Bumble: Post class derrida

Something that you said in class today really stood out to me and I can not seem to shake it from my mind. How in the world do we get through a single day? Language is a twisted net of words and expressions that are all clearly ambiguous and lack any structure. The essence around the word will shift what you feel or think about something at any given time. Mental state and language have more to do with each other than I ever could have imagined. Will there ever be any electrical device that we can hook up to our minds to try to understand another person’s thought processes?

It is scary enough trying to stop and watch our thoughts, in fact according to many Buddhist teachings one of the greatest challenges of meditation is to shut out and shut down the thoughts. It is almost as though your mind has a life of its own, running on auto pilot, and directing you to a new web and circle of understanding. I was thinking about what Derrida said about meaning being deferred. This is too true; there is no way of truly understanding something. In fact we will never know exactly what someone else meant by something because we are not them, and our life experiences have shaped our understanding of things entirely differently. So again this goes to the dilemma of how in the world we all understand each other. It happens on a daily basis that people do not understand the same set of language codes, and somehow the problem is easily solved. Even today I was explaining that I wanted to get some FRO-YO, which is short hand for frozen yogurt. The person who I was speaking too looked at me as though I had multiple heads and finally asked, I am sorry… but what do you want? Just imagine how many times you hear something that you might not understand and how many times you actually bother to clarify the exact meaning. We all make assumptions about language, and luckily we understand each other, but often misunderstandings and miscommunication are the greatest source of relationship problems. It seems as though our understanding should be natural, because it is so a part of our life, but not everyone understands what we do, EXACTLY how we do. These miscommunications are all around us, even when people do not understand a certain culture, for example gymnastics. When I was younger and used to compete in meets, no one would ever understand what I meant when I would say I have to go to a meet this weekend. What is the cutest to observe though is little children who are still learning a lot of the language, they try sometimes so hard to express something, and simply can not. Their determination gets weary and often they will break down crying because they are so upset that no one understands them. Somehow though years later we are able to express ourselves much more clearly!

What is remarkable to me is when people go to a new country and somehow, without understanding a single word, can learn how to communicate. Our minds must be pretty powerful machines!

The game of telephone brought me back to my childhood, where we would play this game endlessly and laugh when a word like Dog turned into Booger. This game proves the selectiveness of hearing and ability of memorization and also the simple not understanding of things.

What Derrida explained about the further from the root source you go it ceases to have any original value, reminded me of Benjamin’s theories on authenticity. Is the original word and authentic, and by replicating it, you are losing the presence of the original. It is the same as when people tell a story about an event that happened the night before. By the 3^rd person who is telling the story half of the details are lost, and the meaning changes. In fact this is the core of rumors and gossip. Never jump to conclusions that someone started a rumor… there is a good chance that it is simply the natural phenomenon that Derrida talks about straying from the original.