page 13
Progressive Thinkers as of 12/1/2022
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Language is a interesting subject, particularly if one is not relying on academically constrained parameters of investigation defined by terms such as Linguistics, grammar, sentence structure, etc... In other words, the normal, everyday, typical investigative orientations. Take for example the origin of language in terms of a vocabulary being made-up and adopted by different peoples through the ages. The appearance of language itself was no doubt sometime thought of as an unusual behavior that I have already (somewhere in one of the pages in this Narrative), described as the moment someone learns to whistle. I can remember that I was blowing air out of my pursed lips as I played a game of shuffle board at a recreation center in Columbus, Ohio back in the early 1960s when all of a sudden I hear this loud whistle. I honestly looked about but could see no one, and realized I had finally learned how to whistle! I was genuinely surprised at my accomplishment.
I had been practicing on and off for awhile while engaged in a distraction, to the extent that the appearance of the whistle bouncing of the interior walls created an echo which I mis-identified as to the source. There was no one else around so I could not guess it came from them, but neither was I able to show anyone my new talent. A few others did come in but upon seeing no one but myself and a young boy, left to return to their own games. However, this was shortly followed by the young boy... I would say around 6 or 7? years old who took it upon themselves to engage in an attempted peeing (urination) nearby to me and then in my direction. I reported him to one of the attendants who swiftly caught and reprimanded him to the point he was no longer able to return to the center. The peeing event was again recalled to memory upon seeing a teenager in a youth corrections center I was working at a few decades ago, while he was in the shower room with another boy who was watching him and then gauging the episode at my expression and comments of disapproval. I later spoke with the other boy and he agreed that the one he observed "had some problems" that all the other boys were aware of . The boy in question had been in and out of one or another institutions since quite young and "had some issues" to be addressed. All I was permitted to do was record the incident. And though to this day I can still whistle, it is not a language I use even to call out for a neighbor's dog. I don't routinely think about using this mode of verbal expression, but probably would if it were a social requirement, the wheezed-whistling in my chest when I get a chest cold, not withstanding.
When most of us typically think of language we think of verbal language and may afterwards reference a specific mode of language. For example, the language used for speaking on the phone. However, if we were to think about it we might recall not only specific types of language such as the jargon and rather cryptic expressions some people engage in while texting on a cell phone. While not a verbal language per se, the symbolic characterization of this type of language would no doubt be referenced as part of someone's language repertoire. The point to be made is that humans have a history of using specialized languages for specific tasks. Yet, the cryptic nature of language seen in text messages has multiple precursors such as the "Abracadabra" language of magicians, or chants used by meditators, or the Latin phrases used in some Catholic churches, or some specialized vocabulary used in witchcraft ceremonies, with or without an emphasis on some demon, devil, satan or special-powered being. Yet I've never understood why such special-powered beings were not able to invoke their own open door policy instead of having to wait on some human go-between. It is an hypocrisy that has yet to be answered in any rational way. Obviously some of the old irrationalities have not been excised from the human psyche.
Spells
The performance of magic involves words (e.g, spells, incantations, or charms) and symbolic numbers that are thought to have innate power, natural or man-made material objects, and ritual actions performed by the magician or other participants. A spell or incantation is believed to draw power from spiritual agencies to accomplish magic. Knowledge of spells or symbolic numbers is often secret (occult), and the possessor of such knowledge can be either greatly revered or feared. In some cases, the spell is the most highly regarded component of the magical rite or ceremony. The Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia, for example, regarded using the right words in the right way as essential to the efficacy of the rite being performed. Among the Maori of New Zealand the power of words is thought to be so important that mistakes in public recitations are believed to cause disasters for individuals or the community. Moreover, like the medieval European charms that used archaic languages and parts of the Latin liturgy, spells often employ an esoteric vocabulary that adds to the respect accorded rites. Belief in the transformative power of words is also common in many religions. Shamans, spirit mediums, and mystics, for example, repeat specific sounds or syllables to achieve an ecstatic state of contact with spiritual forces or an enlightened state of consciousness. Even modern magic for entertainment retains a residual of the spell with its use of the term abracadabra. ("magic." Encyclopædia Britannica, 2013.)
In the attempted analysis of language, behavior and reported ideology, there has been several models devised with which to approach cross-cultural examinations of magic associate with religion and science (such as being a study of nature within the context of a culture's primivity):
- 1
- One-part model: Magic is singularly different than religion, science or philosophy.
- 2
- Two-part model: Magic is similar to religion. Two and four-part model: Judaic scholar Jacob Neusner suggested the neutral rubric "modes of rationality" to avoid pejorative comparisons between systems of thought otherwise classified as magic, religion, science, or philosophy.
- 3
- Three-part evolutionary model: magic→ religion → science; by Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough (1890).
- Three-part psychological model: Sigmund Freud's influential view of magic as the earliest phase in the development of religious thought (Totem and Taboo, 1918) followed Frazer's model and posited an essential similarity between the thought of children, neurotics, and "savages." According to Freud, all three assumed that wish or intention led automatically to the fulfillment of the desired end.
