words are a destruction of thoughts

[loveofreason]

I just had to pull this out of another thread because finally someone has encapsulated in six brief words a truth that has been swimming around my mind my whole life.

And yes. It is ironic. The problem provides the solution.


Originally Posted by Tiger
words are a destruction of thoughts.

I guess the qualifier is spoken words destroy thoughts. Something different happens again when words are sung - they become creators again. And also in poetry.

OK. Prosaic spoken words destroy thoughts.


I don't like talking, I feel like verbalising something destroys the essence of it.

There are exceptions, when vocalisations are actually critical to the atmosphere - when aural sensation is critical to building something... but words?

Words shatter all the possibilities and destroy the ineffeble. Which is probably why I get so picky about words - they must make as accurate representation as possible. This can be achieved when writing. But speaking? People don't have all day to wait for me to string precisely the proper three words together.

Probably why I have all but given up on verbal communication. It hurts too much. Truth suffers.


*****

Hmmm... despite saying all that I actually love words, so long as it's just me and them playing with meaning and sounds. It's that extra set of ears provided by a listener that destroys the circle.

The right words can build worlds.

OK. The wrong prosaic words destroy thoughts.

(And yes, misunderstanding is the fuzziness that allows for the evolution of definition. Oh damn. It's a vital process. Obviously I'm too depressed at the moment to appreciate the expansive possibilities.)


Damn. Look at all this babble ^

What a mess.
Welcome to my world.

 

[Decaf]

I definitely understand what you're saying. The difference between what I think and what I say feels like the difference between a car when its driving through a commercial and a car half way through the assembly line. The thought allows for so much more association than any set of words could.

That's probably the only reason I don't talk to myself. I talk to others because the interchange creates new opportunities, and when I'm talking to someone with ideas of their own, its like buying the inspiration from their words by sacrificing the richness of my thoughts. When I'm talking to the right person, it's more than worth it. With the wrong person, its painful and depressing (like the end of the claymation short, "More").


*edit* I take that back. I do talk to myself to test whether or not I've found the right words to speak a thought. Sometimes the words DO feel right and its an exciting feeling.


*edit2* As a side note... I feel the same way about how I move. Dancing is depressing often because I can't do with my body what my mind imagines I could do. Then again, when I find something that feels like a good expression, its exciting.

 

[Ermine]

I think verbalising an idea is only detrimental if you don't know the exact words to say. Otherwise it's fine.

 

[Auburn]

If only we could communicate telepathically - not having to convert our thoughts into sound and then having that sound be converted into thoughts again by someone else. It's that intermediate stage of "transportation" that destroys so much of the richness of thought.

 

[sagewolf]

But then we wouldn't have writing or poetry either. There'd be no point. And I agree with loveofreason; words as part of a poem or a story are creators in themselves, they become something separate from me and capable of their own lives, depending on who reads them. There's something incredible about crafting things that can do that, and I wouldn't trade it. That and... I don't really want people knowing some of what I think. No reason why.

I agree that verbalisation is a pain. I talk to myself too, to get my thoughts straight in my mind: I find they move too fast even for me, or they'll begin to get convoluted or chase themselves in circles. Then I start talking to myself to straighten them out. But when I talk to myself, there's no pressure: I always feel like it's the presence of another person that renders me unable to make any sense when I talk.

 

[Ermine]

I actually like the thoughts-words conversion. It's just the words to someone else's thoughts conversion I don't enjoy.

 

[FusionKnight]

words are a destruction of thoughts.

This is true, I think, but more so than anybody here has dared intimate. Keep in mind when we think, we think in the words of our native language. To think, even inwardly, we must constrain our thoughts to the bounds of available vocabulary. However, if we were to learn to think without those bounds... perhaps this is what we call emotion?

 

[loveofreason]

Do you mean to say that emotions are thoughts without words?

It makes clear that emotions are far older; preceding language. We know that also from studying the brain. So when we ask can animals feel emotion perhaps we should ask can they possibly not feel emotion?

But what you note - the linguistic boundary - is the thing that constructs thought. We build the thoughts we can from the vocabulary that we have. Does this vocabulary really destroy raw thought, or allow thought to proceed where none otherwise would?

Must we now conclude that words are the creators of thoughts.

 

[FusionKnight]

Must we now conclude that words are the creators of thoughts.

Well, that's the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, but I think there's plenty of room for discussion and ambiguity.

The concept that an unsophisticated language yields unsophisticated thought seems true enough to me, but I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that no language means no thought. It might be a radically alien kind of thought, or it might be something familiar, like emotion...

 

[Dissident]

Words exist only because of the necesity (?) to comunicate with others, without it language would not exist. If we keep our thoughts to ourselves we risk falling in the INTP trap, building a whole edifice of ideas that dont actually correspond with the world. When we talk to someone else words can shatter those edifices, sometimes to protect them the idea of not being understood comes to the rescue. The world inside our minds can be tricky, sometimes only by voicing our ideas in a straight line we can realize their inconsistencies, this sanding process however, can be painful.

 

[Decaf]

So in a way the constant creation and destruction of ideas is like mulching. Leaves individually are very interesting and self sustaining, but if you want to grow a tree, you have to go through the painful process of destroying those ideas to provide the fuel of our minds.

When I was a kid I loved Legos. I would build things and then leave them be. My brother would destroy them and it made me so mad. In retrospect it was a positive thing because I would have run out of Legos to build with if he hadn't taken apart my work. Still, it was not pleasant.

I think INTPs should be called Mulchheads instead of Architects.