The flow of discourse fashions its own expression.
When we humans discuss this or that component, aspect, or even expression of life, in short when we communicate, we must use signs and symbols understood by all humans involved in the conversation. Even facial expressions and non-verbal gestures understood by all languages require an underlying fabric of mutual understanding. Waving goodbye in America is, for example, the same gesture used to call or beckon someone in Italy, and the “thumbs up” sign means anything but that in many places of the world. We are also reminded daily that having a verbal language in common is no guarantee of mutual understanding. Different interpretations and problems with comprehending things like meaning and intent always complicate the forward progress of discourse.
On the small scale, that is, when we humans communicate directly and verbally with others like us, the words become secondary to the meaning, and the intent of the expression is usually known with or without most of the words. So, when your friend Billy comes over and says “What’s up Maestro?”, you know he means “Hello, how are you?” even though you’ve never led an orchestra and that he is not really asking you to define “up”. It is actually even simpler than that, and most of the time, in casual conversation, we many times can decipher the content of whole sentences, and sometimes entire messages, by hearing just one or two words, maybe combined with a certain tone, or given a particular situation.
On a larger scale, as for example when we humans write for predominantly unknown audiences, the possibility of our words being misunderstood and our meanings convoluted increase in proportion to the extent of our readership. The written word cannot rely on gestures and facial expressions to clarify meanings and intentions, and even native speakers of the same language sometimes must be told what is meant by what is being said, for example, that being retarded can extend to bread dough as well as individuals. These type of misunderstandings or confusions regarding word meanings, combined with badly explained metaphors, unshared colloquialisms, incongruent cadences, and a conspicuous lack of stresses and accents in sentences, can make even the simplest writing subject to gross misunderstanding.
For a genuine human conversation to take place, one concerning issues deeper than “that was a good game yesterday”, or “I hear it will rain tonight”, a subtle thread of communication must be established. This thread is made via a linkage, like a wireless “peer-to-peer” connection, and can be envisioned as a mutual level of understanding by which the communicants achieve a common ground and share resources. On the small scale of which we just spoke, that is, when people have their casual, friendly, tea or beer chats, and get going real good, at some point the speakers involved in the exchange no longer think about what they say before they say it. The words begin to flow, from thought to mouth with no screening, with nothing like waiting for your turn as who speaks and when is anyone’s guess. Such genuine human repartee, we know, can often produce unintended statements and bring up issues no one would ever have guessed would arise. A conversation that might start as “How are things with the wife now?” somehow can, in a matter of minutes, become concerned with debating whether “The trade deficit is the problem”.
When, however, the flow of discourse is meant to be maintained through, say, a written work like this one, that is, when we communicate on a large scale, there are no luxuries such as knowing each other intimately, or being able to use restatements and explanations, or facial expressions and gestures, to clarify objections. The words must stand as written, and for any book or work to achieve an acceptable degree of comprehension that thread established on the personal scale must somehow also be multiplied and established on a now much larger scale. The readers, even native speakers of the same language, must rely on and in a sense anticipate the author’s ability to predict objections and clarify sticky points as the text goes on. It would be no different, say, with a radio broadcast, and either the listeners will establish that thread of communication, and so “follow” the speaker, or never establish it, and really never hear what is said.
Attention, or focus, has a lot to do with effective communication. If you have been following along, as far as our understanding of the human psyche goes this attention is identical to what we have called the reflector, as opposed to what is reflected. The difference is between the thinker and the thing thought. Recall (I am guessing…) all the times you reached the bottom of a page in some book, knowing full well your eyes read every single word, yet as you go to, also mechanically, turn the page, it dawns on you that you remember nothing at all about what you just read. You end up having to read it all again, trying to pay better attention the next time. Heck, sometimes the distracting thoughts, those ideas in the mind which carried you away from the mechanical processes of your eyes and brain, recur again and again, and you end up having to reread the same doggone page a third, and sometimes even a fourth time, or more. Has this happened to you?
