Language Processing

Here is the dinner I ate last night:
sweet and crunchy 7-grain bread with fancy stoneground mustard and sharp cheddar cheese, melted, plus tomato soup, a pile of arugula, and two garlic stuffed olives. What? No biggie, just a regular thing a person eats…IN HEAVEN!

Lately in my classes I have been getting confused about what I have said in class and what I have merely dreamed I have said in class. It is unsettling. This also lets you know how boring my dreams are lately. “Wait, did I tell you that Plato was against Democracy, or did I dream that I told you?”

Here is something:

During an extensive conversation the other night with my loved one, concerning how different people process and experience feelings, I had a major realization about myself! Does it still count as a realization if it’s just someone else pointing it out very explicitly? Anyway that’s what happened.

We were talking about how good the old man is at perceiving incredibly subtle things in the most off-hand comment, gesture, or facial expression. We will be at a party or something, and then we’ll leave, and he will drop the most epic bomb (“they don’t love each other anymore” for example was a classic one from a long time ago), and you go “WHAT, you’re crazy!” and yet he is literally never, never wrong. NEVER. And he’s an incredible judge of character. I can’t even tell you all the bombs he has dropped on me because some of them concern stuff that the people involved right now might not even be totally aware of yet. It’s like if I told you of his dropped bombs it would change the future and then there would be no more donuts when I got there (to the future (a reference to a Simpsons reference to a Ray Bradbury short story, FYI, like Dennis Miller I am the king of references (David Cross reference))).

So I’m always mystified and somewhat in awe of his incredible powers of insight into humans. Also, perhaps you are asking how it is possible to tell the myriad lies a wife must tell her husband in a given day (JOKE), if said husband is so adept at reading nigh-unconscious cues, and the answer is that it is not. Possible. I don’t think I have ever successfully pulled the wool over his eyes on any subject. It’s terrifying. But also beautiful. Naked I stand before him in all my dread and glory.

The reason, he opined, that I am mystified by what, to him, is not a magical power but just the normal human skill of paying attention when you’re talking to someone, is because I am 100% language-oriented. I have never thought of this before. I filter everything linguistically. I experience life via language. I think in language and then I say those things out loud. My feelings are experienced linguistically. As soon as I have a gross or emo feeling, for example, I am DESPERATE to put it into words, identify its root and cause and then/thus its resolution (even if just in my own head). Same goes for feelings of joy and pleasure. I make them real by turning them into words or some sort of languey-y conscious thoughts. But, I am only just now starting to understand that for lots of people, “feelings” and “the words that describe or explain those feelings” are often separated by a vast gulf. For some people, the old man pointed out, it may even be secretly (or even unconsciously) ideological–language is just symbols, after all, so maybe actually it’s impossible to put feelings into words, and the belief that one can do so is misguided. Maybe it cheapens feelings to put them into words! But anyway, without passing judgment on myself or others, there it is. I think and feel via language, and some people don’t.

I think I never REALLY TRULY have understood that other people are different from me. Do other people deeply understand this? Am I an alien or some kind of sociopath/robot? I think that, in spite of the fact that obviously I am aware that everyone is different, that cultures make different people, that upbringings give us different beliefs and desires and senses of self…somehow at this more fundamental level I do kind of just think everyone is like me. I’m saying this because when I try to imagine processing a feeling, or even feeling a feeling, without any words or concepts attached to it–which, isn’t this what Depression is like, for a lot of people?–I literally can not. It’s like science fiction. This is unsettling, for real.

The reason the old man is adept at reading non-linguistic social cues is because, though intensely verbal and mind-focused, he doesn’t process everything through language. He has a surface level that is language, and a deeper level that can often function independently of language. This, we realized, is why he’s so good at “acting normal” even if he’s upset, while I am not. One of the banes of my life is that I can not pretend to be okay when I’m not. I think this is a fantastic skill and when you don’t have this skill you feel like a huge asshole basically a million times a year. Because the flip side of experiencing feelings linguistically is that you HAVE to experience them linguistically, that is, more often than not, OUT LOUD. So then you’re like “I want to go HOOOOMME, I’m TIIIREDD oh woe” like a little tiny baby, instead of acting like a grown-ass person who gets that sometimes you don’t need to express yourself at top volume, that actually it’s rude and annoying. This is also why I am a horrible liar in general. I can not remember a truly successful lie I have told. I think I am almost wholly transparent. I think in some ways this is a good quality and in other ways it is a bad quality. We value depth and mystery and I think I am not at all mysterious, in any way. Does it mean I lack depth? Obviously I don’t want to believe this is true. Maybe there are different kinds of depth. I think there can be depth that runs more along the language-y lines–depth of thought and articulation of thought–though whether or not I contain those types of multitudes is up for debate. Regardless, a certain degree of transparency–of surface and depth being basically identical–is something that is just undeniably true, of me, for better/worse. I know I have an unconscious, because everyone does, but I never really worry about it or wonder what it’s up to. I don’t know what this means.

