Sunday, May 2, 2010

Fragmented Thoughts

Segmentation of nature is an aspect of grammar. . . We cut up and organize the spread and flow of events as we do, largely because, through our mother tongue we are parties to an agreement to do so, not because nature itself is segmented in exactly that way for all to see.. We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face, on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds and this means largely by the linguistics systems in our minds.

We cut nature up, organize it into concepts and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way; an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language.

Those thoughts come from the 1956 book, Language, Thought and Reality written by American Linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf. Whorf explains that thought influences language. The differences in thought as well as language is easy to identify in this emerging global society. Not only are we educated to believe that nature is cut up into segments or fragments, we cut our self into fragments and only focus on certain fragmented beliefs. We put other fragments of thought in a category marked not real.

The fact that we exist outside of our personal belief structure is dismissed as untrue, not factual, and crazy. We ignore the fact that all physical manifestations come from our imagination. Our beliefs define us, but we really don't know what we belief. We live and experience reality by our own definitions and descriptions, but we fail to give ourselves credit for all of our creations. The thought of us being part of nature, and the thought that nature is as conscious as we are is not part of our language or our beliefs.

There is more to us than we believe and express through language.The art of knowing the self starts with recognizing how well nature knows itself. We are more than what we express through language. Language can not define or describe the nature of the self in its completeness. But we can recognize it using our imagination.

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