Words are principles of order: ‘W-ORD’ is the entity that orders.
Eugene Halliday
The tendency is, not to work on what we have, but to want to know more, and more, and more, about bigger metaphysical problems – because it relieves us of the necessity for immediate work on ourselves.
Eugene Halliday
You should think of the sentence, not as something you get by putting words together, but think of the words as what you get if you take the sentence apart…. The meaning of the word is the contribution it makes to the meaning of the whole sentence. – An idea attributed to Gottlob Frege by the America philosopher John Searle
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I take ‘Work’ to be about ‘Doing’ …
So that, for example, even though you might believe that you are sincerely attracted to the concepts of people like Eugene Halliday, so much so, that you ‘study’ the works of these people regularly – even going so far as attempting to commit those ideas that have really attracted your attention to memory (in order, you imagine, to ‘understand’ them better) – you have not, in my opinion, been engaged in ‘Work’. … Any more than attempting to calm those see-sawing emotional states that you suffer from qualifies as ‘Work’ … Laudable though these activities might seem to you, or indeed to others who claim to be ‘in the know’ about these matters (for what I believe, are fairly obvious reasons).
No … The way I see it, you have to get your hands dirty … But I do appreciate that you might disagree with me here.
Furthermore, if you do decide that you are going to do some ‘Work’, and then perhaps continue on, later, to describe your experiences – even if you only attempt to describe them to yourself – this should not give you too much cause for self-congratulation either. Because the chances are that you will almost certainly seek to present your accomplishments in a more favorable light than they actually deserve…. ‘Gilding the lily’ you might say….
That being said, formulating your attempts at ‘working’ may – if you ‘do this right’ that is – possibly even increase your active vocabulary…. But I wouldn’t say that it definitely does so … and even if it did … don’t expect the earth to move..
If you’re not sure what I mean here by involving yourself with these ideas, just ask yourself, “If I’d never heard of (for example) Eugene Halliday, what difference do I believe it would make to me now?”..
Your answer might be something along the lines of, “I feel a bit better about the whole dying thing,” or that, “I’m not nearly as guilt-ridden about everything, as I was when I was a staunch, practicing, Irish-Catholic,” or, “I wouldn’t have met nearly as many ‘interesting’ people.” – or, “I would never have taken up Professional Wrestling,” or “His ideas really gave me some very useful tools to help me with the task of ‘knowing myself’,” or, “I dunno really,” or something along those lines… But whatever your answer is here, try to be honest … And try to resist the temptation to exaggerate if you can possibly avoid it … Because the desire to exaggerate to yourself here is a sure sign that someone else in the building is running the show for you… And, in my opinion, this elementary problem is one of the first and – sad to say – major barriers, that the beginner must overcome if they are to make any initial progress here …
I haven’t actually ever heard anyone give a detailed account of the affect on them of working with Eugene Halliday’s ideas – at least in the way that I believe this needs to be done…. Although this doesn’t mean that they haven’t done so at some point…It’s just that I’ve never actually heard them…. I have of course talked to any number of people who are only too happy to tell me that they are, “interested in his ideas,” or that he was, “a wonderful and special human being,” … But that’s not the same thing at all … Is it?
To this end then, the piece below (that I have considerably edited for its inclusion in this blog), which was first put together by me sometime around 1995 – when it formed the basis of my approach to teaching a basic introduction to improvisation – is offered here as an example of what I take to mean, in part at least, ‘working’ with, and ‘working on’ these ideas.
It grew out of – in the main – my protracted musings over Eugene Halliday’s ideas re active and passive forms of language (see my previous posts here for more information) over the previous fifteen years or so; together with various thoughts on the philosophical idea of ‘Intentionality’, contained in the work of John Searle, and (to a lesser extent) Daniel Dennett.(See Searle’s book ‘Intentionality’, and Dennett’s book ‘The Intentional Stance’, if you would like to delve further here).
The focus of this material is centered around, what might be meant by, the term ‘improvising’.
This material was designed by me to be delivered to students who were 18 years-old and older, and also to ‘mature students’. And while some previous musical experience was necessary in order for them to enroll on this particular course, I have edited my notes here in this post, so that this experience is not necessary for any understanding here by non-musicians – although I do use one or two (very minor) ‘technical’ words later on – but again, understanding these is not essential here.
One of the major problems in teaching any subject to the beginner, is that of finding a suitable place to start from – some ‘common ground’ – something that they are already familiar with … (“My understanding is that you are here, and I am going to attempt to help you to get to there, if I can.”)
It is, on the other hand, relatively easy to begin, by simply impressing the new student with just how smart you are; or by loading them down with a lot of (useless) theory in such a way that, even though, by the end of all their studies with you they still can’t improvise, they can now (regrettably) join-in with that legion of ‘experts’ out there who are far more intent on relating their opinions and ‘explanations’ on this subject to anyone unlucky enough to be in the vicinity, than actually demonstrating this ability to improvise themselves.
Of course, had the student focussed on the right question here (‘kept their eye on the ball’ if you like) they would not have subsequently found themselves having had their arrival at some attainable (for them) goal, not only now somehow, magically, and indefinitely, deferred; but also of now finding it almost impossible to be receptive to any further practical advice on the subject, because they have become so ‘full to the brim’ with stuff, that anything which might help here is immediately drowned out by the sound of their own, continuous, internal, chattering ..
The question they should have been focused on?…. “All this is very nice, but am I actually getting any better at this improvising thing?” ….
And – by the way – the only question that any responsible teacher should be asking themselves here? …”What did the learner learn?”(to quote the vernacular).
As someone who took this latter question very seriously, I found myself in the position of having to come up with metaphors and allegories that actually worked for my students, as opposed to, say, having to continually justify the fact that, while I was sure that the material I was delivering was ‘true’, and ‘very good’, (in my opinion that is), it just wasn’t ‘doing the business’. … (“Very poor level of student intake this year,” etc. etc.).
The material below forms the outline of what I ended up delivering…. Let me repeat here that my expressed intention was simply to get my students off on a firm footing, by providing them with material that allowed them to approach some initial experiental understanding of this subject ….And my only reason for continuing to use this approach was that it worked for me during the twelve or so years that it formed (in part) the substance of my introductory unit for this module. …
The students found this material very easy to work with, and to subsequently expand upon – which was really the whole idea … They ‘got it’ immediately …and would often voice their amazement at the fact that something, which now seemed rather obvious to them, hadn’t been explained to them, using something like this approach, before! Of course, later on ‘down the line’ (so to speak) they discovered a down-side to all this, in that they realized they might not have the necessary discipline to get any further here – but, having swallowed the bait by admitting to themselves that they now knew how to proceed – they couldn’t delude themselves into believing that they had a decent excuse for not doing so … Which – I would add in passing – over the years, often resulted in some really bizarre behavior on the part of one or two of them … Something which I also believe is also blatantly obvious to observe in a significant number of those people who have ‘taken an interest’ (so to speak) in the ideas of folk such as Eugene Halliday.
Here’s the basic approach then. The idea here (which I would suggest is ‘easy’) is to get students to reflect upon aspects of their own use of, current, spoken language, and from this position, by conjecture, to consider if musical creativity (which is what improvisation essentially is – in part at least) might be practically viewed in the same way.
For convenience, I’ll use a ‘male subject’ in my example below.
I begin by saying that we are going to consider what we might mean, in general, by the use of the term ‘improvising’. I would not ask for a definition here, or define the word for the group, or give them any etymological information. We would just collectively throw ideas around for a few minutes (ostensively for me to get some ‘feel’ for ‘where they were at’ on the subject) the usual outcome here being that ‘improvising’ had something to do with ’embellishing’, or ‘improving’ even … or of just ‘sort of making stuff up that fitted’. This latter approach might also include some rudimentary theoretical stuff from the odd student. (“You have to fit the correct scale(s) to the right chords.”) etc.
I would them tell them that I would like to start here by asking them to think about ‘improvising’ in a way that I would guess they had never considered before …
I would tell them all to imagine that it’s mid-afternoon and they are out walking on their own, down a major street in town that is part of a bus route. There were the usual numbers of people about: the weather is pleasant enough; and in fact, everything is quite normal.