- Many
- Six-part model: Ninian Smart, devised a six-dimensional (experiential, mythic, doctrinal, ethical, ritual, and social) worldview analysis for cross-cultural comparison that can be applied to different belief systems, whether called magic or religion.
- Total world-view model (using three references): The study of magic as a distinct cultural phenomenon has a long history in anthropological, sociological, and historical studies. Although some distinctions between magic and other religious or scientific activities may be useful, magic cannot be studied in isolation as it once was. Practices classified as magic represent essentially an aspect or reflection of the worldview held by a particular people at a particular point in their own historical development. Magic, like religion and science, is thus a part of a culture's total worldview.
While many of the old expressions are lost to time, the mental architecture which created them may not have been, and unlike some no longer used or usable vestigial organ, a workable scaffolding remains awaiting a given climate, like construction workers who stopped work for the winter but are ready to resume once warm weather sets in, or at least there is no snow or overly drenching rainy conditions. The old brain/mind architecture which set the state for developing such scripts may have to use the words— accompanied by a sometimes ceremonialized behavioral routine— that the human system of referencing in the present era adopts its own verbal utterances to, according to the type and level of commensurate logic and knowledge used by a person or group. It should be of valid interest to note that while simple symbols, words, ceremonies and numerical referencing are routinely used, we don't find a usage of an astute vocabulary or higher mathematics being employed. This suggests that whatever is being conjured up is not particularly knowledgeable or intelligent. Equations detailing a complex geometry is not routinely used by those in the Wiccan, Witchcraft, Western Religious or Eastern Philosophy communities. Nor is it a standard routine of observation in the present currency of New Age orientations. This bespeaks of an enlightened being that either has no knowledge of such or that such knowledge is not a requirement for obtaining an enlightenment which is though to supersede such human concerns and considerations.
What I've been leading up to is the introduction of language used in some specialized occasions, (and yet we can include the expressions used in an operating room at a hospital, or the language used by those engaged in constructing a nuclear bomb, or those engaged in putting quantities of illegal drugs together. There are multiple examples one might want to offer.) For my example, the topic of Nature worship either as a pre-religious orientation, as a defined religion, or as a once-in-a-while get-together cult is on the front (stove) burner for the moment. In any of these, there customarily is some hierarchical arrangement for organizers and participants. There may even be particular clothing used by some or all. In any respect, the totally of the situation should be seen as a collection of different languages, both verbal and non-verbal. I will stick to the verbalized ones thought a magic wand, special symbols, candles, figurines, etc. might accompany verbal expressions.
But in discussing the basic beliefs of people, even as a philosophical supposition, one finds themselves in an area where emotions and not logic runs high. If they believe in a god, then to suggest that god is other than what they believe is negatively responded to, and the whole of one's conversation becomes rejected. Even using the word "Narrative" can be misconstrued as if one is proposing a truth serum be taken, swallowed, and allowed to run the course of one's veins to predispose them to a world of ideology for which they are not prepared to navigate with any personal level of security. Their belief is their security against a perceived world of multiple predators and possible dangers, some of which are born of superstition, personal experiences, and hearsay. Yet like any Narrative, you are not forced to believe it, just accept it or otherwise reject it or use bits and pieces as you probably do other information as well. This is what I do when I come across any religion or philosophy. It is what occurred when Einstein presented his landmark 1905 papers and when Charles Darwin presented his thesis on evolution by natural selection.
At this moment I can recall in my youth when I used to mow lawns and do yard work, that I worked periodically for two sisters (Vera and Angeline Morrow) who told me that when they were young (in pre-television years) and heard about "pictures going across the air", they said they didn't believe it. They thought it was a silly idea. I was truly surprised to hear two grown women expressing that they did not even have the imagination to consider the possibility of such an event, which no doubt must have been the similar case for anyone speaking of creating a flying machine in pre-aircraft days, despite the "technological advancement" at the time when (dirigible) balloons were used to loft people into the air. One of the sisters was a paraplegic, though she worked in their garden by pushing or dragging herself around on a small wheeled cart, and the other was an elementary school principle. After the paraplegic died I went to see Vera but she was beside herself then. (Whereas so many years later I remember their names, I don't actually recall which was the paraplegic, since I never used their names when speaking to them or talking about them in passing. They were the two old ladies on Ridgcrest drive.)
I met a sister of theirs went I went to see Vera after hearing about the death of Angeline, and found her to be a totally different woman with lots of energy and a brightness about her that I never detected in the other two. At the time I thought it must have been due to her having married and having children, whereas the other two had not taken this course in their lives. I got the impression that Vera somewhat rejected her presence and was noticeably agitated exhibited by going from room to room, as if looking for something but couldn't find it. Vera was later institutionalized in a care center and was a totally different person than I remember. I got the impression she didn't want me to see her there but didn't know how to ask me to leave except by repeating a "I need my bowel movement" expression. I was surprised she could even recognize me since it had been multiple years when I last saw them, though I do remember seeing her once at a bus stop but she seemed not to recognize me then. She was an educated woman but in the institution there was no longer any means of recognizing the woman I knew, particularly after she started screaming she needed a bowel movement. This was my first experience with old age dementia. Her mental faculties were on the wane, having been lost to time and age. Needless to say I left and did not return.