This process does not occur only with regard to reading, and it is evident with hearing as well, in fact they both may be related to language and sound. Here you can think about not just when your attention fades out into your own world as you listen to a lecture or watch something of no interest to you, but also about your ability to somehow be able to doze off for a nap in the middle of a busy airport, or even, in a moving vehicle. In all these instances we see the importance of the attention, namely, on what it focuses on, and also apparent is that to what this attention is given is not always a matter of our conscious choosing. One could go so far as to say that most of our attention is taken from us, by someone, some thing or event, or some thought or idea. All advertising is concerned with finding ways to capture this attention.
Once the linkage between interlocutors is established, true discourse can be said to have commenced. From that moment on there are no longer any questions regarding mutual existence or ulterior intentions, and in a sense the actual people speaking sort of disappear, to themselves and to each other. When the thread of communication is established on these common grounds, when the “linguistic firmament” becomes implicit, the attention is free to be focused on the conversation. No longer distracted – no longer leery of the other person’s motives or intentions, or outlying purpose – real dialectical communication can take place. When this happens the participating thinkers become intimately bound to each other, in a sense in each other, and what often magically happens is ideas and thoughts come into the conversation from who knows where – the speakers would say that the words just “came to” them. This is because thinking what you say before you say it is almost impossible at that point. Often you don’t know what you yourself are saying until you hear it as it comes out of your mouth; indeed, sometimes you and the person you are speaking to hear it for the first time at the same time. It is not without some irony that one could go so far as to say that if you mentally rehearse what you say, think before you speak as the adage goes, your conversation has not quite yet reached the level of dialectic.
At this point sometimes even statements for which the words cannot be found are miraculously and implicitly understood (“I know what you mean”). This unexpected repartee that is no less than a mutual comprehension of the logos can only occur when the discussion has become intense or deep enough that all the people involved have basically forgotten their own identities, have left their personal selves literally out of the conversation. To put it yet another, simpler way, in true dialectical discourse the speakers forget themselves. When this point is reached the communication is no longer about personal feelings, bragging rights, winning, or aggrandizement, it is about the topic, and more importantly, the communicative link established. The conversation then takes on a life of its own, and many times we humans thus speak over our own heads, courtesy of this “spirit” of dialectic. At this level the individual minds involved no longer censor or screen the words being uttered, and the participants speak from the heart, often from depths they had no idea existed.
This spirit of dialectic, recognized first by Plato and later revised by Hegel, is an expression of the logos, whereby separate minds might operate as one, seemingly drawing from a common pool. Here we see that language is not the source, but rather a product of our communicative needs.
It is true we humans can and do communicate even without the words incidental to our time and culture, and conversely, it also true that we often use words for their own sake, and often wrongly, and then call ourselves wise when we find and “try to solve” what are just semantic problems or literary errors. Words are a tool meant to crystallize and enrich the expression of our thoughts and ideas. The flow of discourse changes according to the level of, or the depth of, the common understanding. One could say that each authentic conversation, about any subject, holds the potential of tapping into not only all those thoughts on that subject ever uttered, but all thoughts on all subjects. By united effort, and through the power of the logos, and with the attentions fixed and tethered to each other, heights beyond the reach of the individuals may be revealed, or better to say, may come of avail to them, when they operate together. What is tapped into one can see as a collective consciousness, or even, the mind of God.
Why some conversations are substantial and come to reach the level of dialectic and others fluff is due to whether or not egos are surpassed and the thread of contact is established. Whether or not this occurs has little to do with familiarity and more with intensity, compatibility, and like-mindedness, but bear in mind that there must be an essential antagonism for any progress to be made. Two people who sit right next to each other at work might never establish such a high level of discourse, even though they speak daily, partly because of their never antagonizing one another, in short, their unwillingness to argue. Their conversations, as is unfortunately the case in even more intimate relationships, consist of cliches and personal anecdote, simple greetings, mutual agreements, and “casual” chats. Their communications never leave the level of cordiality or utility. On the other hand, two people who have never before met, who, let us say, found themselves near each other on a train, could conceivably reach the level of true discourse in a matter of seconds.