So, to bring this full circle, I think the reason I’m bad at reading subtle cues is because I just expect that everyone just verbally says out loud whatever it is they are thinking/feeling. Even though logically I know this is not how the world works, it’s what I expect. I take people at face value. If you are acting happy, or if you say everything’s fine, I have zero problem believing that you are actually happy. And then when we leave and my old man says “that person seems unhappy,” I have no way of even accessing what he’s talking about. Or, if I do notice something, it’s hard for me to know how to behave around it. Short of saying “WHAT ARE YOU UPSET ABOUT, ARE YOU UPSET OR SOMETHING,” I don’t really have a lot of skills there, with decoding, with being soft and careful and subtle. And then, if someone does express a feeling to me, I just barrage that feeling with words–interpretation and opinions and advice. I mean, it’s telling that my go-to advice for almost any problem I hear about is “make a list.” Putting things into words, for me, is how you break the power evil holds over you; it’s how you make changes in your life; it’s how you delight in things that are going well; it’s how you come to understand your own feelings. Only now am I seeing how deeply unhelpful this must be to people who have a different psycho-intellectual framework for comprehending the world and themselves than I do.

Is understanding feelings even a goal everyone should have? I believe this is the purpose of therapy, right? To understand your feelings and thus be cured/have power over your life? But then, in another way, it reminds me of, for example, the 19th century, when they decided that music should be “understood” rather than “enjoyed.” In many ways, this has been a pernicious intellectual trope that has had kind of terrible repercussions. Is there something so wrong with pure experience? With experience for its own sake, on its own terms? With keeping that experience private and personal? The attempt to understand and codify and separate into lists and broadcast to everyone is maybe sort of controlling and violent, maybe it strips the world of experience of some of its mystical awesomeness, like trying to describe the face of God. Indeed, many artists feel this way about criticism and scholarship. Whereas I am a born critic. I love criticism, scholarly analysis, writing about shit, and I think it is socially valuable, because I believe in trying to get to the bottoms of things, in connecting things, in cutting things open and seeing how they are put together and why. I guess I think this builds bridges–it connects communities and time periods and vast waves of changing thought across history, but it also builds bridges in an individual mind, between what you perceive and what you are able to consciously grasp. I think that’s cool. But, at the same time, I know about this very storied tradition of scorning criticism for its attempt to put into words that which can never be put into words; its attempt to contain and codify the artistic process; to turn everything into a museum piece for cold, distant contemplation. Maybe I limit my emotional experience by feeling only in paltry insufficient words, and by relating to others in this way. And if this is true, I don’t know how to change it, because it’s how I Am in the world. It’s how “I” is, for me. Furthermore, I don’t at all feel like I am cold, emotionally. I have lots of big feelings. I cry all the time. My heart is often full to bursting with feelings happy and sad. And obviously I think criticism too is full of big feelings–that the powerfully emotional aspect of criticism is merely overlooked by people who insist on the dearth of linguistic possibilities in making sense of the world.

So anyway, I am not sure what to make of all this. I am trying to be more thoughtful and aware of it though. In my friendships, in my pedagogy, in my relationship. You know that thing where the wife is mad at the husband for not being able to read her mind? You know this trope of hilarious old sexist cartoons or whatever? That’s how we are, but gender-reversed. My old man expresses himself in so many non-verbal ways, and it is so hard for me to intercept those expressions. I am only adept at it when it comes to jokes–I always know when he is joking, no matter how subtle he’s being. It makes him crazy.

I think this is an issue of different ways of processing information, but it’s also an issue of sensitivity. I think some people are incredibly sensitive to the emotional states of others, and I’m not, really. I think I’m really good once someone is actually TALKING ABOUT their feelings–I’m not scared of tears, I can go deep on emo shit–but up until that point I am just kind of groping around, like one of those Oliver Sacks people who can’t perceive vocal tones. I know I don’t lack empathy, so it must be about something else. Maybe it’s because I’ve never believed in God.

So anyway, that happened.

I just wrote a 7 page paper on the Book of Job, which I know nothing about. The magic of scholarship!