Please note that in providing events which occurred to me earlier in life, I am trying to indicate that the Language Narrative is meant as a Narrative, and not as a preachy sermon akin to some doctrine I am trying to present as a validity that must be accepted at face value.
In some instances it can be fount that so-called "pagan" Nature Worship involving some association with the notion of fertility was redefined by Christian thinkers, as no doubt did other belief systems as they began to develop. Simply put, the ideas of Nature or Animal worshipers didn't work for them. They were either seen as evil or too crude and unsophisticated for those viewing themselves as being enlightened or on a new path of awakening. In so doing one must wonder if such was an unrecognized (or determinate) attempt to invoke some type of higher consciousness by using a different language of the worshipers whose behavior may have suggested they truly were in the presence of some higher being;, and thus the language of old was referenced much like that of an age when magic and magicians or witches were thought to have power in their use of special words and phrases:
From late antiquity through the Middle Ages, Christians used prayer to contemplate both God's omnipresence in the world and God in his essence. The soul's ecstasy, or rapture, in contemplation of God was termed a "spiritual marriage" by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the greatest mystical authority of the 12th century. In the 13th century the term unio mystica (Latin: "mystical union") came into use as a synonym. During the same period the range of objects of contemplation was increased to include the Passion of Christ, visions of saints, and tours of heaven and hell. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the enthusiasms of quaking, shaking, and other infusions of the Holy Spirit were also called mystical.
In the mid-19th century, after the Romantic movement had shifted the emphasis in much religious thinking from theology to individual experience, a growing interest in ecumenism led to the invention of the term mysticism and its extension to comparable phenomena in non-Christian religions. The competition between the perspectives of theology and science resulted in a compromise in which most varieties of what had traditionally been called mysticism were dismissed as merely psychological phenomena and only one variety, which aimed at union with the Absolute, the Infinite, or God—and thereby the perception of its essential unity or oneness—was claimed to be genuinely mystical.
The historical evidence, however, does not support such a narrow conception of mysticism. Even within the history of Christianity there were mystics—such as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in the 5th century and the anonymous author of the Cloud of Unknowing in the 14th—for whom the most desirable mystical experience or perception was not of unity but rather of nothing, or nothingness. Thus, St. Bonaventure, in addition to encouraging a program of mystical union with Christ in his death and resurrection, also recommended devotion to the wholly transcendent nothingness of Pseudo-Dionysius's theology. In the 14th century, Meister Eckhart, along with his followers Heinrich Suso, Johann Tauler, and Jan van Ruysbroeck, all sought experiences in which their souls disappeared, leaving only the mind, emotion, or the will of God. In the 17th century, St. Teresa of Ávila, almost certainly in ignorance of historical precedents, demoted the communion described by St. Bernard to the status of a "spiritual betrothal," instead emphasizing the soul's disappearance in the "spiritual marriage." ("mysticism." Encyclopædia Britannica, 2013.)
Ecumenism: the movement or tendency toward worldwide Christian unity or cooperation. The term, of recent origin, emphasizes what is viewed as the universality of the Christian churches. ("ecumenism." Encyclopædia Britannica, 2013.)
Note: the "Ecumenism" is a repeat of history. The budding development of the Christian church in antiquity sought to use an umbrella approach form gaining the membership of all ideologies whose individual practices were sometimes relabeled and re-shaped into a Christian-center doctrine. With "ecumenism", all disparate forms of Christian worship are being thought of as the once Pagan religions were, and are thus being subjected to various models of "persuasion" in order to bring all of them under a single order of control. The problem is that in order for humanity to move onto the next level of heightened consciousness, all Western religions and Eastern philosophies must be terminated. So too will all forms of present day government and business schemas. All of them represent an old model of consciousness. And yes, it is understood that "termination" will be wrongfully interpreted to mean something dramatic and decisive, as if it demands absolute obedience or else... Whereas such is not the case, because the transition is already underway. Most people simply do not recognize it as such. They see it and may have some occasional notion that this is taking place, but there is not collective dialogue taking place because it would cause widespread panic. Slowly but surely the event is taking place, but it is occurring at a pace much too slow to make the deadline... the expiration date for reaching the cognitive milestone, or else humanity will be trapped in a genetic sequence of creating a deformity of consciousness that few will recognize as a cyclical retardation and not just a "dumbing down" of the education system to comply with misguided attempts to make the young feel better about themselves by celebrating mediocrity.
Date of (series) Origination: Monday, 21st November 2022... 6:00 AM
Date of Initial Posting (this page): 9th January 2023... 11:17 AM AST (Arizona Standard Time); Marana, AZ.