An attractive young lady in her late teens/early twenties is walking towards you, and as she draws near, she says something to you… You have never seen her before, and you had no idea whatsoever that you were going to be stopped by her…. In fact, you were so busy mulling over a minor problem (what club you were going to go to that night) that you hadn’t even noticed her, and so you were taken by surprise when she said, “Excuse me?”
This had the affect of making you stop (and perhaps smile helpfully).
Before you have time to say reply, she continues, “Could you tell me where I can get a bus into town please?” ..
OK. … That’s the set-up…. It’s now the turn of the students, in the main, to do the talking, which is far better than having me rabbit at them for the next hour or so, in order to demonstrate how smart I think I am.
I get the ball rolling here by asking the group a number of questions. But I would begin by asking the students to think about this first one during the coming week.
When you are asked to reflect upon your responses to being questioned by others – about anything at at all – would you say that these responses of yours are all similar in some fundamental way – irrespective of how complex the question is – and that perhaps if you examined these responses of yours, they might tell you something about your fundamental character? … If so, how would you describe this ‘usual response’ of yours? (Inhibited; confident; hesitant; fearful; etc).
I would then quickly go on the put questions. such as the following ones, to the class:-
Always assuming you are going to reply to this young lady, what language would you answer her in?…Why?
If you had done a couple of years French at High School, would you have a go at answering her in that language, because, say, you quite fancied her, and you wanted to impress her?
Would you just give her a ‘normal’ reply – but attempt to imitate a popular film star’s voice while you were doing so?
Do you find, that in order to answer any question at all, you first of all have to go through all the words in your vocabulary, and then select the appropriate ones – carefully checking the definitions and etymologies of these words first, then putting them in the correct order ‘in your mind’ before delivering this answer? … Do you think that’s a really dumb idea? … .If not, why not?
Would you reply with a string of nonsense words because, say, you didn’t know what the correct answer was, but you ‘felt’ impelled to say something .. anything in fact?
Would you attempt to keep a conversation going? … Why? … If ‘Yes’, how would you go about it.
If you couldn’t answer the particular question that she asked you, would you substitute the answer to a different, but far more difficult question, that you did know the answer to? …Why not?
Do you think it would be possible for you to spontaneously answer this question in a language that you, up to then, knew absolutely nothing about? …Why?
What would you do if she had asked you in a language that you didn’t understand?
What would you do if she said, “Excuse me?” in a pronounced foreign accent, and then handed you a piece of paper on which was written ‘I do not speak English. I need to get the bus into town. Can you help me please?’
In working with that last question I would point out to the students, that it is possible here to introduce a ‘group concept’ of interaction/improvisation, by asking them to consider, that if they didn’t know the answer to the young lady’s question here, would they be happy to rope in the next person coming down the road, in the hope that this new person might be able to help, and would they then stick around to add support – because perhaps this new, more complex, situation had quite taken their fancy? … If a few more people joined in here, how do they see themselves fitting in? Would they want to be ‘in charge’ of this group? Do students believe that, as this group enlarged, some members would want to organize it, while others would just want to hang round at the back – not wanting to ‘get involved too much’ etc…. How would the flow of information be managed? …Who by? … Would you all suddenly stop and elect a spokes-person …. Why? …. Does thinking about this new situation start to ‘stress you out’? …. Why? … etc. etc.” If the students wanted to explore this scenario some more, I would tell them that this is a far more complex situation, but that I already planned to discuss it in the next unit of this module.
….. Hopefully the reader here ‘gets the idea’… (Let me know if you don’t).
There’s a good few more questions you can use here, but the ones above should give you the idea…
At this point, it is relatively easy to get the student to appreciate that, even though they had no idea what it was that I was going to suggest to them here; no idea that it would involve some sort of ‘scenario’ to them in which they were required to speak; and that they had no idea what the subject of any speaking by them was going to be about until immediately after they were asked the question by this young lady; none the less they could see that they would have no problem responding instantly – even if they had never been in this particular situation before in their lives.
Students also readily intuited that there seemed to be a great deal of similarity between what they were required to do in this scenario, and how they would react to the problem of improvising – when called upon to do so – in a musical situation that they ‘were potentially equipped’ to take part in, should they wish to do so. That of, say, playing a guitar solo over a repetitive sequence – such as a simple twelve-bar blues pattern – with musicians that they had never worked with before..
I would then continue on, by suggesting that they tie aspects of this discussion into their ideas on ‘improvising’ – that is, in what they think this might now involve – with an attempt at an actual musical improvisation on their part – by using ‘The Blues’ as a basis, a common popular music form with a musical structure that almost everyone in the West can recognize the sound of.
I would tell them that, because they are already familiar with the sound of the twelve-bar blues, they already know – to some extent at least – what it is they are going to hear. Just as when they exchange social pleasantries with someone they have never met before, they know roughly what it is they are going to hear.
The particular way in which we speak, the sound of our voices, the way we use dynamics (load and soft), the way we mechanically repeat certain phrases, our local dialects or accents, all have direct correlations to improvising music. These components adding ‘individuality’ or ‘style’, and allowing us to recognize individual speakers/performers.
In order to communicate, we need to have a vocabulary, which we are continually adding to by the very act of engaging in social relationships, and not necessarily by deliberately attempting to remember ‘lists’ of words, or studying one or two words at great length – which is something that we might have done a lot of when we were ‘beginners’, as when we were still small children (the endless, “What’s that?” … “What’s that?” that infants engage in) or when we were attempting to learn a foreign language in school.
In my personal experience, we do a lot of our language acquiring ‘organically’ – simply by the act of engaging in social relationships, or by watching TV, or by reading – and we do this from an extremely early age ..
To continue on here …. Consider the following. If you go to a music college today you will probably be taught to play along with this ‘the twelve-bar blues’, as a method of getting you to acquire this ability to ‘improvise’.
The way this is done is to teach you a little bit of theory – which would probably include some basic harmony (the simple chords and chord progression); melody (using something that contemporary music teachers have seen fit to label the ‘blues scale’ usually), along with the ability to recognize, and respond to in a simple way, a simple mono-rhythm (usually a ‘blues shuffle’).
This material will be put together (‘conceptualized’ if you like) in the form of a ‘backing tape’, or computer audio file, which consists of a recording of this twelve bar blues pattern – minus any ‘improvised solos’ of course – repeated ad nausium.
So there you are with your backing tape – a simple twelve bar sequence, consisting of three chords played on a guitar or keyboard, together with this simple, arpegiated, chord sequence as a bass line, and a shuffle rhythm from the drums. … As this backing track is played over and over, you are supposed to play notes from that simple blues scale you have been practicing (or other scales depending upon how ‘advanced’ you are) on your instrument – this effort of yours here constituting your ‘solo’ ….
This approach is the most popular way of teaching ‘blues improvisation’ today, particularly to those musicians who don’t actually want to play the blues – but would like to know how to suggest that they do, by adding a little ‘bluesy flavor’ to their playing now and again … (You might like to think about this last bit by the way, as, in my view, it’s far more important to the bigger picture than you might first imagine).
So …According to, say, your guitar tutor anyway, that’s how you do it. … And you are also told that if you listen to any top-draw blues player (B B King say) you can use this system that you have learnt here in order to ‘analyze’ their solos (“In this part of his solo, what he is playing is this fragment of this scale, with some embellishment …etc.”).
However, there are one or two other major problems with this way of looking at things. For example:-
1) Almost all of the great blues players (those from whom todays players look to for inspiration and also to steal licks from) that were around from roughly the turn of the last century until the late 1950’s would have had no idea what you were talking about when you said ‘blues scale’. So.. clearly, on our understanding of ‘what’s going on’ here – that is, from our confident pronouncement of our (‘relative’) ‘truth’ on ‘how one actually plays the blues’ – these musicians didn’t ‘really’ know what they were doing… Which, I would maintain, is clearly stupid!…
2) The second problem? Sir James Galway, an Northern-Irish laddie, who is a genius on the flute and has performed with, amongst others, The Berlin Philharmonic, is on film attempting to improvise over one of these backing tracks, and his attempts are embarrassingly bad !! … But .. We are certain that Sir James clearly ‘knows’ exactly what to do .. We believe also, that he has a phenomenal technique, and also, that – when it comes to performing with an orchestra – the man can ‘read fly-shit’ (to quote the vernacular)… But, none the less, he finds that he can’t do this very simple, basic, ‘play-along’ thing .. In fact he admits that he can’t, during the course of this film. …And that isn’t really very satisfactory either, in our ‘scheme’ of things …at least for me it isn’t.