Rhetoric is another type of communication, but whereas dialectic is meant to discover, and casual conversation to pass time, maintain relationships, or get things done, rhetoric is meant to persuade and convince. All dialectic aims at coming to the truth, yes, and so even dialecticians want to persuade and convince, or be persuaded and convinced as the case may be. The difference is that dialectic, or any real dialogue, ultimately proceeds for its own sake, or for the pursuit of Truth, while rhetoric always has a specific purpose or end goal in mind. Plato and Aristotle considered both dialectic and rhetoric to be arts, but of very different types. Here, from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is a good summary of some of the differences and similarities between dialectic and rhetoric:
Dialectic can be applied to every object whatsoever, rhetoric is useful especially in practical and public matters.
Dialectic proceeds by questioning and answering, while rhetoric for the most part proceeds in continuous form.
Dialectic is concerned with general questions, while rhetoric is concerned for the most part with particular topics (i.e., things about which we cannot gain real knowledge).
Rhetoric must take into account that its target group has only restricted intellectual resources, whereas such concerns are totally absent from dialectic.
While dialectic tries to test the consistency of a set of sentences, rhetoric tries to achieve the persuasion of a given audience.
Non-argumentative methods are absent from dialectic, while rhetoric uses non-argumentative means of persuasion.
This means, really, that rhetoric can pull out all the stops, can violate rules of logic, rely on emotional appeals, and so on, to prove its case or make its points convincing. It need abide by no rules whatsoever, and so we have politicians offering free chicken dinners in lieu of good arguments, and attorneys serving up drama best able to sway the common jury rather than good hard evidence. There are, with rhetoric, always personal motives at work, selfish interests that really must be entirely absent in order for true discourse, or dialectic, to take place.
We humans are often unaware as to when we have “real conversations” and when we are merely being communicative for its own sake. Speaking time itself is no indicator, as you could talk for hours about nothing more than the best shade of mascara. Even mascara could, though, become a subject of true discourse, were we to discuss its value, or its health effects, or its actual aesthetic appeal, and reasons for such, and so use it for a launching pad for higher flights. Closeness, or intimacy, seems to be no sure indicator either, and too many friendships, let alone marriages, have endured a lifetime of surface communication, the deeper thoughts too often left unexpressed. It seems the answer is that what is needed is “like minds”, but like in outlook, not content. Moreover, these minds need not be especially fond of, or really, even know one another. Their communication needs to just at that time operate on the same level, with more or less the same basic understanding, and it is this commonality that allows them the freedom to discourse impersonally. Being on the same wavelength, so to speak, they can then make beautiful music together.
Words alone are merely that, words. They are clothing for, and thus allow the expression of, thoughts and ideas. The best the words can do is establish common ground for real conversation. Too often we waste time arguing about what the words mean, when it is the idea expressed by them that should be the main concern. Our work so far on has been concerned with discovering the origin of Man, and we have found out full well that such a search is a massive and difficult enterprise. Lest we take a leap of religious or scientific faith, we are limited to either evaluating old theories or creating new ones.
What seems fair to conclude regarding the possibility of human communication is that the thoughts always somehow precede the thinkers, as if they are there waiting to be discovered. We “reach” in a way, grab for them, as they float by in our thoughts. When people of like mind with common focus converse this can be understood as their engaging in a type of intercourse, a mingling and intertwining of parts that occurs in this now compound mind, an intimacy established for a purpose seeking a mutual satisfaction. One of the few notable differences between normal sexual intercourse and dialectical intercourse is that with dialectic the people themselves are no longer involved, and the satisfaction desired and sought, decidedly impersonal.
Truthopia 