I think that the word “to feel” encompasses two concepts: to feel things externally (the wind, someone’s hand, etc.) and to feel things internally (hungry, sad, cold, etc.). I would find it useful to have different words for these two kinds of feelings. What do you guys think?
I don’t think it would be necessary unless the language you’re using is very vague. See, ‘feel’ is generally used in combination with description that immediately alerts the language-receiver familiar with the language and the culture there of.
Maybe you mean that using one word for different things leads to an out-of-conscious connexion between those things that might create confusion and damage understanding? I understand that if it be the case but in my experience with my own mind those sorts of things don’t really happen.
If the concern is more aesthetic, in a broad sense, then I think that I agree. I would prefer to have more words to clarify language, even if the same can be done with less. I’m often excited when I learn new and useful words because of this. Maybe in a way it helps because they ease the translation between ideas and words?
Funny you should bring this up.
I feel similarly to you… Uh oh! No really though. To me, fluid languages have words with multiple meanings. I don’t so much have a problem with words meaning more than one thing, as long as people can understand the layering.
For example. I believe that plants feel pain. Now, many people will argue that they have no nervous system and therefore cannot feel pain. But what about heart ache? Oh, I guess they don’t have hearts. But what about psychological pain? Oh, I guess they don’t have a psyche… What about emotional pain? Do plants have emotions? What organ dictates that? Do organs dictate emotion?
I know that plants probably have an equivolent to our pain. As I believe all things have some form of it, plants animals rocks clouds wind, etc. And yet, some people want to define pain as a nervous system response. Of course this allows them to continue slaughtering lifeforms without nervous systems. Many people believe that animals with nervous systems do not feel pain…
Do you (not the personal “you” but the universal-just ranting now haha:D) or don’t you understand the emotional reality of pain? Do we need 1,000 words for every kind of pain or do we need people to recognize the emotional reality or “metaphor” of pain and accept that it has many meanings? I don’t know.
I try to pay a lot of attention to the way I say things, and every once in a while a double meaning disturbs me (and sometimes simultaneously brings light on some psychological process), but I like that “feel” is both emotional and physical. There’s a lot of separation of mind, body and heart (blah blah oh no! we’re out of our bodies! etc) in the behavior of this culture, and I think having separate words would just sort of reflect that, which wouldn’t necessarily be good. But what do I know!
Some double meanings are really distressing though, I run into that all the time but I can’t recall anything at the moment.
me too, mar. i like that i can say i feel something and give many meanings at once. who can say where in your body or where in your self you feel any feeling or sensation, anyway? they have so many layers.
Okay, I’m inspired to write, this might get tangential.
Leads to an out-of-conscious connexion, and/or could it be an expansion of consciousness? Not heightening of consciousness, as in hierarchical, towards a transcendent God, but rather expansion, a widening, horizontally, outward. To place consciousness within the borders of our brain? Or feeling just to the skin? And to separate them both? No thanks.
I don’t care to believe that consciousness is entirely mental (as if anybody has ever shown a definite line separating mind from body), but moreso that consciousness is perception, perceiving. Perceiving with eyes, ears, brain, heart, muscles (e.g. after they’ve been worked or during working). And that thoughts are not separate from feeling, but are moreso mental-feelings. It’s so easy to believe that consciousness resides strictly behind the eyes and between the ears, especially when one’s been raised to ignore their body beginning with at least kindergarten (having to sit uncomfortably, not running around when desired, having to wait to piss, shit, etc.). Perhaps it is our civilized egos that wish to limit consciousness to the skin and inside, because that part of us doesn’t feel connected to the world, in fact feels alienated, disconnected, not coming from the earth, but being placed here, therefore being out of place…
And Scout, I’m with you on plants feeling pain, for how could they heal if they didn’t feel they were damaged?
As for more words? Yes! I feel if one wants to get away from rigid unchanging (dead) essences and towards a more animistic living view of the world, it’s important to get away from single representations, to think a word is a thing and vice versa, and that there’s no overlapping. Therefore more words for more things. Perhaps I think this just because I’ve always sucked at categorizing stuff…
One of my favorite words comes from German: jein. Combination of ja und nein (yes and no). “Pretty good food aye?”
“Jein.”
Bring on paradox, nonduality, multiplicity, let things flow into each other. For what border cannot be changed with a change in perception?
I’ve been told the world is always changing, every moment. Then I thought, sure, but what makes me feel more powerful, but still says the same thing: every movement changes the world.
Don’t let “them” (whoever the hell they are) make you think only the big things matter. Butterflies making tornadoes, throw seashells back into the ocean, and put better in an Ethoipian proverb: If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito.
This tangent hardly dealing with language brought to you by:
Chiggles
I love this! Thoughts as mental-feelings. yah!
Years ago, my Dad (of all sources for an idea like this! if you seek an example of someone raised to ignore his body, he might fit the bill) told me he’s thought a lot about our memories, and he feels they’re stored (physically!) in sort of a giant cloud, that loosely situates itself around our bodies. When he first said that I thought, aha, sounds like all his studies about quantum mechanics/physics talking.
But then I thought, how beautiful to hear this scientist/engineer starting to tell himself stories about the cold, hard science he seems to boil things down to. Then when that story went in my ear, it grew into my own story. I’ve held onto that image he gave me and turned it over and over through the years. Now I can imagine those thoughts and memories as fluid, changing things, breathing into and out of the “giant cloud” of others we interact with in our environment, the moisture and smells in the air, the plants and animals and insects and landscapes we see, hear, feel and taste. . . a cloud has no clear boundary. Why should the thoughts/memories that grow from our interactions have one? Whomever you interact with experiences the interaction too. The clouds merge.
The guru once told me that we feel happy- in a similar way to how we feel cold. Emotions, he said, come from the body- happiness in the face and chest, humiliation in the cheeks and throat, anger down the front of the body.
A girl I asked said, ‘of course’.