I’ll leave this here now, because this is where I would leave it with my students …except to finally ask them if they felt any easier about their understanding of ‘improvisation’ … Which is the same question I’d like to leave you with…
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Here are one or two more reflections of mine on the idea of an ‘active language’ that you might, perhaps, find helpful …
How do you decide if someone you are listening to ‘possesses’ an ‘active language’? …
Let us say that you are sitting and listening to someone who is speaking about ‘matters esoteric’ and that you find what is being said is incomprehensible …even fanciful, and silly, to you … But the people sitting on either side of you find this same material revelatory and empowering. (You find this out because you talk to them about it afterwards, say).
How do you explain this? …Does the question,”Who is right here?” have any meaning? …How? … How would you process the answers from these other people here? … Would your answer here be conditioned by any practical experiences of yours as to what the concept of a ‘passive/active language might ‘mean’ to you? …. If so, what sorts of experiences might these be?
How do you decide then? … Would your answer here factor in: your degree of interest in the subject matter; the fact that what was said made you feel good; that you found yourself agreeing with what was being said… etc.
What would you think of a situation where someone insists that they had been listening to someone who possesses a really extensive ‘active’ language that has resulted in them going home, selling all their belongings, including the house, and then giving all the money to the Salvation Army. … Would your reaction be any different if they had sold everything etc. and then given the cash to the British People’s Fascist Party? ….
And the last one … Do you find yourself desperately, and automatically, looking for a meaningful, smart-assed answer, whenever you are asked questions like the ones above? …
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In closing here, I’d like to give you an example of how I have approached ‘working’ on one aspect, of one particular word … I must tell you though, that I find the process extremely difficult to put into writing … However, I’m going to have a go it at here anyway… but you’ll have to bear with me ..
What I experience as someone else’s ‘active language is only ‘active” if it gets me off the couch and into doing something which takes me further along that path that I fancy I’ve committed myself to traveling along – improve my ‘being-potential’ if you like.
This experience must knock me off balance just enough, so that I can get enough energy from it to impel me forward a fraction – too much energy and I’ll just get confused; to little and I’ll be full of good intentions, but never quite get round to doing anything. And what Eugene Halliday refers to as the ‘three parts of [my] being’ (thinking, feeling, and willing) must remain as co-ordinated as I can manage… All this doesn’t happen to me that often by the way – but often enough to keep me ‘at it’, over the long haul….
So, I maintain that, if the affect of hearing someone speak to you does not develop your ‘being-potential’, then – in my view – the experience you have had, may well have been … ‘interesting’ … ‘pleasant’ … ‘enjoyable’, even … but the only criteria for you here, in cases like this will have been: a). How ‘interesting’ or ‘enjoyable’ …etc… was it? (“Most uplifting.” …”Food for thought there!” … “Moved me to tears!” … etc …”) ‘, or b). How much of this experience you can remember that, at the time, seemed to be ‘smart’ or ‘helpful’ or ‘meaningful’ enough, such that you can relay it to others at a later date …Which will bolster the image, that both you and they have, that you are ‘someone in the know’…
Anyway, here’s an example of how I have worked, in part at least, on the particular word ‘form’.
‘Form’ is a word that Eugene Halliday made use of frequently…. I’ll miss out the part where I do the dictionary and etymological thing – other than to tell you that I do my ‘looking up’ here (and have done for a long time) using a digital version of the ‘Complete Oxford Dictionary’; a task that usually takes me all of about five minutes…and, I have to admit, doesn’t really seem to help me here…. Also, discovering that the word ‘form’ can be related to other words such as ‘shape’, or ‘to strike’, doesn’t get me moving either. Because, although I might find this information interesting in its own way I suppose, it is after all, hardly surprising – to me at least – that other ‘peoples of the world’ have their own word for ‘form’…. And anyway, it’s not as if anyone is claiming that the word ‘form’ is related say, to the word ‘lawn-mower’ – which I would really find interesting!…. Unfortunately then, as far as I’m concerned, considering these additional words only seems to provide me with (more) ‘information’ ….(“Hey! … ‘Information’ ….That’s a word that’s connected to ‘form’! … … Look everybody!! … ‘Inform’ is ‘in-form’ ..I must remember that … It could be ….really useful … information …(?) …”). … ….
So, I use something else that Eugene Halliday said about words to keep me on track here; which was to the effect that, “If you change a word, then you change the form; and if you change the form, then you change the function.” … A nugget of wisdom that I fancy I can use… And so, as a consequence, it’s strictly ‘one word at a time’ for me then.
Anyway, to make a start here …When I’m attempting to ‘work’ on a word, in order to make it more ‘active’ than it previously was, I do not first ‘think’ about the word itself too deeply – unless I am merely attempting to memorize information, or trying to do something strictly cerebral – such as trying to solve a mathematical problem, or the ‘Times’ crossword.
By far the most important consideration for me in developing any word – such that it becomes an ‘active’ component in my vocabulary – is in the process of their actual initial selection by me… To this end then, I have the following little rule – It is only those words I use that I am satisfied can adequately describe my own experiences, which can subsequently become components of my own, personal, ‘active vocabulary’ … To put it another way, I attempt to add to my active vocabulary by considering only those relevant words that, as far as I am able, mirror, and illuminate, the ‘meaning’ of my experiences. … Because, I repeat, it is only these experiences of mine that can provide the substance (the ‘matter’) of those significant words (which I have used in this task) that can go on (perhaps) to become an ‘active’ component in my own vocabulary.
So it is not the ‘form’ of ‘words’ per se that, of themselves, produce (or pad-out) my ‘experiences’ – as this process of word assimilation can just as easily be used by me to manufacture mere opinions – or, more probably, wind… But it is only my experiences themselves that have the potential to produce those ‘active’ words; words that then ‘pin’ these experiences of mine in language… Or … You can only really talk ‘actively’ about those things that you have some experience of.
So I would maintain that the ‘meaning’ of ‘Form’ – where this word concerns my ‘active’ language then – is my attempt to select those words that satisfactorily mirror my experience(s). Without experience then, I believe words are empty of ‘meaning’, but they will obviously still possess dictionary definitions and also etymologies, and they can still evoke emotions, and still have the ability to inform – because groups of words produce concepts, and these can supply a being with ‘information’ – sometimes useful information – and this information can fly about inside a being, all over the place, and produce all sorts of interesting affects – but more often than not, it does nothing of the kind – it simply inflates what I refer to as the Persona (a component of what I refer to as the Ego).
‘Form’ from this aspect (hermeneutically) then, is ‘ the overall generic term I use for that collection of words (words order power) that illuminates the meaning of my experience(s) in language’, and it is not a word I use to describe ‘the shape of a triangle’ or anything like that …(I would not personally say,”‘the form of a triangle,” by the way, as the use of the word ‘form’ here seems to me to be ‘a bit over the top’) ..
The most interesting part of this subsequently for me though, is what now happens when I now hear the word ‘form’ being used by another person. Because I find that it’s now possible for me to quickly become aware of whether or not this word is grounded in this particular speaker’s experience(s); or if it is simply being used in an attempt to impress me, or supply some information.. If this is the case, the of course what is being said here can still be ‘true’, and might also prove to be useful.
‘Active language’ then, on this account, begins with experience. But as it is far more often the case that what is being said, is being said using ‘passive language’, what is experienced by the listener is, at best, ‘informed’ opinion, which is relatively easy to obtain by studying the work of others (an obvious example here would be the reading of a text book) – you only have to listen to any ‘expert’ to experience this, and for me this is qualitatively different from listening to ‘active’ language.
