| Subject: Meaning |
Author:
Baz
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Date Posted: 09/27/02 9:18pm
In reply to:
Ron
's message, "meaning or nicing?" on 08/31/02 1:42pm
>>>>Man must assign a meaning to life since it is
>obvious
>>>>life has no meaning.
>>>>
>>>> Comments:
>>>
>>>
>>>I don't think people have to assign anything to life
>>>to live it. We'll continue living despite any
>apparent
>>>meaning in life, hence, I don't think there is any
>>>need to decry a meaning.
>>Damoclese,
>>
>>I must disagree on one salient point. We will continue
>>to exist without a meaning. A 92 year old man on a
>>ventilator with a feeding tube and the appropriate
>>drugs will exist. Day in and day out he will exist.
>>Nothing more. He is. No input, no outcome.
>>
>>Mu 11 year old on the other hand lives. She thinks ,
>>she dreams and she lives. One is a physical existence.
>>The other is the potential for joy, pain growth and
>>dreams.
>>
>>Life is more than a physical presence. There is a
>>cognigtive process involved. Call it the soul, life
>>force or the human mind. It is more that a collection
>>of neurons, cellular structures and body parts. Itis
>>the intangible that cannot be readily quantified. Only
>>qualified.
>>
>>Later,
>>mredd
>
>That we differ on this may mean that meaning is simply
>in the mind of the beholder.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Ron
The following is an article I wrote to a poetry group and is concerned with meaning, our appreciation of the meaning within poetry, particularly surrealistic poetry.
I belong to a group, Humour Research Discussion List, where the nature of humour and laughter is examined. It is made up of people from many different academic fields - myself being one of the few "amateurs" taking part.
The field has long been dominated by the linguists, who subscribe to a particular theory of humour and laughter, aspects of which are diametrically opposed to my own ideas.
It is my belief that the laughter process is triggered at a much deeper level than the linguists suppose, and is dependent on conflicting emotive sub-contexts engendered in areas of the brain that apprehended the world in terms of percepts and emotions long before the advent of language.
Meaning has as much to do with emotion as it has with semantics as without an emotive sub-context language can be rendered meaningless.
Something can be said to have meaning for an individual if there is a neural system in place ( whether innate or learned ) that can process the information it contains or set in train specific responses.
Dangle a piece of wood of a particular shape ( with a bulging under-surface)in a pond and the male stickleback will go through its mating behaviour. A female stickleback that does not have a swollen abdomen will not stimulate the male. A bulging abdomen has meaning for the male stickleback. The female, for her part, is stimulated by the males colouring, which reddens in the breeding season.
We have two distinct types of meaning in this example: The swollen abdomen has a rational meaning, in the sense that the symbol that elicits the behaviour is directly related to the function of the behaviour. (Swollen abdomen means eggs to be fertilised) The symbol that stimulates the female (redness) is arbitrary, and in this sense, irrational.
The problem is that an individual´s indoctrinated systems of premises, rules, laws, religious taboos, etc may be erroneous or irrational, but this does not prevent events and ideas that are mediated by these systems being meaningful and evoking emotion in that particular individual.
When someone tells me that Jesus has saved me, the sentence holds little meaning (unless I nearly drowned and someone called Jesus pulled me to safety): but to the believer the sentence has a very clear semantic and strongly emotive meaning.
Meaning does not only depend on the "programmes" in your brain, there is also an area called the ventromedial cortex where emotion is experienced and meaning bestowed on perceptions. This area is overstimulated during the manic stage of manic depression, and also gives rise to a strange phenomenon some of you may have experienced. Some individuals wake up in the middle of the night with an idea in their heads that is so meaningful that they feel it will change the world. By morning they have forgotten it. Some have had the presence of mind to write it down before they fell back to sleep. In all cases the idea has been nonsense, of the order: Egyptian tanks run best on boiled cabbage. It seems that meaningful episodes, or should I say episodes that are perceived as wonderfully coherent and full of meaning, occur when, for what ever reason, neural traffic is directed through the ventromedial cortex.
So, the appreciation of ideas and events as meaningful depends on one´s beliefs and knowledge, and whether or not one has a healthy flow of neural traffic through specific areas of the brain.
This means we are all capable, to varying degrees, at at various times, of finding meaning in almost anything. We only have to mentally attach ourselves to something - a movement, a football team - for emotion to be evoked when it is mentioned or we take part in its activities.
Australian Rules football was a complete mystery to me when I first came across it, but having learned a few of the rules, the activity on the field became more meaningful to me. If I had started to support one team, learned all about the individualplayers and their private lives, the whole thing would have become particularly important and meaningful - although the opera lover, the chess-player, might wonder why.
In the end there is no such thing as a good or bad poem, there are only poems that are effective or not effective in particular contexts. If I go out to make an audience laugh, and the audience does laugh, then the my poem has been effective. If I go out to make an audience feel (on a personal level rather than on an intellectual level) and their faces tell me that they are feeling the emotions expressed in the poem , again the poem has been effective. The evocation of these bodily reactions may be viewed as cheap by some, but the poems have been effective - meaningful to the particular audience.
I can see why Tom stops open mouthed before one of Dale´s poems: how can he critique a poem that does not conform to anything in his poetry rule book?
Dale is in danger of being dumped in the same category as psychics, mystics and even the followers of esoteric religion, and lays himself open to the same accusations of charlatanism these types attract.
I have little doubt concerning Dale´s sincerity, the pertinent questions are: what is the source and nature of Dale´s images ?, and: if individuals say the images have meaning beyond mere semantics and the pleasing arrangement of words, are their protestations genuine ( is there a direct link between the images and any inner experience the images evoke) or they just being pretentious twits ? (Like the wankers one often hears pontificating in art galleries)
If I follow Dale correctly, it seems he is accessing the divergent processing typical of the right brain. This is the web of associations, a word or sentence elicits, and may well correspond to the preverbal percepts and emotions I mentioned earlier. The evolution of science has gone hand in hand with the evolution of language - both products of convergent processing typical of the left brain. This, to some extent, explains why some poets discourage the use of prosaic language and others, like Dale, produce extreme works which are created so close to the interface between the verbal and non-verbal that they often defy rational analysis.
Dale´s poetry will always be hit and miss because it depends on the timing of his poetic lunge through the worm hole that separates the verbal and non-verbal universes. He blindly grabs what is flying past at the time, and may pull through dislocated emotionally defined percepts that cannot be decoded into meaning accessible to a consciousness, which in modern western man so depends on verbal definitions (concepts). It is probable that the accessibility of any of his poems depends on the degree of interference from the areas of his brain that attempt to weave disparate entities into a coherent whole immediately before delivery to consciousness.
Those Aboriginals, in Australia, who have had little contact with the European probably process information in the manner Dale strives for in his work. I do not believe we can exist fully in both universes, and areas of the brain trained to routinely apprehend the rational are always going to interfere in the production of art unless they are drugged into oblivion.
We have degraded metaphor to the level of a literary device simply because we are no longer able to access the metaphorical as a function of the brain. For sci-man, as opposed to tri-man, all metaphors are immediately translated into similes.(Thank you Aristotle)
I am entranced when I watch (on TV sadly) an Aboriginal doing an emu dance, but I still see a man moving LIKE an emu. When the Aboriginal dances he BECOMES an emu and is perceived by his fellows AS an emu.
Baz
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