed, but natural for us to say darkness is blackness ( or vice versa ) since, of course, black is a property of the element "darkness" ( i think this is fair enough, but if you can think on different terms, welcome). But coming to describe the colour black, the terminal point is arrived. Now how do we express the realised? In order to allow the existence of identity, we classify elements that carry the same property,that evoke similar feelings, classified "black". Now, arriving to my point of discussion, we over our years of experience ,have perfected this art of identification. But, if I say black is the mother of all colours and I see "blueness" or "redness" in black, since it evokes all emotions in me, that are individually aroused by these properties, the identity that has been carried by it over the ages is broken. Yes! The identity that has all along manifested its existence is broken!! Fear creeps in. Consciousness derived of manifestations gets shattered!!!
.... will continue
Velliya vaa velliya vaaa...
Andha Gaanda mani osai ketu......
Continuing from the last comment i published, i would not give the architects of semantics the blame of coinage, because evolution of a language is a social responsibility( which holds good for any culturally rich language as Latin or Tamil).Languages capture the public interpretation of entities, need not be necessarily true under every context, which is an indespensible ( in the sense cannot be avoided to carry the evolution forward, where also refuting has its own means to help evolution )evil that creeps in. The article though takes note of the "identity marketing" of linguistic fraternity, it is more against classification of entities as they are. I would like to dwell on them ideatively rather semantically. Me being a people person, its people what fascinate me more than anything else.
There was one more reason why i mentioned KB in my blog,was his compulsive restraint to "finish" movie centered on human relations - he understood that there is never a unique climax in our lives - the journey moves on from one phase to another; that includes the characters, emotions and feelings of people - categorisation of people ( why do they ever need "such" an identity??) is the most gruesome attack against individualism. And to me this doesnt need education to back you; it is just that we need to understand that people stay the way are amd therefore they are. will continue as more comments pour in.
Avi,
In view of the comments you'd made prior to your little break, I think the problem of 'generaliztion' itself is not intrinsic to the act/ process of 'identification'. Generallization is a way of life as it is a memory tool. It is method of grouping entities/people together based on SOME charactersitics thought to be similar. In simple terms, the brain cannot identify each entity/person as separate entities with 'absolutely unique' characteristics. Hence there HAS to be an intitial grouping of sorts, individual identification coming later. This is not to justify the cause of generalizing/stereotyping people. Rather, to the contrary. But it must first be acknowledged that it is a necessary evil, if you'd like.
....contd
I will take off from where you left- with the example of "BLACK". It reminds of a movie a watched, starring one of my favouroites- Denzel Washington- called "CRY FREEDOM". He plays the role of Steve Biko- an African revolutionary fighting against oppression of coloured people. He says in his trial, "Black has come to represent many negatives- BLACK SHEEP, BLACK MONEY, etc..."...thus going on to prove that blacks have been victim to this cruel generalization/stereotyping. This is a classic example of the evil that 'grouping' can rsult in. We are talking not just about identification here. We are talking about connotations, some of which result form the sub-conscious response to conscious processes like the use os similes and metaphors (both, exceptionally enjoyable when used in art).
All the same, the importance played by ‘comparison between likes’ and similes (for example) is standing testimony to the fact that grouping/stereotyping/generalization can never be done away with completely. After all, what is an idea when not in words (or pictures) - in a representative form?? In fact, an idea, despite its possession of greatness inherently, can most certainly be beatified further by suitable expression. And as for the need to express itself, I have already countered with the idea of man’s inherent “tendency/urge to express” and shall not dwell upon the same again. Your godfather Mr. K.B would’ve been a little more than a “nobody” had he not considered “EXPRESSION” of his ideas. Haha.
In view of the various criticisms leveled against him, one of the most oft cited ones is “his inability to finish”. Having heard that for most part, its refreshing to read your take on his style of concluding a script or story. But I think it is also logical to say “It is HE who created the characters, HE who bound them together, HE who gave them direction of motion…. And why should he ALL OF A SUDDEN, at the end of the creative process ‘realize’ that the characters should be given a life of their own, an after-life almost???!!!”.
It is not an attack of his individualism that comes from this criticism, but in defense of it.”
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