The positive side of this way of looking at the acquisition of an ‘active language’, as far as I’m concerned? …
I realized a long time ago (because I find it obvious) that I am a being of limited experiences… Thus, from my viewpoint then, my ‘active’ language, will (thankfully) be limited to these experiences … The idea then of, say, attempting to become a ‘polymath’ or ‘renaissance man’ is not one that I find useful here … and I prefer to leave projects like these to those who like competing in pub quizzes…
… I admit that it is possible to know a lot about a great deal …. but it is also blindingly obvious to me that it is also possible (and far more usual) to know absolutely nothing about one’s self… And this latter task is, I would argue – in my case, certainly – the only valid reason for ‘being here’ … It’s ‘the only game in town’, you might say.
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… Once again – it’s Your Turn…
In my last two posting, I first suggested that you might listen to Eugene Halliday’s talk ‘Words’ (recorded in Liverpool during the 1960’s), and then ‘Vocabulary’ (recorded some 10 – 20 years later, at an ISHVAL meeting)
I did post something on the blog Forum re my own ‘interactions’ with ‘Words’ as promised, but I did not do so with the second suggested talk (‘Vocabulary’)… However, I will try to get around to this in the near future if I have time …
Anyway, here’s the third recording I’d like to suggest to you – it’s the final one regarding ‘active and passive forms of language’ from me here for the present, and it’s title is ‘The Value of Words’.
Like the first talk that I suggested you listen to, this one was also recorded in Liverpool during the 1960’s….
You can download an audio-file of this recording from the Eugene Halliday Archive Site. It is contained in the ‘Liverpool Archive Material’ section. Here’s the link: Eugene Halliday Archive – Liverpool Audio Files
You can also download a transcription of this talk from Josh Hennessy’s site. Here’s the link: Eugene Halliday – Transcripts of Talks
Next month I’ll be suggesting that you read something of Eugene Halliday’s on the subject of words
To be continued …..
Bob Hardy
December, 2012
Dear Bob,
I have been following your blog since inception and have done the recommended homework! Thank-you for your efforts, they have goaded me into greater clarification if that doesn’t sound too pretentious.
I have written a series of notes trying to summarise my ‘nuggets’ from your alchemy, if you get my drift. I hope you will have time to read the following which is a bit haphazard but if I try to organise it further, say into an essay, we’ll be here forever contemplating navels which I am sure will not benefit anyone!
Anyway, ‘off the top of my head’ as it were, as I went along with the material you provided, these are my thoughts…..
With regard to ‘working’ with EH’s material, I just listen or read them, noting those parts that are particularly ‘interesting’ in that they have especial meaning for me i.e. relate to my own experience, throw light on those or else stand out as self-evident Truths.
Some of it does seem at best ‘superfluous’, but he was talking ‘off the cuff’ and not writing a critical essay. There is some waffle, but not, I would argue, contradiction. Always he is pointing us back to the origin, the first cause and the purpose for us. He reminds us that words do not exist in a vacuum, when they are cut off from their “power” by false meaning (or ‘wrong relation’), then expect trouble. (See the following comments on an article in the Times newspaper from 11/1/13 on ‘love’). The correct use of words really is vital!
EH talks really about the physics of sound, thence language/vocabulary. Unsurprising given that he describes the universe (or entire created order) as the product of intelligent sound i.e.the Logos. Given ‘Logos’ it would be more peculiar if there was no correspondence between sound energy and its’ formulation or ‘meaning’. Especially where EH defines ‘meaning’ as “field consciousness of the relation between power and idea” (Words para.178), and also “the contents of consciousness in the human being…….we must consider them as ‘form’, as ‘power’, and as ‘field awareness’, of the relation between form and power” (para. 173). EH’s whole metaphysic presupposes such an analysis.
In ‘Words’, EH also states that “we can see that if we get the correct significance for every single letter that we can pronounce, we can see why any given word in any given language means what it means, because in each language the emotional need of expression approximates the organs of speech into certain relations. And then the sound, conditioned by those emotionally determined approximations of the organs, comes out and is the expressed sound equivalent of the pre-determining emotion”. (Para.76).
Now, in the talk ‘Vocabulary’, whilst still emphasising the analysis of ‘primary phonetics’ (track 4), he refers to the ‘passive’ learning of words (track 6), which is unlike their ‘active’ form, (i.e what energy is doing in each letter)…………”But most of the words that people use are not analysed in that way and children do not acquire them in that way and therefore they are bound by an unanalysed passive element of vocabulary with very strong emotional charges, which place them at the mercy of the sound when it comes. They are conditioned in an emotive socio-politico-economic situation to respond to a word”. (Track 7).
Is EH being inconsistent in these two talks separated by 10 – 20 years?
I would argue not, because always he is pointing to the higher or deeper meaning, to self-awareness or reflexive self-consciousness, which alone is what ‘matters’. Where else would you be told that ‘conscience’ is only as good as the current content of one’s knowledge or intellect (!) (Track 8), and changes as you grow and learn.
In ‘Words’, EH says “by understanding the correct significance of every word………we can order our whole substantial being” (para.112). Also in ‘Vocabulary’ he states that one who “wishes to develop full, total efficiency of life function” needs to understand …”more and more about these primordial roots of words and how their emotive associations were accreted to those words” as once you understand how they got there ….”you can begin to release yourself from them” (end track 9).
I may be wrong here, but this only makes sense, to me anyway, if EH meant that we need to understand “more and more about these primordial roots of words and how emotive associations came to be accreted to those words” i.e. so that you can release yourself from inappropriate emotional associations. I think that he distinguishes ’emotional’ accretions from the true ‘feeling’ imparted by the ASP as Logos. In fact this is the only way it makes sense.
EH further explains that undefined or inadequately defined terminology, with build-up of emotive tones causes most problems of religion and war e.g.. Track 12…”an undefined term with an emotive association can be very dangerous”. Thus the importance of ‘investigating fundamental concepts’.
Turning now to ‘The Value of Words’ talk. EH calls the precise meaning of letters/sounds, the ‘universal symbology’ and remarks that important religious texts were written by people who knew it. Terms are not ‘arbitrary’ but the product of primary ‘phonetic facts’. ‘Form’ is the way that power behaves. The correct method of working with words shows how Truth must first be heard, then understood, then pushed down into action. Para 115…”to get the real value out of language, we have to learn to interpret the word in its’ real context, and this we can only do by the universal language”…..”always in perfect correspondence with the universe”…. “the pre-Babel language of the human race”,(para 138). Consciousness is prior to any form or any idea etc. The language needs to be recovered for mutual understanding i.e. clarity, and “..a proper use of terms” (para 140).
On the subject of definitions, in ‘Words’, EH talks about the term ‘love’, which means “labouring for the development of the potentialities of being” (track 13). “That is the only valid meaning of that combination of primary phonetic elements”….”to drive oneself in every situation to develop the life potential of that situation is love”. Also, there must be no compulsion “..because the highest respect has to be given to the free will of every individual being as a zone of activity of that Infinite Universal Power”.
Earlier I referred to an article in ‘the Times’ newspaper on ‘love’, which serves as a contemporary example of the difficulties caused by a faulty understanding of meaning.
Matthew Syed’s article is about an extremist Islamic mother who beat her seven year old son to death for being unable to learn the Koran sufficiently to recite it by heart. Syed argues that her brutality emerged “not from hatred but from love”. He thinks that love (and ‘innate decency’) can be “twisted” by fundamentalism. In truth, love cannot be twisted, if it is then it is not love. But, the word ‘love’ certainly can be.
Syed is an atheist, and gives a good example of what can happen to ‘meaning’ when words loose their relation/derivation from God/Field/Logos, whichever term you prefer. The words then can be, and are, twisted. Syed says the fundamentalist twists them but really they are handed down twisted already from one fundamentalist to the next. He explains that they think they are “obeying God’s will”, which “to him is the highest love of all”, but as we know, ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’….”and ignorance” EH adds in the talk ‘First Love’.
Syed fails to spot that ‘they’ may ‘twist’ the definition but actually he, Syed, pulls it off, and then uses it atheistically, to conclude, ridiculously in my opinion, that “love can sometimes be the most dangerous emotion of all”. (Times, Sat 12/1/13).
