On one level I agree with you that I can't explain what I feel well enough to be understood, nor can anyone else understand it, but on another - we're all humans. We all have a limited range of things we can convey, we all operate on a relatively similar system of symbolic communication. It's not as though I'm suggesting that a fish and an elephant should have a discourse over tea.
Mainly I find that people use the WOE IS ME argument to say, in code, "actually, I don't want to talk about that, but I don't feel all right saying that." I mean, I can't specifically say that I understand you - and my brother and I used to have discussions about whether what I saw as blue was what he saw as blue, etc - but I can say that I can listen. I can understand pants-wetting terror, even if I never fought in Vietnam, so I can be approached on the basis that I have a frame of reference, not told that I wouldn't get it. Saying that a listener can't understand what the speaker has to say is a way of excusing the speaker, and it's used as such. It's just a cop out.
I'm really sick of Unique And Special Snowflakes, really.
Language might be a poor filter, but on the other hand, all of our communication forms are, on some level, symbolic. It's not as though we use scent emissions for emphasis (though we do use verbal tones and intensities of colour for emphasis) or communicate in solidly nounal language.
And to add to that, I believe that the process of living is, on the mental level, to figure out who the hell you are and what you are about. I believe that we strive every day to understand ourselves better, with the thought that we can then understand others better - so while I would have to live your life to the exact detail to know what you feel, at the same time, I can say what I feel now a lot better than I could fifteen years ago because I know more about myself. And I can, hopefully, convey that to you better now than I could fifteen years ago.
Of course, fifteen years ago, I would have just deleted my journal in an inarticulate fit of rage.
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Date: 2006-10-27 12:00 am (UTC)Mainly I find that people use the WOE IS ME argument to say, in code, "actually, I don't want to talk about that, but I don't feel all right saying that." I mean, I can't specifically say that I understand you - and my brother and I used to have discussions about whether what I saw as blue was what he saw as blue, etc - but I can say that I can listen. I can understand pants-wetting terror, even if I never fought in Vietnam, so I can be approached on the basis that I have a frame of reference, not told that I wouldn't get it. Saying that a listener can't understand what the speaker has to say is a way of excusing the speaker, and it's used as such. It's just a cop out.
I'm really sick of Unique And Special Snowflakes, really.
Language might be a poor filter, but on the other hand, all of our communication forms are, on some level, symbolic. It's not as though we use scent emissions for emphasis (though we do use verbal tones and intensities of colour for emphasis) or communicate in solidly nounal language.
And to add to that, I believe that the process of living is, on the mental level, to figure out who the hell you are and what you are about. I believe that we strive every day to understand ourselves better, with the thought that we can then understand others better - so while I would have to live your life to the exact detail to know what you feel, at the same time, I can say what I feel now a lot better than I could fifteen years ago because I know more about myself. And I can, hopefully, convey that to you better now than I could fifteen years ago.
Of course, fifteen years ago, I would have just deleted my journal in an inarticulate fit of rage.