 4 Nov 2005 @ 14:57
GLOBAL COLLABORATION
Let us evolve a team of global collaboraters through NCN to bring enlightenment and conscious organization of people for the good of mankind. Let it take its own time for putting such global team in place.Let there be agreement, disagreement and again agreement through mutual understanding among us.
I intend to put certain questions slowly but in a very regular manner to all those who visit my weblog. These questions are intended to be of fundamental nature to initiate any meaningfull dialogue among ourselves. They would relate to ourselves, that is about human beings, our way of thinking, limitations of our way of exploring and understanding truth, the past and future of our evolution etc. etc. I would be interacting in Indian English and therefore please bear with me on this aspect. This I am posting by way of my introduction.
COMMON GROUNDS TO PROCEED
There are certain things on which must agree to find a common ground to proceed further. The first thing, according to my judgment which is not absolute but always a relative one (of which we shall talk later), is that we express ourselves through language. We have to talk first about "language", the capability of language to convey the full spectrum of what we want to convey, its limitations, our helplessness in finding a better device than language, possibility of finding some other assisting "tools" to suppliment the defiency (if there be any) of language. I shall put my thoughts on this count as the first stage of initiation of our interaction.
Then, there are certain other things on which we must agree and stand on a common ground.These may be: we must have a common objective of whole labours, of our talk. In my opinion, this objective could be: We labour to evolve further the better ways, the more correct thoughts, the better civilization which would make our common lives (that is, the lives of human beings on earth) happier, more enlightened, more consciously organised and more capable of knowing its future course of evolution and in that light of knowledge making corrections, if any, mid way in its course.
Then, we must also agree that all that we are indulging in must be in pursuit of the "truth".We must agree that every claim of truth must get its strength from the judgment of "science", that the "truths" revealed by science are of relative nature and they go on changing as science further develops.
These are some of the common grounds on which we can stand together and talk.
I have certain thoughts on all these subjects and they may be right or they may be wrong. My intention is to put these thoughts before you all who are participating in these talks.
ON LANGUAGE
I put my views on language in the following lines. They have been extracted from my unpublished book "Dialogue of Civilizations".
World is in constant flux and things are changing every moment. What is present becomes past a moment later. Events that are associated with our childhood become in our own lifetime a matter of the past and we become dependent on our memory for having a look once again at them. Faculty of personal memory is really a great tool for conveying the past to the present. However, when there is a great distance of time between past and present, there is no scope of conveyance by personal memory and we depend on other means for linking past with present. We resort to archaeological findings buried under ground, ancient monuments, written records of antiquity and such other things for this linkage. Of all these means, written records are the most eloquent in their contents and details. But these records employ language for conveyance of information and language has sever limitations in several respects. Still, it is the greatest tool for connecting people living not only in the same timeframe with each other but also connecting them with those who lived in long past time.
Please let me proceed further on language so that I complete a part of the whole system of concepts for which we have initiated this series of articles.
Men have developed mind that processes complex thoughts. Language is vehicle of thoughts. It transports thoughts fromthe speaker or writer to the hearer or reader. Language contains words and words have specific thoughts, ideas and vision behind them. When the speaker intends to convey the thoughts and visions he has in his mind to the hearer he tries to choose the words that he thinks would be most suitable to convey all that he has in his mind. However, it is not possible for words to fill in them the entire spectrum of thought for whose transportation they have been chosen. It is inherent weakness of language as a vehicle. It is not possible for the hearer to completely identify with the mind of the speaker through language.
The weakness of language as a means of transport of thoughts is twofold: firstly, words do not possess enough spectrum to contain the complete range consciousness of speaker who uses them to convey his self and secondly, the self itself of the speaker is not a coherently organised being. The being of an individual is multilayered composition of elements that are contradictory and in flux. His thoughts are not only shifting every moment but also they are not always harmonious with his desires and gross impulses. Jacques Derrida, the celebrated French philosopher, in his method of inquiry known as deconstruction points out this limitation of language. He asserts that 'all writing is full of confusion and contradiction and that the author's intent cannot overcome the inherent contradictions of language itself, robbing texts of truthfulness, absolute meaning and permanence'(quote).We are speaking of ordinary people here and not saints and Yogis, who organise diverse elements of their being around one single point, the Supreme Being. These spiritual people have still wider spectrum of consciousness that composes not only thoughts and desires but also experiences and visions that are unknown to ordinary people. In their case, the language is much more incapable.
Words are rigid frames and have specific volume and shape of contents. But they have one very great advantage for this very reason. They are absolute, finite and possess measurable quantity of contents. Sometimes, these properties of words are not only advantageous and desireable but necessary, say in the field of positive science. On the other hand,music and other forms of art (and our body language is a form of art)are fluid and just opposite the rigidity of words. Fuidity of music and art as media allows them to contain not only more volume of a given varity but also more varities. On account of this quality of these media, music and art forms convey more contents and varities of human 'consciousness'. It is a great advantage with these media as vehicle of transportation of one's inner content. But for this very reason they are less specific in volume and variety and therefore less capable in conveying the 'finite and measurable' quantity and quality of human consciousness.
The inter-relation of words and art forms may be expressed in the terminology of modern science thus: The words are 'particles' of Relativistic nature while the art forms are 'quanta' of Quantum Mechanics world. Both carry an amount of 'content' but in the former case this content can be 'measured' and in the later it cannot be.
WHY ARE WE DISCSSING ABOUT LANGUAGE?
We are not discussing language as a subject of great importance. This discussion is our starting point and is meant only to appreciate that language is not a perfect vehicle of thought transportation and that we must, if possible (we shall talk of it later), suppliment it with other means to make up its deficiency.
TENTATIVE GUIDE-MAP OF SUBJECTS TO BE DEALT WITH
IN THESE ARTICLES
Here I would like to put a tentative guide map of the subjects that we may talk about. 1)Language, its limitations, necessity of supplimenting its deficiency. 2)Why should we talk at all, who are we and why we are here in the evolutionary scheme of things. 3) Search of truth, role of science in searching truth, convergence of scientific branches on to the singular point of truth, today's index of modern science. 4)Past of human evolution as revealed by science. 5)Present stage of human evolution, our civilization, our inability to visualise its 'inferior' status, need to look forward and obtaining help from 'past' to guess the 'future'. 6) The evolutionary 'future', necessity of becomming aware of this 'future' and consciously planning our course to avoid pitfalls, waste of evolutionary time and, if possible, to accelerate this evolutionary march in a less zig zag way, etc.etc.
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