One other article came strangely to my attention the day after pondering this subject. Also in the Times newspaper (14/1/13), a piece about a Syrian man who has devised a new ‘universal alphabet’ of 24 letters which “enables any word in any language to be spelt as it is pronounced”. It comprises “the Roman alphabet with a few excisions” (the ‘redundant’ c, q and x) “plus a new symbol to replicate a vowel sound”. This new alphabet is needed, he argues, in order to help people pronounce English words more quickly when they are learning the language.
I suspect EH would not be convinced, especially as the devisor’s name is Jaber Jabbour, or even Jabber-Jabber!!
Anyway, enough asides, let’s get back on track with my promptings from EH’s talks!
As mentioned earlier, EH does seem to contradict on occasion, e.g.. in ‘The Value of Words’, para. 184, he says that you can’t “break the soul, it is an absolute continuous being”, yet in ‘First Love’ (tracks 11 and 12), he talks about the soul either being ‘integrated’ or ‘disintegrated’, (despite allowing for the soul to be ‘eternal’ in track 5). One hardy questioner then gets a strip tore off him for suggesting inconsistency on EH’s part. EH then accuses him of being unable to see the ‘argument’ because of egotism etc. I think that the ultimate answer here is paradoxical as usual! Where absolute inconsistency is impossible, but sadly all too possible for fallen man. By identifying with the inconsistencies we suffer the consequences of them, at the ‘top’ level there is purely Logos. Hence, whilst soul (psyche) is ‘immortal’ (“unbreakable”), when it is individuated i.e. whilst we have hold of it as individuals, we succumb to ‘bitty-ness’ and like ‘conscience’ we are only as good as our current state of knowledge/being.
Also, the Truth is whole and EH’s words are directed to an audience. Audiences always have differing graces of understanding, specific to that moment. Depending on the context of his talk, EH invokes different ideas which to me anyway, generally make sense in their setting, and not only make sense, but further, are illuminating and full of Life.
There is no doubt that EH is at a ‘higher’ level,( if you like that terminology!), than 99.99% of the rest of us, but even Jesus got in the occasional tizzy, e.g.overturning money lenders tables in God’s house, and EH can get irritated!
Rather than raking through for inconsistencies I think we should take each talk/book etc. for what it can say to us at that specific time of listening. Inconsistencies, like everything else, are ultimately resolved but very useful, as EH often says, “for a time”.
A recent interview with the physicist Brian Cox had him explain that in his mailbox he receives the “odd pair of knickers” as well as letters from “natters who have a theory of everything”. I’m sure many would put EH in this category and to them he is exactly that. One just(!) needs to crack him and find the seed.
To attempt a summary then, I find helpful a recommendation from somewhere in the EH corpus, that in order to gain understanding we need to “get a governing concept” because then everything else is derivative. So, how about the following for a concept……..
“Meaning’ is God’s ‘purpose’ for us, given by ‘Him’. If we think of meanings a cushion or cloud, out of which purposively comes the word and/or words. You could think of these words as stalactites hanging down from this cloud. Man twists these words and eventually they may fall off and become, effectively (for us), detached from their origin whereby original meaning is lost. We then have the task of putting humpty – dumpty back together again, or sticking to the ‘cloud’ metaphor, plugging the words back in! I think that this is what is meant by ‘active language’. Re-instating the divinely intended meaning.
Adam, pre-fall, was presumably at one with this language. It seems like a move from intellectual appropriation back to feeling appropriation, i.e. Active language is paradoxically less precise. Is ‘pre-cision’
then, the same as ‘the seamless garment’ of Christ?
As I may now be heading off into the realms of phantasy, I will shut-up!! One last point (can’t resist!), I’m just about to have a go at ‘The Meaning of Meaning’ by Ogden and Richards, but instantly, in the introduction, Umberto Eco makes the point that attempts at greater definition of words have only really worked in legal, economic and military roles (p.vii). To me this suggests greater constriction. Surely we must support the spirit of the law (word), rather than the letter of the law (word)? EH’s active language refers constantly back to this spirit.
Kind regards,
Carol.
P.S. Sorry to be verbose, but I don’t want you to think that you have been having a monologue the past few months, as far as I am concerned your blog ‘rocks’!
Hi Carol!
Great to hear from you. Many thanks for your (extremely detailed) comments! – Any one of your paragraphs below would have been enough! …
By the way, if you want to take anything here further, I’d be happy to do so, if you would like to start a thread on the blog forum about it – or you can just email me at archivequery@gmail.com if you prefer.
I must tell you before you begin reading here though, that as the whole purpose of this blog of mine is to deal with what it is that happens when there is an interaction ‘between the Archive material and the person’, much of what I have written below comes about as a consequence of that… I have attempted then to restrict my reply here by grounding my remarks to you in my personal experience(s) and reactions to your comments as much as I am able…Or at least attempt to provide an experiential basis for any intellectual opinions of mine that I offer here.
I do appreciate that ‘your thoughts’ on this material constitute an interaction of course, but I would like to know more about how these ‘thoughts’ modified, or inter-acted with, ideas that were previously established in you, or if indeed they did…
I have tried to attach a short reply to as many of your paragraphs here as I can, and I apologize beforehand if my efforts seem to be somewhat ‘all over the place’, or if one or two of them might not seem to be connected to what it is that you actually written! (I tend to do that I’m afraid) … But you do cover a great deal of ground .. and consequently raise a large number of issues for me!
This is exactly what I do
Ditto for me also …
At times his spoken material seems almost ‘Joycian’ to me – like a ‘stream of consciousness’….
My own position here is that I believe Eugene Halliday used these situations (talking to groups of interested people) as opportunities for him to ‘Work’, and that is why he insisted on referring to himself as an ‘artist’’ – that is, as someone who ‘creates’ – and not as a ‘teacher’.
To me, he seems to have been able to ‘unbalance’ himself, but only enough to be able to take that next step forward (Which – as a consequence of protracted conversations with a friend of mine – was how I came to refer to what I believe he is doing when he ‘waffles’) …. Although I do believe I can also hear in his voice when the ‘going’ has suddenly become somewhat more difficult for him… ‘in the moment’ at least.
I consider his writings to be examples of his ‘working’ also – which is why I refer to them as ‘essays’ – that is, as ‘attempts’ … ‘creative acts’ so to speak… But in the case of the written word he also has the (entirely legitimate) benefit of an ‘editorial eraser’, which is a great way to remove any unwelcome ‘waffle’ I think.
By the way, you may be interested to know – Ken Ratcliffe told me that when Eugene was initially asked if his talks could be recorded by some of the people attending, he refused. But soon after this he did give his permission – which I believe might be relevant here, as I think he that might have decided to integrate ‘being recorded’ into a further aid to focusing.
So – re ‘ his waffling’, not a ‘contradiction’ then, I agree – but an aspect of his ‘Working’.. Which, incidentally, is why I am drawn to those metaphors that speak of ‘straight and narrow paths’ and ‘journeys one must take alone’ here…(In my own case though I do have to admit that I seem to experience a awful lot of waffling, falling over, and wandering aimlessly about!)…
I can see how you arrive at that conclusion, and I would agree that this is what it is that I experience him attempting to do … and in all of his talks essentially …
I have to confess that I’m not a big fan of EH’s ‘physics’. And he seems to be very confused a lot of time to me, particularly when he speaks of ‘fields’ and ‘waves’.
For instance, electro-magnetic waves do not travel ‘through’ anything – they ‘propagate’. Sound waves, on the other hand, require a medium to ‘travel through’, and are an example of a ‘mechanical’ wave. These are two entirely different processes in my understanding…
When electromagnetic waves propagate through a vacuum at the speed of light, they do so by alternatively generating two changing fields (a magnetic one, then an electric one, then an electric one, then a magnetic one etc. etc.) at right angles to each other – the change in one producing the other. And so they are the ‘waves of energy’ that serve to perpetuate these two fields themselves. So, talking about these two fields ‘travelling through (yet another) field’ is … incoherent … to people with my background here, at least. … And frankly, I don’t ‘get it’ at all…
This problem I have here is compounded by the fact that many of the people I speak to who have listened to Eugene seem to be unable to distinguish (‘appreciate the difference’ might be better) between a ‘description’ and an ‘explanation’ (the verbal production of either one of these constituting two very different objectives, as far as I’m concerned) …
And as to this whole ‘science’ or ‘physics’ thing …. In my view, Modern Physics is predicated on (that is – it ‘comes to be’, or it depends solely for its existence because of) it’s essential, intimate, relationship to (and therefore a prerequisite, essential, understanding of) the employment of various mathematical ‘tools’… By the correct application of these tools, physics claims to have the ability to predict a bewildering variety of phenomena, in what it refers to (or postulates as) the ‘objective world’ (which is not – please note – the ‘real’ world – about which most physicists claim to know nothing – on my reading of the literature, that is). And if physics did not possess this ability to predict these events, then it would be of no more use to them (or us) than ‘fortune telling’… Anyway…. if you don’t ‘speak mathematics’ (and I understand mathematics to be merely another language, like Welsh) then what you are usually attempting to do when you say that you know what the physics ‘means’ is to agree with someone’s translation – rather like listening to French, and saying something like, “Well I don’t speak French, but I think they might be asking us for directions because they’re keep pointing energetically over there.” When, in fact, they could be trying to tell you that your house is on fire – for all you know, that is. …
Brian Cox is ‘trying’ to speak your language’ because it gets him a well-paid gig on the TV – this performance of his though is not an example of him ‘doing science’ because if he was to do that, then hardly anyone in ‘TV land’ would understand him.
In my own case, I don’t need an ‘explanation’ for ‘F=MA’, anymore than I ‘need a translation’ for 2+2=4. And although there is a ‘why’ question here certainly – tackling it’s won’t change any of the results, no matter what answer is given – except in very rare cases – which usually means that we are at that point historically where we will drop, or refine, one mathematical tool, and replace it (with absolutely no regrets, wringing of hands, sense of betrayal, or existential angst) with a better, or perhaps a completely different, one. And this process also has the added advantage of being immune to appeals that seek to engender support, by resorting to emotional blackmail, or hysterical outbursts of self-righteous indignation, or claims that, “We (and it is almost always a gang) don’t chose to believe that, because we are followers of (fill in the blank).”
So – if EH believed he has a handle on ‘physics’ without understanding the math involved … he was wrong in my opinion. … Big Time….
Interestingly enough, there are any number of ‘mathematical works’ out there in the mystical writings of just about everyone, and his dog, from the past five thousand years or so (try the writings of Pythagoras, or Plato’s ‘Timaeus’, or ‘Vedic Mathematics’ by Sri Bharati Krishna Tirtha for example) – but for some strange reason (what can it be I wonder?) these do not appear to be as popular with the ‘great unwashed’, as ‘emptying the mind’, or ‘waving one’s arms and legs about’, or listening to Germans in white suits on DVDs prattling on about how much they know about the ‘great nothingness of it all’ … …. Funny that … Don’t you think?
When Brian Cox does this it’s fine by me by the way – because he fully appreciates the mathematics involved, and if you want to ‘get down’ with him into the minutia of the subject then he’s more than up to the task… That said, while his programs are very entertaining, they would not provide you with enough substance to get you through a GCSE paper on the subject he’s talking about – so even if you were able to regurgitate ever single word he uttered in his program, you would still know less about modern physics than the average well-informed 14 year-old…. And we are welcome to check that out for ourselves aren’t we? … By getting a book of old exam papers and try and answer them for ourselves…
These ‘descriptions’ are like geographical travelogues to me, because, when you are watching these, you do not actually ‘go anywhere’… Nobody who watches a David Attenborough program would say anything like, “It was great last night, I went to Africa with David for half-an-hour,” but many will attempt to tell you – simply because they’ve read the latest ‘comic’ on quantum mechanics, or watched a (usually) Asian physicist on the TV go on about the ‘relationship’ between Western Science and the ‘mysteries’ of various exotic Asian religious tracts – that they ‘understand something here’ …
I spent a great deal of time during my early days (drinking and) being lectured to about electro-magnetic wave propagation and the like (up to a level where I had to be familiar with using Maxwell’s equations in order to pass the necessary exams), and I also have a solid, professional, background in audio-acoustics (from one of the later, many and various, ‘periods’ in my life) … So I believe I know enough about this subject to tell you that I am certain, in fact, that I know very little indeed about it compared to anyone at undergraduate level today .. But – nonetheless – that I could baffle most people about it for half-an-hour or so if you put enough money on the table for me, that is.
Eugene Halliday’s ‘physics’ have a definite role to play in his own scheme of things I guess –But he is not voicing ‘eternal truths’ as far as I’m concerned here – but rather striving to give voice to what it is that he believes that the information he is getting from his experiences with what he believes is ‘Physics’ or ‘Biology’ or ‘Chemistry’….
I also happen to believe that these attempts (by anyone whatsoever, including EH) intimately end in failure, because they are voicing relative temporal truths, and to voice an Absolute Truth would (in my book) constitute an act of Fiat (saying and doing being ‘the same’ if you prefer)…. And so I believe that this failure is inevitable for all attempts at this by temporal beings … …..More life, different life, new experiences, will certainly arise, and these will require completely different modes of expression – which goes part way to explaining why I’m something of a non-determinist as well…. In 50,000 years time I don’t believe anyone will be talking about The Beatles at all….
So while I find what Eugene Halliday has to say about language and vocabulary very useful in parts – I have not arrived at this usefulness from the point of view of his ‘physics’ ….. But then I find Christ’s parables about fisherman and laboring in vine-fields extremely illuminating also, and I don’t have any experience of casting nets, or pocking away at the ground with a pointy stick under the tropical sun, either.
By the way, I have been unable to find a single solitary account of Eugene Halliday ever saying to anyone, at any time – where it concerns any subject at all -anything remotely like, “Gosh! You know you’re quite right…. I got that completely wrong! … Didn’t I? … Silly me!”… Which troubles me when I think about it, for some reason… … I just thought I’d share that with you here….
This is also a bit knotty for me. … Because this is nothing like any definition of the word ‘meaning’ that I have ever been able to find – either in those dictionary searches, or in those etymological researches, that EH recommends. … and I also find that it is also an extremely (conveniently) limited definition… and I also have trouble with metaphors such as ‘field’ consciousness’ if they are abstracted (intellectually) too conveniently…
So I would have to say that, in this instance, this is Eugene’s own definition for the word ‘meaning’. And that, not surprisingly therefore, it completely supports his ideas here… Something of a tautology then …
I see a word’s ‘meaning’ as being something completely different from its ‘definition’ … I do appreciate though that It is common practice to substitute one for the other (the word ‘meaning’ is far more likely to have been misused than ‘definition’ in my experience, as people don’t like to use the latter too much, I believe – probably because in the future they could more easily be called to account for using it, and possibly asked to explain further) and I also admit that it is difficult to stop doing so in ‘everyday speech’. (There are far worse examples for me though – the worst by far being the word ‘feeling’).
But as, in my world only perhaps, ‘meaning’ is entirely existential, therefore I have no problem in principle with EH expressing his particular definition for ‘meaning’ here – as long as he doesn’t claim that it’s the ‘correct definition’ – or if he does, that it’s his own ‘stand-alone’ correct definition.
But also – and fundamentally as far as I’m concerned – for the word ‘meaning’ to have the same existential ‘meaning’ for you and me as it does for Eugene (not the same definition though), the three of us would have to have had an identical experience – which I believe is impossible in principle…. You could of course argue that Eugene’s ‘meaning’ here is also expressing ‘God’s meaning’ and so he is expressing an ‘Absolute Truth’ here…. But if you tried that, I’d take your name right off my dance card.
I think this is a really useful idea – that consciousness ‘contains’ (say) ‘forms’ – however I have found that the people I speak to about this don’t experience this idea as metaphorical, (which is how I experience it), but that they actually believe this is somehow, ‘the way it really is’ … that we experience our ‘being’ in an honest-to-goodness ‘field’ …(Is it ‘like that’ for you by the way?)
It gets worse for me though … because I don’t experience my consciousness as being a ‘space’ … ‘in which’ there are ‘forms’ either (but it took me years of what I like to fancy was ‘hard work’ to rid myself of this delusion) … and I don’t ‘see’ ‘things’ ‘in my imagination’ either … But I confess that I do find it convenient to use this terminology, and so pretend that I do when speaking to others about what it is that ‘goes on inside’.
But if I say something to the effect that, “Well, if you ask me to imagine a tree in my ‘mind’, although I say, “OK,” I have to confess that I don’t actually have the experience of looking at a tree – I just say stuff to make you think that I do … and I’m aware that I do, and I can ‘fake doing that’ really well, because I’m fed up talking about it … But truthfully I don’t actually ‘see’ anything at all,… Sorry! “ . …This just seems to make the people I talk to about this with, very nervous and unhappy – almost as if I’m trying to break a favorite toy of theirs. …
So, I confess that I think the idea that consciousness actually has location and extension is fundamentally daft, that is, if you take it too literally … (‘There’s a whole world in my head you know” – This is surely a metaphor?)
However I completely agree that it is a very useful metaphor, and impossible to avoid … (Perhaps contemplating the phrase, “The limits of the application of terms’ might be appropriate here) …. Nonetheless it is still only ‘just that’, as far as I experience ‘being’ – a metaphor
Eugene’s use of that word ‘must’ here is also a bit of a problem for me … Because my experience of applying this idea to any depth doesn’t work very well for me, which is a real pain if having to take it on board ‘doing it’ is as a ‘must’ …(Aren’t I a nuisance?) … Although I appreciate that others might find it so….
Instead, I have my own private armory of personal, secret words, ideas, and concepts, for all this – which has the added advantage for me that I’m the one that gets to wear the Purple Avenger outfit while I’m using them; and I also get to boss everyone else around … But only ‘here’ inside my ‘mind’ though, you understand … (“Up there in the top left hand corner of my bit of the ‘conscious field’ …next the image of that tree … (I was wondering where that had got to!”)…
I would agree in part with this … but I think it’s an illusion to say that when we say a word, that we do so by … kind of ‘running together’ the ‘letters’ … I do agree that the emotional tone of speech can mirror a pre-determined emotion – but there are all sorts of problems with that idea for me … starting with the utterances of ‘trained actors’ and the whole area of ironic speech… . The idea then is helpful to me, and like a lot of EHs ideas it provides a viewpoint where I can view the terrain here (see me slipping in those metaphors re ‘things’ in my ‘mind’ here… slippery indeed!) to see the limits of this sound-emotion axis that he postulates here… (Didn’t put that very well – but I hope you get my drift)
I have problems agreeing with this, and I see an explanation for the acquisition of even a basic communicative skill as requiring far more than this. So even though I’m on board with the basic idea of acquiring an ‘active language’, and even that children can be programmed, I’m not on board with some of EH’s theorizing about how we go about it, or indeed how we end up with a (mostly) passive one.
OK. … Let me say that if you do in fact understand this part of these talks in the way that you’ve indicated here, that’s OK by me! … But far as I’m experiencing your comment now, you appear to have disappeared…. I can’t see anything here about your experience(s) where it concerns this information. … So I will ask – Can you provide examples from your own experiences? – What have the consequences of digesting this information been for you? And if there have been no perceptible consequences for you, what is it then that do you believe you’re doing here, and why are you doing it? … Have you tried this phonetic thing yourself? …What happened if you did? … By the way, I believe it is essential that you experience this phonetic thing for yourself before you put it on the record that you agree with it…in my case, I don’t – at least not in the I-O-U-Z-P-T way that EH puts it.
Just a point: my experience here is that these two things (self-awareness and reflexive self-consciouness) are not the same thing …. at all!
That’s a whole debate for me… but I will if you will.
Again, while you clearly have engaged with the text, what I’m interested in here are the consequences for you of doing so. Can you provide your own unique, experiential example of ‘’investigating fundamental concepts’? … Or do you instead, for instance, experience a ‘warm glow’ because you perhaps believe that, “everything is now OK.” … because you now find it easier to believe that, “there’s someone out there who knows what’s going on?”, and this is very reassuring, which is all you’re really after – you want to be ‘tucked in’ snuggly before you ‘drop off’ … I’m not suggesting for one moment that you do this by the way, I’m just trying to press a few buttons … Find out what this ‘means’ (that word again) to you.
Again Carol – there’s a PhD here!
I do find this oft repeated idea of EH’s extremely valuable myself … Although I must confess that I have been known to also enjoy stamping all over somebody else’s foot from time to time, and for purely negative, and selfish, reasons, … Still – nobody’s perfect (or so they tell me)… And I do try..
I would not agree with him, in fact I think the substance of this article is just (yet more) journalistic, sensationalistic, psycho-babble, myself.
You can use anything to say anything if you’re smart enough, and if your audience is dumb enough… My question for the writer here – if I could ever be bothered to ask him, that is – would be, “Why this incident, and why this ‘take’ on it?” …. You see, I do not believe that this women, if asked why she brutally killed her own child, would reply that she did it simply because she ‘loved him’ – no matter how ‘twistedly’ Mr Syed maintains that she views that function. (“I can feel myself now, battering him about the head, and while I’m doing this, I am so filled with love for him… It was wonderful! …Thank you God!)” … So constructing a text that appears to supply us with some process or other that seems to support this hypothesis is something I’m not ‘on board’ with at all here….It’s a piece of malevolent mischief in my book, masquerading as a ‘journalistic enquiry, or examination of, the ‘facts’…
And I don’t like the people who write this sort of ‘sober entertainment’ for the digestion of the ‘knowledgeable reader’ either (“This is a very good article on the brutal murder of a small child by its mother, darling! … Really made me think!…. You should read it after you’ve taken your shower…… It’s so very, very, very, sad. … … … Pass the racing page would you – there’s a good girl. … Must get off to work now!… Bye! … Kissee kissee! …. Love youuuuu!”)….
File under ‘unwholesome entertainment’ – very often the prime cause of severe hair loss in my opinion …(You have been warned!)..
Oh! …And I do not view this event as a suitable platform to express opinions about the existence, or non-existence, of God either … So there!
Like Esperanto, this seems to me to be yet another, similar, loony idea. The unacceptable face of ‘Intellectual Reductionism on Acid’ gone wild!
As I have only ever experienced relative inconsistency myself, I prefer to keep my head down here and work away at that. I believe these ideas are only useful if they succeed in getting you off the sofa…. And as I have only ever experienced this ‘soul’ of mine, (the one I think Eugene refers to here) as inconsistent, I have no idea if it’s possible, even in principle, to ‘integrate it’ – none the less I would cautiously agree that I seem to be trying to do just this whenever I’m able ….. Or that, what it is that I am doing, could be perceived by someone else to be me having a go at doing this… Once again, I’m not comfortable with the terminology here, at least not enough to ‘work’ with it at the moment….
To put it (yet) another way – I’m inclined to be relativistic rather than absolutist; and to tackle things epistemically rather than ontologically; and I prefer to deal with ‘what there is to hand/what is happening’ (my version of ‘Dasein’) rather than indulging in constructing too many intellectual scenarios. …. So I’d ask myself the same questions here that I’m now going to ask you …What does this idea do to you? What is it about this that captures your attention?
I always have my antenna out looking for answers to those, ever present, questions of mine … And even given that I might miss a lot of useful advice right in front of my own eyes, I have to possess faith in the integrity of my search for answers, and so, I will only go ‘as far’ with any metaphysical stuff as is practical for me…. I don’t want to ‘feel comfy’.. I want something that turns up the wick on my available energy supply(‘inspires me’ to try to go further, might be better here) and that could be anything..
… And yes, I agree, we are … indeed … only ‘as good’ as we are good .. as!.?
So the same question as above for you, “If you’re claiming some appreciation here, what are the demonstrable consequences for you with this point of view in the ‘now’? What task of yours ‘does it aid’ you in?
Well I’m only able to deal with relative truths myself – and I don’t really have any rational sense of what the whole truth might be… So yes, sometimes I get what he’s saying and sometimes I don’t (but for someone else it might be the other way around) But that’s more than enough for me, and I’m very grateful, even (funnily enough) if everyone else maintained that I have completely misunderstood him (A situation that I find rather ‘magical’ myself – and strangely comforting).
I use ‘remarkable man’ myself. But if pressed (and if we must) I prefer ‘labored harder and longer than most’, than ‘at a ‘higher level’ . Because I don’t really understand that phrase – unless you mean that he was taller than me …It is surely about context – and it’s really essential that you say what that is for the description to make any sense at all to me….it also has an, “Ooh! … Spit on me Elvis,” ring about it for me …And it also smacks too much of the British obsession with the idea of hierarchies, the implications of which, along with its inevitable inertial nepotistic stagnation, is its very own version of the caste or class system – ‘A position for everyone and everyone in their position’…. “Now! Let’s see you all standing up on the correct rung of the ladder when I blow the whistle … Lizzie on top remember!’ … It also results in some alarming problems for me, such as, while I’m fine with the idea of Charlie being the next monarch (because it’s irrelevant to me who ‘fills the position’) I’m not at all happy with the idea of him babysitting my grand-children.. …. …. ….. I’ll stop here with that now, I think.
…And I’m cool with the whole money-lender-tables/dinner-all-over-the-floor thing as well, by the way.
I’ve been the victim of the ‘theory of everything’ crowd myself… … and as for being in receipt of the ‘odd pair of knickers’ … a better way of going about things I have yet to hear … and here comes the postman now!..
I don’t tend to go in for ‘theories of everything’ .. In fact I never even use terms like ‘Absolute’ sentient power (unless it’s completely unavoidable for some reason) because in most circumstances where I have heard, or seen, it being used, it doesn’t mean anything to me. I do use ‘sentient power’ all the time however – because I find that I can deal with that…. I have the same problem with the words ‘eternal’ and ‘infinite’ (although I have some sort of handle on the last one – at least from a couple of mathematical perspectives). I have never really dealt then with EH’s ideas where it concerns these words (I tend to gloss over those bits) … But then, I have never felt the urgent need to engage there… ‘Relative’, ‘finite’, and ‘temporal’, is ‘where I’m at’. I also feel there’s a very real and ever present danger of hubris if you fall too hard for your own rhetoric about these concepts …. Having said that, I can of course give you dictionary definitions and etymologies for these ‘big words’…. And, like most of us girls, I’m very good at ‘faking’ engaged discourse – providing of course, there’s something in it for me.
I appreciate the Anselm approach to all this as well by the way – but I don’t like the ‘feel’ of that at all… It always smelt like a con to me….
Or I could just appeal further to your theological background and tell you that I’m a big fan of any number of apophatic texts – and that I also find these very reassuring, and supportive here … funnily enough…
And I do find that this ‘seed’ thing has being done to death where it concerns Eugene’s material. … And that if all that needed to be said by Eugene was half-a-dozen words or so on something – then that’s all the man would have said, in my opinion…. But what he actually said, and what he actually wrote, is how he actually put things – and I much prefer to deal with that…. If someone wants to have a go ‘reducing these’ to ‘seeds’ then that’s fine by me of course – but be sure and understand that, as far as I’m concerned, they have to take full responsibility for doing so themselves and not foist these ‘seed ideas’ of theirs onto Eugene Halliday himself and ‘claim’ that they belong to him. … I can find no instance of him ever using the term ‘seed idea’ by the way, although I have found that he does use the word ‘seed’ in connection with ‘Will’.
If anyone wants to use this term to propose that it is possible to find ‘starting ideas, with Eugene Halliday then they are going to have to establish those empirically to convice me …. And I don’t accept that it had been done by others …. Me? I prefer to stick with, “This is how that looks to me.” … I feel that this approach is somewhat safer for me.
I’m also big on EH’s idea of ‘governing concept’… I have used it quite deliberately for a very long time now myself … and making use of it did, of course, bring me immediately into a practical relationship with the concept of a ‘teleological principle’ – a situation that I have also found to be of immense practical use here…
I’m fine with this idea of yours (apart from the first sentence) which would, I think, go something like this (if I understand the essence of what you said correctly) for me, ‘If I continually strive to work for the development of potential in all being, then the meaning which that aspect of my language will consequently acquire from this ‘Work’ (that I have freely chosen to engage in) will be such that it will further empower me in the furtherance of this task’…..
Yes (apart from that first sentence again) that’s an interesting idea… I agree that we have the problem of formulating, while at the same time maintaining harmony…. However, ‘I find helpful a recommendation from somewhere in the EH corpus’ ( ☺ ) something to the effect that.. ‘It’s fine to perform an abstraction. But always be aware that – while it is permissible to examine what it is that you have presently wrenched out of context – you must always remember that you are solely responsible for putting it back where it belongs!’
Once again I would agree with you … And so does Eco in the next couple of paragraphs I think- at least down to the bottom of page viii. But he then starts to apologize for it, beginning at the bottom paragraph on that page, before, sadly, ending in complete surrender with ‘This is the fascination and strength [etc]’ which is almost as bad as that old thread-bare academic chestnut, ‘But it could be argued that..’ And so, as far as I’m concerned he has indulged in a bit of a cop-out … But full marks for being smart enough not to offer any concrete alternatives or solutions here (probably because he wasn’t being paid enough)! … However, as he is the author of ‘Foucalt’s Pendulum’, I would tend to forgive him anything!
‘Spirit of’ rather then ‘Letter of’ … The ‘meaning’ then, rather than all that E-O-A-I-P-J stuff?… ☺ Yes indeed …!
Just a (further) short note here as to the place of Eugene Halliday in my own scheme of things.
I do not view his material as anything other than being a possibly useful tool in my search for the illumination of meaning. I am not looking for the ‘perfect tool’ either – anything will do if it ‘works for me’. Neither do I need to believe he was ‘above’, ‘below’, or ‘slightly to the left of’ me, you, or anyone else. As far as I’m concerned the rest of world could believe he was totally, completely, absolutely off his rocker, it wouldn’t make any difference to me. I’m only interested in what ‘turns me on’ – but I am also completely happy with the fact that it might be something completely different from what it is that turns anyone else on. …. I have never needed any sort of endorsement, or condemnation, for anything I have ever done in my life, or anything I have chosen to believe – I can do that for myself thank you… I have an unshakable belief in purpose – and am quite happy with the fact that I really don’t have any solid-gold answer for what that is, and further, I suspect that if I did know the answer here, then this whole amazing adventure would be over for me. Understand then, that I am not searching for ‘meaning’ – I already have an abundance of that – but for assistance in my attempts to articulate it (To articulate the ‘what, why, when and how’ of it, if you like), and Eugene Halliday has been important for me in that search. …But I am not desperately searching for answers about things like ‘dying’; or if there is, or there isn’t, ‘really a God’… I have my own perceptions there -and I’m fine with that.
So I am grateful to EH for the material he has placed at the disposal of us all. And I would add, one again, that his output – it’s scope, and the depth – is truly remarkable in my estimation, and that it’s affect on me has always been, at the very least, provocative… I have very little to say about him as a person (I don’t think it’s prudent). ….
As for others who believed themselves to be involved with him here? For me, they each exemplify what it is to be that person who has constructed the particular relationship with him that they believe they are in. … And if I find that my examination of any expressed description of this (illusory or not) relationship by them, serves to further illuminate my attempts at articulating ‘meaning’ for me, then I’m grateful to them also …
I don’t support the idea that Eugene Halliday needs to be remembered, revered, reinterpreted, or anything like that. I simply believe it would be nice if his work was readily available to all, in order for anyone who wished to do so to interact with… And – for me personally – I would be happy to discuss the consequences of these interactions with anyone at all who wished to do so …as I find all these varied reactions intensely interesting….Hence my decision to write this blog
Many thanks for all this Carol – I could have written loads more – but I feel (like you) that I had to stop somewhere. …Much of what I have written here I would, under normal circumstances, probably have been heavily edited, and I would also, almost certainly, have revised much of what I’ve written here in an attempt to reflect more accurately what it is that I believe you were actually getting at, but – what the hell – here’s the unedited edition…
… I do have to get back to working on my next post for the blog though – because if I did mistakenly press the wrong button and publish any of the any unedited versions of that, there’s no telling what would happen! … But, where it concerns your comment here, I did want to reply back to you asap.
More please …. if you get the time of course…. It was a real shot in the arm for me to receive this comment of yours.
Many thanks, once again … and best regards to you and your family
Bob
P.S. What can I say to that Carol?… Except to say … “What can I say?”